Seal With a Kiss (2 page)

Unfortunately, the words were heard by the bane
of his existence. The hair shirt of his world. The pea
under his mattress. The little rock inside the shoe of
his life.

Violet Oliver.

"It's not Latin, darling. It's Greek for `black,' as
in black, round-headed long finned pilot whales."
She flicked her shiny brunette hair in the way that
hadn't failed to annoy him once in the many years
they'd worked together. "And that puts you down six
to three, unless I'm mistaken."

And Smitty knew that Violet never made mistakes.

He seethed a little as he watched her glide across
the deck in a shortie wetsuit that only one tenth of one percent of the population of the world could possibly look good wearing.

Violet, of course, looked incredible. Then again,
Violet always looked great.

Even at the end of a weeklong run, when Smitty's
hair was standing on end, his clothes were stuck to
him with a combination of salt water and general
grunge, and his teeth felt like they had acquired a
layer of shag carpeting, Violet would look perfect.
Her hair would be clean and slightly curled, her fingernails and toenails cheerfully painted, and her
clothes freshly pressed.

He was pretty sure she did it just to irritate him.

There had been another time, in what now seemed
like another life, when they had been close. Violet,
Brody Davenport, and Smitty had been thrown together in the marine mammal program of U.C. Santa
Cruz and had become a trio of friends that had
seemed inseparable until-

"Hey Smitty, wake up."

Fingers snapped in front of his nose and Smitty
blinked, focusing on Streaker's pristine deck, on the
endless ocean surrounding them, and on the face of
the last of that trio, Brody Davenport. "Yeah, boss?"

Though Smitty and Violet were Ph.D.'s with milelong resumes of their own, Brody was the idea man,
the politician, and the acknowledged leader of Dol phin Friendly. Smitty was content to be the man behind the scenes. He was the organizer, the planner,
the guy who got things done and kept the boat lively.

Brody began, "I want-"

Streaker pulled to within a few hundred feet of the
long-finned pilot whales and Brody forgot what he
was going to say.

Smitty grinned. He knew the feeling. The allconsuming awe they felt in the presence of marine
mammals was the glue that kept their little group
together through thick and thin, ups and downs.

And there had been plenty of each over the years.

The pod contained maybe thirty animals, ranging
from five or six feet in length to over twenty feet,
and as the members of Dolphin Friendly watched, a
pair of round black heads broke the surface and the
lighter gray of the animals' throats glowed against
the blue-green North Atlantic water.

While not uncommon in the waters off Smugglers
Cove, the long-finned pilot whales never failed to
enthrall Smitty.

"Quick, Violet, get the camera! I have a feeling
something good's going to happen," Brody hissed.
"And get Maddy from the sonar room, she won't
want to miss this."

Brody's wife had joined the team recently and
Smitty thought it rather sweet the way his boss wanted to share everything with her. Sweet and
vaguely unsettling. Where once Streaker had belonged to the three original members of Dolphin
Friendly, with a rotating cast of interns coming and
going, the dynamic had changed after Brody's marriage.

Now it was a pair of pairs.

Understandably, Brody wanted to spend time with
his wife, but that left Smitty alone with ... Violet.
He glanced over as she returned with the waterproof
video camera and he found himself nose to lens with
the thing.

"Smile for the camera, Smitty," she trilled, knowing full well he hated to have his picture taken. He
scowled as the little red light blinked to indicate that
it was recording the sight of him: sunburned nose,
diving mask marks, bad hair decade, and all.

Either his skin had grown thinner, or her digs had
become more frequent of late, because he felt his
patience fading fast. His voice rose as he said, "Violet, why don't you take that camera and-"

"There you are!" Maddy put a hand on his arm
and pulled him away. "I was hoping you could explain what we're seeing right now. Do pilot whales
often congregate in groups of this size?"

Smitty looked down into Maddy's guileless eyes
and snorted as she towed him to the other end of the boat. "Bull-oney. You just finished your degree, so
you're bound to know as much about this as I do, if
not more. But I'm grateful for the interruption." He
sighed and glanced back at Violet, who was chatting
with Brody as she panned the camera across the
lively ocean. "We're getting on each other's nerves
more and more these days. I think once the Smugglers Cove Stranding Center is up and running and
we expand the Dolphin Friendly fleet, Violet and I
should take different boats for a while. If we spend
much more time together, I'm afraid we'll kill each
other or something."

Though it pained him to say the words, the truth
was inescapable. He and Violet were like oil and
water. While the combination used to mix just fine,
it had stopped working about the time Brody and
Maddy got married.

Smitty didn't like to think of what that might
mean, just as he didn't like to remember that Violet
and Brody had once dated.

Maddy smiled and patted his arm. "Personally, I
think I'd bet on the `or something' happening between you and Violet, and it might be the best thing
for both of you."

With a final grin, Maddy walked over to where
Brody was hanging over the rail with a boom mike
to pick up the squalls of the pilot whales. Watching her go, Smitty muttered, "What the heck does that
mean?"

He glanced at Violet with her turquoise neoprene,
her waterproof camera, and her talent for irritating
him from twenty feet away, and shook his head.

Or something.

Smitty was looking at her again. Violet could feel
it like an itch. A rash. Like poison ivy or a jellyfish
sting, he got under her skin and lurked there, waiting
for her to let her guard down and let him in. In defiance, she aimed the camera directly at him, knowing that he would duck and run, though what he had
against cameras was beyond her. He looked great in
pictures.

Whenever he was caught in a candid photograph,
Smitty always looked like one of those rugged male
models posing for companies that sold camping gear
and expensive polo shirts. His windblown auburn
hair was bleached white at the tips, and his eternally
tanned face was free of freckles and creased with
interesting lines.

She hated those lines. They reminded her of how
long she'd known him. How long it had been since
he'd chosen Ellen over her. How long she'd been
trying to forget him and move on with her life.

She spun her camera in Smitty's direction a second
time, hoping to annoy him again.

But he didn't run. He wasn't paying attention to
her after all, darn him. He stared out to sea, at the
half-dozen bottle-nosed dolphins that had joined the
pilot whales and were gamboling around the larger
animals, playing in Streaker's shadow.

"Hey Violet, get some film of these guys. We still
need five or six minutes of tape to run behind
Brody's voice-over at the beginning of the opening
ceremony video." Smitty waved at a pair of younger
dolphins playing tag, leaping around and over one of
the pilot whales. "This would be perfect."

"Don't tell me what to do," she replied with a toss
of her hair, "I'm the photographer here, not you."

Then, of course, she had to film the juveniles because he was right, dang it. The dolphins' playful
antics were a perfect backdrop to their fearless
leader's speech about marine mammal conservation
and the purpose of the Smugglers Cove Stranding
Center, which was to open in five days amidst much
hoopla.

Out of the corner of her eye, Violet saw Brody
frown at her. She knew that the constant bickering
between his two senior crew members bothered the
leader of Dolphin Friendly, and out of fondness for
her boss and former-very briefly-boyfriend, Violet might have laid off. She'd even tried to be nice
to Smitty a few times recently, but it had been a wasted effort. He'd gone out of his way to annoy her
and they'd fallen right back into the same old pattern.

But ever since he had married Maddy, Brody had
been on a mission to make Smitty and Violet get
along whether they liked it or not. Violet was pretty
sure it had been Maddy's idea, since Brody's wife
was one of those flowers-and-sunshine kind of people
who wanted everyone to be happy.

Well, Violet was plenty happy. Particularly when
she was scrapping with her arch-nemesis.

She still owed him for crazy-gluing her swim fins
to the deck last week. And she didn't think he'd used
his snorkel since she dipped the mouthpiece in that
hotter-than-blazes jalapeno sauce.

Smiling at the thought, she continued to film the
dolphins playing around the pilot whales. In frame,
Smitty leaned over the railing to wave at the animals,
and as the sun began to drop low, a magnificent pastel wash of color spread across the sky. The younger
dolphins leaped and spun in glorious abandon and
Smitty faced the camera, his silhouette expressing the
sheer joy of the moment.

"Is there anything better in the world than this?"
he yelled. He spread his hands wide, threw his head
back, and laughed in wonder, and the two dolphins
burst from the water in tandem and corkscrewed in
the air just behind him.

From Violet's vantage point, it looked as if the
bottlenoses had leaped from the water at his summons, like he was the sorcerer's apprentice. The moment seemed to freeze in time for a heartbeat.
Another. Then Smitty dropped his hands and the dolphins fell back to the sea. A single gull flew across
the sky and was gone, a black silhouette against the
pastel sky.

Then life returned to normal. The pilot whales
breathed at the surface once, twice, then rolled and
dove into the ocean. The sun set in earnest and the
sky lost its magical light. And Smitty became, once
again, just a man.

"Did you get that?"

Violet started at the voice, not knowing that Brody
had come up behind her while she was engrossed in
her filming.

She nodded, not quite ready to trust her voice. The
beauty of that moment was still etched on her retinas,
the memory still too fresh to be spoken.

"Good. That will be the first scene of the opening
ceremony video. If that doesn't convince those politicians to approve our grant, I don't know what
will." Brody patted her arm. "Take good care of that
film, Violet. It's irreplaceable. I think it might just
be the ticket to the second half of our funding."

She nodded again, still not trusting her voice.

"What's the matter, catfish got your tongue?"

Violet started, more violently this time. Smitty had
snuck up on her while she was talking to Brody. His
presence jangled along her nerve endings and that
itch returned, making her irritable and a little bit sad.

When would she be able to be in Smitty's presence
and not feel the regret? Probably never.

"Huh?" Brilliant, she thought. Witty repartee at its
best. She drew a breath for another volley, but he
beat her to it.

"I'm irreplaceable." He jerked a thumb at his chest
and grinned. "Didn't you hear? So if you had any
thoughts of replacing me...."

She curled her lip and dangled the camera by one
finger. "Well, there had been some talk of this trained
monkey at Seaquarium Florida. They say he can
whistle `Ode to Joy' while riding a tricycle. I thought
he'd make a nice addition to the team."

Smitty shrugged, and his red hair seemed to glow
in the fading light. "Whatever makes you happy,
babe."

"Children, play nice." Brody's voice was a mild
warning.

Violet felt her fingers tighten on the camera strap.
Temper tangled with the last vestiges of the awe
she'd felt while filming that scene. "You have no
idea what makes me happy, Smitty. You never did."

To her surprise, he didn't rise to the bait and remind her that at one time he'd known exactly how
to make her happy. Instead he turned and walked
away, calling over his shoulder, "Be careful with that
film, Violet darling. I wouldn't want you to wake up
one morning with it crazy-glued to your forehead."

He was so smug. So aggravating. So not interested
in her. With a snarl she spun, intending to stomp
back to the sonar room and slam the door for good
effect.

But she had forgotten about the camera. Dangling
from its strap, the expensive piece of equipment
swung out when she turned. It hit the wheelhouse
wall with a sharp crack!

"No!" Violet dove for the deck. Smitty looked
back at her cry.

"Grab it!" He leaped for the camera and barely
managed to graze it with his fingertips as it bounced
once, twice on the deck, ricocheted off a docking
cleat-

And fell overboard.

Smitty lunged for it, and Violet grabbed the back
of his shirt and saved him from following the camera
into the ocean. She would have cursed, would have
apologized, would have given anything to rewind
time a few seconds, but she could do none of those
things. She could only climb to her feet and stand, awkwardly looking at the deck between her feet
while the silence grew thick.

She'd really done it this time.

Brody had needed that film, and if she wasn't mistaken, the camera's waterproof casing had cracked
on the first bounce. The new vidcam had become an
expensive dolphin toy, the video was toast, and it was
all her fault.

She drew a breath. "Brody, I'm-"

"It was my fault."

Violet wasn't the only one on the boat whose jaw
dropped when Smitty stepped up beside her and
faced Brody's I've-had-just-about-enough-of-youtwo look.