The Best of Me

by Tina Wainscott

  His lips quirked. “Yeah, right. You even cared that a bartender thought you’d seen me naked. What do you want? I’m busy.”

  She tried to let his rudeness roll off her, but it stuck in her skin like a cactus spine instead. “You don’t look very busy.”

  “I’m observing him. I want him to get used to my being here without thinking he has to react to me. I don’t want him to think of me as human so much as just something in his area.”

  “Like a piece of seaweed?” She couldn’t help the grin that erupted on her face as he lifted an eyebrow at the comparison. Wonder what he’d think about the eel comparison? Their gazes held until she had to clear her throat and focus on the dolphin again. “I wouldn’t think he’d like humans very much.”

  “Would you blame him?” He rolled over on his side, facing her. “But they hold no grudges. They actually seem to like people, though I can’t understand why.”

  She looked at him, wondering again what made him dislike people so much. “He seems to like you, though I can’t understand why.” He splashed water at her. She ducked, but caught the edge of the spray. “Ah, you can dish it out, but you can’t take it, eh?”

  He laced his fingers behind his head. “Come here and I’ll show you how I can take it.”

  “Uh-uh. I’ve already had a fish thrown in my lap and now a saltwater bath. I think I’ll pass.” She waved dismissively at him and turned to go, but her heart had somehow taken off in some other direction because it was thumping heavily inside her. Good grief, he was just goading you on, girl. Don’t be a fool.

  LUCY FINISHED packing up the apartment of the man who had fathered her. She put the maps in a separate box, not exactly sure what she was going to do with them. Her mother thought she was crazy for coming down to this “tropical infestation of drugs and bugs,” but Lucy was glad she’d come. This gave her a sense of closure she’d never had concerning her birth father.

  Her mother called Sonny a bum, a loser, and she’d wanted that influence nowhere near her daughter. Lucy knew her mother hadn’t made it easy for Sonny to keep in touch, but she still wished he had. Maybe he had been a bum in some ways, but he’d been her father. She decided that she was proud to call him that.

  She flicked on the small television to watch the weather. It still amazed her that she hadn’t thought about work, much less home, since she’d left.

  Cold and rainy in St. Paul. Time to call her best friend Vicki and rub it in. Vicki was a journalist for one of the large St. Paul newspapers. They’d met years ago when Vicki did a piece on Advertising Genius, and they’d been friends ever since. She dialed the number, waiting to hear Vicki’s always-cheerful voice. Sometimes Lucy wished she could be more like her friend, spontaneous and carefree. Lucy couldn’t remember ever being that way, even when she was little. Be a good girl, Lucy. Act like a proper lady now.

  “Hello!” Vicki answered breathlessly.

  “Hi, it’s me.”

  “Lucy! It’s about time! Hold on, let me get my portable phone. I just walked in.” After a second, she said, “I’m looking at a picture from a magazine of the Bahamas with beaches as white as snow and water the color of glass cleaner that can’t be real. So…is it beautiful there?”

  Lucy bit her lower lip as the image of Chris flashed through her mind. “Actually, I haven’t had a chance to look at the beach.” And the water was right there beyond the park’s boundaries.

  “Oh, Lucy, that is so like you! This is supposed to be a vacation, isn’t it?”

  “Yes and no. But it’s more complicated than that. I have to decide what to do with the park. And there’s this guy who’s taken custody of the dolphin there and is training—or rather untraining him to set him free.”

  “A guy?” She could see Vicki’s blond eyebrows shooting up in interest.

  “Yes, a guy. Anyway, I’ve been busy—”

  “What about the guy?”

  “He’s not that kind of a guy.”

  “What is he, then?”

  “What I mean is, it’s not like that. Don’t romanticize it, please.” Lucy laughed at the concept. “He and I barely get along.”

  “Is he cute?”

  “Mmm, yeah, I’d say that. Tall, blond curly hair, thin but muscular, and these green eyes that—he’s okay.”

  “Lucy,” Vicki said, drawing out her name. “You’re holding out on me.”

  Lucy looked around, paranoid that somehow someone would be standing there. “This is going to sound like a romance novel, but when I look at his eyes, it’s like I’m falling in. All right, he’s gorgeous, but that’s all there is to it. He spends his days saving dolphins. I mean, that’s his job. Sort of, because he doesn’t get paid for it. But he says he’s not a hero, and I believe he does feel that way.”

  “I still think you’re holding out on me.”

  “He and I got off on the wrong foot, and we’ve been stumbling ever since. He doesn’t even like people, and he calls me the advertising princess.” She smiled. “And Miz Lucy.”

  Vicki was making swooning noises on the other end of the phone. When she finally composed herself, she said, “Oh, man, he sounds delicious! And I know he is, because I can hear that little smile in your voice.”

  “You cannot,” Lucy said, trying to scrunch her mouth into a straight line.

  “Yes, I can,” Vicki teased. “All right, so what—he’s not your type, which in my opinion is boring if Tom is any indication and that’s about all the indication I have to go on because I think you’ve dated what, once, maybe twice, counting that bozo from Michigan, so maybe not-your-type is exactly your type. Have you thought of that?”

  Lucy raised her eyebrows, trying to assimilate that last statement. “You think my type is boring?”

  “Yes. Come on, Lucy, you go for the got-it-together suit, drives a fancy import and has a respectable, stable job. Maybe it’ll be good for you to, you know, have a fling with this guy. An island romance!”

  “A fling? You’re suggesting I have a fling?”

  “Yep. You need to loosen up. And what better way to do it than with this dolphin guy with the—did you say blond curls? Ooooh, I love blond curls!”

  “Well, they’re sort of golden, actually—” She caught herself twirling her hair and stopped. “Vicki, forget it. You know I’m too sensible for a fling.”

  “That’s your problem. You’re too sensible, too good, too smart. Throw it all away for a change.”

  “You’re a bad influence on me, you know that? But it’s not going to work. For one thing, this guy can’t stand me. He thinks I’m materialistic, ambitious, too caught up in success.”

  “Well, you are.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Look at what I have because of who I am.”

  “I know, girl, but there’s more to life than designer clothes and fancy wheels.”

  “No, there isn’t. Besides, I could never live with myself if I slept with this guy and never saw him again.”

  Vicki laughed. “Happens all the time. Okay, so bring him back with you.”

  Now it was Lucy’s turn to laugh. “Does the term fish out of water mean anything to you? This guy is a fish. Or maybe part dolphin. I can’t even imagine him in my world.” She tried to picture him at a cocktail party, wearing his tiny trunks and the shark’s-tooth necklace. And Tom’s face when he met Chris, which made her laugh out loud again. “No, it would never work. Besides, didn’t you hear me? He can’t stand me. He threw a fish at me today.”

  “That’s always a sign that they like you.”

  “In what country? But he did let me feed the dolphin. Liberty is so cool, and he pressed his nose—snout right up to Chris’s hand, and aw, you should have seen it.”

  “Chris is the guy, I hope, and Liberty the dolphin?”

  “Yes, Chris is the guy.” She cleared that ridiculous dreamy sound from her voice. “The pain in the neck. So, what do you want me to bring you back?”

  “Okay, here’s what I want: I want a picture of this Chri
s guy. And a picture of that beach so I can compare and make sure this ad agency didn’t enhance the photograph. And I want you to come back with an I’ve-been-thoroughly-loved-up-one-side-and-down-the-other look on your face.”

  “Bye, Vicki.”

  “Bye, Lucy. And I mean it about the look!”

  She shook her head as she hung up the phone. “Vicki, I’m thinking that I don’t want to be like you at this moment. Shame on you. I’ve never told you I wanted to be like you so I can’t tell you that I don’t. In fact, you’re the one always saying how I have it together, how you envy that. But I never told you about the empty ache inside.”

  5

  LUCY MADE A POINT that morning to check out the color of the ocean beyond the park, but the skies were overcast. Whitecaps tipped the grayish water, and a distant rumble echoed off the building behind her.

  Another sound rumbled through her—splashing water and Chris’s low, coaxing voice.

  “That’s it. Oh, yeah. Perfect.”

  Those words slinked through her body in a way that she could not, did not, want to explain. When Vicki’s words about having a fling drifted through her mind, the hot, rapid response of her body made Lucy more resolute in avoiding Chris.

  Then she heard a trill, happy chattering that drew her attention to Liberty. His head bobbed up and down, and to Lucy’s surprise, he was looking at her. She felt touched and warm and a little giddy all at once.

  “Well, isn’t that just like a guy?” Chris said. “A pretty woman throws him a fish, and now he’s smitten.”

  The compliment—or at least she thought it was a compliment—swirled through her, riding on the edge of that low voice. She walked over and crouched by the edge of the pool. At first Liberty swam away from her, making her wonder if she’d moved in too fast. With his bruised snout, he balanced an inflatable striped ball as he made his way back to her. He tossed it to her, and for a moment, all she could do was stare at him.

  “He wants you to throw it back,” Chris said, pulling himself up on the opposite edge of the pool.

  Sheets of water poured off his body, and she forced herself to focus on his eyes instead. When she couldn’t see anything disapproving, she tossed the ball out, and Liberty batted it back to her. The next time he hit the ball toward Chris, and so the game went, first to Lucy, then to Chris. She couldn’t stop grinning.

  When Liberty tired of the game, he positioned himself for his treat. Chris merely shook his head. Only when Liberty gave up and ducked beneath the water did Chris throw a fish. Lucy never thought feeding an animal could be so exciting, but there was something about feeding Liberty the day before that still touched her. Because he trusted her, maybe. Because they were from different worlds and should never have even met. She found her gaze had moved to Chris where she found those green eyes watching her.

  “Do you want to feed him?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She smiled, feeling shy all of a sudden. Shy? Good grief, when was the last time she’d felt like that?

  He tossed one of those mackerels her way, but Liberty leaped up midway and snatched it out of the air. After splashing back down into the water, he raised his head and bobbed it.

  “You’re welcome,” she said with a laugh, wiping water from her face. “You’ve come a long way with him since yesterday.”

  That gaze held her, pinned her to the spot and to that breath. “He’s lonely.”

  She nodded slowly. “I imagine he is.”

  “Lonely enough to even want the company of humans,” he added, breaking that spell with the hard tone underlying his voice.

  She found herself wanting to ask if he felt the same way, but thank goodness he glanced back toward the office before she could make an idiot of herself.

  “Looks like you have company, Miz Lucy.”

  Bailey was bringing over a man perhaps a few years older than she, wearing a flowery silk shirt and baggy pants that both flapped in the breeze. He finger-combed his straight, slick blond locks, which immediately blew into disarray again. Banks of gray clouds sailed over them, darkening everything in their path including the man whose hand was already extended and aimed right at her, along with a dynamic smile.

  “Ms. Donovan,” he said with a slight British accent, squeezing her hand in a tight hold and wrenching it up and down. “I’m Crandall Morton with the Caribbean Real Estate Group. A pleasure to meet you, and might I say how much I appreciate your calling us.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Lucy said. Now this man was a gentleman. Maybe Chris could pick up a few pointers. “And this is—” She turned to introduce the Bohemian, but he was already back in the pool with the dolphin.

  “The dolphin fish, er, tief?” Crandall said, glancing toward Bailey to indicate where he’d gotten the expression.

  “Ah, never mind him. Let’s go to the office, shall we?”

  She found it refreshing to talk to a civilized man about numbers and business. So why did she decline his dinner invitation by making up some excuse about packing up her father’s things when that was already done?

  “Perhaps another night before you leave?” he asked, a gracious smile on his thin lips.

  “Perhaps,” she said, walking him to the front gate.

  He stepped into one of the nicer cars she’d seen on the island and waved as he drove away. If she were to have a fling—which she wouldn’t—that man would be more her type. Successful, classy men were her style. Not dripping-wet-watching-the-sky-darken-wearing-those-little-trunks-again-who-liked-to-ignore-her types.

  And if not, why was she invariably walking his way? Luckily Bailey intercepted her.

  “You not going to sell dis place to dat guy, are you?”

  “Why not? He represents an investor who’s going to put a charming hotel on this property, which is worth more as land than it is as a park.”

  Bailey scowled. “He came in talking to Sonny about dat.”

  “Crandall mentioned he’d talked to Sonny.”

  “Sonny hate the guy. He always come round trying to badger Sonny into selling the park to put up some high-rise condominiums. Sonny, he love dis park.”

  She wasn’t sure if Bailey was a reliable source on anything. One of them was lying about the relationship between her father and Crandall, and she’d bet on Bailey first. But she grasped onto the last part of what he’d said.

  “My father loved this place?”

  “Yah, mon. It mean the world to him.”

  Her gaze swept from one end of the park, pausing at Chris, to the other. The aquarium needed painting, the office needed refurbishing and most of the signs were faded.

  “He had a strange way of treating what he loved,” she said.

  “He love you, too, Miss Lucy. He used to watch the kids, especially girls wit’ brown hair, and get dis sad smile on his face.”

  She turned to Bailey. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you mean. He used to talk about you, you know.”

  Her voice grew small when she asked, “He did?”

  He nodded. “He tell everyone what a big shot his girl is, how proud he was.”

  She chewed on her bottom lip, sure that the moisture gathering in her eyes was due to the spray of salty mist a gust of wind blew up from the ocean.

  Bailey scanned the sky. “I don’ t’ink we gonna have much business today. Tropical storm gonna be here all day, and the cruise ships no going to send people ashore on ferries when it’s rough.”

  A bank of dark clouds shimmered with electricity in the distance, and shades of gray mottled the entire sky. The wind was having a heyday with Chris’s curls as he slipped into a white cotton shirt and red shorts.

  She forced herself to turn to Bailey. “What did Sonny do on days like this?”

  “If the weather was going to be bad all day, he jus’ close up. Everyt’ing’s been fed, except for the ones who get fed during the tours.”

  She could see one of the cruise ships in the distance rising and falling on the swells. It looked li
ke a toy ship in a child’s tub. “All right, let’s close.”

  “Yes!” Bailey said with jerk of his fist. “Not’ing like snuggling up with the one you love on a day like dis. I’ll feed the sharks and stingrays and go right away.”

  “The one you love would be the mother of your six children, I hope!” she called after him, but he was already sprinting toward the aquarium.

  “He’s got six kids?” Chris asked from her side.

  “It depends on when you ask him. It’s a variation of kids and goats.”

  He rubbed a towel over his curls and then gave them a shake. “You closing down for the day?”

  She glanced around at the banners being whipped in the wind, at Bailey tossing food in the pools. “No point in staying open.”

  “Not unless you want to get struck by lightning. I’m off to Barney’s. See ya.”

  He headed for the front gate, and she turned back to the office. Bailey jogged through the gate at the same time Bill turned the sign around and headed to his car.

  Suddenly a whole day stretched out before her with nothing to fill it. Hanging around in the office didn’t sound appealing, nor did hanging around her father’s apartment. When she turned back to Chris, he was standing a few yards away looking at her.

  “I don’t suppose you’d want to wait out the storm at Barney’s with me.”

  Her mouth quirked in a half smile. “Is that supposed to be an invitation?”

  He seemed to consider that. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Well, then, I guess I’ll accept.”

  He nodded toward the moped. “We’d better get going before the rain starts.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not getting on one of those things.”

  A teasing glint lit his eyes. “Miz Lucy, I’ll bet you’ve never done anything daring in your life, have you?”

  “I most certainly have. I started a business right out of college. That was risky. I came down here by myself.”

  “Ooh, paint me wrong. Come on, let’s go. It’ll be pouring by the time a cab comes.”

  She found herself following him outside the gate, which she locked. He was already starting the engine. She stared at him, with his shirt flapping open and his long legs bracing the bike. This was dangerous, insane. Risky? Probably. She glanced behind her, watching the squall thunder in.