by Caroline Lee
He was chuckling. “I like that too. I had no idea.”
That’s when her leg decided to twitch. It happened, sometimes, if there were outside sensations—like a gorgeous man’s hand on her knee—but it was entirely beyond her control. His eyes dropped to her leg, and he pulled away as if he’d burned her.
“It’s totally involuntary,” she hastened to assure him.
“I know, I know,” he said wryly, turning his gaze to her as he stood. “It was just a surprise.”
And that’s when he reached down and touched her shoulder.
I sure as shaka feel that!
Warmth shot down her arm, and she felt herself matching his smile.
The knock on the door startled them both, judging from the way he jerked away. Marley had just enough time to notice Travis’s grin when Caro stuck her head in.
“Everything okay in here?”
Travis invited her in with a wave, and she hurried to his side. It was cute the way he put his arm around her, and she cuddled up against him. They were a good match, and Marley was happy for her friend.
“Hey, hon,” Travis said, dropping a quick peck on Caroline’s cheek. “Marley is going with the ReWalk, and we think we can get her all set up in it. She’s got enough mobility that I’m pretty sure it won’t be a problem to master the movements needed.”
“I’ll bet.” Caroline elbowed her fiancé. “Did she do her hip waggle?”
Dustin blew out a breath. “She did the hip waggle.”
Caro turned to Marley, eyes deceptively wide and innocent. “You did the hip waggle?”
Marley groaned and dropped her head back in her chair, throwing her forearm across her eyes. “I did the hip waggle, okay? Can we move on? Talk about something else? The weather!”
“The weather is warm for this time of year,” Travis deadpanned.
“I do so hope it continues to be warm,” his hottie cousin responded.
“Very warm,” Caro agreed.
“Dear God,” Marley mumbled under her breath.
Her best friend—bless her—took pity on her. “You guys want to come to dinner? Travis and I were talking about going to trivia over at River’s End Ranch. I’ve got to pop home and check on Bentley—make sure he hasn’t snuck out again—but then we were going to head over.”
Marley straightened, glad for the change in topics. “That sounds rad.” She always aced the science portions of the trivia quizzes. “Where’s this place?”
“The next town over has a big tourist ranch with lots of fun things to do.”
Dustin was nodding. “We all grew up going over there, and we know the owners pretty well. Two of my sisters are married to the current owners’ cousins, actually.”
Marley didn’t even bother trying to work through that convoluted relationship. “So close by. You sure you don’t mind us tagging along?”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized what she’d said, and glanced at Dustin with an audible gulp. She’d just assumed he’d be coming, and…
And he looked pleased about it. He was nodding again, this time towards Travis. “You’re going to need my help with the art and history portions.” He winked at Caro. “In fact, you’re going to need my help with this guy in general. Anything with rules….”
Caroline sighed good-naturedly. “Don’t I know it.” In a not-so-subtle aside to Marley, she stage-whispered, “Travis stinks at any kind of organized game.”
“I do not!”
“Yes, you do!” Caroline and Dustin answered together, then chuckled.
As the four of them headed out to their cars, Marley caught herself glancing over at Dustin more than once, which wasn’t good.
He was a charmer, a playboy. She knew enough about the world to see he treated her differently than he treated most women, and knew why. To him, she was a patient, a clinically interesting specimen. It would be stupid of her to start thinking he might feel anything more than that.
Then I must be stupid.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Coral reefs, home to the plants which are thought to supply up to 85% of the world’s oxygen— Yes, I read that right!” Arthur, the older man who ran the trivia at River’s End Ranch, responded to the surprised murmurs, before starting again. “Coral reefs, home to the plants which are thought to supply up to 85% of the world’s oxygen, are built by which tiny animal?”
His brows raised, Dustin sat back in his chair, and along with Travis and Caroline, turned to Marley. She sat opposite him, the remains of her buy-one-get-one pizza crusts on the plate in front of her, and folded her hands angelically.
“Yes?” she asked, all innocence, as if she didn’t know what they were waiting for.
Around them, conversations started up as other teams discussed the answer, and Arthur began the song which would give them their timer to answer the question.
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Is that true, Mar? The 85% thing?”
“Yep,” Marley said with a nod. “Well, it’s likely up to that much of our oxygen comes from the ocean. It could be as low as half—50%--but that’s still a huge amount. We’re focused on the rain forests as oxygen suppliers, and that’s important, but ocean plants—most of which live on reefs of some sort—are usually overlooked.”
Dustin felt his lips curve into a smile. “That’s why we’ve been hearing so much lately about saving the reefs and cleaning up the oceans, isn’t it?”
“Yes, thank goodness,” Marley said with a relieved sigh. “Someone somewhere finally got their butts in gear to help the reefs. I can’t do everything, you know.”
But it seemed to Dustin that maybe she could. This was only his third time getting to hang out with Marley Santana, but the longer he spent with her, the more impressed he was. She was passionate about so many things, and smart as a whip.
Wait, are whips smart?
Dustin couldn’t recall his grandfather’s saying, but it had something to do with being smart. As a tack? No, that was sharp… Well, she was as smart as something very smart. And funny too.
Travis was the one who dragged him back into the conversation when he leaned in and waved the paper they needed to turn in to get points. “So…animals? The animals who make the reefs which make the plants which make the oxygen, please?” He shook his head. “I thought reefs were made up of coral.”
“That’s why they’re called coral reefs, hon,” Caroline teased.
“But coral’s a rock, right?”
Marley was shaking her head as she leaned in. “Coral is the remains of the exoskeletons coral polyps leave behind. They build up calcium carbonate around themselves, and that’s what the reef is made of.”
Travis frowned. “So it’s actually polyp exoskeletons?”
She nodded and dropped her hand to the wheels beside her. “Yeah, to protect the polyps. Not everything can survive with some augmentation, you know.”
Dustin was still watching her, wondering if that’s what had attracted her to the ocean in the first place, when Travis bent over the little slip of paper.
“Coral polyps,” he murmured as he wrote. But as he folded it up and stood to take their answer to Arthur, Caroline snatched it out of his hand.
“No offense, sweetie,” she said with a smile, “but knowing your record with games, you’d find a way to drop it on the way over and lose our points!”
“Hey, I’m not that bad,” he called to her, as they all laughed.
They got that answer correct, but the next one was about some Dostoyevsky novel no one had read, and then, after that, was a question about a leading lady in a black-and-white film none of them had ever heard of. They were teasing Travis about being the cause of their losing streak when Arthur announced the next category.
“Vocabulary?” Caroline groaned. “We’re dead.”
“Hey, I’m a doctor,” Dustin reminded her. “I went to school.”
“Yeah,” Travis shot back, “for chiropractic, not vocabulary.”
Marley was snickering a
long with the rest of them as Arthur read the question, but immediately sat up straighter.
“A nine-letter word meaning to energize.”
Travis and Caroline frowned in concentration, but Dustin was busy watching Marley. Her lips moved and she stared across the room, obviously considering the question. When he saw her fingers twitch as she counted out letters on the table, he knew she had an idea.
“Marley?” he prompted with a smile.
She leaned in, her eyes twinkling with excitement. “Innervate,” she whispered.
Caroline began counting letters as Travis shook his head. “I was going to say energized, but yours is better.”
Dustin was nodding, and he couldn’t help his proud smile. As if he had come up with the answer. “Travis and I talk about nerve innervation all the time, but it didn’t occur to me it could be a simple definition too.”
Again, Caroline wrote down the answer, and they cheered when they got it correct—one of the few teams to do so. They laughed and teased and swapped stories about their childhoods during the remainder of the game, getting some answers to the trivia right, and totally flopping others.
Finally, Arthur announced the last question. “This is a field of study within biology, related to the structure and motion of biological systems, such as bodies, organisms, or even cells.”
Well, this was one Dustin knew. He leaned forward to whisper the answer at the same moment his cousin and Marley did the same.
“Biomechanics,” all three of them said at the same time, then chuckled as Caroline scribbled the answer.
Travis rolled his eyes. “I should’ve guessed Dustin knew that one, but Marley?”
“Hey,” she defended, slapping the wheel of her chair once more, “I’ve gotten to know a lot about biomechanics and the way the human body moves!”
While Caroline gave Travis a hard time, Dustin found himself watching Marley. Yeah, he figured she did know a lot about biomechanics, didn’t she? And probably a bunch of other stuff he’d only run into when discussing physiotherapy innovations with Travis or at chiropractic conferences.
He wondered what she’d known before her accident. What kind of stuff had she been interested in? She’d been a surfer, but what else had interested her? Did those things still interest her?
She was intriguing, that was for sure. He found himself asking all sorts of questions about her.
So after Arthur had announced the winners—they didn’t even make the top three—and they’d all had a good-natured toast to the winners, Dustin found himself standing and pushing back his chair.
He nodded to his cousin, who was currently holding hands with his fiancée and looking very much in love. “You guys probably wouldn’t mind some time alone. I’m going to check out the lake. Wanna join me, Marley?”
It was kind of a jerk move, putting her on the spot like that, but she didn’t hesitate. She just shrugged and nodded, reaching down to unlock her wheels and push away from the table.
“Lead on, dude,” she said with a smile.
They wove between the tables and out the door. As he followed her chair down the ramp, he wondered if he should offer to push. But he also couldn’t help but admire the way her biceps and shoulders rippled with each easy turn of the wheels she made, and he figured that meant she was fine and independent the way she was.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his scrubs, and reminded himself she was just here in Idaho for Caroline’s wedding. She wasn’t a woman for him to flirt with, she was a friend.
Right?
River’s End Ranch sure was pretty. In fact, Marley had to admit the entire area was beautiful. As they crossed a meadow on a paved path, she tilted her head back and inhaled deeply.
“I could get used to this,” she said with satisfaction.
Beside her, Dustin hummed in agreement. “The air around here sure is something, isn’t it.”
“It’s the lack of humidity,” came a voice behind them.
They both halted and turned in confusion, only to see an older woman beaming at them. She was holding one end of a leash, connected to a huge rabbit, which plopped down in the middle of the path.
Marley rotated her chair until she could see the woman—who looked to be waiting for a response—freely. She shrugged and inhaled again. “Yeah, no humidity. I guess that’s it. Makes the air feel crisper.”
“The fact that it’s not even dark yet and already feels like a Florida winter doesn’t hurt either, does it?” The woman tugged the leash. “That’s why I wait til now to bring Tubbolard here on his walks. Jess and Jake at the vet clinic tell me he needs exercise, and since Simon’s been saying the same thing about me, we take evening walks together.”
Marley was still reeling from the woman’s casual comment about Florida to care about the rabbit’s health regimen. How did she know Marley’s history?
Dustin cleared his throat. “Jaclyn, right?”
The woman—Jaclyn—beamed. “How kind of you to remember, Dusty. Or is it Dustin now? You’re all grown up, and I’ve been waiting for you.”
To Marley’s surprise, Dustin paled. “You have?” he croaked.
“Oh yes.” Jaclyn leaned forward slightly. “You’re such a charmer, I never thought you’d settle down. But the fairies tell me you’re on that path, which is quite exciting, if a shame for all the single ladies in these parts.” She smirked. “You just need to open your eyes, my boy!”
Dustin opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Marley, for her part, was hopelessly lost. Jaclyn just smiled—as if whatever she’d said had made complete sense—and nodded politely.
“Good luck, children. Come along, Tubbo!” When she nudged the rabbit with her foot, it let out a noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh, then heaved itself to its feet and lumbered after her. They both headed towards the distant RV park without a backwards glance.
The silence stretched for a few minutes, before Marley finally asked, “Who was that?”
Dustin sighed, shoved his hands back in his pockets, and turned for the lake once more. “That was Jaclyn. She’s been a fixture here at the ranch since I was a little boy—probably longer. She, uh…she claims the fairies talk to her and…”
When he shook his head and trailed off, Marley prompted him. “And?”
“And they tell her who is going to fall in love,” he admitted.
She couldn’t help it; she burst into laughter as she wheeled along beside him. “Matchmaking fairies? That’s fantastic! And sounds like they’ve got their eye on you!” she teased.
“Oh, ha-ha.” He looked pretty uncomfortable, didn’t he? “Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure.” She took pity on him. “Tell me about your family and this place.”
So as they circled around the boathouse, he explained the history of Riston and River’s End Ranch, and how it was being reenacted in an apparently popular TV series she’d heard of once or twice. Dustin’s brother-in-law Jonathan—who turned out to be the action movie star, Jack Raven, a fact which Marley made him repeat twice, then verify with photos—had a major role in this season’s plot, which was cool.
Then he went on to tell her about Quinn Valley and his wide-reaching family, as well as his dad’s McIver legacy. Apparently, Bigfoot was said to reside on McIver Mountain, and he kept her laughing at stories about various hoaxes and “evidence” found around their property and the ranch.
Finally, he led her to a bench on a little patch of dirt facing the lake. “This is my favorite spot,” he said softly.
She could see why. With a shove, she popped her wheels off the paved path and into the grass. It offered more resistance, but it wasn’t as bad as, say, sand, so she managed the dirt patch just fine. She halted beside the bench and locked her wheels, just as he moved around her and settled on the seat beside her with a sigh.
“We’ve been talking an awful lot about me,” he finally said. “How about you?”
Marley wasn’t paying attention. The sun had gone
down, but the brilliant pinks and oranges of the sunset were reflected in the large lake before her. Way out in the middle, someone was rowing—fishing, maybe?—and the ripples they were causing made the sunset’s reflections look almost magical.
“What do you want to know?” she murmured.
“Well, you’re staring awfully hard at that lake. What are you thinking about?”
She sighed and dropped her hands in her lap, glad she’d grabbed her gloves to protect her palms for this jaunt. “I was thinking… Sometimes I really miss the water, you know?”
He hummed softly. “I can imagine, I guess. You were a big fan of water sports, huh? Surfing and swimming…”
“I still am!” But she had to admit the truth. “But yeah, I miss a lot of it. I haven’t been snorkeling since— Well, you know.”
After a pause, he asked, “Did you used to snorkel a lot?”
Did she? She snorted and shifted in her chair so she could glare at him. “Did you not hear me nail that coral polyp question?” When he chuckled, she lifted her chin. “First time I saw a parrot fish in the wild was on Molasses Reef off Key Largo. I was snorkeling with a tour. After that, I got my own gear and had my scuba certification by the time I was fifteen!”
“Sounds like you really loved the water.”
She frowned, slightly irritated he wasn’t taking the hint. “Yeah, I did…and I still do. I’m not scubaing with the fishies anymore, but I’m still in the water all the time.” Just because her legs didn’t work, didn’t mean she was dead!
“Oh, that’s right. You said you were at the water park to schedule lap time. So you’re a swimmer?”
Marley stared at him, her mouth open just a little bit. Did he not know? Had Caroline or Travis not told him? She shook her head slightly, torn between feeling awkward and gloating.
“Dustin…I’m a swimmer, yeah. Caroline never told you?”
“Told me what?” It was obvious he could tell there was something big he was missing.
That knowledge tugged her lips up just slightly. “She didn’t tell you the reason I was only willing to stay for this long in Quinn Valley? The reason I’ve got a seven in the morning lane reserved every weekday between now and the wedding?”