“I’m also giving Dr. Sherman dance lessons starting on Tuesday,” Doris said.
Natalie looked up again from her cards. “Dance lessons?”
“The Colonel and I are giving him a dating makeover.”
Natalie ignored the pang of jealousy that shot through her and reorganized her cards in her hand. This would be good. If she was going to be a true friend, she should be happy he was dating. He deserved to meet someone nice and long-term. She’d chosen to bow out of that plan. She could barely commit to a phone plan. And she’d never wanted to stay on the island—the idea made her claustrophobic as soon as she thought about it.
She just needed to stay out of Elliott’s way for a little while and get her independence established. Then she could possibly reenter his life as a true friend.
“Why don’t you come to the center with us this week and maybe lend an extra hand?” Doris pressed.
“No trump,” Natalie said. “What can I help with?”
“They definitely need help cleaning the ICU rooms.”
The other women nodded over their cards in agreement.
“One spade,” said Katherine.
“And they could use more towels, and help washing the towels they have,” Doris added.
“Definitely,” Marie said. “Pass.”
“Actually, that’s a great idea,” Doris said. “If we all get together, we can probably help with the towels. We have a lot of washing machines here at the apartments—many more than they do. Maybe we can start a rotation.”
Natalie nodded. That would have to do. She wanted to help, but she didn’t trust herself to see Elliott right now.
“So, did we find a band for the prom?” Katherine asked, laying down one of her cards.
“We found a great big band on the mainland, and they even said they’d let Trummy play along with them,” Doris said.
“That’s perfect,” Natalie said. “Do you need me to arrange anything or take the ferry over?”
“No, you’ve been doing a terrific job with all your ideas so far—I love everything you’ve added.”
“Thanks.” Natalie had been having fun with the planning. She realized she’d absorbed more from her mother than she’d thought, and the organization came easily for her. She was able to find plenty of low-cost decorations, arrange numerous vendors, and coordinate entire teams to take care of things.
“We do need to get the favors we ordered,” Doris said. “They’re coming on the five o’clock ferry tomorrow night. Can you pick them up for us?”
“Sure.” Natalie punched the details into her phone calendar.
“Who are you bringing to the prom, Natalie?” Katherine asked.
“I’m not bringing anyone. I’m on a mancation.”
Doris looked at her quizzically. “A mancation?”
“A vacation from men.”
“Why are you running away from men, dear?”
“I’m not running away.”
Doris and Marie seemed to pass heavy glances at each other.
“That sounds like a good thing then,” Doris said. “I would just hate to think you were running away from men altogether. Like Dr. Sherman, for instance.”
Natalie’s heart pounded ridiculously when Doris said that—she hadn’t realized her feelings might be that transparent—but she ignored her heart and moved her aces together.
Doris smiled. “Your mancation sounds like a fine idea, if it’s to find your strength as a woman. That’s always a good thing. But I would think that a mancation is supposed to be taking a self-imposed vacation from men to build that strength, not running away from certain men. I’d say you should spend time with men plenty. Like Dr. Sherman. But simply resist the idea of hooking up with him.”
“Doris!”
“Oh, I know you young people move things fast these days. I probably would, too, if I’d been born in your decade. I’m just saying, resist the hanky-panky. Just spend time as an independent woman. He won’t bite. If you don’t want him to.” She giggled with Marie.
“Doris!”
“Anyway, quite frankly, I think he needs a friend.”
A slice of panic went through Natalie. “What’s wrong?”
Doris glanced up at her and gave her a small, knowing grin. “Nothing’s wrong, per se, but you’re such a kind girl, and he seems adrift, and I think you could be a good friend to him. You seem to understand and boost him.”
“Boost him?”
“You boost his confidence instead of tearing it down. The other women on the island—including his sister—seem to want him to change, to be something he’s not. More debonair, more outgoing, more mainstream, more this, more that. But you allow him to be himself. I think he needs someone like you right now. He’s a lovely man. A true gentleman, as we used to say. And he needs someone who will let him be the man he needs to be. Anyway, trump for me. We’d better get these cards put away so we can get to swimming aerobics.”
Natalie pushed her cards toward Doris and sat in the chair long after the ladies shuffled away.
Trump, indeed.
The following Wednesday, Natalie realized Doris was right. She couldn’t run away from Elliott forever. When Steve Stegner asked for a volunteer to drive the cart to the center, she accepted.
As she pulled up the Concierge cart in front of the Friends of the Sea Lion center, she took a deep breath, adjusted her cap, and reminded herself to stay strong.
She dropped each of the volunteers off at their respective jobs, guiding some by the elbow. Her eyes widened at the sheer numbers of new sea lions. Little pups were all over the floors in every ICU room, some in baby playpens, some on towels on the cement. Varying levels of barks came from all corners of the hallways—some strong and sure, some weak and needy. Outside at the pools, there wasn’t enough room either, and a few blowup pools had been set up to handle the overflow.
More volunteers than usual moved from one room to another, handling group feedings, medication, weighing, checkups, and “fishing for food” training at the pools.
Natalie glimpsed Elliott outside a propped-open back door waiting on a new rescue. He and Jim were motioning a golf cart in with gloved hands. They both leaped onto the cart bed to haul another cage off, handing it off one to another.
“This is a heavier one,” Jim grunted.
“Good news, overall,” Elliott said.
“Parasite infection,” young Garrett said as he hopped out of the driver’s seat, clipboard in hand.
Elliott hauled the cage in one deft movement toward the gurney he and Jim had waiting and glanced up at Natalie, almost dropping the cage.
“Natalie!”
“Hi, Elliott.”
Jim came up behind him and grabbed the cage out of Elliott’s seemingly frozen hand. “I’ve got this. You should take a break, Sherm. You’ve been at this all morning. Garrett! Come help me get this guy into check-in.”
Elliott pulled his gloves off and plopped down on a stair stoop.
“Good to see you,” he said. “I haven’t seen you around in a while.” He motioned toward a wooden barrel that was next to the staircase.
Natalie took the barrel and sat beside him. “You’ve been busy.”
“Yeah, it’s been a little crazy.”
“Doris says you’re stressed out.”
Elliott gave a tired half smile. “Doris always exaggerates. But I am worried about this epidemic.”
“Is it worse than other years?”
“Yeah. I’m in touch with some scientists on the mainland, and they’re seeing an influx, too. It’s definitely dehydration for the pups. We think the mama sea lions are having to swim too far to get fish to feed their young, and by the time they’re getting back, the pups are scrambling toward shore and getting washed up, already dehydrated.”
He looked tired. Natalie
had an urge to sit by him on the stoop and put her arm around him, but she didn’t think they had that kind of friendship yet. With Elliott’s admission that he might have feelings for her, and her own libido starting to go into overdrive just seeing him and his tanned forearms again, she didn’t know if that would be wise just yet.
“How’re Larry, Curly, and Moe?” she asked instead.
“Larry and Curly are doing okay. Moe took a bad turn five days ago and started losing weight. I’m keeping my eye on him.”
“Oh no! Lily will be upset.”
“Yeah, you might not want to bring her for a few days. Although . . . I mean, I noticed you haven’t.”
“Elliott . . .”
“Anyway, Moe looks bad, and the whole center looks crazy besides, so I wouldn’t bring her this week. We’re supposed to get some help from the mainland on Monday, so maybe after that things will look better.”
“Can I see Moe?”
“Of course.”
He walked her back into the center, popping his head in from room to room, until—amid the hundreds of brown-shaded sea lions in every corner—he somehow spotted Moe across a hall.
“There he is.”
Moe was in one of the little playpens in the fourth ICU room, plopped lethargically into the corner on the pink-and-blue play mat, his head down. His large brown eyes peered up at them.
“Oh! He looks terrible.”
“I think he may have contracted one of the viruses. Jim’s been checking him out. He was sent back here to ICU, where they can feed him intravenously. He’ll be okay, though. He’s a fighter.”
Natalie was pretty uncertain. Moe looked bad. His color had turned grayish again, and his ribs were showing. “Is there anything I can do right now?”
“Do you want to feed him?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
Elliott spoke with the volunteer who was handling the feedings and pointed back at Natalie.
Then he returned to her. “Feeding time is in fifteen minutes. Can you wait?”
“Definitely.”
“I have to get back to work.” He pointed in the opposite direction.
“Yes. Of course.”
He lingered in the doorway for a moment.
“It’s good to see you, Natalie,” he said before finally turning to leave.
Natalie felt her chest fall. He looked disappointed. Maybe he’d felt she abandoned him. Maybe he thought she didn’t want to be friends. Maybe he thought she was like all the others Doris had described who wanted him to change first. Or maybe . . . maybe she just didn’t know what she was doing, and she really didn’t know how to be friends with a man.
She sighed and looked for something else to help with before she could feed Moe.
For the next two weeks, Natalie stopped at the center each day and tried to help where she could. She always popped in to see Moe, and snapped on gloves and did his feedings when her timing was in synch. At other times, she helped at other stations—weighing pups, moving laundry, driving the golf cart down to the harbor landing to pick up supplies, or whatever was called for. The center had been forced to relax its standards on volunteers, no longer insisting on a year’s worth of training, as they tried to just get enough people to do all the work that needed to be done.
Lavender Island had really stepped up. Natalie always bumped into Doris, Marie, the Colonel, Sugar, and George at the center, even on their days off. John-O often tried to stay after his Casas del Sur driving was done. Sometimes June came. Tag was often there, and Mrs. Conner from the post office came to help some days, while Mr. Conner often donated his golf cart for extra rescues. Lily couldn’t stand to be left out either and begged to come, so Natalie agreed to bring her once a week only. She’d broken the news to her that Moe wasn’t doing well. Lily cried the first time she saw Moe in the playpen, but after that, she came back strong, wearing her EMT costume every visit with her stethoscope around her neck.
Like everyone else, Elliott became a full-fledged volunteer, not just a scientist. Gone was his lab coat. He spent most of his days in T-shirts and cargo shorts like the rescue teams.
Sometimes Natalie saw Elliott hauling sea lions from room to room. Other times she saw him in the feeding room, feeding the baby seals with baby bottles. Sometimes he was in the pool area, helping another volunteer haul out heavy buckets of fish, which they threw into the pool and watched to see if the sea lions were strong enough to catch fish to properly nourish themselves. Sometimes he was with Jim, back in his lab coat, soothing a sea lion from seizures. And other times he was out behind the propped-open back door with his gloves on, waving the next golf cart in with new intakes.
The following Wednesday night, Natalie drove home with Lily and realized, right after dinner, that Lily had left her Elsa doll at the center. Natalie called to find out if someone would still be there to let her in and got Tiffany, who assured her she was staying until midnight.
Natalie bounced along in her golf cart back through Canyon Road and parked in the cool night air. The center was mostly closed down, but she could see two lights still on.
The gravel crunched underneath her tennis shoes as she headed in.
“Tiffany?” she called into the silence.
“I’m here,” she heard a voice call out to her.
She walked around the corner to where Tiffany was folding donation letters into envelopes.
“There you are!” Tiffany hopped off her stool and motioned for Natalie to follow her down the hall to the feeding room, where Natalie had remembered she and Lily had been earlier. But when they walked up to the chair where Lily had been sitting, the doll was nowhere to be found. Tiffany stopped short. “Where did it go?” She looked all around the seating area. “I swear it was just here an hour ago.”
Natalie looked, too—under stacks of towels, inside buckets, inside the boots that lined one wall. “You don’t think a sea lion could have grabbed it, do you?” she asked.
“Weirder things have happened,” Tiffany said.
They made their way into the next room and looked around there, too, but then Tiffany stopped and peered down the hallway. “I forgot I wasn’t alone. Follow me.”
They walked down the hall, toward the lab, which had the only other light coming from beneath the door. Tiffany barged in.
“Hey, Tiffany,” Elliott’s voice said.
The sound sent a warm feeling into Natalie’s gut, and she actually had to put her hands over her stomach to calm herself. She took a deep breath and headed in.
“There it is! We were looking for this,” Tiffany said, rushing across the room.
“We?”
Tiffany motioned back to the entrance, and Elliott did a double take at Natalie in the doorway.
“Oh, hey.” He put a test tube in a small wooden rack with several others, which all clanked together with a soft tinkling noise. “I saw the doll and knew it was Lily’s, so I brought it here to return to her.”
He wiped his hands on his lab coat and turned to face Natalie. He looked as if he was going to move toward her, but then he stopped and redirected his hands into his coat pockets.
“Here ya go,” Tiffany said, bringing the doll back to Natalie and shoving it into her arms. She motioned for Natalie to follow her out.
But Natalie stayed facing Elliott instead, clamping the doll across her middle. He looked terrible—his blue eyes half-lidded behind his glasses, dark circles under both eyes. And his skin looked ashen. It all could have been the lab lights, of course, but his stooped shoulders gave away the fact that it probably wasn’t.
He gave Natalie a wan smile and ran his fingers through his messy hair. “Glad you got her back. I’m sure Lily misses her.”
“Even after just a few hours,” she said.
He tried another smile.
A strange silence welled in which everyone
seemed to be waiting on Natalie.
Finally, she turned toward the door. “Tiffany, can you leave us alone for a minute?”
CHAPTER 20
The door closed, much to Elliott’s frustration, and Natalie turned back toward him in the silence.
He knew he’d been avoiding her. It had just been easier. After the kiss on Castle Road, her fleeing that night, then her admission on the beach that she really just wanted to keep things cooled down between them, he could take a hint.
He wanted to be friends with her, as she’d suggested, but he wasn’t sure how. Every time he came near her, all he could think of was what it felt like to have her in his arms like he had that night, to have her turn her head and kiss him, to have her body become supple and inviting against his. She’d let him protect her, she’d let him save her, she’d let him take care of her. And, since that moment, he knew one thing for sure—he wanted to do that for the rest of his life. He wanted Natalie Grant.
But she didn’t want him.
So he was stepping back, trying to determine where the line was: how much he could enjoy her in his life without pushing himself across the boundary she didn’t want him to cross.
“You look pretty bad,” she suddenly said.
He slid a glance her way. He didn’t even know what to do with that information. “Thanks.”
“I just figure that’s the kind of things friends can say to each other.” She thrust her chin in the air. “Right?”
“I suppose.”
“You just look tired.”
That was probably true. That happened when you worked all the time. When you did your own science work between two and four in the morning. And, of course, when you finally did get to sleep but intense sexual dreams about a woman you couldn’t have left you feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.
“Working a lot,” was all he said.
“Elliott . . .” Natalie walked toward him.
He stepped back instinctively. Man, he didn’t want to have a conversation with her right now—he was way too tired. Way too susceptible to saying something stupid. Way too close to memories of dreams that might let his body betray his wayward thoughts.
The Kiss on Castle Road (A Lavender Island Novel) Page 21