The Best Of Me

“You’re not going to try to explain yourself again, are you?” he said.

“I don’t care what you think.”

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.”

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