Chapter Nine
As Jackie crossed to the pens, she wished she hadn’t unloaded on Alex. He didn’t know the limitations she faced at the Center. And he didn’t seem to be a guy with a rabid ego who threw his weight around. Just that morning Michael Albright had asked her to consider that Alex might want to take more than a passing interest in the Center. Maybe he was one of those philanthropists who gave quietly, Michael had said, one of those who stayed in the background and took pleasure in seeing missions succeed.
If true, that would be refreshing.
She had little patience for donors who threw their weight around. Lately they’d attracted far too many of those. To them, the Center’s work was an entertainment, an amusing diversion that provided clever conversation to spice up their dinner parties and events. More than once, halfway across the planet, they’d shown up at research sites, loaded with thousands of dollars of gear, and embarked on photographic safaris with fashion models on their arms. If it’d been allowed, they’d have been shooting more than photos. Though she tried to steer clear of those sorts, Jackie had had to do her share of bowing and scraping to make sure the money flow didn’t dry up.
She let out the breath she’d been holding.
The reality was, she needed to be civil to them all.
But it wasn’t Alex as volunteer or potential big donor that stymied her. It was the visceral reaction the man called up in her. Just as sprinkling water on a magical marsh moss transformed it instantly from brown to green, parts of her sprang alive whenever he was near. She couldn’t deny that it happened. That she felt it. That she liked feeling alive.
What was it Gage had said about baseball and the primal stance of poised lions? That the response below the level of conscious awareness was primal? Well, the reactions Alex triggered would qualify. What she didn’t like was liking them so much. And knowing that her mind had little to say about her response.
Tired of her circling thoughts, she stopped to inspect the progress on the new feeding pool. It wasn’t large enough for the big sea lions, but it would work for most of the smaller ones. Fish could be tossed in from above and the animals could chase them down on their own.
She was determined that the Center would have adequate pools so that the animals could be fed in them directly, with as little human contact as possible. Proper feeding pools meant that their charges wouldn’t become accustomed to taking food from human hands. If that happened, they’d go swimming up to a frustrated fisherman and come face to face with a very unfriendly shotgun. The new protocols she’d developed would prevent that, at least. The volunteers had grumbled at first, but the crew chiefs got it. Now the crews vied to see which team could feed with the least human interaction. But if they were to truly succeed, they needed more feeding tanks and bigger tanks for the older sea lions.
Some days she wished her family were wealthy enough to fund it all. But since her father’s death, her mother had struggled to keep the family estate in Cornwall afloat. Jackie and Cory had tried to persuade her to sell Trethewen Hall and move to the States, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Trethewen was their home. Someday they might want one, she’d said.
And though she wouldn’t come right out and say it, her mother wanted Cory to move back to England and take on the responsibilities of his title. She was old fashioned that way, still thought that because Trethewen had been handed down in the family for five hundred years, it should stay in the family. And, bless her, she still thought titles meant something. Once she’d even tried to persuade Jackie to use her title to help with fundraising for the Center.
Jackie frowned. That had been an unnecessary fight. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that she and Cory eschewed their titles and followed their dreams.
“Hey, Dr. Brandon,” one of the volunteers shouted. “Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle in pen eight is seizing.”
Even as she took off at a run, hearing the name made her cringe. They allowed those who called in the rescues to name the animals. If they didn’t, the crew members chose a name. There were simply too many animals to keep track of them with numbers. The Thursday day crew supervisor—a woman with a penchant for children’s stories—had likely named Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.
Jackie set her instruments aside, examined the harbor seal, then read the chart the volunteer handed her. From the look on the volunteer’s face, she didn’t have to ask what he was thinking. Volunteers hated when an animal had to be euthanized. They never seemed to understand that sometimes there was nothing left to try, and she had to put the animal out of its misery. Their ignorance made her job that much harder.
“Isolate her in pen three,” she said. The volunteer eyed her warily. He couldn’t know what she suspected; it was still too early to confirm anything. And if what the facts were indicating turned out to be true, what could they do about it? It was something she’d have to think about when the time came.
“Pen three already has four harbor seals in it; they came in an hour ago,” he reported.
She signaled to the crew supervisor to help her hold the seal so she could get a blood sample. It was hardly necessary; the little seal barely moved. She pocketed the vial of blood and walked the aisle, scanning for a better pen. They were too crowded, particularly the pens with pools.
She’d just have to work with what they had and trust that Michael Albright and his cronies would eventually come up with the funds to make the most critical improvements.
“You’ll have to use pen three,” Jackie said. “We can move her later.”
She pulled off the latex exam gloves and tossed them in the med-waste receptacle, then she picked up her instrument tray and headed to the tool shed next to the necropsy lab.
The light in the shed was too dim for her to work efficiently and the makeshift table was too low. She leaned against it and did a quick tally of all the animals they’d so recently treated.
No doubt they were losing many more animals than those that made it to the Center. And she still had no idea why anyone would do such a thing. Surely hurting the marine mammals wasn’t the intent.
So what was the reason for dumping chemicals and contaminating the water? And why steal her samples?
The lab break-in worried her more than she’d admitted to Gage. She’d decided to take duplicate samples and ask Bradley to store them at the UC Davis lab. She wasn’t taking any chances.
She’d considered telling the board about the missing samples but had thought better of it. Any time she’d suggested that an activity could result in anything remotely dangerous, there’d been weeks of reviews and legal queries and board members faffing about, worried about liability. Michael had already proven that he couldn’t keep her discoveries under wraps. Best to forge ahead and stay under their radar. Once she had conclusive evidence, she could lay it all out and let them have at it, let them inform the appropriate agencies if need be.
The banging coming from the necropsy lab did not bode well for getting back in there and fixing the final tissue samples onto slides. Nor did it bode well for the USDA inspection in less than three hours. She couldn’t have dreamt up a more impossible situation.
She washed her hands, picked up her tray and walked to the lab. Gage could work around her.
“Nearly finished?” she asked as she stepped into the doorway. To her surprise it was Alex kneeling on the lab floor. Gage was nowhere in sight.
“Be easier if you weren’t standing in my light,” he said, looking up from his hammer just long enough to flash her a grin but not break his rhythm.
It was impossible to ignore the ease with which the man handled a hammer. His forearm muscles rippled sinuously as he worked. She remembered the feeling of his arms when he’d lifted her into the Zodiac and the ease with which he’d pulled her up the cliff on the night they’d saved the whale. He was muscular in ways she hadn’t imagined a man could be.
And she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit she more than imagined him. Sometimes in the night she’d wake, asto
nished at the clarity of her dreams. Lately he’d featured in them in sensual, almost embarrassing roles.
She stepped aside and as she did, he caught her staring.
“Where’s Gage?” she asked, hoping her embarrassment didn’t show.
“He’s not handy, in case you didn’t know. He’s gone off to tend an animal in the hospital, said he’ll be back.”
His shirt was soaked through with sweat. Even over the usual odors of the lab, she detected a spicy, subtle, citrus-laced scent and under that, the smell of man, a scent that made her core tingle.
He smoothed glue onto a patch of linoleum and laid it over the boards he’d sawed out and replaced with a rough square of plywood. As he pressed the linoleum into place, her eyes followed the muscles of his back that rippled against his damp shirt. She backed up a step, but didn’t look away.
“That should hold,” he said as he stood.
“Thank you,” she said, not liking the way her voice went all wobbly.
“My pleasure.”
He wiped his sleeve across his face, tracking a black streak along his chin. He slid his gaze to her and gave a shrug that shouldn’t have sent a melting pulse throbbing through her. But did.
“You look like you could use more than a day off.”
“Unlikely,” she said, trying to ignore how near he stood and the arousing heat emanating from his body. But she couldn’t bring herself to ignore the swath of grime he’d swiped across his cheek.
She pulled a cloth off a hook on the exam table and reached toward him, then stopped.
“You have, um, a streak.” She motioned in the air with the towel. “Right about here,” she said pointing to her own cheek. The flush she felt was already spreading into territory that spelled trouble.
He smiled as he tugged the towel from her grip.
“Then how about just an afternoon?” he said, swiping the towel across the planes of his face. His skin glistened with perspiration but instead of looking ragged, he looked as if someone had misted him for a shaving commercial.
Just that fast, Jackie was back in one of her dreams from last night. Alex had stood in her shower, beckoning her with a crooked finger and a devilish smile. Steam had filled the bathroom and heated her blood.
Or maybe it was the look in Alex’s eyes that had heated her. His look had promised pleasure and ecstasy and lots of it.
She felt her face flame when she thought of how he’d delivered on his promises, of how she’d groaned her satisfaction. God, she hoped he wouldn’t ask why her cheeks were red. What could she say? I was just thinking about all the great sex we had last night and wished we could try it out for real?
While he might be intrigued and tempted, he’d certainly think her nuts.
And she’d have to agree.
She relaxed when he glanced down and appeared to debate whether or not to hang the towel back on the hook.
She reached to take it from him, and her fingers brushed his. A buzzing, uncomfortable shiver rose in her, like bees dancing in her chest. Definitely territory she didn’t need to visit right now. Maybe never.
“I can’t.” She turned away and hung the towel on the hook, but not before she saw the clouding in his eyes. Though she didn’t owe him an explanation, part of her wanted to tell him that it wasn’t him, it was her. But as he walked out of the lab, she knew that wasn’t true. It was him. She wasn’t ready to cross into Alex Tavonesi’s world, no matter how diligently her heart and her body argued for her to give him a chance.