Betina Krahn (9 page)

She had something up her sleeve. He could just feel it.

He took a deep breath and rolled his aching shoulders, forcing them to relax. Forewarned was forearmed.

The beach was a pale crescent at the heart of a large, rounded cove. To the right, a rocky finger of land jutted out into the sea and formed a protective barrier that kept the water of the cove more placid than that of the surrounding shoreline. When they reached the bottom of the cliff, she struck off across the beach and he trudged through the soft sand after her, wondering briefly if she meant to charge straight into the water, clothes and all. But, with a glance back over her shoulder, she corrected her course.

“Where are you taking me?” he called out as she climbed several rocky steps to a path.

She pointed toward a dock and boathouse near the mouth of the cove.

“A boathouse? You cannot mean to go out in a boat now … tonight … with darkness coming on?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone out at night.”

“This is idiocy,” he muttered, following her up the steps
with an eye on the water breaking against the rocks just below his feet.

“I prefer to think of it as
determination”
she shot back. “I am experienced at sea … you would be perfectly safe with me at the tiller … day or night.”

Her at the tiller. His teeth ground together. Wouldn’t she love that?

He stalked along after her, so intent on his thoughts that he didn’t watch where he was putting his feet. When a board cracked underfoot, he jumped ahead to a sounder plank, then turned to look in horror at the splintered wood and the darkness beneath it.

“Oh, and do mind where you put your feet, Professor.” He couldn’t see her face, but could somehow tell from the sound of her voice that she was smiling. “Some of the wood isn’t quite what it used to be.”

“See here, Miss Ashton …” He drew up behind her as she opened the rough planking door to the tumbledown boathouse. Smells of rotting algae, damp wood, and musty canvas rolled out of the boathouse onto the evening air. “Either you have these dolphin creatures at your beck and call, or you don’t.”

“It is not quite as simple as that.” She entered the darkened boathouse and slid a hand along the wall, feeling for a shelf and then along the shelf until she found a lantern and matches.

“It isn’t?”

“This is not a safe, predictable laboratory, Professor. This is the sea.”

“Science is science, Miss Ashton,” he declared, tugging his vest irritably. “Either you can do what you claimed or you cannot.”

A light bloomed in the darkness. He ducked inside and saw her standing in the center of it, holding up the lantern. He stood silent for a moment, taking in her heart-shaped face, framed in a halo of glowing golden hair … cheeks brushed with warm, rosy tones … big, dark-centered
eyes … lips that seemed indecently full and red and almost …
edible
.

He suddenly realized she was speaking again.

“… more than one way to call a dolphin.”

She thrust the lantern into his hands. Then she lifted a large sheet of corrugated tin that had rope attached at two corners, and a pair of wooden dowels that had been made into mallets. Skirting him, she ducked out the door, and he was left staring at the glowing flame of the lamp, trying desperately to remember what objection he had meant to raise.

Something about calling dolphins … at night …

It was nothing short of absurd, he thought. The brazen chit … showing him dolphins in the dark … where they couldn’t be seen clearly except by
her
. This was her clever plan? Did she really think him that gullible?

He exited the boathouse and found her where the dock formed a ledge along the side of the crude building. “This way,” she said, flattening her back against the boathouse and edging along that narrow decking. He lost track of her after she rounded the corner, until he heard her call, “Aren’t you coming, Professor?”

Expelling a ragged breath, he pressed his back to the wall and slid his feet along that narrow ledge. At the far end of the boathouse, the dock continued at full width for several feet before dropping off into the watery abyss. He inched his way along until he could slide around the corner, onto the relative security of the wider dock. There, he sagged against the boathouse wall to catch up on the breath he had missed in transit.

She had sunk to her knees on the decking and was hanging the large piece of tin between two of the dock posts, so that it was half suspended in the water. Then she settled on the edge of the dock herself, took a mallet in each hand, and began to rap on the tin: five short raps, a pause, then a single lower-pitched rap. After repeating that pattern several times, she paused.

“You’d better have a seat, Professor,” she said, looking up at him. “This may take a while.”

She was calling her dolphins, he realized.
Supposedly
calling. In her book she had said that she rapped on the side of the boat … a pattern of sound that the dolphins recognized as coming from her.
Allegedly
recognized.

“Very well,” he said, approaching the edge of the dock and kneeling down stiffly on the splintery boards. “I suppose I have nothing better to do.”

The deepening crimson of the sunset slid gently into purple, then almost imperceptibly into the last dark blues of twilight. The sea darkened for a while, then seemed to brighten, as if drawing the last available light from the sky itself. The regular lapping of the water and the measured pounding of her makeshift drum complemented each other, producing a curiously agreeable rhythm.

The longer he listened, the more pronounced and compelling it seemed. Slowly, it invaded his senses, vibrated along his nerves, and founded an unsettling resonance in his blood. Tension built in him, a persuasive sensual imperative … making him uncomfortably aware of his body. Then the drumming ceased and only the soft, expectant whispers of lapping water could be heard.

He scanned the surface of the cove for signs of a curved triangular fin, dimly aware that he was holding his breath. When the waters merely glistened and flowed on undisturbed, he turned to her. She was watching him. A moment later, she had returned to her drumming. Like waves piling on a shore, the seductive pattern of that primitive call accumulated in his consciousness, pushing his awareness of her steadily higher … to the point of true arousal.

After a time, he found himself seated fully, gripping his upraised knees with whitened fingers, staring heatedly at the hazy blue ribbon of the night horizon. His jaw was clenched, his legs were beginning to ache, and his trousers felt suddenly tighter.

“No dolphins,” he declared thickly, and cleared his throat.

“They don’t just swim around the dock, or even the cove, Professor. They have a very wide range … miles, perhaps even scores of miles.”

“Then what makes you think pounding on a piece of tin could possibly reach them?”

“They have an exceptionally keen sense of hearing and sound carries under water for surprisingly long distances. And, of course, this is summer. They like to summer here, along this coast, with me.”

“With you?” He raked a critical glance over her blatantly feminine form, wondering if dolphins could possibly be as susceptible to blond hair, big blue eyes, and generous curves as human males generally were. “And what makes
you
so irresistible to dolphins?”

She watched him sitting there with his back ramrod straight and his chin raised well above his stiff collar so that he could look down his patrician nose at her, and she was seized by an overwhelming urge to shock him.

“I’m a lot of fun,” she declared firmly.

He made a choked sound, as if the word were a foreign concept. “
Fun?
”

She smiled with defiant cheeriness. “Dolphins put a premium on fun, and I think of novel things to do and introduce them to games and objects they’ve never seen before. That … and … when I get into the water with them, they get to laugh at my flukes and flippers.”

“Laugh at your …” He glanced involuntarily at her lower half.

“Well, they are rather unusual.” She hauled her skirt up to her knees and plopped first one, then the other foot up onto the dock. Fitting her heels together, she waggled her feet as if they were flukes. “Much too small … from a dolphin’s perspective, anyway. And I expect they probably think my nose is pathetically short and my eyes are much too
close together. Imagine”—she crossed her eyes—“what we must look like to them.”

He produced a strangled sound that might have included a laugh.

“We’re a strange sort of pale pink and white all over,” she continued. “We have only these long, unwieldy flippers”—she demonstrated, wiggling her hands—“and have to thrash and dig our way through the water to keep up with them. Not very promising creatures, we humans. Although”—her eyes widened in mocking interest—“they might find you more promising than most.”

“Me?”

“
Your
flukes”—she nodded to his feet—“are quite large.”

He seemed to stiffen a bit more, but it was hard to tell for certain in the dim light. She rolled up to her knees and held out the mallets to him. “Your turn.”

“My turn? Don’t be absurd.”

“It’s not difficult. Five raps along the upper edge, a pause, then a single lower rap in the center.”

He folded his arms. “I am merely an observer. There is objectivity to be maintained. My participation might muddle or taint the results.”

She continued to hold the mallets out to him. “Oh, I doubt you would taint the results, Professor. Unless, of course, you have no sense of rhythm.”

“That is beside the point, Miss Ashton—”

“Dolphins can hardly know who is calling them across miles of ocean … as long as the signal is properly given. And if you are to repeat my results, surely you must repeat my methods.”

Cornered by her logic and his own pride, he grabbed the mallets from her and scooted awkwardly across the dock to take her place. She moved back and leaned against the post, arms crossed. It took an effort to keep her smile from turning into a taunting grin.

He began to pound the tin with jerky, self-conscious motions.

“That was only four,” she interrupted.

“It most certainly was not.” He looked up with his nostrils flaring. “It was five and then one, just as you did it.”

“It was four,” she insisted. “Perhaps you’d better count aloud.”

“I will not.” He rapped out another set, a bit louder and steadier this time, but still lacking discernible rhythm. She could see in his face that he was counting mentally, but his third attempt was not much better.

“Goodness, you really don’t have much of a sense of rhythm, do you? Perhaps I should do it, after all.”

“I am perfectly capable,” he insisted, and applied the mallets to the tin with greater determination.

Eventually, he settled into a creditable rhythm. His face seemed to soften and his grip on the mallets became freer and more natural. He no longer held himself so rigidly, and his shoulders began to flex slightly with each lower tone. The familiar rhythm took on a whole new sound to her.

Her gaze was drawn to his profile: his long, straight nose, his prominent cheekbones, his high forehead and the lock of hair that hung over it. Looking away, she searched the cove for a glimpse of a dorsal fin. But again and again she came back to his hands, gripping those mallets … large hands, long, powerful fingers, and square, neatly trimmed nails. She recalled them tracing the edges of the plates and goblets at supper … gentle, authoritative…

Nana was right. She hadn’t examined many gentlemen at close range. No doubt that accounted for this strange urge to stare at him, to study his movements and the nuances of his speech and expressions. It occurred to her that she knew more about dolphin males than human ones. And here was a prime specimen, practically at her fingertips…

“There, I’ve repeated your procedure, Miss Ashton.” He paused, his eyes glowing in the dimness. “Still no dolphins.”

“As I said, Professor, it may take them a while to get here.” Her voice sounded oddly constricted to her own ears.

“And how will you know they’re here?”

She pulled her gaze from him and looked down at the moonlit water at their feet. “They usually come to the dock and stick their heads up out of the water. If I’m not here, they sometimes swim around in the cove and leap out of the water to let me know they’ve arrived.”

“They
leap
. Out of the water. To get your attention.”

“They do.”

He eyed her skeptically. “Because they ‘like’ you.”

“I can’t think of any other reason they would return each summer. Occasionally I give them a treat, but I’m not much of a soft touch when it comes to food. They eat prodigiously … it would be far too expensive.”

“You honestly believe these creatures capable of ‘liking’ someone? Of the higher feelings of regard and affection?”

“I certainly do.” Her voice came soft and earnest. “We have not the slightest qualm about crediting land mammals with such attributes. For example, we say dogs ‘like’ to be petted, because they seek it out. And we insist that they
love
a good game of fetch or a juicy bone, since they wag tails and leap for joy, and even appear to smile at us at times. Then why is it so difficult to believe that dolphins, who possess brains much larger than those of dogs—brains similar in size and structure to our own—may share at least those same fundamental feelings and attributes?”

He expelled a breath tinged with disgust and looked out at the sea. “Very well, just what sorts of things do dolphins ‘love’?”

“They love to be with each other, they’re quite social beings. They love to investigate things. They are very curious and easily fascinated by anything new or different. They love to play and, of course, to court each other and mate. But what they love the very most is …” When she paused for effect, he looked at her so intently that she smiled. “
Mackerel
. Much like human males, their affections seem to be tied closely to their digestion.”

“Oh?” He laid the mallets on the dock and slid back from the edge. “And what would you know of the affections and
digestion of human males, Miss Ashton? More than your grandmother is aware, perhaps?”