Reluctant Date (9 page)

Less than a thousand inhabitants, Daniel had told her when
he was filling in the details about the job. What else had he said? That its
main income came from tourism; that it took ecology seriously; that it was an
ideal place to get away from the pressures of life.
 
And something else too! She paused in her
stroll along the pier. Something about everybody knowing everybody else’s
business. Something about it not just being the summer heat that was stifling.
Then he had laughed and changed the subject, telling her to take no notice of
him; saying it would be different for her because she hadn’t been brought up
there.

She leaned on the railing and stared across the bay to her
new home, keen to see it from a new perspective. She noticed she had left the
door to the balcony wide open and quickly dismissed it. At four stories up her
apartment was hardly going to be a major attraction for any would be intruder.
With a shrug she turned her attention to the building as a whole and
immediately her face creased into a delighted smile.
 
She was living in a wooden clapboard house,
ON STILTS, for goodness sake!
 
She
guessed it was to protect it from flooding but it still felt as if she was
living in a storybook…apart from the bit about being rescued by a handsome
prince of course because, unfortunately, her particular handsome prince had
made it very clear that other, far more important things, occupied him.
 
She sighed.
 
Whatever had got into her? This was the twenty-first century, and
damsels, distressed or otherwise, had been looking out for themselves for a
very long time.

* * *

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” The voice and the
question came from somewhere below her.

Peering over the railing she saw Daniel smiling up at her
from the stern of the dinghy she had noticed from her balcony.
 
He was the man in the baseball cap, except
that now he had taken it off and tossed it into the bottom of the boat where it
perched on a coil of ropes, next to several nets and a small rucksack.

It took her a moment to push the fact she had been thinking
of him to the back of her mind and produce an answer.

“Like a log, thank you.
 
And when I woke up and saw the view, well I just had to come out and be
part of it.
 
You didn’t tell me it was
going to be like this!”

“Didn’t I?” His eyes twinkled as he looked up at her.
 
“Maybe I was afraid that if I made it sound
too idyllic you would come for all the wrong reasons. Besides it’s not always
like this.
 
Sometimes we have hurricanes.
 
In fact one of the first things you’re going
to have to learn about is the evacuation plan, and what to do if the siren
sounds.”

Claire looked at him in horror. “Are you serious?”

“’Fraid so.
 
But we’re
a long way off hurricane season so you don’t need to worry about it yet.”

Thinking that the onset of the hurricane season might be yet
another good reason to return home when her six months were up, Claire dragged
her eyes away from Daniel’s upturned face, and particularly away from the
generous curves of his grinning mouth, and turned her gaze back towards the
beach.

“I’m just off to take a look at the white pelicans.
 
Want to come with me?” The question was a
casual one as Daniel readied himself to start up the engine.

Remembering the note from Beth she had found propped on the
kitchen counter, Claire shook her head. “Another time.
 
I need to unpack before Beth arrives.”

He gave something that sounded like a snort or derision.
“That’s not any kind of an excuse.
 
Beth
won’t be with you until ten, and the trip out to the sandbar will only take
half-an-hour or so.
 
Come on Claire,
you’ve plenty of time. And early morning is the best part of the day to see
them, before the boat trips start.”

Knowing he would think her foolish, maybe even pathetic,
Claire still searched for reasons why she couldn’t join him.
 
Her heart told her it was too soon.
 
Later, when she had settled into her job, it
would be fine.
 
He would just be
wallpaper by then.
 
Someone she was used
to being around.
 
Now though, the sight
of his laughing face and the curling ends of his dirt blond hair were causing
her actual physical pain.

“I can’t.
 
I haven’t
even showered yet, and besides I haven’t had breakfast.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t. And I have enough breakfast for
both of us.”
 
He nodded towards the
rucksack.
 
“Coffee, juice, fruit and
bread.”

Out of excuses, and knowing when she was beaten, Claire made
her way to the ladder leading down to the mooring. By the time she reached the
lowest rung he was holding the boat steady and waiting to help her.
 
For once extremely grateful for her long
legs, she ignored his outstretched hand and jumped, landing gracefully in the
middle of the boat.

“You’ve done that before,” he said with a nod of approval.

“Mmm.
 
I spent a
summer on the canals with my parents,” she told him. “It was their maritime
period! Dad wore an old sailor’s cap all the time, and Mum dressed like a
pirate, right down to the red bandana and striped T-shirt! Not exactly the open
sea, of course, but it was the best they could manage. I had to secure the
ropes at every lock, so I became quite good at jumping on and off moving
boats.”

“Sounds fun.
 
Surely
you enjoyed some of it.”
 
He had heard
the disparagement in her voice and his face was serious as he untied the
painter and pushed them clear of the pier.

The memories came flooding back as she heard the waves
slapping against the prow.
 
It was years
since she had been in any sort of boat. Suddenly she remembered the freedom of
that hot summer when her bare feet had become so tough she had been able to
climb trees and walk across rough stones without flinching.
 
It had been a summer when she had had only
the most cursory relationship with hot water and a flannel, and had worn next
to nothing for days on end until even her normally pale skin had turned biscuit
brown in the sun.
 
A summer of alfresco
meals on riverbanks; of non-existent bedtimes; of watching the stars rock to
and fro as she slept on the cabin roof with only her old dog Barney for
company. To her surprise she was overcome with a feeling of sadness. Where had
it all gone, all that freedom?
 
Why had
she buried herself in a city and lived most of her adult life through books?

Her reply, when it came, was thoughtful.
 
“A lot of it was really good.
 
In fact it was probably what started my
interest in photography. I was about ten years old and I remember I spent hours
walking along the towpath picking wild flowers and searching for bugs and
butterflies. I can remember getting really frustrated too because I couldn’t
draw well enough to record them. Then, one day, Dad disappeared for ages, and
when he came back he presented me with an old camera he’d found in a
second-hand shop.
 
I thought it was
fantastic and…well I’ve never stopped taking pictures since. ”

“There you go.
 
You
obviously benefited from your crazy childhood far more than you realize.”

“I guess,” Claire agreed.
 
Then she changed the subject.
 
She
didn’t want to think about her childhood anymore, particularly not now that
Daniel had made her feel guilty about her attitude towards her parents. After
all, if she had a bit more of their adventurous spirit then visiting Dolphin
Key and working with Daniel wouldn’t be such a big deal.

Chapter Eight

They didn’t say very much for a while after that.
 
Daniel was too busy guiding the dinghy round
the pier and out into the bay, and Claire was too busy absorbing everything
that came into view.
 
Only when she
laughed out loud at the sight of at least twenty brown pelicans perched every
which way on a derelict wooden structure that had collapsed into the sea, did
Daniel speak.

“It’s the local doss house,” he told her with a grin. “Once
upon a time it was part of an old landing stage but most of it disintegrated
years ago.
 
These guys took this bit over
a few years back and now it’s one of the iconic images of Dolphin Key.You’ll
see it everywhere.
 
On postcards, books,
posters…even on letterheads.”

“I can see why.
 
It’s
just so funny, and yet picturesque at the same time,” Claire turned her head as
he steered the dinghy away from the pelicans and their dilapidated roost.

“The white pelicans are a bit different,” he told her,
opening up the throttle in a noisy burst as they sped across the bay. “Much
more stately; they are almost aristocracy compared to their common
cousins.”
 

But Claire had stopped listening to him. Instead she was
looking over his shoulder, her eyes wide with disbelief.
 
He turned his head to follow her gaze and was
just in time to see a pod of dolphins flip into the air before arcing back into
the sea.

“Hunting for breakfast,” he said.
 
“Same as the white pelicans will be.
 
Everyone eats early around here.”

After looking in vain for another sighting, Claire brought
her gaze reluctantly back to the boat. Daniel smiled at her.
 
“Your first time?”

She nodded.

“It gets everyone the same way.
 
Soon you’ll be used to it though.
 
There are so many of them around here that
before long you will start to recognize individual dolphins because they swim
in a particular place at a regular time each day.”

Claire stared at him.
 
“Are you serious?
 
This just gets
more and more like fantasy land!”

He grinned at her.
 
“You’d
better believe it. Was I right that you will love living here?”

“Maybe.”

Claire wasn’t prepared to commit herself completely, not
until she had met her colleagues and started work, but she had to admit that so
far, if it weren’t for the complication of how she felt about Daniel, then life
in Dolphin Key would be close to heavenly. She turned to look for dolphins
again and was rewarded, instead, by her first sight of the white pelicans. At
the same time Daniel cut the throttle, and in a moment the only sounds were the
slap of water against the boat and the squabble
of
the feeding birds. He let the dinghy drift in among the reeds fringing one of a
string of tiny islands and threw out an anchor.

“Time for our breakfast too, although I can’t offer you any
choice.” He leaned forward and pulled the rucksack towards him. In moments he
had handed her a bottle of orange juice, a banana and a hunk of bread torn from
a fresh loaf.

Claire took it gratefully. She hadn’t realized how hungry
she was until she saw the food.
 
Now she
tucked in greedily, not caring at all that it was the sort of unsophisticated
picnic she might have put together herself when she was about twelve years old.

* * *

As they watched the pelicans wheeling and diving in their
search for food, Daniel told her a little about them. Then, when he noticed how
focused she was, he stopped talking entirely and just let her watch them. He
saw how she took in every detail and realized that it was her gift of
concentration that made her a good photographer.
 

And she was good. He had seen what she could do because,
although he had been desperate to find a way to keep seeing her despite the
fact that there was an ocean between them, he hadn’t been so besotted that he
hadn’t checked out her work before he offered her the job.
 
If it hadn’t been good enough he would have
found another way, but it had turned out to be unnecessary.
 
It had been easy to check too, because when
they first met she had mentioned the names of a few publications that used her
photos. They were nature magazines and a couple of local newspapers whose back
numbers were available online.
 
He had
found them by searching the Internet and it had only taken him a few minutes to
be impressed by the quality of her work. Now, watching her watch the pelicans,
he could see why she was so good.

Her focus had another benefit too. It meant he could study
her undisturbed, something that made him feel less like the stalker he had felt
himself to be earlier.
 
It hadn’t been
intentional, well not consciously anyway.
 
He had always planned to visit the pelicans this morning, to check on
their behavior in case they were preparing to migrate back to their nesting
grounds. He had wanted to be sure Claire saw them before they went so she could
get a few good shots that could be used on the company’s promotional
literature. It had never been his intention to take her with him today, so his
glance towards her balcony as he tied up the dinghy had been no more than
curiosity, a wish to see if the drapes were drawn back or whether she was still
asleep.
 
What he had seen, however, had
arrested his hands midway through securing the dinghy to the pier, and he had
had to grab hold of one of the wooden stanchions to stop the current sweeping
him out into the bay again.