Seal With a Kiss Read Free

behind his head.
    Waving, he yelled, "No prob. Just let me rescue
my irreplaceable image from Dolphin Friendly's
friendly dolphins!"
    As he twisted the flexible breathing tube and put
the snorkel into his mouth, Violet suddenly remembered.
    The hot sauce.
    "Smitty, no!" she yelled, but it was too late.
    The figure in the water jerked and started thrashing
around, emitting horrible gargling sounds and clutching at his mask and snorkel. The water foamed white
and the dolphins darted away.
    Maddy yelled, "Shark!" and the boat was suddenly
abuzz with running figures and yelling people.
    "No! No, it's not a shark." Violet waved her arms
until some semblance of calm was restored. She
could forgive Brody's wife for her paranoia-her
parents had been killed by a great white-but the
added chaos wasn't helping. She waved her arms again until she had everyone's attention. "Not a
shark! He's fine."

    "Doesn't look fine," observed Ishmael, pointing at
Smitty, who had shed his mask and snorkel and was
now gargling with seawater and glaring at Violet
through red-rimmed eyes.
    "He'll be fine," she corrected, and winced at the
ire building in Brody's face. "It's only a little jalapeno sauce. He's just being a baby about it."
    That earned her an irate splutter from the water
and she winced again when she heard Smitty climbing up the rope ladder on Streaker's port side. She
was in for it.
    "He glued my fins to the floor last week. I was
just getting him back." Even to Violet that sounded
weak. "I ... I didn't mean for anything bad to happen."
    She never did. Somehow, it happened anyway.
    Brody rolled his eyes to the heavens as if praying
for patience. He stabbed a finger at the crow's nest.
"Ishmael, get down here and fetch that camera. It's
probably trash, but we don't want to litter. And you
two." He divided his glare between Smitty and Violet. "I'll see you in my office in five minutes."
    Smitty glanced at Violet and mouthed, "Uh-oh,"
and she had the insane urge to giggle, though her
heart thumped at his teasing. It was like being sent to the principal's office at the age of thirty-two, and
that was just plain ridiculous.

    Because honestly, what was the worst Brody could
do to them?

     

Smitty tried not to squirm as his oldest and best
friend glared at him from across the chart table in
the wheelhouse. If he could go back and undo the
last twenty minutes, he would. But it wasn't an option. So he hung his head in real dismay and waited
for the explosion.
    Brody shook his head in disgust, calmer than
Smitty had expected him to be. Maddy must have
soothed him a bit. She had a knack for that.
    "I don't know what's gotten into you two," Brody
began. "You've been at each other night and day for
months now and it has to stop. You're affecting mo rale on the boat and it's impacting your abilities to
do your jobs."

    While he might argue the morale point, since Ishmael and Maddy were the only other scientists on
Streaker and they didn't seem to care about the continued tension, Smitty couldn't very well defend his
own actions. He'd known he was pushing Violet too
hard, but something about the way she'd jumped
when he'd walked up behind her had just plain
rubbed him wrong and he'd reacted.
    Nothing had changed in the decade or so since
she'd walked away from what they'd had together.
But since Brody's marriage, he'd been thinking more
and more about the way he and Violet had ended
things. He'd been wishing things were different, and
maybe he'd been picking on her because they
weren't different. Because he was frustrated. And because the happy couple's relationship showed him
what he didn't have.
    But now, five spectacular minutes of badly needed
footage had paid the price. The camera dripped on
the chart table, a long crack in the waterproof casing
giving mute testimony to its demise.
    "We'll pay for the camera and we'll get another
good scene for your video," he offered lamely, aware
of Violet