“Are you sure you don’t want to join us in the swim today?” Joan called to her. “You’re welcome to, and it’ll be fun.”
“No, thanks. I want to take pictures,” she called back. She lifted the camera hanging around her neck to prove the point.
“We have a photographer,” Joan reasoned. “He’ll make sure to get plenty of great shots of Nate.”
Carson paused.
A part of her wanted to go into the water with Nate, to feel the rubbery skin of the dorsal fin under her hand again and glide across the lagoon. That feeling was unlike any other. But she couldn’t face swimming with another dolphin. Not yet. She’d had such a rare and unique bond with Delphine. She missed seeing Delphine’s bright, inquisitive eyes, hearing her high-pitched whistle or her nasal staccato laughs. Swimming with another dolphin would be too painful.
She shook her head. “My stomach’s feeling a bit off,” she called back. “Better not. But thanks.”
Carson bent over her huge canvas bag where she kept all their supplies and pulled out the lenses she wanted to use today. A dog’s bark from the far end of the lagoon caught her attention, and turning her head, she was surprised to see a large black dog on the lower dock at the end of the pavilion. A dog near the dolphins wasn’t the norm. Curious, she rose and joined the cluster of tourists craning to watch the interaction between the big black dog and a dolphin. They were laughing and pointing.
Carson lifted her camera. Through her lens she saw the big dog lower its pointy nose as it inched with agonizing slowness toward the edge of the dock. The dolphin appeared equally curious about the dog and was rising higher in the water, angling closer.
Carson held her breath, her finger on the button.
The big dog reached the edge, then stopped. The dolphin moved forward to touch its rostrum against the dog’s nose.
Carson clicked the camera. “Got it!” she said, grinning. She felt as if she were the big black dog as its tail began wagging a mile a minute. Carson kept clicking away as the dolphin returned for more kisses. It was clear the two animals were having a good time.
When a man came to take hold of the dog’s collar and, with a gentle pat, lead it away from the dock’s edge, she lowered her camera and joined the chorus of groans from the audience who were enjoying the tender scene. He tied the dog to the dock post in the shade and gave the dog’s big head several more pats. When he returned to the lower dock and looked out, Carson realized that the man was Taylor.
She knew she should go right back to Nate’s dock, but she couldn’t resist watching Taylor give signals to the two dolphins at his dock with the ease and authority of any of the other trainers. He was working with two male dolphins, one huge and the other small. She poised her camera and photographed Taylor giving a command that sent the dolphins swimming off underwater. Clicking rapidly, she caught shots of them leaping skyward in a beautifully synchronized leap. The big dolphin reached a remarkable height, while beside him the smaller one climbed not nearly as high.
Carson’s heart lurched when she saw a chunk was missing from the smaller dolphin’s tail fluke, like Delphine’s. She followed the small dolphin with her camera, focusing in on the details. When the small dolphin emerged again at the dock to receive a fish, she saw that part of its dorsal fin was missing as well. The crowd applauded and Carson caught a great shot of Taylor’s face breaking out into a reluctant grin.
“I could watch him all day,” a young woman to her left remarked to her friend. “And I’m not talking about the dolphin.”
“Mm-hmm,” her friend agreed, before they bent their heads together, giggling.
Perusing the group, Carson couldn’t help but notice how many of the women had their gazes not on the dolphins but on the handsome trainer. With her camera she captured his muscles exposed beneath his sleeveless T-shirt, the long swim trunks falling from his hips. Besides his good looks, his movements were graceful like a dancer’s. What made him all the more attractive was his being oblivious to the attention he was receiving. His focus was solely on the dolphins.
Carson lowered her camera, feeling an undeniable racing in her blood, a spine-tingling attraction to the ex-Marine. She was only human, after all. But then Blake’s smiling face popped into her head, and she felt guilty that the first time she’d left Blake, her gaze was wandering.
Carson covered her lens and hurried back to the other side of the pavilion to Nate’s dock. She quickly took several photos of Nate chest-deep in the water, grinning ear to ear while confidently giving signals to a big dolphin. Then she went back to the bench and, pulling out her phone, placed a call to Blake. She wanted to hear his voice. Blake had been out doing fieldwork for the past several days, out of phone range. Once again, her call was sent to voice mail.
Sighing and putting her phone in her bag, she looked up to see Nate engaged in a splash battle with the dolphin. Clearly the dolphin was winning and Nate was loving it. As she watched, her mind drifted back to Blake. She’d never been in love before, but she thought what she felt for Blake might be love. So her attraction to Taylor was a red flag.
“Still stalking me, I see.”
Carson whipped her head up to see Taylor standing by the bench, a crooked grin on his face. He held on to a thick, black “Service Dog” harness attached to the black dog she’d seen on the dock. The dog was so big that, sitting on the bench, she was eye to eye with it.
“Taylor!” she exclaimed a little too loudly, rattled that he’d snuck up on her just as she was thinking about him. “I didn’t know if I’d see you again. And certainly not training dolphins.”
Taylor’s grin widened as he took a seat on the bench beside her. He seemed more relaxed today, and she wondered if it was because of his session with the dolphins or because he was with his dog.
“Didn’t I tell you I was having sessions here?”
“You did, but I thought you were doing what Nate’s doing, not training. You looked good out there, by the way,” she said, then blushed slightly at the double entendre. “I took some pictures. Here, take a look.”
He leaned closer to look into her camera’s LCD panel, their shoulders touching. Once again she felt a jolt of attraction. She flicked through the photos, enjoying the sound of his deep laughter and his occasional “That’s a good one.”