Chapter 2 #2
“Right, sure.” Notwithstanding his agreement, something twisted deep in his chest. Wrong.
Because Isabel had immersed herself tonight in frigid Monterey Bay, and now she was trying to salvage the tank’s dying organisms instead of elevating her core temperature back to a normal range.
Even while her hands worked mechanically with the mesh and the pump, she shivered.
If the coral was stressed, so was her body.
Which she probably knew. Still: “People get hypothermia in the Pacific, Isabel.”
“I needed the cold.” She fished out a clump of greasy detritus.
Her knuckles on the skimmer’s plastic handle were white, colorless as the massive diamond she wore, and—Jesus.
As if aware of his gaze despite her own averted focus, she dropped the skimmer and stuffed her fists and that ring under her sleeves.
Beneath the flecks of mascara on her cheekbones, a tinge of color suffused her skin.
She spoke to her feet. “It helps. Sometimes.”
He’d done polar plunges before, but then he’d sprinted for a sauna.
Isabel still stood here in her puddle.
Why?
He didn’t ask her. Not right now. In spite of her stillness, instinct from his years of wildlife work whispered that she was poised to run. Fight and flee were rarely a wild creature’s first responses to a threat. That first reaction was freeze.
But clearly, Isabel had already fled here from somewhere else tonight.
Why was she at Erin’s bungalow?
He wouldn’t ask her that, either. Not yet.
She had no reason to trust him with an answer.
Instead, slowly and very carefully—wary of startling her or of slipping in her puddle—he stepped away from the tank, out of her threatened sphere.
He backed into the kitchen. He opened cupboards and drawers and rummaged through them, making noise so that she could track his movements.
The shelves were bare of coffee, tea, or cocoa, with nothing except expiring condiments available.
He nevertheless filled an electric kettle from the tap.
While the water heated, he blew dust from a pair of mismatched mugs.
He returned to the doorway between the kitchen and the living room with them, then raised the mugs in inquiry as he volunteered,
“I’m also an open-water swimmer. I’m guessing you win the Fahrenheit numbers game tonight. But even after submerging in something as warm as the Indian Ocean, it’s important to get your body temperature back up. The water in Monterey Bay can’t be over sixty degrees.”
“Fifteen,” she nodded.
“Christ, fifteen—wait, you mean Celsius.”
Another nod. She didn’t outright reject the mug.
And she measured the temperature in Celsius, not Fahrenheit.
He sidled back into the kitchen to fill their mugs from the whistling kettle.
Once he’d placed the hot water on coasters beside the coffee table’s binder of local tourism highlights, he perched on the afghan-draped arm of the couch and asked her, “What’s your estimate on the number inside these mugs? ”
“The temperature?” A frown wrinkled her nose. She approached gingerly, took a mug, stepped away, and sipped. Her mouth twisted. Down went the mug. “Close to one hundred. Only organisms inhabiting thermal fissures in the ocean’s hadal zone would survive this.”
“Sure.”
All right: who the hell is Isabel Wright?
Smelling of kelp and salt, skittish and avoidant, but with numbers and niche marine facts ready on her tongue—and apparently hungry: even through the terrycloth, her stomach’s rumbling was audible.
If nothing else, this was easy.
He pushed off the couch. “The cupboards are pretty empty, but I saw chocolate-covered strawberries in the refrigerator. Want some?”
She hugged her forearms. “Won’t Ethan. . .?”
“Yeah, but finders, keepers.” He retrieved the berries in their tray, then dragged a wicker basket chair over to the coffee table for her.
He offered up the fruit. “Anyhow, he and Erin are probably in San Francisco. His brother’s getting married later this month.
Since it’s a Friday night, some party or other’s got to be scheduled. We can leave the champagne for them.”
Again, Isabel frowned. But her stomach rumbled a second time. Flushing faintly, she sat.
He ate a strawberry, noisily.
She didn’t glance at the tray.
She didn’t glance at him.
She didn’t speak into the silence that his chewing left, either. Damp patches began to emerge on her bathrobe, evidence of her soaked silk sheath beneath it. Her spiky shoes lay abandoned by the door. There was that diamond on her fourth finger, too.
She’d been somewhere nice tonight. Somewhere important. Probably with someone important.
Where?
More critically: why?
Most important of all, since she was here alone: what went wrong?
What had sent Isabel running to Monterey, into the freezing midnight water?
Are you safe?
I went swimming.
That wasn’t an answer.
Wes suppressed his need to ask more questions by biting into a second strawberry.
Yes, she was sitting across the coffee table from him, had stopped her fiddling with the aquarium pump, but her elbows remained tight against her ribs and she was staring with hunted, haunted intensity at her mug, almost as if she were drowning in it.
Or wanted to.
One wrong move, and she might vanish back into the sea.
He needed to get her talking. Warmed up, but not by running.
Eating a third strawberry seemed like a good first step.
Around his mouthful, Wes told her, “I’m supposed to be staying in a hostel in Moss Landing, but I got a good airfare deal and flew to California early.
So my room’s not ready. Like I said, Frizzy—Erin—mentioned that I could crash on her couch for a night or two.
Not for my whole five weeks here, though, and.
. . wait, did I mention that I’m documenting the Monterey Oceanic Research Institute’s eco-restoration work on the kelp forests?
You might’ve seen some floats and fronds out in the bay, if there’s any bioluminescence tonight. ”
Isabel’s frown shifted. “The institute—MORI?”
“You know it?” He nudged the remaining strawberries toward her.
“MORI’s established a couple of environmental protection zones to help the bay’s ecosystem recover after its sardine boom-and-bust in the nineteen-thirties and forties.
I’m contracted to shoot the sea palms and some sea urchin and crab species—plus the sea otters—that only exist in Central California’s bull kelp forests. ”
“Kelp is the planet’s largest alga,” she nodded.
“If you, Attenborough, and MORI’s briefing materials all say so?
” He shrugged and gave the strawberry tray another push.
“The institute reports that it only took eight years after otters reinvaded the bay in the nineteen-sixties for the kelp to come roaring back. Or maybe the right word is gurgling? Anyhow, otters are—”
“—a keystone mammal.” Isabel hitched her chin toward the tank. Her attention briefly caught on the berries, before the coral reclaimed her focus. “This ecosystem needs more than otters to restore it. It needs oysters.”
“Nature’s brainless water purifiers?”
“Smarter than a man-made filter,” she answered. “They’re more effective, too.”
“Hmm.” He wandered over to the aquarium. Overwhelmed by a fresh influx of debris, its pump was sputtering again. “You’re right.”
When he circled back to the table, a strawberry had disappeared from the tray. A freckle of chocolate marked Isabel’s lower lip.
Good.
Against all evidence to the contrary, she must be relaxing a bit now.
Wild creatures fleeing danger would starve, rather than risk the slow, protracted process of digestion.
That was why he noticed the little fleck of sweetness on her pale, pretty mouth.
He wasn’t staring at her. But he had to clear his throat, then redirect himself to point at the couch’s polka-dotted cushions.
“Hey, do. . . do you mind if I sleep here tonight? I’ll find somewhere else tomorrow, obviously. I’m used to that. But—I can also sleep in my Jeep, if you want. I don’t mind. It’s fine.”
“Oh—no.” Her fingers clenched around the tie of her robe. She shook her head. “Take the bedroom. Please, because you were invited here first. I can’t stay past tomorrow morning, so—”
“No.”
“. . . no?”
“No.” His back twinged. He ignored it. “If we’re doing this, I’m taking the couch. You’re taking the bedroom. If you won’t take the bedroom, then I’ll sleep in the Jeep while you sleep on these cushions. Then we’ll both feel stupid. Plus, I’ll have a crick in my neck.”
“I—”
“You don’t know me. The bedroom door locks.”
After whatever had happened tonight, Isabel would be sleeping with a deadbolt between herself and the stranger she’d found in Erin and Ethan’s bungalow.
Even if that stranger was him.
“You don’t know me, either,” she said.
“No, but. . .” A painfully huge yawn cracked his jaw before he could argue more. Fuck this. “Look, I’ve been awake for over forty-eight hours, so just—take the bed.”
“But—”
“No.” He flopped onto the couch. The cushions wheezed. He grabbed at the afghan, ducked it over his head. “Finders, keepers. Remember?”
Silence.
He waited.
Still quiet.
He went on waiting. He counted his own breaths under the blanket.
He listened to the noises of his own body, listening for hers.
. . and was eventually rewarded for his patience: when Isabel spoke again, he triangulated her voice near the bedroom.
Her whisper was barely audible over the burbling reef tank. “Thank you.”
Hinges sighed.
A lock turned.
He peeked out from under the afghan. She’d absconded with the strawberries. His stomach growled louder than the water hissing in its pipes as the shower switched on. But he grinned, and flicked off the light.