I’ve got to get to work.”
It was easy to reduce her father’s park to numbers. Business was her life, even if the creative side was her favorite part. Here, making it a business meant not looking at it as something her estranged father owned, and perhaps loved. Well, as much as a man like that could love something. He’d told her a few times that he’d loved her, too, but she felt neglected as perhaps Liberty was.
Silvery reflections from the Touching Tank danced across the walls like restless ghosts. Her gaze went out the window again, where Chris’s long arms were outstretched and water splashed up to sparkle in the air. In some ways he reminded her of Sonny, or at least of the image she’d always had of him: seafaring, wandering and a loner. She wondered if he had ever been lonely, her father, and what he felt inside, and then she realized she was thinking about Chris and not her father at all.
“Hellooo,” Bailey said in a singsong voice as he poked his head in the doorway a few hours later. “I didn’t scare you dis time, did I?”
“Not much.”
He stepped inside, looking crisp and professional in his white uniform. “Are you going to close us down?”
“I’m still looking at the numbers.”
“I t’ink you were looking out da window, Miss Lucy,” he said with a solemn nod.
She felt a warm flush and hoped he hadn’t seen exactly where she’d been looking. “I was thinking. Now go away and let me think some more.”
“Yes, Miss Lucy.”
He disappeared, and she caught herself smiling. Miss Lucy. Her lips quirked even more. Miz Lucy. Chris only called her that in fun, but something in the way he said the words rippled through her. Ridiculous. Back to the numbers.
Not thirty minutes later, Bailey was back in the doorway with that white grin. “Decision yet?”
“No, and go away!”
BAILEY HELD OUT until almost noon this time.
She glanced over at her notepad full of numbers and calculations, then up at his hopeful face. “It doesn’t look good.” He dropped into one of the chairs in front of her desk. She felt as though she were firing the man, like she’d fired a few people back home. They looked the same way, and she felt the same way: bad. “This place was scraping by as it was. I don’t know how long even Sonny could have kept it going. Without the star attraction, I don’t see that it has a chance.”
“We could buy another dolphin fish,” he said.
“No, I’m afraid we can’t afford one, no matter what they cost. Besides, unless we get better facilities, Mr. Maddox will be back to take him away, too.”
Bailey lifted an eyebrow. “You could beg him, you know, bat your eyelashes and say pretty please can we keep the dolphin fish?”
She lowered her chin. “Have you been talking to a particular bartender at Barney’s?”
He looked innocent enough. “No, why?”
“Never mind. Anyway, I’m not the kind of woman who can convince a man to do things he doesn’t want to do.”
“Sure you are. You’re very pretty.”
“Thank you, but pretty isn’t going to cut it. It never has, to be honest with you. Anyway, forget the begging thing. I’m not going to ask him to leave Liberty because I already know he won’t.”
“You’re right,” another voice said from the doorway. “You could be Marilyn Monroe reincarnated and you wouldn’t get me to give Liberty back to you.”
That flush Lucy experienced earlier was nothing compared to the full fire that lit her face now. She met those green eyes that reeked of smugness. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Since the begging thing.”
She made a sound that combined embarrassment and irritation and wasn’t ladylike by any means. “What do you want?”
Bailey made a quick exit, mumbling something about feeding the squid. Chris wore that bathing suit that had to be illegal on a body like his, moving up to her desk and planting his hands on the edge. His long fingers were shriveled underneath. He wore a band made of colored threads on his right wrist, though sun and water had faded it a little.
“I was wondering if Sonny kept any records on Liberty. Medical, training…anything like that.”
If the person behind the desk was supposed to emit any kind of authority, she was doing a poor job. “You’re dripping on my desk,” she finally said, standing to face him.
He glanced down at the droplets of water swirling down his curls and puddling on the Formica surface. “Sorry.” He stood, forcing her to look up at him again.
“I’ll look around.”
He glanced down at the paperwork scattered across the desk. “I can look if you’re busy.”
“I need a break anyway.”
She found a junk drawer, another filled with more maps and notes on places like Aruba and Barbados, and stacks of National Geographic dating back to the seventies. She walked to the four-drawer filing cabinet. He walked up behind her, so close she could feel the moist heat emanating from him.
“Thanks for the drink, by the way,” she said, diverting her thoughts.
“No problem.”
Her fingers flipped through the hanging folders, nails clicking against the plastic tabs in Sonny’s small writing that read Moray Eels, Sea Turtles and Clown Fish. It was then that she realized she hadn’t only inherited numbers; she’d inherited living creatures that depended on humans to feed and take care of them. Who now depended on her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“There are so many creatures here.”
“Haven’t you seen them yet?”
She glanced to her left, finding him right beside her. “Just a cursory glance. I wanted to look at the numbers first.”
“Of course.” He glanced back at the desk. “Did you inherit a moneymaker or a money pit?”
She turned to face him, finding him still too close to her personal zone. “I don’t care about the money aspect. I just need to figure out what I’m going to do with this place.”
“Surely not move here to run it, not the advertising princess.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I am not an advertising princess.”
He scanned her styled hair, gold-plated barrette, and continued slowly, agonizingly down the rest of her body. “Look like one to me.” Despite his words, his eyes gave away some appreciation of what he saw.
The man was infuriating, but she tried her best to hold her mouth firm and not show him the effect his appraisal was having on her. She locked her knees and
