Free Seal With a Kiss by Jessica Andersen

and
tangled his fingers with hers, the way he used to
when they were together, and she felt a dull ache
under her breastbone.
    Violet slid her hand free as the truck labored up a
gentle Florida hill. She stomped on the clutch and
muttered, "We've both got to stay with the group.
Nothing else matters."
    Then she changed gears.
    Smitty woke up just as they eased into the back
lot of the Seaquarium. From the looks of the sky, it
was early morning. He wasn't sure what day it was,
but he was convinced that he'd never been quite as
sticky and sore as he was at that moment. In his
opinion, which he'd shared with Violet when they'd
stopped to brush their teeth with iron-tainted truck
stop water, not even a four-day stranding rescue in a
sludge-filled inlet could compare to the experience of
riding in a non-air-conditioned refrigerator truck all
the way from Cape Cod to Florida.
    Violet was still driving, as she had been since the
night before. She'd snarled when he'd offered to
switch, so he'd given up and gone back to sleep. She'd apparently opted to head straight for the Seaquarium rather than stopping off at a motel to shower
and change.

    He glanced over at the driver's seat. Her brunette
hair was long and lustrous, caught up in a casual
ponytail that made her look about eighteen. Her nails
were perfect, her khaki shorts neatly pressed, and the
floaty blouse she'd tied over another of those clinging tank tops added just the right touch of girl.
    Of course she hadn't wanted to stop and refresh
herself. She was born refreshed.
    He lifted himself off the passenger side window
that had formed his pillow since Georgia, and tried
to sit up straight like his mother had always badgered
him to do when he was a boy. Every muscle in his
body protested the action with howls of pain. He
scrubbed a hand through his hair and wondered
whether it was possible that he'd actually made his
teeth dirtier by brushing them at that truck stop.
    "We're here," Violet sang, sounding annoyingly
happy. "And look, there's a welcoming committee."
    Sure enough, there was a small group clustered
around the back gate that led into the stranding rescue staging area of the Seaquarium. Smitty and Violet both knew their way around the place, since
Dolphin Friendly had worked out of the Seaquarium
several years ago, compiling stranding data for the
Florida coast.

    Because of the familiarity, Smitty was annoyed
that he felt like such a mess when they arrived. These
people are researchers, he assured himself, they understand that being rumpled-looking is part of the job
... even if your traveling companion looks like she
just stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine.
    He and Violet swung out of the cab to a chorus of
hellos and welcomes, and Smitty tried not to notice
that all of the Seaquarium staff members were
dressed in perfectly pressed khaki shorts and logo
polo shirts.
    "Violet! Smitty!" A tall man stepped ahead of the
others and spread his arms in welcome. He looked
familiar in a slick, well-groomed sort of way. His
dark hair was disheveled and probably trained to stay
that way for the duration of the day. His teeth were
perfectly white, his tan perfectly even, and the legs
that stuck out of his perfectly pressed shorts were ...
well, perfect.
    Smitty couldn't place him immediately-he hadn't
been one of the staff members they'd dealt with at
the Seaquarium before-but he was pretty sure the
guy was going to irritate him, which was surprising,
as Smitty wasn't one for snap judgments and he liked
just about everyone. Except this guy.
    That thought became a certainty when Violet
whooped and jumped into the other man's arms. "Chaz! What are you doing here?" She hugged him
and Smitty ground his teeth.

    He was right. Now that he knew who Mr. Perfect
was, Smitty knew for sure that he didn't like the guy
much. Chaz Trowt-with a name like that, he
should've gone into fisheries biology, not marine