Seal With a Kiss Page 12

  Smitty looked startled and a little afraid. "Vi? Are you okay? You never cry."

  She shook her head. "I've cried over you more than once, you big dummy. I've just never let you see it before." She sighed. "I love you too, Smits. I always have, even when I was too mad to see it."

  She went into his arms willingly, trembling a little, not quite ready to believe this was really happening. It could be a dream. She always dreamed about water. And Smitty.

  This dream had both. With an addition.

  "HORK! Buuuuurp."

  A small tidal wave slopped over their feet as Jasper arrived on the scene. Smitty and Violet broke apart and stood side by side, trying not to laugh hysterically when the sea lion belched a second time. Brody would kill them if they lost it on-stage.

  As it was, the audience was humming with Jasper's arrival, probably trying to decide if the animal was supposed to make noises like that.

  "Here, I'll take that. Thanks, buddy." Smitty deftly retrieved a zippered baggie from Jasper's mouth and popped it open. He pulled a small, velvet-covered box free and Violet felt the bottom drop out of her world.

  He dropped to one knee, clearly not caring in the slightest that his tuxedo pants were quickly soaked with salt water. He took her left hand.

  "Violet, I asked you this once before when the timing was about as wrong as it could possibly be." He paused as the microphone amplified his words and sent them to the farthest reaches of the arena. "I don't know that the timing's any better now, but I do know that I'm not spending another day without knowing you're mine." He glanced around and Violet saw Brody and Maddy give him thumbs up. "So I'm asking you in front of the rest of our family," he looked out at the audience, which was following his echoing words with rapt attention, "and five hundred people we've never met before.... Will you marry me? For good. Forever. Because you are everything to me. I love you."

  Speechless, with tears streaming freely down her face, Violet nodded. He slid the ring onto her finger and she saw that it was a pair of white gold dolphins curled around a single diamond.

  He stood and kissed her.

  And this time it was no casual lipshake.

  GGThar she blows!"

  The hail should've been laughable, because there wasn't a crow's nest on the riverboat Manny-T, but Smitty just grinned and called, "What do you see, Ishmael?"

  "Trichechus manatus, sir," came the prompt reply from the ex-intern, who was on loan to Dolphin Friendly South for a month.

  "Manatees," cried Violet. She hustled up from below deck, where she'd been changing Eyebee.

  The child had been christened James, but the members of Dolphin Friendly had quickly rechriste ned him Little Smitty, because the resemblance was so uncanny. That had evolved into Itty Bitty Smitty, which had been shortened to I.B. Violet and Smitty had given up the fight, and even called their son Eyebee at home. They figured the kid could blame his Godfather Brody for it when he got older.

  Violet handed the six-month-old redhead to his father and leaned over the rail to get closer to her favorite creatures in all the waters of the world.

  The animated brown pillows bumbled in her direction, waving their paddle-like flukes in greeting and snuffling at her with their soft, toothless mouths. Smitty grinned at the look of absolute rapture on his wife's face.

  Ever since Brody had negotiated a merger with Chaz's group so they could exchange staff from Cape Cod and back again without paperwork, Smitty and Violet had commuted back and forth regularly, keeping up their research at Dolphin Friendly North while continuing to build the reputation and strength of Dolphin Friendly South.

  It was a perfect arrangement.

  "Gah!" Eyebee waved at his mother, and Violet reached for the baby as she slid over the side of the shallow-draft riverboat. Smitty tossed his son's floatee over the side and jumped in himself.

  The manatees weren't disturbed by his cannonball entrance any more than they were by the baby tugging at their stiff whiskers. They were used to swimming with the Smith family.