Page 59 of Sucker For You
Was he agreeing with Brianne? Isabel couldn’t tell.
Regardless, disappointment twinged in her chest.
Cold fish.
The words hardly stung anymore, and the facilities manager hadn’t aimed them at her. Still:pulls insane shifts, stays in the lab after the other research staff head home, barely ever leaves that tank, snaps at anyone who gets close, won’t share what she’s working on.
Dr. Solomon—MORI’s brusque, exacting octopus researcher, defensive of her work and her subjects, off-putting to people—had undeniable potential to be a source of the bungalow two-spot’s injuries.
Thatdidsting.
But, she reminded herself while she signed up for a week of morning volunteer shifts, synchronizing her schedule with Wes’s planned dives—it doesn’t matter.
Her feelings couldn’t be allowed to impede her goal.
12
“MORI’s lab facilities are some of the best I’ve seen. Everything is very clean. The tanks are designed for enrichment, as well as research needs. Did you notice the bat-ray pool? How the staff had buried clams for the rays to hunt?” The exterior doors swung shut behind them, almost catching Wes on his heels—but not Isabel, striding toward Baby nearly as quickly as her words came, ponytail whisking between her shoulder blades. Her assessment of the institute blew back to him on the evening wind. “Now I find it surprising that the octopus doesn’t camouflage. The majority of the aquariums here incorporate textures, materials, and colors representing real oceanic habitats. Substrate and live rock. Algae. It’s a well-designed lab.”
“No blank barrels.” He unlocked the Jeep.
“No.” She paused, a sandal suspended on the running board. “At least I don’t think so. Not in any of the areas that we toured—which seemed to be most of MORI. But I couldn’t gauge the environment in the two-spot nursery tank. Hopefully, I will tomorrow.”
“Once we get you some boots.”
“Yes.” Her fingers drummed against her knees while he pulled out onto the highway. Her gaze shifted between Baby’s speedometer and the dashboard clock. “Whatever’s available in a thrift store tonight will be fine.”
He’d observed earlier that Isabel was exactly as patient as their octopus. But hopefully not as destructive.
Self-destructive.
Not while he was here.
Currently, beingheremeant browsing ancient VHS tapes, buyer’s-remorse vacation jewelry (no diamond rings, plenty of puka shells), and heel-worn shoes at Branches Resale Shoppe, a secondhand store that smelled faintly like mothballs and Chinese food. Isabel edged among stacks of flatware propped up on boxy nineteen-eighties electronics to reach a women’s clothing rack. She extracted jeans, a few plain shirts and camisoles, and a couple of snap-button flannels. She didn’t try any of them on. She topped her pile with a baseball cap and nodded at the boots that Wes dangled for inspection.
“Are these your size?”
“They’re close enough.” She took a pair of socks from a basket marked “Free,” which she poked into the boots and added to her mound at the register.
“You find everything okay?” A clerk in purple glasses began scanning the tags.
“Yes, thank you.”
Isabel planned to stuff the toes of those beat-to-hell boots with balled-up socks, didn’t she?Shit.She’d probably had plenty of practice with that, with fitting herself into castoffs, into unwanted spaces, navigating around people who took up more than their fair share of oxygen. Even when she didn’t have to.
Not with me.
“Isabel. . .”
“They’re good for their purpose.” She shouldered her retail bag. “It’s fine.”
For now, he modified mentally as he drove them to the beach house.
The octopus was waiting.
Suckers plastered to the siding of the aquarium, her dominant eye fixed on the door, the two-spot’s body dappled with excited and coruscating flushes of crimson when they entered the living room. In an instant each eager arm was waving a coral spike or a binder clip, an oyster half-shell or a pill bottle. At least she hadn’t managed to dismantle the tank’s new protein skimmer, or expel chunks of live rock onto the couch.
“You can almost see a tail wagging,” Wes said.
