Page 29 of Ruining His Smirk

That only made him laugh harder. I growled under my breath. He had been spending way too much time with the scientists aboard the ship.

“Stop laughing. I don’t want anybody else to hear. Will you answer me or not?”

Dexter got himself under control, though he was still fighting a smile. “You know Dr. Braddock’s a whale researcher, right?”

I nodded impatiently.

“He’s been tracking one particular female humpback for years. You know how scientists back at Waypoint tag animals?”

“Yeah.”

“Same concept.” He placed both hands on my shoulders and turned me toward the wall of displays. “See that big red blinking dot?”

I nodded.

“That’s her. She’s back in transmission range.”

“Back?”

“Yep. Whales migrate to warmer waters for breeding. They’re coming back to Antarctica now that it’s summer here. During migration, scientists lose track of animals for long stretches, so Dr. Braddock didn’t know exactly where she was.” He looked at me with his big round eyes. “This is a huge deal for him, Garrett. Every year there’s a chance she doesn’t come back. She could die during migration. Hundreds of miles of open water. The tag could fail. Anything could happen.”

I found myself looking at the blinking dot again.

“And…” Dexter said, trying very hard not to grin again, “he nicknamed her Lady.”

I closed my eyes for a second.

Of course.

That made perfect sense. I should’ve figured that out immediately. I’d spent enough years around scientists to know all of this. Instead, my brain had skipped right past the obvious explanation and landed on the most ridiculous one imaginable.

Dexter leaned closer. “So there isn’t actually a human girlfriend. Why do I get the feeling you were jealous?”

I opened my eyes and shot him a glare.

“No, I wasn’t.”

Before he could needle me any further, Braddock’s voice carried across the room.

“Landry.”

We both turned. I wasn’t sure which Landry he was addressing.

Everyone else had gathered by the door, backpacks slung over shoulders, ready to leave.

“I think you should come along,” Braddock said, locking eyes with me. “It’ll be useful for you to see a live humpback in the water. It’ll give you a much better sense of the scale of the skeleton you’ll be recovering.”

Every muscle in my body locked. Dexter looked at me with wide eyes.

Only the two of us knew about my fear of water.

But I couldn’t back out now. Not in front of everyone. Not when Braddock had just handed me a perfectly reasonable professional excuse to join them.

It wasn’t a full-blown phobia. I just… preferred land.

“Of course,” I heard myself say.

Braddock nodded once. “You’ll be with me in my Zodiac.”