Page 44 of The Art of Loving Lacy
“Tiger sharks?” She crinkled her nose.
“You’re awfully cute. You know that?” he asked.
“I haven’t been called cute for years. Thank you. You’re not so bad yourself,” she said.
He pointed to the book. “Tiger sharks.” Dane watched her open the book, mumbling,Tiger sharks, under her breath. He opened another book and ran his finger down the index, then opened to a page and set the book aside. He did the same thing with the next three books in his stack.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” Lacy said.
“You’re a quick study. Let’s have it.” Dane sat back, expecting Lacy to rattle off the first three facts in the book.
“They grow to be fourteen to twenty feet. They’re the fourth-largest species of shark; they’re solitary creatures living primarily alone—which is really sad. They must get lonely. They can live almost one hundred years. They sleep with their eyes open.” She stopped to take a breath, and Dane cut her off.
“Lace, their sleeping habits aren’t in that chapter,” he said. A flash of excitement ran through him. Maybe she wanted to overcome her fear as much as he wanted to help her.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, biting her lower lip.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think that you have been researching sharks.” Dane took the book from her and set another one in front of her.
“I might have read a few things about them,” she admitted.
He pushed another book in front of her. “Have you read up on these?” he asked.
“Basking sharks?” She clenched her eyes shut, and when she opened them again, she let out a breath. “TheCetorhinus maximusgrows to a length of thirty-five feet; their mouths can reach three feet in diameter, and—this is cool—they swim with their mouths open because they eat zooplankton. I would think they’d eat seals, fish, gosh, anything, but they don’t. That’s weird, right?”
Dane was still hung up on the fact that she knew the genus of the species. “Yeah, that is weird,” he managed.
“And they’re known as sunfish because they like to swim up by the surface. I swear, if I saw one, I’d be scared to death, but they have these tiny little rows of teeth.” Lacy shook her head.
“Lacy, what’s going on?” Dane asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you know so much about sharks?” he asked. “I wanted to help you to understand sharks, but it sounds like you do understand them.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned back in the chair.
“Oh, that,” she said. “I sort of stayed up all night Sunday night reading about them. It was an accident. I was reading about a shark sighting off the Cape, and they mentioned Brave, and then I clicked around, and you know how the Internet is. A few hours later, I was neck deep in shark facts.”
“Amazing,” Dane said. The right side of his mouth lifted. “You are full of surprises. How do you feel about them now?”
“About sharks?” Lacy’s eyes darkened. “What do you mean?”
Dane leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. His hands stilled a few inches above her leg. He was careful not to touch her, though he wanted to take her in an embrace and kiss that confused look from her lips. “In here.” He touched his chest, just above his heart.
“I don’t know. I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way. I mean, until we were out on that boat together, I didn’t even know how scared of them I really was. Now that I’m thinking about it, when I was reading about them, I had started out feeling a little creeped out by the pictures. But then, by the time I was ready to go to sleep, I was actively searching for more.” Lacy looked at the books that lay on the table. “You know, I think it helped.”
“You beat me to the punch,” he said. “There’s a new aquarium about half an hour from here. Would you like to go?” Dane asked.
“I don’t know. It’s one thing to see them in pictures and a whole other thing to see them up close and personal,” Lacy said.
“It’s up to you,” he said.
Lacy’s eyes met his and held his gaze. “You brought me here to try to help me understand sharks to help me with my fear, didn’t you? Not to learn about Brave.”
Bingo.“Is that such a bad thing?” he asked.
“It’s about the sweetest thing a guy could do.” Lacy reached over and touched his thigh. “Really sweet.”
The muscles in Dane’s legs twitched. “Babe,” he whispered.
