Molly had a sudden urge to kick water right in his face.
Somehow, she managed to resist. “I’ll take my dog back, thank you.”
“Your puppy was up by the dunes just now.” Max handed the Cavalier over and crossed his arms. Molly could have sworn she saw his biceps flex under the sleeves of his pressed oxford shirt. “Digging.”
Molly shrugged. “Newsflash: dogs dig.”
Something brushed up against her foot in the water, but when she looked down, all she saw was a flash of green. Seaweed, probably.
“You shouldn’t let her dig at the beach. Holes in the sand are a hazard to beachgoers of all species,” he said.
Living next door to him was going to be pure joy, wasn’t it?
“Look at her.” Molly glanced at Ursula in her arms. The puppy was gazing down at the water with her ears swiveled forward on high alert. “She weighs less than seven pounds, and she has the attention span of a gnat. Just how large of a hole do you think she can dig?”
“That’s hardly the point.”
Molly tilted her head. “Isn’t it, though?”
Ursula whined again, and she wiggled in Molly’s arms, begging to be set free.
Molly felt a little bit wounded, to be honest. Why was her puppy so crazy about Max? It stung.
“As she grows, so will the size of the trouble she gets into,” Max said.
So now he was a dog trainer in addition to being a scientist. Could he be any more infuriating?
“Look, I really don’t need you to mansplain puppy behavior to me. I get it. You have a PhD, but that doesn’t make you—”
Molly broke off, mid-rant, because Ursula was struggling to get down and Max’s attention had strayed elsewhere. He was staring down into the water at Molly’s feet, oblivious. Honestly, sometimes he really took the whole hot-but-absentminded-professor thing too far.
“Forget it,” she huffed. “We’re leaving.”
Ursula’s whining escalated to a caterwaul that was beyond obnoxious. Was it just not possible for Molly to have a single face-to-face interaction with Max that didn’t end in humiliation?
Before she could swish past him in the shallow water, he reached out and took hold of her arm. Annoying little goosebumps broke out on every inch of Molly’s skin.
What was happening? Was he about to confess that he was attracted to her, or did he think that romantic chemistry was “scientifically insignificant”? Probably the latter, especially considering that he still couldn’t seem to look her in the eye.
But then Molly followed his gaze and immediately realized why Ursula was going bonkers and Max had stopped chastising her.
She gasped. “Turtle!”
***
At first glance, Max didn’t realize the sea turtle—a green turtle,Chelonia mydas—was in trouble. It wasn’t unheard of for this specific variety of sea turtle to linger in the shallows during mating season. But the turtle floating at Molly’s feet was about the size of a dinner plate, too small to be a mating female. And once Max was able to block out the sound of Ursula’s howling and see past her flailing paws, he could see that the juvenile turtle was struggling to swim properly. Only one of her front flippers was moving, and she was drifting in slow, laborious circles.
“There’s a fish hook in her left flipper!” Molly pointed toward the water.
Max bent over, hands on his knees, for a closer look. Molly was right—and the hook was large, probably from a commercial fishing boat.
“Good eye,” Max said as he shifted to stand upright.
Molly glanced at him, surprise splashing across her face. “Thank you.”
Max wanted to say something, anything, to convince her that he wasn’t, in fact,allbad. But now wasn’t the time.
“We need to get her to the turtle hospital and get that thing out of her flipper.” He tugged off his necktie, shoved it in his pants pocket, and moved to unbutton his dress shirt.