He did this just in time to see two whales some ways farther out than The Finnie break the surface, leap entirely out of the water, and land with massive splashes on their sides.

“Not expecting there’ll be sand drills tomorrow,” Tint noted strangely, and still grinning, he turned and walked up the beach.

The rest stayed where they were, and it started slow, but then it built until the cheering and clapping rent the air.

He felt his wee wife’s eyes and looked down into their ice-blue beauty.

“I think I like it here,” Finnie declared.

His Finnie. His adventuress.

She found something to like everywhere.

He smiled at her.

Then he decided he didn’t care how close the other tents were.

So he took her hand and led her back up the beach.

Queen Ha-Lah

Aboard The Finnie

OFF THE WEST COAST OF FIRENZE

Aramus was nuzzling my neck and I was stroking his back when the cheer rent the air.

We both stilled completely.

Then my husband lifted his head and looked down at me.

My, but he was handsome.

“Do you think they—?” I began.

“No.”

“But the timing can’t be a coincidence.”

“None of my men can see through wood, baby,” he murmured, but his head twitched just as I heard it.

The high-pitched, happy shriek of dolphins.

A goodly number of them.

He slid out, I did not like losing him (in the slightest), but I did like how he gathered me to him, wrapping a blanket around us both, and pulled us to a porthole.

We looked out and saw a large pod of dolphins flirting with the surface of the sea as they swam away.

“Right, well then, I guess they know,” Aramus muttered, humor in his tone.

I looked at his profile. “Should I be mortified?”

He turned his head to gaze at me. “No.”

“I feel like I should be mortified.”

His big body started shaking my body when he started laughing.

Then his big body covered mine since he pulled me down to the bed with him on top of me.

And he was still shaking with laughter.

“So, apparently, the dolphins will keep us company when I join with my wife,” he remarked.

“Apparently,” I mumbled.

He was still laughing, his eyes warm and dancing.

I loved to see that in his gaze.

Nevertheless, I rolled my own eyes.

When I rolled them back, he was no longer laughing, and he’d lifted his hand to tangle it in the curls by the side of my head.

“It was not the splendor I had hoped, my love. It went too fast. But next time—”

I felt my eyes narrow. “What words are these you say?”

He closed his mouth.

“I will never forget it,” I vowed.

His expression gentled. “Ha-Lah.”

“Never, not in my life.”

“My Ha-Lah,” he whispered.

“You are more beautiful out of clothes than in them,” I declared.

At that, my husband grinned an arrogant grin.