Page 19 of Next Door Midlife Alpha
“I’m sure you’re right,” Stacey murmured. She studied Dylan’s handsome profile against thelandscape that flew by his window. As far as she could tell, he was a pretty great guy. She didn’t have any reason to believe otherwise. Why would anyone want to leave this beautiful place and this beautiful man for the crowded city? That wasn’t for her to say or know, and she’d certainly felt plenty of her own doubt when it came to Dylan.
“Here we are: Head of the Meadow Beach. I figured coming out here to the Atlantic side would be a bit of a change of pace for you.” He pulled into the parking lot and then straight through the other side of it.
“What are you doing?” Stacey asked, alarmed.
He laughed as the Jeep’s tires made easy work of the bumpy ground. “You can get a permit to drive the oversand ORV trails, but since I’m a ranger, I don’t need one.”
“ORV?” Stacey’s nervousness came out as a laugh. She’d never done anything like this before!
“Off-Road Vehicles,” Dylan explained. “It’s a great way to take it all in.”
“It’s gorgeous.” As she gripped the bars of the Jeep, she looked out over the crisp water. The sand beneath them was so incredibly fine and white. Long-legged birds trotted along the shoreline, calling to each other as they hunted for food. “Itfeels so different from the beach we have by our houses.”
“That’s one of the things I like so much about this place. Every few minutes, it changes a little. If you could magically transport me from one beach to another, I think I’d know all of them within a few seconds of getting there.” He had a faint smile on his face as he gestured off to the right toward the water. “This one is pretty remarkable, but we see the fewest tourists here. There’s a lot of wildlife in the area, but I guess that probably drives some folks away if they just want to sunbathe.”
“What’s that?” Stacey pointed out over the waves to where several dark, bulky shapes rose out of the water.
“That’s theFrances,or at least what’s left of it. It was a whaleboat that sunk back in the 1870s, and you can see it when the tide is low like it is right now. There are actually hundreds of wrecks all along this coastline, but most of them aren’t so obvious.”
She noted a sense of pride in his tone. “You know what I think?”
“Hm?”
“I think you really like your job. You like sharing your knowledge about the area and keeping it safe, too.”
He glanced at her, and Stacey realized that was one of the first times he’d looked at her since he’d picked her up. “Is that so bad?”
“Not at all. I think it’s pretty great, actually. I had a certain passion for my job at Martin Marketing, but I think it was really more of an obsession. What you do seems more like it’s just a part of who you are. When I get back to work, I hope I can find something that suits me so well.”
Dylan nodded. “I guess you’re right. I’m pretty lucky in that sense. My job is one thing in my life I don’t ever question. Ah, it looks like we’ve come about as far as we can go.” He slowed down and brought the Jeep to a halt.
Stacey stared through the windshield with her mouth agape as she took in the massive crowd of seals. Their heavy bodies littered the sand, some of them piled on top of each other. They barked and grunted, calling out and responding. The younger ones still moved around them easily, while the more mature seals didn’t seem so inclined to shift their weight. Two particularly large ones, which Stacey assumed were males, had confronted each other. They threw back their heads, letting out deep grunts as they battled over some dispute. A few dark heads bobbed out in the water as some of their numbersearched for their supper. Birds dipped in and out of the mass, taking advantage of any scraps they could steal.
“This is incredible,” she breathed. “There are so many of them!”
“The shifting sands in this area create a lot of nice sandbars for them, so this isn’t an unusual sight. We have to stay at least fifty yards away from them, though.” Dylan, though he’d surely seen this same sight countless times, watched them as closely as Stacey did.
“Are they dangerous?”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to get into a fight with one, but they’re also protected, just like most of the wildlife around here. These guys bring in some more wildlife on their own behalf, too. Great whites will stalk the area, waiting to pick one off. We’ve had a few sightings around here, and researchers are starting to find out just how many sharks there are coming in and out of this area.”
Her stomach jumped anew. “Do they come over to the bay side?”
“It does happen, but the risk of being stung by jellyfish is way higher than a shark attack.”
Thinking of home and the beach just beyond her backdoor, Stacey remembered her weird interactionwith Will. Dylan hadn’t said anything about it yet, and she wondered if he even knew. “So, I accidentally met your twin brother the other day.”
His jaw hardened. “He told me. I’m sorry he didn’t keep his dog in check. I told him he’ll have to from now on.”
“The two of you seem…very different,” she hedged. Though Stacey had such good feelings about Dylan as a person, she wasn’t so sure about Will.
“Oh, we are.” He sat back, keeping his gaze on the seals. “We might be twins, but we’re just not the same people. We had a big blowout about ten years ago about some old disputes.”
“Family can be difficult,” she replied softly. Dylan was a grown man, and she didn’t doubt he could handle a disagreement with his brother maturely. As she listened to him talk about Will, though, she started to understand what she’d already been noticing this entire time. Something else was on his mind that was bothering him deeply.
“Some family members are more difficult than others.” Dylan carefully turned the Jeep around and headed back the way they’d come. “Will is one of them.”
Silence fell between them as they retraced theirtracks. Had she said something wrong? Had she shared too much of her past? Her mother would tell her no, that if someone couldn’t handle her,theywere in the wrong. Stacey wasn’t so sure she prescribed to that particular school of thought, but she did know that the small distance between them as they sat in the Jeep was starting to feel wider.
