Dating the Duke (The Aristocrat Diaries 2)

She pouted but nodded. “All right. Can we see the crocodile?”

“The crocodile?” I asked.

“There’s a caiman.” Alexander looked at me with his lips twitching. “Miniature crocodile.”

Oh.

That made so much more sense than a huge arse crocodile in the middle of a stingray exhibit or something.

“Ohh,” I said after a moment. “Okay, that makes sense.”

He laughed and let go of Olympia’s hand as she rushed towards the first exhibition that was actually the caiman. She dropped to her knees and flattened her hands against the glass, only just stopping short of actually pressing her face into it.

“Did you think there was a crocodile here?” He fought a smile as we caught up to her.

“It’s an aquarium. It’s not that outside the realms of possibility.” Shrugging, I put my hands in the pockets of my jeans. It might have been August, but this was England, after all. “I was trying to figure out where they might put it.”

“The building is deceptively big. You should see the shark tank—it’s absolutely incredible, and the feeding talk is always worth seeing. I think I’ve seen it sixty times since she discovered her love for sea creatures.”

“I see him! There he is! Papa, look!” Olympia pressed her fingertip against the glass.

He quirked his eyebrows at me and joined her against the glass. “Oh, wow. Good spot. He’s hiding.”

“He is! Addy, look!”

I had no choice but to join them. I couldn’t see the bloody thing, but I pretended I did all the same. “Oh, yeah, look at him. He’s very cool!”

“Uh-huh!” Olympia jumped up and moved on, leaving us lagging behind her.

“Does she ever slow down?” I whispered to Alexander.

He grinned. “Do you need me to answer that?”

I shook my head in response. No. No, I did not.

“You can’t see the caiman, can you?”

I glanced at him. “No idea where he is.”

“Just there. Under the water. See his nose poking out between the rocks?”

I leaned over so I could see from his angle and, sure as heck, there it was. His slimy little nose was just poking out. “Oh, now I see him. I think I was at the wrong angle.”

“Probably.” Alexander’s voice was very close to me.

Very, very close.

Which made sense.

Because I practically had my head on his shoulder.

I straightened, clearing my throat. “Sorry. I didn’t realise I was practically taking a nap on you.”

Laughing, he stood up. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you coming?” Olympia called from the other side of the room. “Just look at this starfish! It’s huge.”

We dutifully crossed over to where she was and ooh-ed and ahh-ed appropriately over the—admittedly very large—starfish. Olympia was an absolute squirrel as she rushed from exhibition to exhibition, demanding our attention for every single thing. She only slowed down when Alex handed her his phone and told her to take photos of everything she really liked.

It didn’t bring her down to a normal level of speed, but it did enough that she actually paused at a few of the information plaques that were dotted around. She stopped long enough to study a few of the names, even asking us to pronounce some of the ones she wasn’t sure about and reading them back. She was trying so hard to better her reading, and I couldn’t help but smile at her.

It looked like a lesson on sea creatures would be on the agenda.

I held back largely from the father-daughter time, enjoying my own perusal of the sea life here. It was surprisingly enjoyable to meander through exhibitions that had local British species, and I especially enjoyed the native sting ray pool. It was a huge pool with an open top that had a bridge off to the side so you could look over the top and see them from above.

Why were aquariums considered to be a day out for children?

I was having the best time. It helped that it was much quieter than I thought it would be—there weren’t half as many people as the car park had led me to believe, and perhaps that was because it served more than just the aquarium.

We passed through a dark curtain and Olympia’s scream of, “Jellyfish!” echoed off the walls, and Alex flinched.

“Oly. Calm down,” he admonished her gently. “You’ll scare the other animals.”

We entered a dark room that had a huge, floor-to-ceiling centre tank with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree viewing. There were tanks all through the room, but she was only interested in the one in the middle that had some ethereal looking, almost luminescent, semi-translucent jellyfish happily floating around it.

Olympia pressed her entire body against the side of the tank, practically hugging it. I don’t even think she twitched as she stared at the jellyfish and, shoot, if I knew that was all I needed to calm her down, I’d have found and bookmarked a YouTube video of these things by now.