Locked In Silence (Pelican Bay 1)

But I refrained and motioned with my arm for him to head outside. I followed and then led him past a couple of pens to the building where I kept the animals that were nearing the end of their stay with me. Despite all the pens we were walking past, Nolan kept his eyes on the ground, and I couldn’t help but think he was focused on not losing his footing.

Once we stepped inside the building, he relaxed and finally began to look around. I knew what he was seeing. I’d worked hard on designing the entire center to meet the needs of my guests, but I was extremely proud of this building in particular. I’d worked with a zoologist to create pens that would be most conducive to acclimating an animal back to the wild. So instead of them being stuck in cages as they recovered the strength they needed to survive in the wild, they had small habitats that were most like their natural ones. The building we were in housed the habitats for the smaller animals.

Nolan’s eyes were wide as we walked past several habitats that included rabbits and various other small mammals, birds, and even some reptiles. While I had a couple of raccoons that were being rehabilitated, I’d kept the mother and her baby in a smaller, separate habitat. Since I’d been planning to see if the mother would accept the orphaned raccoon, I’d limited her and her baby to a small section of the habitat that I could easily access to remove the orphan if the mother showed any sign of hostility toward it.

I tugged on my own gloves and then carefully took the baby from Nolan. I motioned for him to flip the latch on the smaller door at the base of the larger door. I sent up a silent prayer and gently eased the baby into the enclosure. The mother hissed at me and backed into a corner, her baby hidden behind her. I closed the door and took Nolan’s arm and had him step back with me so we’d be out of the mother’s direct line of sight but could still see her.

I’d expected Nolan to put some space between us, but he didn’t, and I could feel his body occasionally brush mine whenever he shifted on his feet to try and get a better look. It took the mother raccoon a good five minutes to finally move so she could investigate the bundle of fur in the center of the sectioned-off part of the habitat. I studied her behavior as she neared the baby, but nearly took my eyes off the scene in front of me when I felt Nolan’s fingers wrap around my wrist. I’d missed it, but at some point, like me, he’d taken off the gloves. Heat and energy surged up my arm at the contact and I wanted desperately to look at him. I highly suspected he was fearing for the baby raccoon, and I wished there was some way I could reassure him I wouldn’t let any harm come to the animal.

Since I couldn’t tell him so, I did the only thing I could and used my free hand to cover the fingers that were clinging to my wrist. I could sense Nolan’s eyes on me, but I kept my gaze on the mother raccoon who’d started sniffing at the baby. She hissed at it several times, but the baby wisely didn’t move. It took a good ten minutes of investigating before the mother raccoon began nuzzling at the baby. When the orphan moved for the first time, the mother didn’t react other than to step back a little. A few seconds later she returned to nosing at the baby.

Nolan and I stood there for another twenty minutes as we watched the mother accept the baby.

And he held onto me the whole time.

When the two babies curled against the mother so they could nurse, Nolan let out a rough breath. “It’s okay, right?” he asked. “She’s accepted him.”

I nodded at him and he rewarded me with a huge smile. It wasn’t until that moment that he finally seemed to realize he was still holding onto me. He dropped my wrist like he’d been burned.

“Sorry,” he mumbled as he took several steps away from me. “I was just…sorry.”

We watched the mom and her babies for a few more minutes before I led Nolan back toward his car. I was both glad and disappointed that I was finally getting him out of here.

For his part, Nolan was once again quiet, and I wondered about his earlier breakdown. As we neared the building where I kept the orphaned babies, I was half-tempted to pull Nolan back into the room so I could make use of the whiteboard. But I stopped myself because it didn’t really matter. I needed Nolan gone.