Holiday at Magnolia Bay (Southern Born Christmas Book 1) by Tracy Solheim Page B

classified,” he joked, hoping she’d drop the subject. While he’d love to open up to someone, to be able to share the heavy burden he carried, he couldn’t. Especially not to someone as guiltless as Jenna. The knowledge of who and what he really was would destroy her.
    She ground her hips against him again and Drew reached for the condom. Fortunately, she wasn’t innocent in the bedroom. Sheathing himself, he lifted her over top of him, slowly bringing her down until his eyes blurred. “Besides,” he murmured. “Tonight is supposed to be about forgetting.” She rode him until they both went over the edge and he finally tumbled into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Seven
    ‡
    F or a sunny Saturday afternoon in late August, the lobby area of the Turtle Rescue Center was crowded with tourists browsing the many exhibits and the gift shop. Hand in hand, Jenna led Drew through the employees’ only door into the hospital area of the facility, eager to show him why she was so passionate about the Center and the hatchery project. They’d spent the past sixteen hours discovering each other’s bodies and now Jenna was determined they learn about what interested the other one. Although, given that Drew was a red-blooded American male, his interests could lie exclusively with her body, but she was going to try and uncover the mystery behind the man no matter what.
    Drew stopped just inside the doors, quietly assessing the large room. A few techs were checking water temps in several of the large pools, but having recognized Jenna, they ignored her guest.
    “Wow,” he said. The sound of awe in his voice made Jenna beam. “This isn’t what I expected.” They walked between the large pools housing sea turtles in various stages of recuperation. He stopped to watch one of the grad students carefully place lettuce and other greens in the smaller bins housing the terrapin turtles that had been rescued.
    “You sound like my father.” She adjusted one of the filters as they passed by. “He thinks we just collect box turtles by the side of the road and nurse them back to health in a terrarium. Which we do, by the way.” She pointed to the terrapin. “But our main focus is the sea turtles.”
    She showed him the operating suite where surgeries were performed on the giant creatures and the smaller rooms where more minor injuries were tended. All the while she explained the types of procedures they performed each and every day in an effort to stave off extinction for the creatures. Drew asked questions about the hatchery, and Jenna was filled with a sense of awe of her own realizing he had actually done more than ‘skim’ the prospectus she’d left him. She shot him a smile of genuine appreciation.
    “What’s that for?” He brushed his lips over her hairline.
    “It’s just nice to converse with someone outside the field who gets it. My family thinks that I’m nuts.”
    “Your parents aren’t turtle fans, I take it?” Drew asked.
    Jenna grimaced. “My father believes I’m wasting my education, that I should have taken my biology degree and become a doctor or a nurse. Something more productive to society than saving seafood —his words, not mine. The hatchery would be a coup not only for Magnolia Bay, but for my career as well. If nothing else, my parents—especially my father—might finally take me seriously.”
    They stopped outside the empty incubator room where the hatchery was intended to be housed. “You mentioned your dad was in the military?” Drew asked.
    “Still is,” she said, hoping he would drop this line of questioning.
    No such luck. “What branch?” he asked before she could redirect him.
    Avoiding his eyes, she led them both into the cool room filled floor to ceiling with racks for trays where the eggs would be inseminated and incubated until they were viable enough to be transplanted to the man-made nests along the Center’s shoreline. “My father is also in the Navy,” she answered. Jenna