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She lifted that strong, stubborn chin. “Is that what happened in Pacifica, all those years ago? Not as far as I’m concerned!”
“You were too young to understand. If you’d listen to me, I could tell you. My father had nothing to do with your mother’s death.”
“Oh, he didn’t?”
“No. He was horrified that one of his supporters had taken a speech of his and interpreted it in that way. The man was acting totally alone.”
He heard the smallest tremor of doubt in his own voice, and wondered if Lass had picked up on it. He still wasn’t sure of the whole truth himself. There was a tiny thread of evidence—the report of one witness—that suggested Joran, one of Okeana’s own supporters, had incited the fanatical assassin to murder Okeana’s wife in order to further the unrest that Joran sought.
For the moment, however, Loucan ignored the possibility. It was a detail that didn’t affect his own innocence. He had been three thousand miles from Pacifica when Wailele died.
He pressed on.
“Listen to me, Lass. Trust me at least long enough for us to talk about Phoebe and Kai and Saegar, and for me to tell you why I’m here. I’m not just looking for your belief in my version of the past. There’s more than that. I’ve spent years searching for you. Give me some time. Let me help you in the tearoom today, and we’ll—”
She laughed. “You? The self-styled rightful king of Pacifica, Loucan the Triumphant, or whatever you’ve decided to call yourself, cutting tomatoes and stacking the dishwasher? What could your royal majesty possibly know about my kitchen?”
He grinned, seeing the chance to soften her with humor, and grabbing it.
“I admit I’m more experienced at tending bar than pouring coffee,” he said, still smiling as he invited her to share his amusement. “But I’ve worked in the galley of a commercial fishing boat, cooking a hot breakfast for twelve hungry men after we’ve been up all night hauling nets. I know which side of a teapot to hold, and which to pour from.”
“Big deal!”
“I bussed tables once for a few months, a long time ago, when I was around seventeen. You should see how fast I can flick a wet cloth around, when it’s needed. You need help today, and I’m offering. For less than minimum wage. Couldn’t we start from there?”
His smile was as hot as summer sunlight and as powerful as the sea itself. It pulled at Lass’s emotions, the way the ocean did in all its moods.
Loucan knew all about that. He was a creature of the ocean himself. Even so, she would have forced herself to stay immune to his smile if he hadn’t pulled the packet of photos from the tight back pocket of his jeans, and added casually, “Tell me what to do to start setting up, and you can look at these while I work.”
“All right. Okay. Uh…I’m not— This isn’t a capitulation, Loucan,” she insisted. “All it is…it’s for Saegar and my sisters.”
“I know that,” he said quietly. “I understand. By the end of the day, I hope your reasons will change, but for now it’s good enough.”
“Okay,” she said again. The word hardly had meaning. “Good.”
Unlocking the door that opened directly into the gallery, she led the way past blue-green seascapes, glazed ceramics and trays of delicate jewelry, feeling as if she was walking with Loucan into a new future she hadn’t even imagined three days ago. She was terrified of everything about it.
Chapter Two
Cyria was the one who had taught her to be afraid, and to set herself apart.
Time and again, she had held Lass close to her and whispered, “No one should have to see what you’ve seen. We’ll never go back. Not unless your father himself comes to claim you and tells us that Pacifica is safe for us again. Promise me that.”
“I promise, Cyria. Only if it’s safe.”
As Lass grew older, she heard the same message from Cyria in more sophisticated language.
“We’ll stay hidden here,” Cyria said. “Forever, if we have to. King Okeana will come for us only if it’s safe. If we’re careful, no one will suspect that we are mer. These land-dwellers, they have no soul and no sense. It would never occur to them that all their silly legends about mer people could possibly contain an element of truth. Joran was right in what he told your father. We must use our kinship with the land-dwellers to take what we need from them, but we must never make the mistake of thinking they are our equals. You in particular, Thalassa. You are a mer princess, and you must never forget it.”
Of course, Lass hadn’t blindly accepted everything Cyria told her. Young girls didn’t, particularly once they reached the adolescent years of rebellion and quest for selfhood. But enough of it had stuck, enough had grafted itself to her nature and helped to form the woman she now was.
When she swam, she did so secretly, and almost always after dark, because she never knew exactly how long it would take for her tail membrane to form. She’d had no one to tutor her in the chemistry and physiology of the process, and had worked out a hazy understanding of it by herself, through trial and error.
It was quicker at the full moon. Slower when the water was cold. Something to do with the sea’s saltiness, too, because it always took longer to happen when she swam near the mouth of the tidal lake next to her favorite beach, where a freshwater stream emptied into the sea.
If Cyria knew the science of it, she hadn’t passed on the knowledge. She had forbidden Lass to swim in the ocean at all.
“You could be killed as if you were a fish, before you could even cry out, if anyone saw your tail. Or you could be captured and tortured in the name of science.”
Lass had tried to argue at first. It would be perfectly safe to take a short swim, even in broad daylight, as long as she left the water in time. Her tail membrane did not even begin to form for at least fifteen minutes.
But Cyria wouldn’t hear of it, so Lass swam guiltily as well as secretly. She’d been doing it since the age of fourteen, but there had been defiance rather than guilt in the act until she was twenty. The guilt came after Cyria’s death. The old woman had worked so hard and sacrificed so much for Lass’s safety. She’d sincerely believed that the ocean was too dangerous.
“But I can’t give it up. I can’t!” Lass had told herself, over and over, in the first acute days of mourning her guardian’s loss. “I’ll do everything else Cyria wanted. I’ll keep my hair. I’ll run a business that’s under my own control and where there’s never anyone I have to get too close to. She’s right. Friendships are dangerous. Ondina and my mother thought that their friendship was enough to keep peace in Pacifica, and they were wrong. And I’ll never fall in love with a land-dwelling man.”
She’d already had proof that Cyria was right in that area. She’d had a boyfriend at college who’d taken her out several times and then told her, just as she was beginning to let down her guard, “There’s something weird about you. I don’t think I want to go on with this. I’m sorry.” She hadn’t accepted any dates after that, and after a while, word got around and no one asked.
“I’ll never have a child, who could turn out to be mer. But I have to swim…sometimes. Not too often. Or I might as well just die….”
Even so, she kept trying to give it up. She learned to love horseback riding and hiking in the wild Australian bush country. She told herself that eventually she would wean herself away from the sea.
But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. And so Loucan, son of her father’s enemy, had found her….
Summer was the most dangerous time of year—the season when Lass tried hardest, and failed most often, to stay away. The water was at its warmest, so her tail formed faster. The beaches were more crowded, so she had to be watchful and seek the most isolated places.
Lass hadn’t been to the ocean for weeks—not since the start of school summer vacation in mid-December. And now Christmas and New Year had passed, and it was late January.
And she was ready to snap. She had snapped. Three times today, at Susie and Megan, over trivialities. That was out of character. Normally, she didn’t have a flashing temper, and in any case she’d found long ago that a cheerful attitude toward others invited less curiosity, and fewer questions.
Today, she knew that the pressure inside her would keep building until she flooded it away with the cold, salty, healing caress of the ocean.
It was a hot day, and even the big ceiling fans and the thick stone walls of the old dairy weren’t enough to keep away the heat. She closed as usual at five, quickly ate the left-over pasta special she’d served in the tearoom at lunch, rebraided her long hair, grabbed her swimsuit and her towel, and jumped into her car to speed down to the north end of the beach where she could hide among the rocks at the base of the cliff if anyone came.
It was perfect. The beach was deserted and the sky glowed with mauve and orange near the western horizon. There was no wind, but there’d been storms at sea for the past few days and the surf was high, rolling in long, even waves onto the sand. The foam was so white it was almost iridescent.
And the dolphins were there. She tried to surf with them, but they weren’t interested tonight. Maybe because her tail hadn’t formed yet and they didn’t recognize her as a kindred creature. Or maybe because the fishing was good, out where the sea floor shelved down, and eating was more important to them than having fun.
So she surfed alone, and didn’t regret the solitude. Didn’t use a board, just her body, timing the moment when she launched herself ahead of the breaking wave and let it carry her to the beach in a tumble of cold foam. Her whole body was tingling so much with the buffeting of the waves that it took her a while to recognize the special, deeper sensation that signaled her membrane was starting to form.
And then suddenly she saw him—a strong, athletic-looking man not twenty yards from where she swam. She hadn’t noticed his approach at all. He was walking in the shallows and peering out at her, and beyond her, as well, to where the dolphins cruised back and forth, feasting on fish.
Hastily, she waded to shore and ran up the beach to grab her towel, as water streamed from her heavy rope of braided hair and down her torso and legs. When the transformation was imminent, she would wriggle out of her swimsuit and swim naked, but somehow even in this conservatively cut suit, she felt more exposed and more vulnerable this evening than she’d ever felt in the nude.
Why was he watching her?
She was as strongly aware of the stranger’s body as she was of her own. She took in the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his thighs and the deep tan of his skin. Beyond these details, he had an aura, a presence that she couldn’t name. And he was looking at her as if he was seeking something.
She began to rub herself dry immediately. A couple of times in the past, when she hadn’t dried the seawater away, her membrane had begun to form as she lay on the sand. From a distance, it had only looked like a rather bizarre and serious case of peeling sunburn, but if anyone had peered too closely…
As this man was. He was studying her with serious intent. Oh, Lord, what had he seen? He was coming over to her, and there was definitely something about him… He was so big and broad and strong, utterly male from top to toe. Look at that long, sure stride! And those eyes! Even in the washed out, dusky light she could see how blue they were, as if filled with the ocean itself.
Filled with the ocean…
She had a strange moment of intuition, and he confirmed it with just one word.
“Thalassa.”
Her reaction came at gut level, making a mockery of her recent awareness of him. This wasn’t awareness. This was terror.
She scrambled to her feet, screamed and ran toward the headland, fifty yards away. Didn’t get far. Not against those long, powerful male legs. He caught up to her within yards and pulled hard on her shoulder to turn her around. His big hand was warm on her cold skin. He let it trail down her arm, and his fingers came within an inch of her breast, leaving an imprint of sensation there as they passed.
“Don’t run away, Thalassa,” he said. His voice was resonant and deep. “It is you. I knew it. I saw you with the dolphins. And look…”
He dropped his hand to point, and she saw at once what had convinced him. She hadn’t rubbed hard enough with her towel. Or else she’d stayed in the water too long.
On her outer thighs there were rough patches of scale, already beginning to flake away. Normally, her tail wasn’t like that. When properly formed it was smooth, silvery-green and glistening. But when she left the water at the wrong moment, as she had tonight, the scales were rough and white, and stood out strangely on her skin.
“Who are you?” she said in a voice that refused to work as it normally did. He had her cornered, with the sea at her back, the highest reach of the waves lapping occasionally at her heels, which were still tingling.
She saw a couple strolling along the beach, hand in hand, getting closer every second. She couldn’t run past them in a panic. If they tried to help her, how on earth would she explain? And the sea was no refuge. She already sensed that this stranger was far more at home there than she was. So she had to face him, confront him in a way that Cyria’s fearful directives had never prepared her for.
He was mer.
He had to be, to have known the name she hadn’t heard on anyone’s lips since Cyria’s death thirteen years ago. Lass registered his clothes—the rough, off-white sailcloth shirt, loosely covering his broad, smooth chest, and the close-fitting sealskin pants that ended, unhemmed, at the knotted swell of his calf muscles. She hadn’t seen clothing like this since she was eight.
He was mer, all right.
But who? Her father’s messenger? Cyria had always said that Okeana would come for them himself.
The stranger didn’t keep her in doubt about his identity for long.
“I am Loucan, son of Galen and now king of the Pacifican people. I have been looking for you for a long time, Thalassa.”
“To kill me,” she said. Her heart beat even faster. “You’re here to kill me, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m not your enemy.”
“Your father was.”
“Things have changed in Pacifica now. We are bringing the two factions together. I have no desire to harm you in any way.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then I’ll have to convince you. Thalassa, I know this must be a shock for you, after so long. Your father, King Okeana, is dead. You couldn’t have known that.”
Lass swallowed. “No.” But she wasn’t surprised at the news. He would have been an old man. In her heart, she had been mourning him for years, certain she would never see him again. “So how did you find me?” she demanded to know, the fear and anger surging through her again.
“It took a long time. But it started when I remembered your beautiful hair….”
Before he could reach her lustrous mass of waves, Lass ran from him, intent on destroying the very thing that led him to her.
Hours later, when he’d left her with his promise—or his threat—to return, and she was lying in her own bed with her now-shorn locks telling herself she was safe, her whole body still refused to stop shaking.
Lass’s hands shook again as she studied the pictures Loucan had spread for her on one of the tearoom tables.
Phoebe’s wedding to Kevin Cartwright was the more formal and traditional occasion, but Kai’s simple ceremony with rakishly handsome Ben was just as beautiful to Lass’s eyes. Both women looked radiantly lovely, with love and happiness sketched in every line of their bodies.
Pictures weren’t enough. She wanted to hear their voices, catch up on twenty-five years of lost time, hold them against her and hug them just as she used to when they were tiny.
How would she get through the day?
Looking up, she realized that Loucan wasn’t doing what she’d asked him to. Despite what he’d said a few minutes ago about bussing tables and tending bar, and despite his obvious intelligence and strength, she honestly wasn’t expecting him to be of much help. He seemed too powerful and too driven to have the necessary practical skills.
Susie had left the chairs stacked upside down on the tabletops after she’d cleaned last night, and Lass had simply asked Loucan to put them back in place. But he’d already done that, and now he was setting the tables, with the deft, experienced movements of someone who’d done this before.
His big hands flicked back and forth, unloading floral centerpieces, place mats, pepper and salt and sugar. The sight was incongruous, but apparently bothered him not at all. Evidently, he didn’t set much store by his image when he had a higher goal in view. Unwillingly, she was intrigued by what this said about the man who now ruled her ancestral home.
As he leaned over the tables, the fabric of his faded jeans tightened over his backside, emphasizing its compact, muscular shape. The sleeves of his T-shirt stretched taut around the hard bulk of his upper arms. Something softened and grew heavy inside her, making her deeply uncomfortable.
She quickly refocused on the photos.
He didn’t pause or look up, but he must have seen that she had been watching him, and that she wasn’t anymore.
“They’ve both married good men,” he said. “Men who deserve them. Because they’re great women, Lass. You’ll think so when you meet them again. Both of them are bright and loving and happy.”
“Oh, of course they are….”
“Saegar had a tough time, growing up. His guardian, Bali, kept him pretty isolated. He never spent any time on land until he met Beth—her father captured him and was planning to go public. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. And when Saegar fell in love with Beth, he made the decision to lose his tail.”
“He’ll never get it back.”
Saegar was one of the cursed among the mer people, able to grow his tail just once. His decision to shed it for the sake of his new love was irreversible. After living as a merman all his life, he must love his new bride very much to have made such a choice.
Lass’s chest tightened, as if an unseen hand was squeezing her heart. The idea of taking a step like that frightened her. There was no room for such a dramatic change in her own life. No room for love. Cyria had convinced her of that. Lass was happy here. She was safe, and she wanted to stay. She had promised Cyria that she wouldn’t go back. Pacifica held too many memories.
“Have they decided…” She stopped. Her voice was so scratchy it was barely intelligible. She cleared her throat. “Have they each decided where they’ll live now? If they’ve married land-dwellers, they won’t be returning to Pacifica, will they? Even if peace is fully restored there?”
“No. They’re all hoping to visit together very soon, but it’s not the same.”
She expected him to make more of an issue of it, but he didn’t. He had his back to her, setting the last of the tables, and she couldn’t read him. She knew he hadn’t come here just to tell her about her siblings. He wanted something from her. He’d told her that, and instinct told her to dread what it could be.
He obviously didn’t want to talk about it yet. Instead, he said in a matter-of-fact way, “I’m finished here. Tell me what you want done in the kitchen, and the gallery.”
“The gallery’s fine. Everything’s set up.”
“I liked some of the things I saw, coming through,” he said, following her into the adjoining kitchen. “Particularly those semiabstract paintings of the sea.”
Yes, those are my favorites, too.
