Mermaid (3 page)

“Oh, I...” she started to protest, but he shook his head.

“My place is...hard to find from the road.” She sensed he didn’t want his address given out and remembered the wrought iron fence and the locked gate. The house exuded the impression of old wealth, and she didn’t blame Mark Forsythe for wanting to protect his privacy. She nodded and took the towel off her head, shaking her hair loose. It would dry better unwrapped. Running her hands through its length to untangle it, she explained to her boss that she didn’t need a ride, watching as Mark Forsythe walked outside with long, even strides to hang her wet towel over the back of a chair. In the sun, the white in his hair was so bright, she could barely look at it without squinting, but she managed somehow. His tanned skin rippled over hard, sinuous muscles. She easily could have spent the next sixty-nine years watching the man move, she thought, but then what Jim was saying began to get through to her bemused brain.

Only it made no sense at all.

“Do it all over again?” she said with a gasp when she realized what he was asking of her. “Not on your life! That was a one-time-only shot, Jim. I don’t care what it cost to hire the photographers! No! I’m not going down there again! Then let Bristol use the film of himself playing the salmon, and they can splice in film of me in the tank...I don’t care what they’re willing to pay. Once was enough...No, I didn’t like it,” she snapped. “In fact, I hated it. I was scared and cold, and it wasn’t the piece of cake you and Robin assured me it would be...Of course Robin wasn’t cold! He was wearing a full wetsuit! It was also a whole lot different from working in the tank. Buddy-breathing is for the birds.”

There was a pause, and as Mark came back into the room, he could hear the sounds but not the words of a male voice arguing. “Well, then, it’s for the fish,” said Jillian. “Or the porpoises or whatever, or strictly for emergencies. It is not for me. Not again. Sorry, but if you want publicity photographs for any more political hopefuls, you find yourself another mermaid.”

After another pause she said, “Yes, I’m just as committed to cleaning up the oceans as I ever was, and I believe that if he’s elected, Ken Bristol would stand a chance of making some progress, but there has to be another way I can do my bit. I...”

She listened for a moment or two, and Mark noticed how pale she was again. He tucked the robe around her more tightly, and she smiled at him in thanks as she said softly but firmly, “I said no, Jim. And I meant it. Not again, not for any amount of money.”

Mark heard her make a soft, dismayed sound and saw her stiffen, saw her eyes widen and her face go even whiter. He kept his hands on her waist, aware of the rubber suit between her skin and his but also very much aware of her female shape.

“You both told me it was an extra! That it had nothing to do with my regular job. And if you try to pull anything, changing my job description in the middle of the season, let me tell you, you won’t get away with it. I’m the mermaid in the club, and that’s that. Any extracurricular mermaiding you want done from here on out, you hire yourself another mermaid!” She hung up, and staring wide-eyed and frightened into Mark’s face, she wrapped her arms around herself tightly.

“Oh, brother,” she said. “Can I do that?” Without waiting for him to reply, she went on. “But I did, didn’t I? I as good as told my boss to get lost.”

He stood and went to an intercom switch near the door. “Edward, could I have coffee for two in my den, please?” He thumbed the switch closed and came to sit opposite Jillian, drawing his chair up so close that his knees almost touched her thigh.

She could smell the scent of his soap, or aftershave, or shampoo, or maybe it was just him. It smelled good and male and comforting, and his voice when he spoke was deep and masculine and soothing. Well, maybe not soothing, since it made her heart beat fast, but it was...oh, she didn’t know. She certainly did enjoy the sound of it. It held a rumble so deep, she could almost feel it. It made her want to lay her palm on his chest to see if she could feel the vibrations.

“Why don’t you get out of that costume, Jillian? I could find you someth—”

“No!” Her sharp, almost panicked word cut him off, and he waved a hand as if to calm her.

“All right, all right. It was only a thought.” Maybe she needed help getting out of it and didn’t have anything on underneath. The thought made his breath catch in his throat.

“I...Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. But I’m fine like this. I’d rather keep it on, and really, I’d rather have someone else come and get me. I hate to bother you, and I’d make sure they were discreet about where you live and—”

“Jillian, I said I’d take you home. It’s no bother at all.”

“Thank you. I’m grateful. It’s just that if you’re going to drive me home, it’ll mean you’ll have to carry me to the car and...” The thought of being lifted into those muscular arms of his again, being held against that solid, warm chest was almost too much I much for her. Weakly, she forced herself to go on. “So maybe it would be better if...” She let the sentence trail off as he shook his head.

“I’ll drive you home, and I’ll be happy to carry you to the car,” he said. In fact, he thought he would be happy to carry his mermaid in his arms for the rest of the day. Or maybe even the week. Hell, why not go whole hog? What about the rest of my life?

The thought slammed into his brain, and he shook his head. It was one thing to be so damned sexually aroused by the woman that he could hardly keep his hands off her, but it was entirely another to be thinking in terms of the rest of his life.

“I, uh, how in the world did you ever get to be mermaid?” he asked quickly, making conversation to occupy his mind because he felt as if he was on the verge of tilting into insanity once more. “That has to be the most unusual occupation I’ve ever heard of. And how long have you have been doing it? Where?”

“Just for the past two years, in a place called The Pearldiver’s Club. I did a lot of water ballet when I was younger and was on a synchronized swimming team,” she said, “not that I ever expected it to be anything but a sport, but when I—needed a change from my regular job, my former training was what got it for me.”

“Your regular job?

“I’m a...I was a teacher.”

“What kind of a teacher?”

“I was a guidance counselor and taught phys-ed.” She bit her lip, then said with a wry smile, “If I’ve lost my mermaiding job, I guess I’ll have to go back to teaching.”

Mark got the impression she was of two minds about it and wondered why. He smiled. “If you’re as good a teacher as you are a mermaid, I don’t see why there’d be any problem.”

“I’ll never go back.”

He leaned forward slightly. “Why not?” he asked, as if it really mattered. “Didn’t you like teaching?”

Suddenly she had the most absurd impulse to move closer and bury her face against the warmth she knew she’d find between his muscular shoulder and his strong neck, to feel his arms encircle her, hold her again, make her feel secure and unafraid. Instead, she leaned back and pulled the robe more closely around herself, pulling her tail in as tightly to the front of the chair as she could, telling herself that she could take care of her own life and didn’t need to lean on anyone.

“I loved teaching,” she said. “It’s the most rewarding job in the world.”

He raised his dark brows. “But you left it? Why?”

“Oh, I decided I needed a break,” she said with a bright smile that he didn’t believe for a minute. But he did believe that she had loved teaching. “I’d been at it for more than ten years, and it was for something new. I’ve done some tutoring on the side these past two years, just to keep my hand in and my license active.”

He smiled as she spoke of her former job. He was surprised at how long she’d been a teacher. It had been twelve years since she’d graduated from college, counting the two she’d been out of the teaching business, he calculated. He’d guessed her age to be around thirty. Now he upped that by three, maybe four years. And in spite of the bright smile that curved her pink mouth, something bleak in her tone and pained in her eyes told him there was a lot more to her choice to leave teaching than just having “decided” to take a break. He wondered if something had gone wrong with her job, and she’d been forced out of it.

“Where were you teaching, Jillian?”

“In Seattle. In a school downtown.” Her eyes still seemed to smile, but he thought he saw sorrow in their depths. “Downtown” was an ambiguous word that could mean a lot of things, but coupled with teaching, it normally meant “inner-city”, and inner city could mean tough kids, knives, drugs, danger, constantly having to be on the alert, constantly having to be on edge.

Burnout? No, probably not, he decided, not when her eyes lit up the way they did when she spoke of her former career. Yet there was a sadness about her that suggested she hadn’t left of her own free will.

“What about another district?” he suggested. “Did you try to find a position in a school up this way?”

She gave him a faint smile. “No,” she said, amazed at the intensity of his gaze. With those blue eyes of his fixed on her face, it was as if he could read all the conflicting emotions that ran: through her whenever she thought about what she’d like to do with her life, whenever she remembered the plans she had made and how circumstances had changed them. With anyone else, she would have looked away, hidden her feelings, kept herself private as she always did, but somehow his knowing she felt sad about having left the school system didn’t seem to threaten her. She was comfortable with it and with him.

She wondered if she would feel as comfortable if Mark actually knew why she had left and suspected she would not. That was something she hadn’t been able to deal with yet, at least not, adequately, and she doubted that she ever would, which made meeting a man like Mark Forsythe doubly difficult. Because as attracted as she was to him, and even though he had a smile that warmed her right down deep inside, she didn’t think she could let their relationship go any farther than it already had, which was nowhere at all.

“Who do you tutor and in what subject?” he asked.

“Mostly high school kids who are having trouble. Some math and remedial English plus college level science for a university junior who was forced out for a semester due to illness.”

His smile deepened. “All that and mermaiding too? What else do you do?”

“Not a lot, I admit. There isn’t time for much more. I also have a d—”

She broke off when a tall, lean man with a gray mustache and a military bearing came in carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and slices of what looked like banana bread spread with butter and served on fine china.

He set the tray down and looked impassively at Jillian’s tail hanging out from beneath the edge of her robe. Only his rapidly blinking eyes betrayed any surprise he might be feeling.

“I understood you were intending to catch a salmon for dinner, Mr. Mark,” he said with a hint an English accent. “Shall I thaw steak instead?”

Mark laughed and nodded. “Good idea, Edward. This is Ms. Lockstead.”

“Miss Lockstead.” Edward gave a little bow and left. Mark poured out two cups of coffee from the china pot.

“Sugar? Milk?”

Smiling, she said, “Just the way it comes out of the pot, thanks.” She couldn’t help laughing softly. “He acted as if you had a mermaid in for coffee every morning of your life.”

“Edward is British. He prides himself on being unflappable.” Mark passed her the cup, and she balanced her saucer on her lap.

Mark looked more closely at the tail draping across the carpet. Now that it was dry, he could see that it was made of rubber, and despite how carefully it had been crafted to give the impression of scaled fish skin, he felt extraordinarily foolish again for having believed the illusion for so long.

He frowned. Why had he been so ready to believe that she was a mermaid? How much of his belief had been wishful thinking? Too much, he decided, because of course he knew better than to believe in magic, no matter how convincing the circumstances. He’d been taught by the age of four that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were really Mom and Dad, that Let’s Pretend was just a game, and that Peter Pan couldn’t really fly. So what had gotten into him when he gathered Jillian up out of the water and felt magic touch his soul for the first time in all of his forty years?

Looking at her again, he could feel the same light-headedness, the same bubbling happiness, the same suspension of disbelief.

Even in this now dimly lighted room, with its dark, masculine furniture, its book-lined walls and mullioned windows, there was a golden glow all around her, and sunlight in her eyes.

“Edward said you have something in here I should see.”

Jillian around at the sound of the young voice, and Mark paused in the act of reaching for the plate of banana bread.

A boy of perhaps ten or eleven came in. He had untidy brown hair, a sullen mouth, intense blue eyes, and darkly tanned skin. Jillian knew at once that he was Mark Forsythe’s son.

He came to a halt, looking disgusted.

“A woman? Edward wanted me to see a woman?” he asked, and Jillian gave her tail a small kick, watching disdain fade from the boy’s face to be replaced by disbelief, then total enchantment. He looked as enchanted as if the tooth fairy had come to sit on his thumb, or as if a unicorn had just danced across the lawn.

“This is my son Christopher,” Mark said, hiding his surprise at the boy’s appearance. Edward must have been very persuasive in order to have gotten Chris to enter the same room as Mark.

“Chris, this is Jillian Lockstead.”

“M-mermaids have names?”

“Hello, Chris,” Jillian said with a warm smile. I’m afraid Edward was teasing you. I’m not really a mermaid. This is my costume. Your dad was kind enough to help me when I ran into some trouble this morning trying to make a film out in the bay.”

Chris came farther into the room, perched on the edge of a chair near her, and continued to stare not at Jillian’s tail but at her face.

“Are you a movie star?”

“Heavens no,” she said. “Not even a TV star, although the film we were trying to make was for TV commercial.”