Mermaid (5 page)

“Was it like that with you when your husband died?”

“Yes, it was. And when my dad died too.”

“But you still miss them? You haven’t forgotten them?”

“No, of course not. I’ll never forget either of them, and I’ll always love them. But that doesn’t mean I can’t love someone else, that it would be disloyal or something if I did.”

“Oh.” Chris fidgeted. “I’ve got a picture of my mom in my room, but sometimes I can’t remember what she looked like unless I look at the picture. And then I don’t know if she looked like that all the time or just some of the time. It scares me. I don’t want to forget her.”

“I understand. You won’t forget her. I can promise you that. Maybe your dad has other pictures of her you could look at.”

A look of disdain crossed his face, and he stood up. “I doubt it. I’m goin’ in. He’s prob’ly forgotten that he was looking for me, and I know he’s got to drive you home. Will you come back?”

Jillian hesitated. “I...don’t think so, Chris.” She held out a hand to him, and he took It. “But I enjoyed meeting you, and who knows, maybe someday you’ll come into the Pearldiver’s Club in Boundary Bay and see an old, gray-haired mermaid swimming in slow, sedate circles.”

He giggled, then caught sight of his father. For a moment he stiffened, before turning and running away so fast that he sent water drops flying all over. Jillian turned around to look at Mark Forsythe’s tortured face.

He wrapped her in his robe again and lifted her into his arms. As he stood, she put her arms around him in what she hoped would seem to be a casual manner, but there was no way either of them could pretend that the desire that had sparked between them during that kiss lay very far beneath the surface.

She shivered, a delightful little tingle of sensation moving down her spine, and she felt him tighten his arms around her as if he, too, had felt it.

But as he carried her across the patio, she felt a silent sigh rise up in his chest.

“I’m sorry about you and Chris,” she said. “Kids so often hurt their parents, even nice kids, and I think your son is certainly that.”

He strode along a flagstone path to where a garage was secluded behind a tall hedge. On the apron in front of one of the two closed doors stood a pale green Mercedes sports coupe. After seating her and making sure her seat belt was securely fastened, he got in and started the quiet, powerful engine. Only when they had pulled away from the house did he comment on her statement.

“His good behavior, when it occurs, is no doing of mine. His bad behavior, on the other hand, is all my doing.”

“He’s been hurt a great deal,” Jillian said. “It must be hard for both of you to cope with the death of his mother.”

“Lorraine and I were divorced nine years ago. I’m not mourning her, but of course I’m sorry she’s dead. I liked her. We were good friends. Yet I can’t seem to convince Chris of that. I’ve told him over and over that I didn’t want to kill his mother—or him.”

Jillian didn’t quite know what to say. She certainly had an opinion on the subject, but it wasn’t her place to express it.

She thought it was possible that Chris wanted those denials his father kept giving him. And the only way to get them was to continue making the accusations. She wondered how Chris would react if his father stopped arguing the point, stopped trying to convince him, and simply gave him permission to believe what he wanted. Because, she was sure, that would leave a door open for Chris to change his belief whenever he was ready to do so. It was none of her business, however, and Mark Forsythe was a stranger who wouldn’t thank her for interfering. Yet again she experienced the sensation that the word “strangers” didn’t apply to them. No, something in her made her feel as if she had known him forever, and she wanted very badly to renew that acquaintance. The kiss they had shared had only sharpened her longing. She sighed. If only it were possible.

But she knew it wasn’t.

They had reached the end of the long, twisting drive that led from Mark’s house to the highway. He paused, looking at her quizzically.

“Where to, Jillian?”

“I live in Point Roberts,” she said, naming the busy resort community just across Boundary Bay. The town was accessible on land only by crossing the Canadian border into British Columbia and then recrossing onto the little American peninsula that jutted down from the forty-ninth parallel. “The freeway’s the best way to get there. At least it’s the quickest.”

“Do we need to take the quickest route?”

She hesitated for only a moment and then nodded regretfully. “I’m afraid so. I have appointments this afternoon.”

As the car shot ahead at highway speed, her hair went flying around her face, whipping forward and back as the wind played with it. It felt nice to have it blowing around. It made her feel free and young and untroubled, as if she were twenty again, not thirty-four, and had no weight of responsibilities on her shoulders. Mark complied in silence with her instructions, and as they entered the flow of freeway traffic she saw him glance at her.

Feeling foolish, she quickly gathered her hair up in her fist and held it back. But he took her hand and turned her flowing mane loose, laughing with her as it flew around her face and neck, catching in her lashes, fluttering and dancing like pale, golden flames.

She watched his big, square, competent hands on the wheel. He drove as if the action were second nature to him. She didn’t think he was the kind of man who ever drove carelessly or would have been responsible for an accident through Inattention or recklessness. Although she knew even the best drivers could be involved in accidents, she also knew that they weren’t usually the cause of them.

With uncanny accuracy, Mark picked right up on her thoughts. As he stopped at the end of the line of traffic waiting to cross through customs, he said, “You seem pretty relaxed in the car with me. Doesn’t it make you nervous to know that I was the driver in a fatal accident?”

“I don’t suppose you were at fault,” she said.

“The police investigation said I wasn’t, but try to tell that to Chris.”

“You don’t have to accept your son’s evaluation of it any more than you have to accept his judgment that you deliberately killed his mother,” she said firmly.

“How do you know I didn’t wipe Lorraine out on purpose? It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened.” He moved the car ahead a few feet.

Jillian laughed softly. “You and Chris must be very much alike. You’re both grieving and looking for someone to blame. He’s blaming you, and you, in taking that blame, are letting him give you the punishment you think you deserve.”

Mark flicked her another quick glance, and she saw that his face had softened, his eyes lightened. He smiled wryly. “Are you sure you’re a teacher, not a psychologist?”

She gave the question a serious answer. “As I said, I was a guidance counselor. In order to get that job I had to take several psychology courses. But I’m no doctor, believe me. Whenever I ran into something I couldn’t handle on my own, which was often, I referred the child and/or his parents to a professional. I’m certain Chris’s doctor knows a lot more about how to help him than I do.” It was almost a question, and Mark shrugged.

“He’s been getting help for more than six months, but I haven’t seen any progress. Sometimes I think maybe I should let him do what he wants—live with Lorraine’s parents. But I keep hoping we can make it, the two of us. We used to be so close.”

“You will be again,” she said quietly but with great confidence. “Grieving can take so many forms. Chris is dealing with his through anger. Just go on loving him, Mark. It’s all you can do.” With the car stopped once more, he turned to her and saw the deep compassion in her eyes. He suddenly was rocked by the urge to lean over, clamp his hand to the back of her head, and kiss her again until traffic behind them was backed tip for a mile—or ten.

The attraction he felt for her was getting too far out of hand, he thought, feeling lost in the depths of her sea-green eyes. Her tangled, windblown hair caressed her cheeks. It made his fingers itch to do the same. He fought down the impulse. He had enough troubles right now without adding attract ion to a woman to the list—especially not to a part-time mermaid who was so beautiful, she probably had more men begging to be let into her life than he had any chance of competing with. Besides, what woman in her right mind would be interested in a man who had a son whose needs were going to have to come first for a long, long time?

Nope. If he were looking for a woman—which he wasn’t—he’d be looking for a good-time lady who could cheer him up when he needed to be cheered up and would disappear when he needed tier to. And no matter what else Jillian Lockstead, mermaid, might be, he didn’t think she’d qualify as a good-time lady.

Someone behind him honked, and he reluctantly drove on through customs and over the border. The drive from there to Point Roberts was made in silence.

Finally Jillian said, “Turn left at the next corner, then go straight ahead for six blocks.” A few minutes later she spoke again into the silence. “It’s the gray house halfway down the block on the right—there. You can park in the driveway behind my mother’s car. I don’t think she plans on going anywhere for a while, and you’re still stuck with toting me around until I’ve changed out of this suit.”

He pulled to a stop and asked, “Do you have a car?”

“Yes, but it’s at the club. I went there to get my costume before this morning’s little expedition.”

“After you change, could I drive you there to get it? Or come later and take you to work?”

Briefly Jillian thought of arriving at work in his pale green Mercedes. It would be nighttime and he’d have the top up and it would be cozy and intimate inside the little car and...

“No, but thanks just the same. Robin, the diver who was with me this morning and supplied my air, is picking me up later.”

He nodded and got out of the car, wondering if Robin was more to her than just a source of air. As he lifted her out he said, “I could get to like this.” His breath stirred her hair as they crossed the driveway and he walked up the creaking steps to the porch.

The house had been built during the same era as his, but there the similarity ended. More than just the ten or twelve miles of water across Boundary Bay separated their homes—and their lives.

She thought of the rolling green lawns she had seen beside Mark’s shaded, twisting driveway, of the tall, stately cedar trees, the fence surrounding Isis property, of the remote-controlled gates at the entrance, and of the attractive lamps that seemed to be required security lighting. She wondered what he thought of her neighborhood, which, with its droopy fences, unkempt lawns, and littered vacant lots showed its rapid decline.

It was a neighborhood she should move her family out of. But her mother had come there as a bride, had raised her three children there, and I spread her husband’s ashes under the cherry tree he had planted there the day they had learned, Jillian, their eldest, was on the way. She thought her mother probably would be as easy to transplant as that now-huge cherry tree.

She leaned over and opened the door, putting a smile on her face as she saw her mother coming from the kitchen. Quickly she introduced Mark.

“Mom, this is Mark Forsythe. He rescued me this morning when I got caught on the wrong fishing line.”

Her mother raised her eyebrows and gave Mark an approving look. “That was fortunate.” Then, rooming closer, she said, “Oh, Jilly, you’re hurt. What a bump! And you’re bandaged. You have a cut? Is it bad?”

“No. Just a little scrape. Mark, meet my mother, Shirley Elliot. And this,” she said, as a little, dark-haired girl came to stand quietly beside her mother, “is my daughter Amber. Amber, this is Mr. Forsythe.”

“Hello,” he said to the little girl who didn’t reply but only stood there with her dark green eyes fixed on his face, studying him. She apparently came to some favorable conclusion, because she replied to his greeting and smiled. When she smiled, her dark green eyes danced like her mother’s sea-green ones, and then she laughed.

“Mom, you look funny! Mermaids don’t wear housecoats.”

Jillian laughed, too, embarrassed as she realized that Mark was still holding her in his arms. “Honey, open my bedroom door for us, please, so Mr. Forsythe can put me down.”

Amber paused with a worried look on her face. “Did you break your leg again?”

“No, but it’s kind of hard to walk on the tip of my tail,” Jillian replied, making Amber giggle as she ran to swing open one of the doors off the short hall on the far side of the living room.

“There you go, Mr. Mark.”

“Just Mark,” he said at the same time as Jillian said, “Mr. Forsythe.”

Amber swung open the door to a room in which there was a single bed with a bright gold spread, one chair, a tall chest of drawers, and a neat dresser with only a double picture frame on it. One side of the frame held her wedding photograph and the other a picture of a plump baby cuddling a kitten. Through a half-open closet door he could see a rainbow of garments on hangers and realized that she favored bright colors. Her closet was full of reds, hot pinks, and brilliant blues and greens, even a couple of shades of purple. Pairs of shoes were stored neatly in a rack on the floor of the closet.

He liked the almost austere tidiness of her room, and the smell of it was distinctly feminine.

“Mark, if you’ll just put me down on the side of my bed, I’ll be able to give you back your robe so we won’t have to keep you any longer,” Jillian said with a smile.

Reluctantly he did as she asked, and winked at her daughter who still stood by the open door, gazing up at him.

“Did you catch my mom on your fishing line, Mr. Forsythe—Mark?”

“Just Mark,” he said again.

“Just Mr. Forsythe,” Jillian said firmly. “And I’ll explain it all later.”

Shirley laughed. “I just made some fresh coffee, Mark. If you’ll join us, you and Jilly can fight in comfort about what Amber will call you.”

Her mother seemed, Jillian thought, to think that Mark was going to become an established visitor to their home, and that it would matter what Amber called him. Quickly she set out to disabuse her of the notion.