Mermaid (8 page)

“You are beautiful in or out of the water, in or out of your costume.” His voice was soft. His eyes held the same look they had when he had gazed upon her mermaid shape by his pool. He had wanted her then, too, even as realization dawned that the whole thing was a hoax. She had been aware of his wanting her, but she knew it was because he didn’t know. He may have visualized her without her costume, but his vision was so terribly, horribly wrong.

He didn’t even know what he was seeing now, as he looked at her, as he touched her. His hand as it slid down the side of her face to her neck was warm and ruggedly callused. His nails, she had noticed earlier, were neatly cut and were pale against his skin. He had nice hands. She liked the look of them. Even more, she liked the feel of them—on her.

“I want to see more of you,” he said, and she shuddered at the thought, nearly weeping at the feeling that welled up in her.

Why? Why? Why?

She was certain he could feel the pulse hammering hard under the heel of his hand. How could he not be aware of it? How could he not be aware that his touch was the cause of her increased heart rate? She stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself, shaking her head. “No.”

“I passed an all-night restaurant not far back,” he said. “After all that work, aren’t you even a little bit hungry? I remember your saying last week that swimming always makes you hungry. What about some bacon and eggs? Or a sandwich, or whatever?”

She smiled, remembering her thoughts in her dressing room the previous Saturday when she had expected—no, had yearned for—a note from him. Even while she knew she should turn, say good-night, and go inside, she said, “I was going scramble some eggs myself. Would you like to join me?”

His wide grin was her reward as he took her land and walked with her on tiptoe up the creaking steps to the even creakier porch. In the kitchen they whispered and laughed like giddy children as she made coffee, scrambled eggs, and buttered toast. Then, with their midnight feast piled on a tray, they went downstairs into a finished basement, “my cave” as Jillian referred to it. The room was straight out of a movie set depicting the 1960s, complete with fake wood paneling on the lower two-thirds of the walls, cork on the upper third, and vinyl furniture under a low ceiling with acoustic tiling between darkened beams. Indirect lighting gave off a soft glow.

Mark laughed as he set the tray down on the table beside the coffeepot Jillian had put there. He laughed in delight. “I love this room! It makes me feel like boy in high school again, visiting a girlfriend and sneaking around hoping her father won’t come down and order me out because it’s past his daughter’s bedtime.”

Jillian put a tape in the cassette player, keeping the volume low so as not to disturb her mother and Amber, who were asleep upstairs. She smiled as she passed him a plate of eggs and toast and poured the coffee.

“Did you do a lot of that as a teenager?”

“What? Keep girls up past their bedtime?” He grinned, creases bracketing his mouth, fanning out from his eyes. “I guess I did my share of it. What about you? Did you ever have to have your boyfriend kicked out because it was too late?”

“Oh, frequently, at least until my dad came home one night when I thought he was already in and caught me on the living room sofa with a boy he didn’t like. After that, I was a lot more careful, and besides, soon after I went away to college.”

She didn’t add that her father had died of a massive and unexpected heart attack that same year. Seated side by side on the couch, they ate until their plates were empty.

Sensing Mark’s gaze on her, Jillian looked at him, trying to read what was in his eyes. Whatever it was, it spoke to something vital far down inside her soul, and it was asking questions for which she didn’t think she had any answers.

When his hand reached out, large and capable, to cover hers, she turned hers under it and clasped her fingers around his. She turned his hand over and traced the hard calluses there with one fingertip.

“What do you do to get these?” she asked.

His glance flicked over her face almost shyly. “I build trucks.”

“Really? What kind of trucks?”

“Logging trucks,” he said.

“You own the company that builds them? You don’t do it yourself, personally, do you?” she asked, thinking again of his “weekend cottage” and wondering what kind of house he had in the city. Mark Forsythe was no factory employee.

“Me, personally,” he assured her, smiling. “I even provide the logs. I build fire trucks, too, with ladders and hoses and firemen, and pickup trucks with campers on the back, or canoes or dirt bikes. I build moving vans with loads of assorted furniture in them, and houses to put the furniture into once it’s delivered. Right now I’m working with a designer toward moving out into the world of boats. Ever heard of Elfshop Toys?”

“Elfshop Toys!” Of course she had heard of them. Everyone had. “You make those? Why, they’re wonderful!”

“Do you think so?” He looked at her as if he thought she was wonderful, and the world slipped into slow gear for several minutes while she wondered again whether he was going to lean forward kiss her.

He didn’t.

She swallowed hard and said, “I really think so. I bought Amber one of the logging trucks for Christmas last year. She loves to spill the logs off and then scramble around finding them, stacking them up again and fastening the chains over them. I like wooden toys. They seem so...so much closer to nature—warmer—than plastic. I haven’t seen the moving vans and houses yet though.”

“They’ll be on the market by Christmas, but there are a few prototypes ready now. Would you like a set for Amber?”

She thought of how much pleasure Amber would get out of a toy like that, but shook her head and said with a smile, “Thanks, but I’ll wait and buy her one. When do you expect to have your boats in the water?”

“In time for next summer,” he said, and went into an enthusiastic description of what they would be like. They both agreed that kids would love them.

“How did you become a toymaker?”

“My family owned a large logging operation. You may have heard of it,” he said with a wry grin. “Corville-Forsythe.”

He clasped her hand harder, and said sternly, “Now, you quit looking at me like that. None of it’s my fault. I didn’t earn any of the money C.F. makes. I simply inherited some of it.” Before she could comment that inheriting even some of it put him in a financial bracket she couldn’t even begin to imagine, he went on.

“When I was a teenager, my dad sent me out to a different logging camp every summer so that when I took over the business and had to deal with the workers, I’d have some idea of what they were doing and what problems they had. During one of those summers, an old fellow taught me to carve wooden animals, and I discovered a talent I never knew I had. Since then I’ve loved working with my hands making toys. After college, when I declined my father’s offer to take an active part in the company, my dad and his partner, Jason Corville, who had no one to take over from him either, very sensibly decided to go public. When my dad passed away a few years ago, I inherited this half of the business. But fortunately for the stockholders, I didn’t inherit the responsibility for running the company.

“Fortunately for me, too, as I’m able to indulge myself. I do what I want to do and that is make wooden toys. I have a small company in Seattle where I employ close to fifty people, and we all work together. As the market expands, we expect to expand. We may not make a lot of profit, but we all like what we’re doing.”

“And that,” she said softly, picking up her coffee to sip, “is very important, isn’t it?”

For several minutes he didn’t reply. He sensed her understanding of the grief he had experienced as well as caused in turning down the opportunity to take over his father’s business, that it had I pained him deeply to disappoint the old man. Her compassion, he thought, would be equally shared between the two of them.

“Very important, Jillian,” he said finally. “I know that very few people are given the options I was given, and don’t think I’m not aware that it was my father’s hard work which enables me to indulge myself the way I do running what almost amounts to a nonprofit organization.”

She smiled. “I think I knew that without being told. Your work is important to you for more reasons than just your own personal happiness, isn’t it?”

Her understanding touched him deeply. He wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her, to thank her for not judging him. So many people had considered him ungrateful and lacking in filial duties, but he thought what he was doing was as important in its own way as carrying on his father’s empire would have been. There, in the quiet room with only faint background music and dim light surrounding them, he wanted to tell her about his company, about his workers, about the pride he felt in their every accomplishment. But he didn’t want to appear boastful. It wasn’t false modesty, though, that kept him quiet; even as he longed to be able to talk to her about it, he felt that the friendship between them was too tenuous yet, the building trust just a small, fledgling thing. And there had been those who’d scoffed, who’d assured him he was wasting not only his father’s hard-earned money but his own precious time.

“Do you like what you’re doing, Jillian?” he asked, knowing he had to change the subject before he gave into his own impulse and spread all his hopes and dreams before her, babbling like a fool and asking for her approval.

She hesitated as he had done, and then said, “In many ways. It’s not much of a mental challenge, I admit, but I do enjoy most of it.”

“But you’d rather be back working in the school system.”

It wasn’t, she recognized a question. “I did love teaching and counseling,” she agreed carefully. “It’s—it was—what I did best.”

He looked at her over the rim of his mug as he drank another mouthful of coffee, then set the mug down, leaning back on the couch. Rolling his head sideways to look at her, he asked quietly, “Why did you leave it?” He knew he had asked her before, but her answer hadn’t satisfied him. This time, in the quiet of the night, with the beginnings of an aura of trust wrapping around them, he thought he might get the truth.

But she, too, seemed to think that it was too soon for confidences. He found her answer evasive. “There were several reasons. I got sick and had to stay home for a while. When I was better, I discovered that I couldn’t...handle...a full day in a front of a class. My school didn’t have a full-time counseling position so I did the next best thing, took the job at the club. Besides, just about then, my mother started suffering from angina attacks. The doctors said they weren’t life-threatening, but I didn’t—don’t—want to leave her alone. And I do like my job at the club. Swimming was my avocation, as I said. I simply turned it into my vocation.”

She smiled wryly. “Surprisingly, for a lot fewer hours and for work that requires no brains at all I’m earning nearly twice as much as I ever did in the classroom. I’ve always wondered why some football players earn more than most brain surgeons, and exotic dancers-mermaids included—more than teachers. It seems incongruous that people are so willing to pay to be entertained and so chary when it comes to the important issues like medicine and education.”

“It doesn’t seem fair, does it?” he said.

“No, but I must confess that the hours suit me and I like the extra pay. It’s nice being home with Amber during the day. From the time she was only a couple of months old I’ve had to work. These past two years have been a real joy because I can spend so much more time with her. Of course, it’ll be different starting In September when she’s in school all day.”

“You’re going to miss her, I know,” he said. She was sure he did know, this man who had been forced to live apart from his own child and who, even though he now had that child with him, was still far apart from him in all the ways that counted.

“Yes, I’ll miss her like crazy, but it’s something all parents have to go through, and it’ll mean less strain on my mother. She likes to pretend she’s just fine, but I worry about her.

“She needs a life of her own too. She’s certainly young enough to marry again if she had the chance to get out and meet people instead of being tied down with my child most evenings.”

For a moment he was silent, looking down at his lap. He set his coffee cup down. Then, with a quick glance up at her, one she was beginning to think characteristic of him, he said, “And what about you? You’ve been a widow a long time. Have you been alone all those years, or have you thought about marrying again?”

She shrugged. “Once or twice.”

“But?” His glance was keen, and this time it stayed pinned on her face.

“But it didn’t work out. It was just one of those things. When I moved up here we drifted apart. Nothing earthshaking. No heartbreak or anything. Just an ending and a little...sadness.”

He nodded as if he understood. “What about you?” she asked. “You said you were divorced what, nine years ago?”

“That’s right. Lorraine was the Corville’s only child, and we grew up together. I think we married more to please our parents than to please ourselves. When we both realized how bored we were with each other, we parted with no hard feelings on either side.” Well, few hard feelings, he amended silently. Lorraine was one of those who had thought him heartless and ungrateful for failing to live up to their fathers’—and her own—expectations.

“You said that seven years was a long time to be widowed. Nine years is even longer to be alone. Have you been?”

He looked somewhat taken aback at the bluntness of her question, but then he smiled. “Okay, I guess I deserve that. I pried and you answered. Like you, I haven’t been alone the whole time, but there’s never been anyone special. I don’t see myself ever getting married again. I’m forty now. I think maybe I was meant to be a bachelor.”

She shrugged. “I see.” She didn’t, but what could she say? She refilled their cups.

“You said ‘once or twice,’” he reminded her. “You only told me about the once. What about the twice, Jillian?” He knew he had no right to probe, but, dammit, he wanted to know.