The Mermaid Collector (12 page)

She folded her arms. “It won’t help, you know.”

Tom looked up at the sound of her voice. He rose, then wiped sweat off his forehead with his arm. “How’s that?”

“Laying them out like this,” Tess said. “They’ll still smell like salt. Everything in Cradle Harbor smells like salt.”

“It’s not the salt,” he said. “It’s the mildew.”

They stared at each other, uncertain. He looked a whole lot better this way, she thought. He was rumpled,
his hair slightly scattered, his shirttails popping out a bit over his belt.

Just tell him,
she thought.
Tell him and get it over with. He’s looking at you as if he’s going to ask you something, as if he wants something. Tell him
.

“I have coffee,” Tom said. “It’s really terrible stuff, and I don’t have any milk—”

“I can’t.”

“Oh.”

He looked disappointed, Tess thought. Or maybe not.

“I just came because I wanted to be clear about what happened last night,” she said. “I wasn’t feeling like myself. I was confused.”

She watched his eyes narrow skeptically. He didn’t believe her; she could tell. Maybe he remembered it differently. And maybe it wasn’t the entire truth. Maybe she had known full well who he was and she’d wanted to kiss him anyway, but that didn’t matter now. She’d been drunk, loose, hurting. Surely he could understand that. Men used that same excuse all the time. Not that it was an excuse.

“I just didn’t want you thinking there was something to us now,” she said, “because there isn’t.”

Tom didn’t reply, just moved down the row of mattresses, snapping the edges to try to flatten the lumps that still resembled mountain ranges.

Staring at him as he worked, Tess grew frustrated by his silence.

“You’re mad, aren’t you?” she said.

He shrugged. “Not at all. Actually, I’m fairly accustomed to people who drink too much and then think they don’t have to be responsible for their actions.”

“That’s a rotten thing to say. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you should take responsibility for the things you do. I know you kissed me. Among other things.”

“Because I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“So you keep saying.”

Tess felt the skin of her ears warm, certain the lobes were a bright scarlet. “You don’t believe me—is that it?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. Excuse me.” Tom reached down to scoop up one of the piles of sheets he’d brought outside and moved past her, headed for the empty clothesline that stood on crooked poles a few feet down the lawn.

Tess followed him, reaching him as he flung a fitted sheet over the clothesline, the rope stiff with age and dried salt.

“I don’t sleep around,” she said firmly. “I’m sure that’s what you heard, but I don’t. They said the same thing about my mother, and it wasn’t true about her, either. I have to be in love with someone to sleep with him. And it just so happens that I
am
in love with someone. Someone
else
.”

Her heart racing, she stared at his profile, waiting for him to call her bluff, to be cruel and point out that he knew damn well the man she claimed to be in love with had stood her up. But he didn’t. He simply kept his eyes firmly
on his task, drawing up another sheet and laying it over the line, saying only, “Then I guess we’re clear.”

“Good.” Tess gripped her bare arms, feeling suddenly chilled even though the breeze had thinned noticeably since she’d arrived and the sun was unfettered by a single cloud. She’d made her case, and now she could go.

So why hadn’t she?

The last sheet hung, Tom turned to her, clearly wondering the same thing.

Tess swerved her gaze to the lighthouse, a safe thing to look at, she thought.

“I haven’t been up there yet,” Tom said, seeing where she looked. “Would you like to go with me?”

Tess turned back to him, their gazes holding.

“Why would I want to do that?” she asked.

“I don’t know that you do. That’s why I asked.”

She didn’t have time for this. She had plenty to do, so much it made her head spin.

But his dark eyes were a warm brown. She didn’t remember their being so warm.

“Maybe just for a minute,” she said.

THEY WALKED THROUGH A BRISK
wind down the twisting path to the tower, flanked by hedges and saying little. They took turns glancing at the horizon where the sun was dropping gently behind lavender clouds. Tom freed the padlock and wrenched the heavy metal door open. Tess
stepped in first, and he followed. With the door ajar, there was enough daylight to illuminate the interior, the brick walls, the twisting metal staircase.

“You first,” he said, giving her room, and she took it.

The climb to the top was harder than he imagined, the sharp curve of the metal stairs and the view to the bottom making him dizzy. He gripped the railing and followed her up, through the trapdoor and into the lantern room. Once he was inside at last, out of the dark and into full light, the panorama revealed itself, the view of the sea endless in nearly every direction. A pedestal stood in the middle where the beam would have perched; it now carried only the weight of a simple plaque:
CRADLE HARBOR LIGHT: BUILT IN 1854
.

Tess walked to the windows; Tom followed her, certain he heard the unmistakable clatter of wind chimes. Sure enough, he saw a set tied from the railing, banging in the harsh wind.

“Seems like a strange place to hang chimes,” he said.

“Lydia didn’t think so.” Tess spread her hands against the curved glass. “She had to be sure they never came back.”

Tom frowned, confused. “The men?”

Tess smiled. “I thought you weren’t interested in fairy tales.”

She had him and she knew it, Tom thought, seeing that same curious flash of warmth flicker across her face, tilt her lips briefly, then slip away. All right, he’d admit it. He was slightly intrigued. Or maybe he just wanted an excuse to keep their conversation going.

“Did it work?” he asked.

“If it did, Lydia never knew it,” said Tess. “She was so heartbroken she jumped from the gallery right after she hung them. A neighbor found her body washed up on the rocks.”

Tom shifted his gaze away from her to the view of the gallery, thinking how cold and desolate it looked on that metal walkway.

Tess considered him in the quiet. “So why you?”

“Why me what?”

“Why did Frank give the house to you?”

Tom shrugged, driving his hands into his pockets. “I was just as surprised as everyone else,” he said. “I barely knew him.”

“But you
did
know him? I mean, no one gives away a building to a total stranger.” She traced lazy circles on the glass. “Buzz won’t tell me anything.”

“What makes you think there’s something to tell?” Tom asked.

“There’s always something to tell. Everyone has a story. Everyone has secrets.”

Tess turned to face him fully then, the air filling suddenly with the scent of her, familiar to him now. He wondered why she had lied to him. She hadn’t been that drunk. Twice he’d seen her eyes flutter open as she’d urged him down beside her, both times flashing with recognition. And she knew he knew; Tom was certain of it. Still, she’d made her claim.

“Do you ever go out there?” he asked her.

“You mean the gallery?”

“No, the water. Do you swim?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “If it gets hot enough. Do you?”

“Never.” Tom looked out at the sea, the pewter blanket white-tipped and rippling. “Dean, my brother, is the swimmer. Not me.”

“Then he’ll love the Mutiny Dash,” Tess said.

“What’s that?”

“The opening night of the festival, everyone gathers on the town beach at dusk, links hands, and rushes into the water. Just like Linus and the others did.”

“Sounds unpleasant,” said Tom.

Tess smiled. “It’s not when you run in. You barely feel the cold.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“What about your brother?” Tess asked. “Is he a teacher too?”

“No. No, he’s not a teacher.”

“What does he do, then?”

“As little as possible.”

Tess frowned at him. “I don’t understand.”

“Dean’s not much for working. He never has been.”

“Maybe he’s just never found the right job.”

She was defending him, Tom thought. She was defending someone she didn’t even know. But then she’d probably adore Dean. Most women did. He was like a bonfire in the middle of a cold room. Everyone wanted to get close
and warm their hands on his heat. But it was easy to throw caution to the wind when you knew someone would always be there to chase it down. Their parents had done so for the first seventeen years of Dean’s life; Tom had merely picked up where they had left off.

“I don’t think that’s his problem,” Tom said. “Dean’s like a child who’ll dump out a whole box of cereal to get to the prize. He lacks any kind of self-control. He always has.”

He turned to find Tess studying him. In the silence, the space around them grew thick. Outside, the sea looked frigid to him, but inside the lantern room, he was burning up.

This was his chance, Tom thought. It was his opportunity to smooth things out between them, though why he felt compelled to do so he hadn’t yet decided. He knew only that he wanted to.

“I’m not like that, either, you know,” he said carefully. “I really did just come over last night for a shower. And I meant what I said. You are beautiful.”

Tess glanced to the trapdoor, as if she’d heard movement. “It’s getting late,” she said. “I should go.”

Dean was right, Tom thought. He was awful at this.

He stepped back to let her pass, giving up. “Then we’ll go.”

THE WALK BACK WAS AS
quiet as the one there, past the graveyard of mattresses and the sheets snapping madly on the line. Reaching the porch, they turned to each other.

Tom nodded toward her car. “I’ll let you get back t—”

“I’ll have coffee.”

Tom blinked at her, startled by her suggestion, but he could see she’d startled herself more. “All right.”

Tess followed him inside the old house and sat at the kitchen table while he fixed them two lukewarm mugs, the coffee watery and the color of tea.

“I warned you,” he said, seeing her expression as she stared down at hers.

Tess looked up, realizing she hadn’t really wanted coffee. She didn’t know what she wanted. She’d only come here to tell him something. She wanted to find Pete; she wanted him to explain why he’d changed his mind, why he’d forgotten his promise, all of his promises, ten years of them. But instead she was here with this strange man in a house that she hadn’t set foot in since she was seventeen, a house that smelled of old books and old plaster, with walls so white, so bare, a person could lose her way, snow blind.

“I should go,” she announced.

“Then go,” Tom said, his expression, once patient, now frustrated.

But when Tess stood up, her feet felt heavy, stuck. Suddenly, all she could think about was walking to those stairs, the corners of which she could see from where she had been sitting, setting her hand over that worn banister, and following those ancient treads that had been used so many times, their wood was rippled like wind over water.

Their eyes met and held.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said. “I can’t even drink coffee without cream.”

“That’s not a crime, you know.”

Her feet came loose then. The moment she felt her freedom, she went to him, rearing up and pressing her lips to his mouth just as she had done the night before. Only this time her eyes were open, wide open, so there could be no confusion.

And this time, Tom Grace kissed her back. He took her face in his hands and steered her mouth under his, his own eyes blinking just to be sure. But he
was
sure. As little sense as it made—and it made
none
—Tom was as certain about wanting to kiss her as he had been about moving Dean and himself to this damp and lonely house at the end of the world.

“The mattresses…” Tom pulled back the tiniest bit from her mouth. “They’re all outside. Everything soft is outside.”

“I don’t care,” Tess whispered.

Neither did he. In that moment, and for the first time in a very long time, Tom didn’t care about anything but sliding over this woman, sliding into her. He didn’t care about police calls or cell phone signals or empty liquor bottles rolling around the back of Dean’s car. He didn’t care about secrets or guilt or regrets.

It was the sea air, Tom told himself as he lowered Tess carefully to the floor. He was drunk on salt, overtired, maybe even a little lost. Here, without Dean, he wasn’t
sure who he was, but he liked this person he was becoming. This person who after a single day, not even twenty-four hours, craved someone he didn’t know, who thought obsessively about a split second of breast, a stash of empty shampoo bottles in a cluttered bathroom, the sweet smell of fresh wood curls pooling on the floor of a crooked shed.

Beneath him, Tess closed her eyes.

TOM FOUND THEM A BLANKET
, a cheaply made thing that, even almost threadbare from wear and wash, was still scratchy and stiff. They hadn’t undressed, only unzipped, though his hands had sought out her breasts and managed to free them from her bra. Now they lay there, considering the ceiling.

When Tess rose without a word, Tom expected she meant to leave, to flee without saying good-bye, regretting what they’d done, but then he heard the creak of the refrigerator door, the thud of several cabinets opened and shut, and a few minutes later, the padding of her bare feet returning across the floor.

She sat back down on the blanket, across from him, considering him.

“Do you know that you have absolutely nothing to eat in this whole house?” she said.

“I know.” Tom rose up on his elbows. “I’m working on it.”

Then she remembered. “I have lasagna. And cheesecake.
They’re in the car.” Tess saw his eyes narrow quizzically and she said, “Don’t ask.”

“I won’t.” Tom smiled. “Maybe you should go get them.”

“Maybe I should.” Tess smiled back at him. It was a remarkable expression, he thought. Her whole face seemed to light up.