For the Taking (4 page)

“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.

She didn’t say it out loud.

“I have a rotating group of local artists and craftspeople who exhibit and sell through the gallery,” she explained instead, grabbing on to the subject like a lifeline. “And a stockroom out the back for people to browse through. The tearoom takes more work, but I need both things, to pull in the business. People will
stop to browse and stay to eat, or the other way around. I’m not on a main road, so I don’t tend to get big tour groups, or anything like that. I’m not making a fortune, but I’m very happy.”

And I’m staying.

Her meaning was clear, although she didn’t say it.

“Not lonely?”

“With people coming through all day?”

It wasn’t an answer, and they both knew it. “People” weren’t friends. But she didn’t want him to challenge her on any of the choices she’d made in her life. They were necessary, considering who and what she was.

Mer.

Like Loucan himself.

Somehow, though, he was far more at ease inside his own skin than she was. At ease on land, too, from what she’d seen so far. He didn’t seem to have built up the same defenses, the same complex web of fear and longing for the mer world, the same deeply in-grained instinct to set herself slightly apart from the land-dwellers among whom she’d lived for so long.

He didn’t see his mother die.

“Okay, now salads.” Loucan opened her commercial-size refrigerator and began to take out ingredients. “You probably make the quiche fillings and the pastry crusts in advance, right? Just add filling to the base when they’re about to hit the oven, a little later on? And are you doing a pasta special?”

“How did you—”

“I read your blackboard menu while I was unstacking the chairs. What about the cakes?”

“Those are delivered. There’s a local woman who
makes them for me. But I do the scones. I need to get those in the oven soon.”

“The same as American biscuits, right, only not with gravy?”

“Here we serve them with jam and whipped cream and a pot of tea or coffee, and it’s called a Devonshire Tea. They’re very popular, all through the day. Even things like sandwiches and pasta people want as late as three or four o’clock.”

“Tricky. Hot dogs or chicken nuggets would be easier.”

“Hot dogs and chicken nuggets would be a disaster. My gallery clientele doesn’t have that sort of taste. They want something a little more up market and fancy. I tried a more substantial hot meal for a while. A curry or a casserole. But I found…”

Lass stopped. His face was wooden.

“I’m boring you stupid with this,” she said.

Lord, what was happening to her, confiding the petty details of her business to him like this? She was rattling on like a runaway train! She, solitary Lass Morgan, who rationed small talk as if words were an endangered species, and never had deeper conversations at all. She was babbling.

Loucan laughed. “Wait until I tell you about my past life as a bond trader. That’ll bore you stupid. This is nice. It reminds me of…well, of some good times I had once, in America, hanging out with someone I liked.”

She went still. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” He kept on deftly cutting green pepper and slicing mushrooms with his big hands, while Lass set up the mixer to put together the day’s batch of scone dough. Her own hands were clumsy
today, and she couldn’t seem to get the dough hook to click into its slot.

“Don’t try and act as if we’re friends,” she said. “Don’t try to get through to me that way.”

She dropped the metal mixing bowl and crossed the kitchen to the CD player. One press of a button brought music into the room—Susie’s favorite classic rock radio. Lass didn’t care what it was, as long as it was loud and fast and broke the illusion of intimacy.

“Is that what you thought I was doing?” Loucan said. “Trying to get through to you?”

“Yes. Weren’t you?”

“I’m not a manipulative man, Thalassa. I don’t sneak my way into people’s good graces through flattery and insincerity.”

His head was held at a proud angle, emphasizing the straight strength of his nose. His brown skin was incredibly smooth, considering he had to be forty years old by now. He was an able man in the prime of life, and Lass felt foolish at having accused him of behaving like a two-faced schoolgirl.

She flushed and said weakly, “Don’t you?”

“I go after what I want,” he continued. “But I do it openly. I’ve told you, we’ll talk at the end of the day, and then I’m sure things will get rocky and tense again.”

“You got that right!”

“I know you don’t want this to be happening. For now, if we can enjoy each other’s company, is that a sin?”

“I’ll…I’ll get back to you on that,” she told him awkwardly. Lifting the lid of the big flour bin, she would gladly have crawled inside.

A moment later, the driving, upbeat rhythm and
lyrics of a song on the radio threw her back into gear at last. This was familiar. It was what she did every day, and if she didn’t get through the routine by ten or close after…

Loucan needed her to tell him what to do from time to time, but apart from that she ignored him. She and Susie and Megan usually chatted a bit. Light stuff about local events and the doings of the women’s extended family.

Susie and Megan always did most of the talking, while Lass asked just enough questions to keep the flow going. It was one of the things she liked about the two sisters—the easy flow of their chatter. Since she didn’t have to give away much of herself, it kept her feeling safe. Loucan wasn’t nearly such a restful presence.

“What time do you usually get your first arrivals?” he asked at around quarter after ten. The clock above the old stone fireplace was ticking loudly, and the scones had just come out of the oven.

“About now.”

“I’ll wait tables while you take care of things in here. Is that okay?”

“Yes.”

If anybody ever showed up. She had been counting on a steady summer crowd today. Like the music, it would add a distance between the two of them that she increasingly needed. It would be ironic if this turned out to be one of their rare days when, for no reason that they could ever predict or discern, almost nobody came.

She hated her awareness of Loucan. Tried to tell herself that it was purely self-defense, but deep down, she knew it was much more.

Loucan was mer.

Lass hadn’t seen a merman in twenty-five years, and she’d been just a child then. Over the past fifteen years of her adult life, she had never allowed herself to fall for a land-dwelling man. That one clumsy attempt at a relationship during her college years had quickly convinced her that Cyria was right on this issue. Physically, she and Gordon had never gotten beyond a few unsatisfying kisses.

But Loucan was mer.

That had to be the reason she was feeling like this.

She was so conscious of exactly where he was in the big kitchen. So conscious of her own body—of its lush curves, of its weight and shape and the way it moved, of the sensitivity of her skin.

In the days following one of her guilty trips to the ocean, she was always more sensitized, always yearned for…for
something.
For years this
something
had been quite nameless and out of reach. Painfully, frustratingly so. But suddenly now she understood.

She wanted a man’s touch.

She wanted the sensations of lovemaking that she’d only imagined and read about, never experienced. Cyria had told her it must not happen, not with a land-dwelling man. She’d always implied that one day, in the future, when King Okeana came for them and everything was safe, there would then be someone for Lass to give her heart to—someone in Pacifica. Unconsciously, she’d believed that, waited for that.

And Loucan was mer.

Mer, and the son of her father’s enemy. It was because of Galen and the escalating violence that her father had secretly sent all four of his children away,
each with a different guardian, and each to a different part of the world. It was because of Galen that her mother had died.

The hair on Lass’s arms and on the back of her neck stood on end, and her stomach began to churn.

What am I thinking?
she wondered.
What kind of a trick is my body playing on me? I can’t start wanting him. I still don’t know why he’s really here. This instinct to trust him could all be coming from…from this physical frustration. Because he’s mer, and I want—I want… Oh lord, Cyria was wrong to tell me to live my life like this!

“S
o is it often like that?” Loucan asked.

“No, thank goodness.” Lass combed her hand through her hair several times. The gesture was jerky, as if she still expected her fingers to get tangled in the long, living strands that had recently reached to her thighs. As if she couldn’t get used to the change.

She looked tired, and Loucan wasn’t surprised. It was nearly six-thirty. The kitchen was squeaky clean and the chairs were stacked on the tables. He’d just vacuumed the gallery floor, while Lass was still mopping the tearoom.

They hadn’t had a single customer until noon, when three cars had pulled in within two minutes of each other. After that, it hadn’t stopped all day. Lass had shuttled back and forth between cash desk, kitchen and gallery, while Loucan had waited tables and washed dishes. He’d also sold two of the seascapes and a big and very ugly vase. He hadn’t told her about that yet, actually.

He remedied the oversight, and Lass’s opalescent green eyes widened.

“You sold
that?
The big—? The green—? With the knobbly things?”

“Yep. That’s the one.”

“Good grief, I thought I’d never get rid of that.” Her relief broke a little of the simmering tension between them—a tension they’d managed to put on hold since noon.

She leaned on the mop handle. Her hands shook a little and she seemed giddy and light-headed all of a sudden, as if she’d gone beyond exhaustion and was running purely on nerves. Loucan guessed she hadn’t been sleeping well since the other night, and felt bad about that.

His fault. And yet he didn’t see how he could have softened the blow of his sudden appearance in her life.

“It was left over from an exhibition that didn’t do very well,” she was saying. “And the artist has left the area, now. How did you manage to—”

“Hypnosis,” he told her, straight-faced.

There was a beat of silence, and then she laughed. The sound was a musical gurgle and came from deep inside her. This was the first time he’d seen her do it, and she seemed surprised that it had happened. He got the impression that maybe it didn’t happen that often, Lass’s pretty laughter. He was sure she spent too much time alone.

Now with her face lit up, her eyes looked greener than ever. The mop handle swayed in her hands, and she swayed with it.

“Lord, I
am
tired!” she said. “I almost believed you.”

She laughed again, a lighter, easier sound this time.

“No, seriously,” he said, “I just agreed with the customer when she spoke of its lyrical form and the tonal depth of the glaze.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m grateful!” She pushed her hair up off her forehead again.

So that she wouldn’t have time to regret saying it, he interjected quickly, “Listen, are you done?”

Lass looked vaguely at the floor. “Oh, probably. I’ve lost track of where I started.”

“It looks spotless. You should close up and eat.
We
should eat. Quiche and salad and some limp pasta and stale scones, right?”

“Already packed up in a basket in the kitchen.”

“You always live on leftovers from the tearoom?”

“No, sometimes I make some local pigs very happy.” She grinned again, and again it did something to him, made him want to get her to laugh and lighten up more often. “But not tonight,” she added. “We’ll get the leftovers tonight, because I’m too tired to go into town, and the local take-out places don’t deliver this far.”

She went through her short ritual of locking up, and they walked toward the house, both of them silent until he heard a husky, “Thanks. For today. I would have been swamped. I know you…want something from me, Loucan. You’ve been honest about that. You didn’t have to work your butt off to give yourself a better chance of getting it.”

“I know that,” he answered. “I wasn’t doing that.”

“No, I know. I’m going to take it as a reason to at least listen to what you’ve got to say.”

“Not tonight.”

“Yes, I want to hear it tonight. Or I won’t sleep again, and I need to, because I’m wiped. I’ve got questions, Loucan.”

“Fire away,” he invited her.

“How come you’re so at home on land?”

Lass wasn’t sure why this was the number one question on her list, but after a day spent with Loucan, it definitely was. To her eyes, the other night, he had been so obviously mer. His clothing. His smooth brown skin, nourished by the seawater, which was so much better than any expensive cream or lotion. The way he belonged in the seascape of sky and sand and water. The way he smelled like fresh sea air and salt.

Today, though, he had seemed more at home among the land-dwellers than she was, although she had spent most of her life here. She couldn’t believe it when she’d heard him say to the tearoom’s first customers, “My name is Luke, and I’ll be your waiter today,” in his American-flavored accent. Most mer people spoke English with an old-fashioned, almost piratelike lilt, having learned the language from English sailors in the days when Britannia ruled the waves. She’d probably scarcely understand such speech now.

So kings were waiting tables these days? she had thought.

He
acted
like a king, although she doubted he was conscious of the fact. He had every woman he served completely in thrall by the end of the meal. They all promised to come back a second time, and to recommend the place to their friends. The men laughed at his humor. The gallery customers eagerly absorbed his references to Impressionist painting and classical Chinese pottery.

How did he know that stuff?

“I left Pacifica, don’t you remember?” he answered her. “About a year before you did.”

“No, I…my memories of that whole time are very patchy.”

They were overshadowed, blocked out, by what had come after.

“It’s not surprising,” he said. “You were only eight.”

He didn’t know what she had seen, and she couldn’t find the words to tell him. Lass pushed the memory back, deep down inside her. She led the way into the house, coming through the back door, which opened into the kitchen.

“Do you want to freshen up first?” she invited him.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Continue, then. So you left. You must have only been—”

“Fourteen. It wasn’t quite running away, but it was close. I told my parents I was going. They weren’t happy about it, but I didn’t given them a lot of choice. I just went.”

Lass took two low-alcohol beers from the fridge. She held one out and he nodded and took it. There were two cracks and two hisses as they opened the cans in unison. Lass put hers down after one mouthful and got out the leftovers to heat in the microwave.

“Why, Loucan?” she said. “Why was leaving so important?”

“Because I couldn’t stand what was happening in Pacifica. The factions that were developing, with your parents on one side and mine on the other.”

“Where did you stand?”

On Galen’s side, of course, she realized abruptly. Why even ask? Why was he here in her kitchen, drinking her beer? Her mother had died at the hands of one of Galen’s men.

“I thought both factions were dangerously and completely wrong.” The blunt strength of the statement silenced Lass’s inner rebellion. “I despised Joran, and I was deeply disappointed in your father for listening to him.”

Before she could speak, he continued, “And I thought my own parents were foolish and naive. They wanted to declare Pacifica’s existence to the world? They knew nothing
about
the world! And neither did your father, or Joran, or any of the people who argued that whole craziness about mer superiority and using the land-dwellers as we needed them. None of it made sense, because nobody
knew.
The mer people had stayed hidden for so long, apart from a few wild souls who ventured forth to bring back patchy knowledge and exaggerated stories. Both your father’s ideas and my own father’s beliefs were based on imagination and speculative theories. I wanted to
know.
So I left. A reconnaissance mission, I guess. It lasted over ten years.”

“But you were only a child, Loucan!”

“I was strong and big, even among the mer. And I matured quickly. I had to. On land, I passed for twenty when I was sixteen. And during the first two years I didn’t spend much time on land. I took it slowly.”

“When my mother was killed, shortly after you left—”

“I was riding the Japan current with a pod of whales. I knew nothing about Wailele’s death, or the
escalation of violence in Pacifica, for another nine years. Does that help, Lass?”

He said it quietly, soberly. She pressed the start button on the microwave and turned to face him. His eyes were fixed on her, his gaze steady and his mouth closed and serious.

“Yes, I guess so,” she answered. “If it’s true.”

“Why wouldn’t it be true? What have I got to gain by lying? We’ve been alone for hours today. If I wanted to harm you in any way, Lass, haven’t I already had ample opportunity?”

“There’s more than one kind of harm. You’ve already harmed me just by coming here.” Her voice cracked unexpectedly and she swallowed the hard lump in her throat.

“Have I?”

“I was safe. I was happy. I was fine. I didn’t know how much I needed…” She stopped.

How much I needed that “something” in my life that I never had a name for until now.

Lord, she could hardly look at him without wondering how it would feel to lie in his arms, to feel his heat and strength around her and inside her.

He was mer, and so was she. It took away all the excuses she’d used to herself over the years for not getting involved with a man, and made her suddenly confront everything that was lacking in her life.

“Why were you dressed in mer clothing the other night?” Lass posed the question in a desperate attempt to keep her focus.

“Because I hoped it would help you to accept who I was.”

“How did you know you would find me that night?”

“I didn’t. I’ve worn that clothing many times. I’ve been going up and down the coast for weeks, on and off, in search of you.”

“By car?”

“No, I have a boat, which is moored in the harbor at Condy’s Bay right now. She’s named the
Ondina,
after my mother.”

Condy’s Bay was only about fifteen minutes’ drive from here.

“So you’ve just been sailing up and down the coast, hoping you might get lucky and spot a red-haired mermaid?”

“I’ve been talking to different people, trying different stories, and, yes, sometimes just walking the beach watching for dolphins in the water.”

She knew what “story” had finally worked. The one he’d fed to Judy at the hair salon. That he was a photographer, looking for a model with long, red-gold hair for a photo shoot involving dolphins. It would help if she was a strong swimmer.

Judy had been only too happy to stay in conversation with such a well-built and good-looking man, and although she hadn’t been willing to give Lass’s name or address, she’d unintentionally come up with all the details he needed.

The microwave pinged.

“You told me you were an honest man,” Lass said. “But you lied to Judy.”

“What did you want me to tell her? ‘I think one of your clients might be a mermaid I’m looking for. She has long red hair and green eyes, and if you recognize this description could you please give me her address?’ I do want, one day, for us to tell the world who we are, but it can’t be done like that. It’s been
pretty hard for Kevin and Ben and Beth to accept the reality of our existence, even with love to smooth the way. It has to be done right.”

“How?”

He spread his hands. “I’m working on that. First, and it’s starting to happen, we have to end the polarization that has half of Pacifica despising the land-dwellers and half of them idealizing them into paragons of all that is wise and good.”

Lass coughed. “Hardly! Once you’ve experienced—”

“Exactly!” he interrupted. “Once you’ve experienced life on land. Once you
know.
That land-dwellers are every bit as complex as the mer. That there’s good and bad, things that work on land and things that get royally messed up. And you
do
know, in a way that most of the mer still don’t, jaded though they are with the fighting. Don’t you see what an asset you could be?”

“No!” She dropped a tangle of leftover linguine into a big, shallow bowl, serving tongs included, and paced the kitchen. “I should have known! I should have guessed that’s what you wanted. I’m not going back, Loucan!”

Damn!

It was his own fault, Loucan realized. He had allowed his impatience to overpower his judgment. He’d declared himself way too soon, and Lass had made all the necessary leaps of logic. He’d underestimated just how bright and on the ball she was.

True, she hadn’t exactly made it easy for him with the direction of her questions. He’d expected her to focus on her siblings. Maybe it was the fault of those wedding photos. She’d lingered over them this morn
ing, absorbing every detail, and asking questions about Saegar as well. She’d obviously satisfied herself that they were all happy. Safe, too, away from Pacifica, and not likely to go back except for cautious visits, including the imminent one they were all impatient for.

“I’m not looking for any kind of decision right away, Lass,” he said calmly.

“Well, you’re getting one!” Her green eyes blazed and her full lower lip jutted angrily. “My decision is made. I won’t go back to Pacifica! There’s your pasta. It’s getting cold. Let’s eat, both of us, because I’m tired. I want to phone Saegar and my sisters, and then I want you to leave.”

“This isn’t over, Lass.”

“Is that a threat? Are you planning to kidnap me?”

Loucan’s scalp tightened in frustration. Kidnap her? Yes, what a good idea! Take her to dinner somewhere overlooking the water and talk to her,
listen
to her, until he arrived at a better understanding of why this was so difficult for her. She didn’t look like a timid, unadventurous woman. She hadn’t been a timid child.