For the Taking

She was tempted to let it ring, except that when you ran a small business essentially on your own, you couldn’t afford to do that. All her calls were potentially important. In any case, Loucan had taken advantage of the moment and had hidden the photos back in their packet.

“Take the call,” he said. “This can wait.”

She was already running to the phone that was fixed to the kitchen wall. It was her decision to take the call, not his! She refused to respond to his arrogant orders, and she wasn’t going to let him underestimate her.

“Lass?” The voice on the other end of the line was shaky, but she recognized it right away.

“Susie? What’s up?”

“We’ve just had an accident. Rob was driving, but it wasn’t his fault….”

“Oh, Lord, Susie, are you all okay?”

Susie and her sister Megan helped in the tearoom kitchen every day, while Susie’s husband, Rob, came part-time to keep the garden in shape and handle maintenance. Susie and Rob were in their late twenties, hoping to start a family soon, and Lass was close to them.

Well, as close as she ever let herself get to anybody.

“We’re fine.” Susie burst into tears.

They were obviously not fine. In a rambling account, Lass heard the details. Susie had lacerations on her face, Megan was being assessed for a head injury and Rob had probably broken something, but they weren’t yet sure what. They were at the emergency department of the local hospital.

“I’ll try to get out to you as soon as I can,” Susie promised, “but they want to put dressings on the cuts, and—”

“Susie, you’re not coming in today, okay? None of you. Or tomorrow. Not till you’re ready. It should be quiet. I’ll—”

“Quiet? It’s the middle of school summer break!”

“I’ll manage. We can still get quiet days sometimes. You just look after yourself and Megan and Rob.”

The fact that Susie stopped arguing at once was proof that neither she, her sister nor Rob were fit to come in. Lass put down the phone, and faced the knowledge that “managing” wouldn’t be nearly as easy as she’d claimed. She opened in less than an hour, and still had the salads and sandwich ingredients to set out, the quiche fillings to prepare, the coffee machine to start, the scones to make, the cream to whip….

And she didn’t care.

“Show me the photos, Loucan.”

Coming through the doorway from the kitchen, her bare feet cool on the polished hardwood floor, she found him standing in front of one of the two sets of French doors that opened onto the veranda, in the direction of the sea.

He was watching the sparkling blue ocean, just the way she always did. Silent, still and totally absorbed. Hungry for it. Listening to its call.

But he couldn’t hate the power of that call, the way she did.

He turned at her words, and he wasn’t holding the photos anymore. Where had he hidden them? She couldn’t tell. Not in the T-shirt pocket.

“I heard your conversation,” he said. “Your help can’t make it today?”

She shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m worried about them, not me. It seems as if none of them is seriously hurt, fortunately. Please show me the photos of Phoebe and Kai. And—and Saegar, too.” The brother and playmate she’d loved. “Do you have pictures of him?”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“News about him, then? You told me the other day you were in touch with him.”

“You didn’t believe me.”

“I do now. Tell me. Show me.”

“Not yet. Tell me what’s in it for me, first, Thalassa.” His blue eyes burned with a cool fire, an assessing look she didn’t trust. “Meet me halfway. If I give you what you want, will you listen to me? Will you give me—?”

“No!” she cried, pressing her palms to her ears. “How can you talk about giving? Your father and his supporters took from me something that can never be replaced. They took my mother’s life with unspeakable violence, and without warning.” She drew a shuddery breath and had to struggle to keep going. “I’m giving you nothing, Loucan!”

As always, when she thought about her mother’s death, she couldn’t fight the secret, nightmare memory. Cyria—she’d only ever called her guardian Aunt Catherine in public—was the only other person who knew what Lass had witnessed as an eight-year-old child, and now Cyria was dead, too. That death, at least, had been peaceful.

Her mother’s, Wailele’s, wasn’t.

Oh, dear God, must I see it in my memory for the rest of my life?

Still, after twenty-five years, the sight of blood in the water panicked and terrified her, and she had told Cyria time and again that she would never go back to Pacifica, where such violence might happen once more.

“Then I guess the photos aren’t needed today,” Loucan said, cutting across her relentless unfolding of memory. He still seemed cool and totally in control.

“How do I even know they’re genuine?” she argued. “I haven’t seen Phoebe or Kai in so long, those couples could be anyone.” She didn’t really believe that. She knew in her heart that they were Phoebe and Kai, and their new husbands. All the same… “I don’t trust you, Loucan!”

“That’s obvious,” he said. “And I can understand it.”

“I hope so!”

“What I can’t understand is that you’d deny yourself the chance to connect with your brother and your sisters purely because you don’t want to have anything to do with me.”

“Not so surprising, if you’d think about it a little more.” Deliberately, she kept her voice hard. “You’re apparently willing to blackmail me by keeping me in ignorance of the only family I have left. What that says about your character doesn’t inspire me to get to know you any better. But you’ve given me some facts about Phoebe and Kai and Saegar. Where they’re living. The names they use. I’ll be patient.”

“You’re saying—”

“Yes. I’ll track them down myself, or I’ll employ someone to do it. I don’t need you, Loucan. Your blackmail attempt has failed. And now I need to open up the tearoom. You can let yourself out.”

She slipped her feet into her sandals, pulled a bunch of keys from her pocket and opened the door, quaking inside. What would he do? Would he call her bluff? Could she bear it if he gave up and left, without telling her more about her siblings and without showing her the photos? Would the facts she now had be enough to trace her family on her own, as she’d suggested?

The heels of her silly, impractical shoes rapped like gunshots on the stone flagging of the veranda. Why did she buy these things? She had a dozen pairs and they killed her feet all day. Her clientele wouldn’t raise their eyebrows if she wore flats. Half the time she kicked her shoes off behind the counter and didn’t even notice.

She felt her breasts bounce as she clicked along to the end of the veranda, and was self-conscious again, aware of her own body in a way that was unusual. She didn’t like to think about where Loucan’s gaze might be focused.

He was a powerful man. Powerful in his position at the center of the chaotic situation that apparently still existed in Pacifica. Powerful in the aura of determination and ruthlessness that he exuded. He hadn’t given up. He would call her bluff; she was sure of it. Was he watching? Why didn’t he say something?

Loucan didn’t find his voice until Lass had reached the end of the veranda. He couldn’t understand his own reluctance to speak. She wouldn’t carry through on her threat, he was sure.

And yet he heard himself saying, with a husky note in his strong voice, “Wait!”

“Yes?” She turned, and he saw that he’d been right. She wasn’t remotely cool about this. He saw her hands shaking and her eyes glittering with hot tears.

“I’m not going to blackmail you.” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness that he couldn’t remember ever using before in his life. “And I was wrong to imply that I would. I want your alliance and your trust, not this.”

“Sure you do, Loucan.” She pivoted and stepped from the veranda onto the paved path that led to the tearoom.

“Lass, listen to me—”

“No!”

He followed her, faster than she was in those frivolous, kittenish heels. Hearing him gaining on her, she kicked them off once more, and abandoned them in the grass at the side of the path. He caught up to her anyway, grasped her shoulder and spun her around. He pinned her to the spot with the sheer force of his will.

“This is how wars start,” he said urgently. “This is where violence comes from. When people can’t find a way to talk.”

She lifted that strong, stubborn chin. “Is that what happened in Pacifica, all those years ago? Not as far as I’m concerned!”

“You were too young to understand. If you’d listen to me, I could tell you. My father had nothing to do with your mother’s death.”

“Oh, he didn’t?”

“No. He was horrified that one of his supporters had taken a speech of his and interpreted it in that way. The man was acting totally alone.”

He heard the smallest tremor of doubt in his own voice, and wondered if Lass had picked up on it. He still wasn’t sure of the whole truth himself. There was a tiny thread of evidence—the report of one witness—that suggested Joran, one of Okeana’s own supporters, had incited the fanatical assassin to murder Okeana’s wife in order to further the unrest that Joran sought.

For the moment, however, Loucan ignored the possibility. It was a detail that didn’t affect his own innocence. He had been three thousand miles from Pacifica when Wailele died.

He pressed on.

“Listen to me, Lass. Trust me at least long enough for us to talk about Phoebe and Kai and Saegar, and for me to tell you why I’m here. I’m not just looking for your belief in my version of the past. There’s more than that. I’ve spent years searching for you. Give me some time. Let me help you in the tearoom today, and we’ll—”

She laughed. “You? The self-styled rightful king of Pacifica, Loucan the Triumphant, or whatever you’ve decided to call yourself, cutting tomatoes and stacking the dishwasher? What could your royal majesty possibly know about my kitchen?”

He grinned, seeing the chance to soften her with humor, and grabbing it.

“I admit I’m more experienced at tending bar than pouring coffee,” he said, still smiling as he invited her to share his amusement. “But I’ve worked in the galley of a commercial fishing boat, cooking a hot breakfast for twelve hungry men after we’ve been up all night hauling nets. I know which side of a teapot to hold, and which to pour from.”

“Big deal!”

“I bussed tables once for a few months, a long time ago, when I was around seventeen. You should see how fast I can flick a wet cloth around, when it’s needed. You need help today, and I’m offering. For less than minimum wage. Couldn’t we start from there?”

His smile was as hot as summer sunlight and as powerful as the sea itself. It pulled at Lass’s emotions, the way the ocean did in all its moods.

Loucan knew all about that. He was a creature of the ocean himself. Even so, she would have forced herself to stay immune to his smile if he hadn’t pulled the packet of photos from the tight back pocket of his jeans, and added casually, “Tell me what to do to start setting up, and you can look at these while I work.”

“All right. Okay. Uh…I’m not— This isn’t a capitulation, Loucan,” she insisted. “All it is…it’s for Saegar and my sisters.”

“I know that,” he said quietly. “I understand. By the end of the day, I hope your reasons will change, but for now it’s good enough.”

“Okay,” she said again. The word hardly had meaning. “Good.”

Unlocking the door that opened directly into the gallery, she led the way past blue-green seascapes, glazed ceramics and trays of delicate jewelry, feeling as if she was walking with Loucan into a new future she hadn’t even imagined three days ago. She was terrified of everything about it.

Chapter Two

Cyria was the one who had taught her to be afraid, and to set herself apart.

Time and again, she had held Lass close to her and whispered, “No one should have to see what you’ve seen. We’ll never go back. Not unless your father himself comes to claim you and tells us that Pacifica is safe for us again. Promise me that.”

“I promise, Cyria. Only if it’s safe.”

As Lass grew older, she heard the same message from Cyria in more sophisticated language.

“We’ll stay hidden here,” Cyria said. “Forever, if we have to. King Okeana will come for us only if it’s safe. If we’re careful, no one will suspect that we are mer. These land-dwellers, they have no soul and no sense. It would never occur to them that all their silly legends about mer people could possibly contain an element of truth. Joran was right in what he told your father. We must use our kinship with the land-dwellers to take what we need from them, but we must never make the mistake of thinking they are our equals. You in particular, Thalassa. You are a mer princess, and you must never forget it.”

Of course, Lass hadn’t blindly accepted everything Cyria told her. Young girls didn’t, particularly once they reached the adolescent years of rebellion and quest for selfhood. But enough of it had stuck, enough had grafted itself to her nature and helped to form the woman she now was.

When she swam, she did so secretly, and almost always after dark, because she never knew exactly how long it would take for her tail membrane to form. She’d had no one to tutor her in the chemistry and physiology of the process, and had worked out a hazy understanding of it by herself, through trial and error.

It was quicker at the full moon. Slower when the water was cold. Something to do with the sea’s saltiness, too, because it always took longer to happen when she swam near the mouth of the tidal lake next to her favorite beach, where a freshwater stream emptied into the sea.

If Cyria knew the science of it, she hadn’t passed on the knowledge. She had forbidden Lass to swim in the ocean at all.

“You could be killed as if you were a fish, before you could even cry out, if anyone saw your tail. Or you could be captured and tortured in the name of science.”

Lass had tried to argue at first. It would be perfectly safe to take a short swim, even in broad daylight, as long as she left the water in time. Her tail membrane did not even begin to form for at least fifteen minutes.

But Cyria wouldn’t hear of it, so Lass swam guiltily as well as secretly. She’d been doing it since the age of fourteen, but there had been defiance rather than guilt in the act until she was twenty. The guilt came after Cyria’s death. The old woman had worked so hard and sacrificed so much for Lass’s safety. She’d sincerely believed that the ocean was too dangerous.

“But I can’t give it up. I can’t!” Lass had told herself, over and over, in the first acute days of mourning her guardian’s loss. “I’ll do everything else Cyria wanted. I’ll keep my hair. I’ll run a business that’s under my own control and where there’s never anyone I have to get too close to. She’s right. Friendships are dangerous. Ondina and my mother thought that their friendship was enough to keep peace in Pacifica, and they were wrong. And I’ll never fall in love with a land-dwelling man.”

She’d already had proof that Cyria was right in that area. She’d had a boyfriend at college who’d taken her out several times and then told her, just as she was beginning to let down her guard, “There’s something weird about you. I don’t think I want to go on with this. I’m sorry.” She hadn’t accepted any dates after that, and after a while, word got around and no one asked.

“I’ll never have a child, who could turn out to be mer. But I have to swim…sometimes. Not too often. Or I might as well just die….”

Even so, she kept trying to give it up. She learned to love horseback riding and hiking in the wild Australian bush country. She told herself that eventually she would wean herself away from the sea.

But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. And so Loucan, son of her father’s enemy, had found her….

Summer was the most dangerous time of year—the season when Lass tried hardest, and failed most often, to stay away. The water was at its warmest, so her tail formed faster. The beaches were more crowded, so she had to be watchful and seek the most isolated places.

Lass hadn’t been to the ocean for weeks—not since the start of school summer vacation in mid-December. And now Christmas and New Year had passed, and it was late January.

And she was ready to snap. She had snapped. Three times today, at Susie and Megan, over trivialities. That was out of character. Normally, she didn’t have a flashing temper, and in any case she’d found long ago that a cheerful attitude toward others invited less curiosity, and fewer questions.

Today, she knew that the pressure inside her would keep building until she flooded it away with the cold, salty, healing caress of the ocean.

It was a hot day, and even the big ceiling fans and the thick stone walls of the old dairy weren’t enough to keep away the heat. She closed as usual at five, quickly ate the left-over pasta special she’d served in the tearoom at lunch, rebraided her long hair, grabbed her swimsuit and her towel, and jumped into her car to speed down to the north end of the beach where she could hide among the rocks at the base of the cliff if anyone came.

It was perfect. The beach was deserted and the sky glowed with mauve and orange near the western horizon. There was no wind, but there’d been storms at sea for the past few days and the surf was high, rolling in long, even waves onto the sand. The foam was so white it was almost iridescent.

And the dolphins were there. She tried to surf with them, but they weren’t interested tonight. Maybe because her tail hadn’t formed yet and they didn’t recognize her as a kindred creature. Or maybe because the fishing was good, out where the sea floor shelved down, and eating was more important to them than having fun.

So she surfed alone, and didn’t regret the solitude. Didn’t use a board, just her body, timing the moment when she launched herself ahead of the breaking wave and let it carry her to the beach in a tumble of cold foam. Her whole body was tingling so much with the buffeting of the waves that it took her a while to recognize the special, deeper sensation that signaled her membrane was starting to form.

And then suddenly she saw him—a strong, athletic-looking man not twenty yards from where she swam. She hadn’t noticed his approach at all. He was walking in the shallows and peering out at her, and beyond her, as well, to where the dolphins cruised back and forth, feasting on fish.

Hastily, she waded to shore and ran up the beach to grab her towel, as water streamed from her heavy rope of braided hair and down her torso and legs. When the transformation was imminent, she would wriggle out of her swimsuit and swim naked, but somehow even in this conservatively cut suit, she felt more exposed and more vulnerable this evening than she’d ever felt in the nude.

Why was he watching her?

She was as strongly aware of the stranger’s body as she was of her own. She took in the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his thighs and the deep tan of his skin. Beyond these details, he had an aura, a presence that she couldn’t name. And he was looking at her as if he was seeking something.

She began to rub herself dry immediately. A couple of times in the past, when she hadn’t dried the seawater away, her membrane had begun to form as she lay on the sand. From a distance, it had only looked like a rather bizarre and serious case of peeling sunburn, but if anyone had peered too closely…

As this man was. He was studying her with serious intent. Oh, Lord, what had he seen? He was coming over to her, and there was definitely something about him… He was so big and broad and strong, utterly male from top to toe. Look at that long, sure stride! And those eyes! Even in the washed out, dusky light she could see how blue they were, as if filled with the ocean itself.

Filled with the ocean…

She had a strange moment of intuition, and he confirmed it with just one word.

“Thalassa.”

Her reaction came at gut level, making a mockery of her recent awareness of him. This wasn’t awareness. This was terror.

She scrambled to her feet, screamed and ran toward the headland, fifty yards away. Didn’t get far. Not against those long, powerful male legs. He caught up to her within yards and pulled hard on her shoulder to turn her around. His big hand was warm on her cold skin. He let it trail down her arm, and his fingers came within an inch of her breast, leaving an imprint of sensation there as they passed.

“Don’t run away, Thalassa,” he said. His voice was resonant and deep. “It is you. I knew it. I saw you with the dolphins. And look…”

He dropped his hand to point, and she saw at once what had convinced him. She hadn’t rubbed hard enough with her towel. Or else she’d stayed in the water too long.

On her outer thighs there were rough patches of scale, already beginning to flake away. Normally, her tail wasn’t like that. When properly formed it was smooth, silvery-green and glistening. But when she left the water at the wrong moment, as she had tonight, the scales were rough and white, and stood out strangely on her skin.

“Who are you?” she said in a voice that refused to work as it normally did. He had her cornered, with the sea at her back, the highest reach of the waves lapping occasionally at her heels, which were still tingling.

She saw a couple strolling along the beach, hand in hand, getting closer every second. She couldn’t run past them in a panic. If they tried to help her, how on earth would she explain? And the sea was no refuge. She already sensed that this stranger was far more at home there than she was. So she had to face him, confront him in a way that Cyria’s fearful directives had never prepared her for.

He was mer.

He had to be, to have known the name she hadn’t heard on anyone’s lips since Cyria’s death thirteen years ago. Lass registered his clothes—the rough, off-white sailcloth shirt, loosely covering his broad, smooth chest, and the close-fitting sealskin pants that ended, unhemmed, at the knotted swell of his calf muscles. She hadn’t seen clothing like this since she was eight.

He was mer, all right.

But who? Her father’s messenger? Cyria had always said that Okeana would come for them himself.

The stranger didn’t keep her in doubt about his identity for long.

“I am Loucan, son of Galen and now king of the Pacifican people. I have been looking for you for a long time, Thalassa.”

“To kill me,” she said. Her heart beat even faster. “You’re here to kill me, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m not your enemy.”

“Your father was.”

“Things have changed in Pacifica now. We are bringing the two factions together. I have no desire to harm you in any way.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then I’ll have to convince you. Thalassa, I know this must be a shock for you, after so long. Your father, King Okeana, is dead. You couldn’t have known that.”

Lass swallowed. “No.” But she wasn’t surprised at the news. He would have been an old man. In her heart, she had been mourning him for years, certain she would never see him again. “So how did you find me?” she demanded to know, the fear and anger surging through her again.

“It took a long time. But it started when I remembered your beautiful hair….”

Before he could reach her lustrous mass of waves, Lass ran from him, intent on destroying the very thing that led him to her.

Hours later, when he’d left her with his promise—or his threat—to return, and she was lying in her own bed with her now-shorn locks telling herself she was safe, her whole body still refused to stop shaking.

Lass’s hands shook again as she studied the pictures Loucan had spread for her on one of the tearoom tables.

Phoebe’s wedding to Kevin Cartwright was the more formal and traditional occasion, but Kai’s simple ceremony with rakishly handsome Ben was just as beautiful to Lass’s eyes. Both women looked radiantly lovely, with love and happiness sketched in every line of their bodies.