Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes)

by Cusack, Louise

  He walked slowly to the library door, dread building with every step, then he eased his head around the corner, and whatever air had been in his lungs, fell out.

  She was sitting cross–legged in a wingback leather armchair, completely naked with slicked–down hair dripping onto the jumble of loose papers filling her lap. Blue ink ran across some of them and when Baz saw the leather satchel beside the chair he realised they were probably old documents relating to Saltwood that had been kept for historical purposes. He glanced around the floor–to ceiling bookcases that lined the room but couldn’t see where they had come from.

  What he could see, on the opposite recliner, was Ted snoring, oblivious to the desecration of his family’s heritage.

  Baz neither blinked nor swallowed. He was completed immobilized. Eventually he’d collapse, he suspected, if his heart failed to restart. Would that wake his father up? Or would the girl’s quiet rustling do the job before he’d managed to have a heart attack and lose consciousness. Baz hoped it would be the former, because he really didn’t want to be awake when his father saw a wet naked girl rifling his papers.

  Then she looked up, saw Baz in the doorway, and smiled.

  Her blaze of dazzling white teeth and sexy tilted eyes completely evaporated the ten percent brain function he’d been struggling to retain.. His shorts tightened instantly and he had no hope of fighting it. She was sex on very–long legs. But somehow he didn’t pounce. A shred of self–control he hadn’t known he possessed saw him put a finger to his lips and set off towards her, hoping the polished floorboards wouldn’t creak. They didn’t. He reached her side and leant down to whisper, “Don’t say a word,” in her ear. She turned to look into his eyes and for Baz, who was already pushed into hyper–arousal by the mere scent of her skin, the bottomless clarity of those big baby blues was petrol on a bonfire.

  His lips came open and for all of three seconds he forgot to be fearful of his father waking up, forgot that the police were on the way, in fact, forgot completely where he was on the planet. He was simply in her thrall. The combination of her sexy nakedness, an aphrodisiac drug, and the innocence he saw in her eyes undid him. He didn’t remember consciously deciding to lean forward, but he could see her eyes growing larger, and he could smell her warm breath on his face. He almost imagined he could taste her skin, and knew it would still be salty despite her bath. In fact, Baz couldn’t stop himself imagining a whole range of skin flavored activities.

  And then his father farted.

  Incredibly, in the middle of a slow–motion sequence Baz would probably dream about for years, a loud, foghorn fart emanated from the recliner opposite them and Baz had one of those emotion shifts that are completely irrational and impossible to circumvent. Intensity morphed into hysteria and he started to giggle.

  When she whispered, “What was that?” he knew he was about to break up, so he started backing out, gesturing for her to follow.

  She untangled her coltish legs and stood, allowing the bundle of loose papers to squabble with each other on their way to the floor. Miraculously, his father slept on. Baz reached out both hands and she took them, leaning on him heavily as he backed out the door. They were quickly into the hallway but Baz wasn’t allowing himself any relief until he’d marched her back around to the guest suite and parked her on her bed, then he returned to the library and hid the papers and the satchel under her chair. He ran back to ensure she was still where he’d left her and thankfully by then the hilarity of the fart was a long–distant memory.

  She lay sprawled out on her back and Baz was so overcome by the combination of desire, frustration and fear that it took him a minute to work out what to say. Eventually he spluttered, “What were you doing?”

  “Exercising my legs.” She sounded tired, but that didn’t halt his interrogation.

  “In the library?”

  “I got tired and sat down.”

  “And the papers?”

  “I was curious.”

  It all sounded so logical, and she looked so innocent it made him want to bash his head against a wall. “You shouldn’t walk around naked,” he said at last, trying to keep the hysteria out of his voice. Failing. “If my father woke up and saw you there he’d …” What? Baz closed his eyes momentarily, trying to rid himself of the image of Theodore Tiberius Wilson having a massive coronary on the Persian rug.

  “That man’s too old to make a baby with,” she said, and Baz got an entirely different mind–picture that turned his stomach.

  He shook his head to clear it. “The police are coming,” he reminded her.

  “Can I have sex with them?” she asked and rolled towards him, her breasts jiggling and distracting him for a moment before he remembered the question, then adrenalin surged through his body, and not in a good way.

  “No!”

  She frowned, as though wondering at the vehemence in his tone.

  Baz knew he was over–reacting but the damned drug was still clearly in his system. He tried to moderate his tone. “They’ll be offended if you ask that,” he told her, and “They’re not allowed to anyway. It conflicts with their job.”

  She yawned and shook her head. “Then why do I need to see these police if there’s no sex involved?”

  “They want to ask questions …” She’d closed her eyes and was snuggling into the pillow. “But let’s get you dressed first. I brought some clothes.” He retrieved them from the chaise lounge and put them on the bed beside her.

  “Do I have to?” She opened one eye and in the semi–darkness of the room with afternoon light leaking in through the timber shutters she looked adorable, like a sleek kitten who just wanted to sleep.

  Baz was struck with an almost insatiable urge to curl up on the bed with her, spooning, just feeling the warmth of her body. But as soon as he imagined his thighs pressed against that cute tush he started visualizing what his hands might be doing and he had to physically clasp them together behind his back to stop from touching her. “Please don’t go to sleep,” he said. If she was lying here naked when the police arrived he’d be in all sorts of trouble, and he just didn’t trust himself to put those clothes on her himself.

  But she just lay there, so he added, “The police are authorities, remember. You didn’t want to be taken by authorities.”

  Her eyelids fluttered for a second before they snapped open. “Are they coming to take me?” she asked, struggling to sit up. “To lock me in a room?” She wriggled to the edge of the bed. “I have to hide.”

  Baz started to feel bad. He shouldn’t have frightened her, but at the same time he felt reassured that she wasn’t some cool criminal who was ready to talk herself out of things. She was genuinely frightened.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said and crouched in front of her, taking her cold hands in his. “It’s routine for the police to ask questions when someone dies.”

  Her mouth opened and she stared at Baz in surprise.

  He stared back for long seconds until he realised what the problem was. “Oh sorry, you don’t know. You were unconscious when we found Steve.”

  All she knew was waking up in his guestroom.

  “Who?”

  “The man who tried to rescue you this morning. A shark got him. He’s dead.”

  “Rescue me?”

  Baz wasn’t sure what response he’d expected, but that wasn’t it. “His brother had said you were drowning. Steve went in to save you and a shark got him. Lucky it didn’t get you too.”

  She shrugged that off. “Then the police aren’t coming to take me away?”

  He shook his head, wondering why she wasn’t reacting to the news that a man had died. Denial? “They just want to know who you are to wrap up their investigation. They don’t think you did anything wrong.” She nodded, not saying anything, so he rubbed her palms with his thumbs. Soothing her? He wasn’t sure. “They’ll want to know your name and address.”

  She frowned and looked at him helplessly, those enormous blue eyes gazing into his an
d Baz felt himself slipping, his body starting to tingle, to harden. Damn it! When was this drug going to wear off? At last she said, “I … don’t remember,” but it sounded more like a question than an answer.

  He let go her hands and stood, realizing this was the point where he could get tough, where he could say, Look sister, I don’t want your trouble on my doorstep, but he wasn’t sure if that was true. A wicked part of him was enjoying the trouble she’d brought to Saltwood, which was crazy and maybe drug induced, but nothing like this had ever happened in his boring life before. And when she looked up at him with that combination of kicked–puppy and innocent–naked–wet–girl he wanted to take bullets for her. So he convinced himself that he could protect her from the police, which his testosterone driven jealousy demanded anyway, then he’d help her on her way. Because she wasn’t a keeper. Even drugged to the eyeballs he could see that.

  “I’m sure you’ve got identification papers somewhere,” he lied. “Did you have anything at the beach? A bag? Suitcase?”

  She shook her head. Maybe she really did jumped off a passing ship as he’d suspected earlier. But he wouldn’t be telling the police that theory. “It’s okay,” he told her. “I’ll think of something.”

  “They won’t take me away?” she asked.

  Baz shook his head. “They’ll ask some questions. Just follow my lead.” He wasn’t sure what that meant — what he was planning to do to ensure she wasn’t taken away – but he hoped it wasn’t going to be something incredibly stupid.

  “I need help,” she said. “If you can’t give me a baby, can you at least make sure I don’t get locked up?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Baz said, and that felt right. In that moment, while his libido wasn’t revving him into overdrive, he just felt protective of her. She was a kid, stranded in a strange place with an even stranger mission. It wasn’t her fault. And maybe given time, if he could find out more about her, and when the damned drug wore off, he could counsel her to something other than a teenage pregnancy. He was just a science teacher and not a social worker, but he’d seen girls dropping out of school because of bad choices, and it felt good to be able to do something practical, now that this problem had landed in his lap.

  Of course, getting past the whole overactive lap thing was the first step. But she’d said the drug would wear off, and he could feel himself getting moments of clarity. Surely by tonight it would be gone altogether. A man could hope!

  He picked the tee shirt up off the bed and got on with practicalities. “Put your arms up,” he said softly, and she did. When he had that on her, he started on the shorts, one foot at a time into the leg holes, then he slid them up her calves and over her knees. “Stand up,” he said and she did, leaning heavily on his shoulders. He could smell her then, over the tea rose soap – the scent of a woman’s juices, and his hands trembled as he pulled the grey cotton shorts carefully up over her incredible butt. He fumbled with the drawstring. Okay, maybe the drug hasn’t worn off as much as I thought.

  She sat heavily back onto the bed. “I want the police to go so I can sleep. After that I need to find someone to have sex with.”

  Baz shuddered past a surge of jealousy. “Let’s comb your hair.” He got up and walked to the mahogany dresser. “And while we’re waiting, let’s introduce ourselves,” he said, coming back to sit on the bed beside her where he could untangle the long strands that fell to her waist. “I’m Balthazar Wilson.”

  He heard her sigh, struggling to stay awake. “Will Son,” she replied, her back to him, and, “Bal Thaz Ar.”

  Was she Polish? Danish? Definitely European, he decided and said, “Everyone calls me Baz. So what’s your name?”

  She shook her head, the golden hair sliding back and forth across his red Nike tee. “I’m not sure. What do you think it is?” she asked, and he suddenly realised she wasn’t going to tell him. So he could either demand a name and get a fake one, or …

  “Well you came out of the ocean,” he said. “Is your name Venus?”

  “Yes … it is,” she said quietly, her head tilting off to one side, as if she was too tired to hold it up properly. Had the bump caused that? Or the shock of near–drowning? “Vee Nus,” she added softly. “That is my name.”

  “Okay,” he said, and a quiet acceptance of the situation settled inside him, as if the weirdness of this girl coupled with Steve’s horrific death and the strain of looking after his father had pushed him to the edge. Which was bad luck if it had. There was no one to ask for help. He was in this all alone, so he just had to be practical. He went back to combing her hair.

  In the distance a door shut and Baz’s hand stilled. It had been a faint noise, at the front of the house. Surely the police wouldn’t let themselves in?

  Unless his father was up!

  Baz jumped off the bed. “I have to go. You wait here.”

  She turned to look at him, eyes wide open now. “I’m scared.”

  “I’ll sort it out,” Baz promised, holding out a placating hand. “You won’t get taken away. Just lie back and look exhausted. I’ll do the talking.”

  “I need to stay. I need sex. Soon.” She frowned at him a moment longer, then obediently lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes.

  Please, please don’t say that to the police.

  Baz hesitated at the guest suite door, wondering if she was planning to go wandering around the house again looking for sex? That wouldn’t impress the police. And though it seemed a silly precaution, Baz thought it better to err on the side of caution, so he locked the guest suite door on his way out.

  Chapter Seven

  Baz reached the front foyer in time to hear his father say, “… he was a good boy, but always bringing home stray kittens or birds with broken wings –” His father turned to him as Baz stepped into the foyer. “I was just telling the constable here about your fascination for sickly creatures.”

  Baz had a fleeting memory of his mother helping him tend his menagerie, before he’d gone to boarding school. Before the stuffing had been pulled out of his world.

  “Morbid,” Ted added and shook his head.

  Baz was staring at his father, trying to work out what he’d ever done to deserve this crap, when he realised he had more pressing problems. Venus. The guest bed. His shoulders straightened and he stepped forward to hold out his hand. “He’s a sergeant, dad.” Baz smiled at the giant Maori with his incongruous crew–cut, then tried not to wince when that large paw started to squeeze. “Sergeant … Waikeri?” he said, casting back a couple of hours to their phone conversation. Waikeri nodded and let Baz’s hand go before he broke it.

  Beside him, a younger man, perhaps in his thirties, held out his hand. “Constable Liam Moore,” he said. “Also of the Crystal Cove Police.” Moore was leaner, tanned, with cropped white–blond hair and the sort of deep voice women would melt over. Knowing he was about to talk to Venus didn’t help Baz’s equilibrium.

  “Oh.” Baz shook his hand. “We haven’t met.”

  “No. You were leaving when I arrived on the scene this morning.” If there was sarcasm in his words, it didn’t filter into his voice.

  “Is the girl awake?” Waikeri asked, getting straight to business.

  “What girl?” Ted asked, and Baz looked up to see his father’s grey hair wisping around his head like a manic hat.

  It wouldn’t take much to convince the two men in front of him that his father was a nutter. On the other hand, if Randy What’s–his–face could prove that Ted was mentally incontinent before Baz had new forms lodged, they stood to lose everything.

  It was clearly lesser of two evils time.

  “The girl from the beach, dad,” Baz said. “The one I introduced you to earlier.”

  Ted frowned. “That was a man. The one on the veranda?”

  “No, the man left with me this morning, dad, when we went to find his brother. I’m talking about Venus,” he said. “You know, Venus. The new housekeeper.”

  “Oh.” Ted looke
d surprised. “No, I’d forgotten about her.”

  “Well, you only saw her for a minute,” Baz lied, “on your way for a nap.” Ted was totally confused now and Baz turned back to the two men to say, “Doctor’s got him on sleeping tablets. Disorients him sometimes.”

  Waikeri nodded and Baz felt his confidence rise. So far, so good.

  “You pop out into the kitchen and get a pot of tea on, dad,” Baz said, knowing it would take his father an hour to find the kettle. “I’ll fix this up.”

  “Alrightie then.” Ted tottered off down the hallway. “I like visitors.”

  “He’ll be fine when the sedative wears off,” Baz told the two men. “Venus is still resting. I’m afraid you’ll have to interview her in her room. She can’t get out of bed. Wobbly legs.”

  The blond constable nodded. “Shock.” Then he asked, “Is she healthy apart from that?”

  “Doctor said she was fine.” Baz felt as if he was standing outside himself, listening to someone else make up bullshit. “Sunburn and shock. That’s all. Told her off for skinny–dipping, though.”

  Waikeri cut in with, “You didn’t tell me she was your housekeeper. In fact,” he looked in his notebook, “You told me you didn’t know her.” His quiet tone disguised the importance of the question, but Baz knew both men would be remembering everything that was said.

  “I’d never met her,” he replied, and gestured for them to follow him down to the guest suite, setting off ahead of them so they wouldn’t see his face. “It wasn’t until she woke up and introduced herself that I realised she was the housekeeper we’d been expecting.”

  “You didn’t interview her?”

  Quick, think of something. “We’re so isolated here, it seemed a long way to come out to twice, and she was well recommended,” Baz said. “Daughter of a friend. Great references.”