by Judi Fennell
Hades, the planet had too much at stake for that, which meant she did, too.
He’d convince her; he had to. Another failure was not an option. No, he’d filled that quota twenty-one selinos ago with that prank with Reel.
Prank.
Bullsharkshit.
It hadn’t been a prank. More like his blatant disregard for the rules of their world, all because he’d known his brother wouldn’t be able to resist. And now, Reel had turned down Immortality and chosen to live a mortal life on land, and it was all Rod’s fault.
Rod shook his head and tried, as usual—and with the usual futility—to ignore the guilt, immersing himself in the steps needed to achieve his goal.
He headed toward the real estate office down the street, mentally thanking his brother for the forethought and insistence to rent the apartment above Valerie’s shop. He’d hoped he wouldn’t need it, but perhaps one more day would be all he’d need to convince her.
He purchased a few items from the grocery store, then walked back to Therese’s Treasure Trove.
The lights were still on inside the beige stucco building, although a “Closed” sign hung on the sun-bleached red door. Rod didn’t see Valerie through the bay window bracketed by Mediterranean-green shutters, where more glass spheres filled with sand and poor imitations of the Mer capital were on display. If only Humans knew that Atlantis really existed, this would be so much easier.
Rod climbed the outside staircase to the apartment, then dropped his shoes inside the small, stuffy living area. He opened a window for fresh air—an action he found as repugnant as being pulled from the Trench Study just so he could return a woman who didn’t want to go to a world she didn’t know.
Rod tossed his bag and the fake papers into one of the bedchambers then went toward the galley kitchen to put the food away and cook his meal, banging a toe on the low coffee table. Damn. Sometimes he misjudged the spatial relations of the new body parts. Would Valerie do any better with a tail?
Hades. They might never find out.
He wanted to know why. What Lance had done to Valerie that she obviously despised him. Why her mother hadn’t told her anything about who and what she was.
Therese had seen Lance; the Mer had confirmed it. She’d known what he was. That was why The Council had agreed to the search for Valerie in the first place. Humans couldn’t know about Mers and her mother was a full-blooded Human.
The timer sounded on the electric appliance his sister-in-law had taught him to use to prepare his meals. He hadn’t quite grasped the concept of “micro waves”—in his world they were called ripples—but they did the trick. Not that he enjoyed the meals nor their non-biodegradable packages, which ended up littering his world, but according to Reel, kelp wraps weren’t easily obtainable and this town didn’t have a sushi bar. Since he’d never needed to prepare food himself, he was stuck with these plastic-covered abominations.
Just one more reason he wanted to get back in the sea.
“How in Hades am I supposed to make her come with me?” he asked his reflection in the appliance’s stainless-steel door.
“You could always kidnap her.”
Rod stared at his reflection. Talking appliances? If Humans could design something that complex, surely they could fabricate something other than plastic to keep their food in.
Then he saw movement behind him and turned around.
A herring gull.
And if his hunch was right… “Livingston, I presume?”
The bird confirmed his identity by stretching his wings, revealing the legendary star tattoo on his breast, then inclined his head in the traditional acknowledgment of royalty.
Forget niceties. The Council’s Chief of Air Security had only one reason to be here. The renowned aerial spy didn’t “happen” to show up inland without a very good reason: like making sure Fisher’s son was following orders.
Zeus. Could someone cut him some slack?
“What do you want, Livingston? And what were you doing in Valerie’s store earlier?”
The herring gull ruffled his black-tipped wings before he hopped off the window ledge onto the dining table. “In her store? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Livingston shrugged, then worked his gray feathers back into place with his yellow beak. “Hey, what you believe is up to you.”
The gull turned his head to the front, the red spot on his beak always a perfect way to distract someone.
But not Rod. He knew all the tactics—had studied each and every one. And if The Council would only remember that, he wouldn’t have to deal with the Chief of the ASA.
Of course, that put the kibosh on the report of the rogue gull in the store.
“What were you doing there, Livingston? You scared her and made a mess of the place.”
“Rod, I wasn’t anywhere near her today. Haven’t been for a few weeks.”
“Oh, really? Then you want to explain who decided imitating a stuffed seagull would be funny? She ended up getting hurt.”
“Imitating a stuffed seagull?” Livingston rolled his eyes. “I’m going to kill Ace. It’s his newest hobby.”
Ace? Hardly. That gull had been a menace at flying, not an ace. “Not if I get to him first.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“I believe so.”
“Oh. Good. So, you got anything to eat around here? I just flew in from Bermuda and, boy, are my wings tired. Cod? Herring? Toasted cheese sandwich?” The bird kicked one webbed foot over the other and brushed his forehead with his wing. “Trifle warm here, isn’t it?”
Rod opened a cabinet and grabbed the tin of sardines he’d planned to save for a snack, offering them instead to Livingston. Bribery might work. “Yes, it is. Much warmer than we’re used to, especially without sea breezes. Which, again, brings up the reason you’re here. And how long are you planning to stay?”
The bird slurped one of the sardines down with a satisfied gulp. “Those are good. Nicely salted.” He helped himself to another then settled down next to the tin. “So, how’s it going?”
Rod exhaled. The bird was a well-known interrogator, and if he didn’t want to squeal—or squawk, nothing could make him. “It’s… going. Not with quite the results I had anticipated, but I’ll get her to come. Even if I have to toss her over my shoulder.”
“That well, huh?” Livingston grabbed another fish. “Caveman tactics don’t go over so well these days, I hear. You could always tell her the truth.”
“Sure, Livingston. Water-breathing people with tails who live in Atlantis go over so well with Humans. Especially without proof.”
“Hey, you don’t have to get snippy with me. It was only a suggestion. I do work in an advisory capacity to the High Councilman, you know.” The gull snorted then coughed out the sardine. “Ugh. That’s not pretty.” He fluffed it off the table with his wing. It landed on the floor with a splat.
Both of them looked at the gelatinous mess, then at each other.
“You want to get that?” Rod asked.
“Ummm.” The gull spread his wings, turning the black tips upward. “Do you see opposable thumbs?”
Rod sighed and shook his head, grabbing a paper towel from beside the sink. The gull had climbed the ranks of the Sky Service faster than anyone in the agency’s history. His ego was legendary; cleaning up a mess was obviously beneath him.
Not that Rod was in line to be the ruler of all the seas or anything.
“So, here’s how I see it, Rod.” Livingston grabbed another sardine. “The Hybrid—”
“Can you please not call her that? She’s a Mer.”
“Half.”
“The better half, so let’s stick with that.”
Livingston shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Humans certainly have better tas
ting food than your kind. Say, you wouldn’t happen to have any cheesecake around here, would you? I think that’s probably one of their best. The cherries can get a bit gummy, but still… What?”
Rod held up the sardine tin he’d yanked out from under the gull’s bill. “I didn’t come here to sample their food. I came here to,” Rod cleared his throat, “bring her back. So, you want to explain exactly why you’re here, Livingston? I’m too old to need a nanny and you’re certainly not bodyguard material.”
The last brought Livingston to his webbed feet. “I’ll have you know that I’ve dive-bombed with the best of them. We’ve turned breaching whales around, thrown off dolphins’ running rhythm, even kept a hunting party from a harp seal nursery. I can be quite effective when I want to be.”
“So you’re here to protect me from orcas in the middle of the landmass?”
“Uh, well… no.” The bird sighed and dropped onto his belly. “If you must know the truth, The Council sent me.”
Rod snorted. Not surprising. “How much are they paying you?”
Livingston fanned himself. “Not enough clams to hang out in this Zeus-forsaken place. How are you going to stand this for long?”
Not so long. Rod patted the front left pocket of the shorts for the bottle of oil he needed to apply to avoid the two-sunset limitation on legs. If he was out of the water any longer without the oil, his tail wouldn’t return.
It was not an unending supply. He had a certain timetable to get back, and with Valerie’s refusal, the deadline loomed even larger.
Rod slid the tin back onto the table, then walked over to the cabinets and leaned against the countertop, crossing one ankle over the other. “I don’t plan to be here long, Livingston. Tomorrow, hopefully. The next day at the very latest. These legs are all right for a few days, but why anyone would be willing to give up a tail and the freedom of the seas for them and this world is beyond me.” Especially his brother, who’d finally earned the tail he’d always wanted—only to give it up.
Rod still blamed himself for that, no matter what absolution Reel gave him, or how many of the gods’ tests he passed.
And with this latest wrinkle in the assignment, the gods didn’t appear to have forgiven him either.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Livingston rifled through the remaining sardines before inching a fat one into his beak. “You’ve seen Reel’s wife. Erica isn’t hard on the eyes. Neither is Valerie.”
“Don’t even go there.”
Livingston stopped eating, a tail dangling from the side of his bill. “Go where?”
“Tossing Valerie in my face. Yes, she’s beautiful, but it doesn’t matter. I’m here to bring her home and that’s it. Nothing else.”
“Uh oh.”
“What?”
“Could it be that you want something more with the Hybrid?” He polished off the fish.
“What? I—No. Knock it off, Livingston. This mission has nothing to do with what she looks like and everything to do with me gaining the throne.”
“Pity. The boys back on the roost were taking bets.”
“Taking bets? On what she looked like?” Unbelievable. His first official duty would be to increase training missions if the “boys” had enough time to concern themselves with a Human and fly around her shop instead of performing their duties.
Rod removed his dinner from the microwave oven, the aroma of chicken nowhere near as appetizing as the sardines, nor the idea of eating it as pleasant. Hmmm, maybe he’d find another use for those “boys.”
Allowing himself a grin, Rod knew he’d never follow through on that threat, but he still probably shouldn’t let Livingston have any idea he was having fowl for dinner.
“Don’t you want to know the odds?” Livingston tossed another sardine down his gullet.
“No. I don’t.” Rod pulled the liner—damned plastic—from the container and set the food behind him on the counter, then reached into the refrigerator for a beer. He popped the bottle top off against the countertop.
“Why?”
He took a swig. Different taste than kelp wine, but not bad. One thing Humans had to commend themselves. “Livingston, is there a point to this?”
Livingston scratched the top of his head with a webbed foot. “Odds are flying high in favor of you being down on bended knee inside a week.”
“I hope you didn’t take those odds since I don’t plan to have knees inside a week.”
“Uh huh. Then I guess you’ll have to get cracking. Nardo said her hoo-hahs would do it, while Deuce was certain you’d see beyond them and take the time to get to know her. Ace, on the other hand, was still wondering what hoo-hahs were when I left.”
Rod poured a good portion of the beer down his throat in one long swallow. Zeus. He didn’t need this. “I am not discussing her hoo—her shell-fillers with you or anyone else. They—it doesn’t matter. She’s the answer to The Prophecy and I have to return her to The Council. Anything else is just a figment of your collective bird-brained imaginations.”
Livingston clacked his bill shut, the corners of it turning up, and he whistled an off-key sea shanty.
“What?”
“Oh, toss around a few ‘methinks’ and ‘protests,’ a ‘doth’ or two, and I’m sure you can come up with it.”
Rod glared at the bird. He knew what he wanted to toss around. And it didn’t have a ‘methink’ in it, though the ‘protest’ part was a definite possibility.
Instead, he took one last swig of the beer and set it and his dinner on the countertop, then strode to the door and worked the shoes back onto his feet.
He hoped Valerie was still in the store below, because he was going to enjoy proving the bird wrong.
Chapter 5
When the front window rattled, the first thing Val noticed was his eyes.
The second was his smile.
And the third, well… the third was all the rest.
Rod was back.
Val reached for the edge of a display table to keep from falling over the pile of T-shirts she still had to clean up. Not because he made her weak in the knees, as some would argue—namely Tricia, if she hadn’t left to feed her family—and headed to the door.
She opened it, trying to tuck a few wayward curls back behind her ear again. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t leave you to clean this up by yourself. It’s late. Have you even eaten yet?”
“Really, I’ll be fine.” She did a good job of hiding the limp as she shut the door behind him, if she did say so herself.
“Valerie, you’re injured.”
Okay, so maybe not as good a job as she would have liked.
His arm brushed hers as he walked past her. “I can do it for you.”
He certainly could, and she didn’t mean clean up.
God, what was wrong with her? She’d vowed when she’d returned home this last time that she was going to stand on her own two feet—
Okay, so that wasn’t the best analogy at the moment.
But she’d come back with every intention of making this work. Of making Mom’s dream come true. The last thing she needed was to change her focus just because a guy who had a killer smile wanted her to up-and-leave. She was not about to be swayed by a pretty face.
But when Rod bent down to grab the pile of shirts, she did start to sway.
And it didn’t have anything to do with the nice butt she got a glimpse of.
Really.
“You want to help in those clothes?” She had to get her mind off that butt.
He stood up and looked at his clothes. “What’s wrong with them?”
Not a blessed thing. “Well, they’re not exactly clean-up quality.”
“Oh. That’s easily remedied.” And before she could react, Rod had whipped the shirt over his head from the back of his neck the way g
uys did, and she almost swallowed her tongue.
“Is this better?”
So much it was sinful.
“So where do you want to start?”
The countertop would be a good place. Followed by a bed in the apartment upstairs, then maybe a nice, long, erotic soak in the claw-foot tub…
Luckily she was saved from answering when Mr. Hill, her mother’s accountant, knocked on the door then pushed it open. He stopped short at the sight of Rod—and Val could totally relate.
“Come in, Mr. Hill. This is Rod, um…” She looked at him. She knew she knew his last name. It was on the tip of her tongue.
Okay, not a thought to be having when she was staring at a chest to rival the best Olympic swimmer’s.
“Tritone,” Rod offered, one corner of his mouth kicking back into a sexy grin.
“Uh, right. Rod Tritone. He was just leaving.”
“No, I wasn’t. I offered to help and I mean to.”
So much for getting out of here quickly tonight.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Hill? Did my mother order something for you?” Simon Hill had been a mess at Mom’s funeral, leaving Val to wonder if more had been going on there than Mom had let on. She hoped so. Mom had deserved someone special.
“Is there somewhere we can speak privately?” Mr. Hill slid his glasses up the bridge of his nose then jammed his hands in the front pockets of his faded navy polyester pants, jostling his change. “It’s a business matter, Valerie.”
Val gestured around the shop. “This is as good as it gets, Mr. Hill. The back isn’t any better.” Especially since the arrival of her seagull visitor.
“Oh. Fine. Well, then…” He looked at Rod.
Rod looked back.
Val looked at Rod. “Rod, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“No. I don’t mind at all.” He crossed one foot over the other and his arms across his chest, and leaned against the shelves. “Carry on.”
Both she and Mr. Hill did a double take, but Rod didn’t seem to notice.
Okay. Whatever. She didn’t have time for this. She had a date. One she wasn’t looking forward to anymore for some reason. “What’s this about, Mr. Hill? Is there something you need?”