by Judi Fennell
“Are you okay?”
Such a generic phrase. He was so far from being okay, it was laughable. Unbearable.
What must she think of him? Dragged halfway across the country on a promise to collect an inheritance, only to find the guy she’d trusted had lied to her.
Not that he had, but how in Hades was he going to prove it to her?
And how was she going to fulfill The Prophecy if he couldn’t?
Unless…
He turned around. “Valerie, you have to go into the ocean.”
She scrubbed a towel through her curls, damp from the shower she’d taken immediately after the fiasco on the beach. “After what just happened to you? I don’t think so. I can’t, Rod.”
He could understand why—he hadn’t exactly put her fear of the ocean to rest. But she had to if he wanted a shot at regaining his tail and his throne.
“You have to, Valerie. I think that’s why my tail didn’t come back. My father said I had to bring you to the ocean. Not just the beach. Maybe you need to get your tail and fulfill The Prophecy before it’ll happen.”
She adjusted her T-shirt where it clung to her damp skin. “Rod, I’m telling you, I’m not going near the water. I mean, even if what you said is true—and, honestly, a tail? But even if it is, what’s it going to do for me? It’s not as if a tail is an appendage one needs in Kansas, and it’ll certainly catch someone’s eye, so there goes the ‘humans can’t know about merpeople’ thing. Plus it’ll definitely land me on some scientist’s examination table, and you yourself said what a problem that will be.” She shook her head as she hung by the door. “And the fact that this is my argument is just so utterly bizarre, I can’t even believe—wait a minute. Prophecy? What prophecy?”
That had to be it. Rod took a step forward again but stopped when she took a matching one backward.
“There’s a lot more I need to tell you, Valerie, about our world.”
“It’s not my world.”
He’d convince her. He had to. “Not yet, Valerie, but it could be. It should be.”
He walked toward the house, hating the fact that she shrank from him, and hoping it was only because of the ridiculous notion that she was allergic to the salt water coating his skin. But it didn’t matter why. He wasn’t about to give up.
“Listen, let me take a shower and wash the seawater off. Then we’ll talk, okay? I promise you this will all work out.” And it would. Somehow.
He wasn’t about to fail.
Exactly how Rod thought this could work out was something she couldn’t fathom. He’d also promised she would collect her inheritance and go back to the shop; now he was throwing some prophecy into the mix, which didn’t sound as if he was planning for her to head home anytime soon.
Which was something they’d definitely need to discuss. She’d finally settled into her own world; she wasn’t about to go traipsing off to his. Especially when his was full of fables and fairy tales.
Val opened the refrigerator after he left the kitchen. Right now, she needed something to do, and, with the hollow feeling in her stomach, eating sounded just right. She’d replace whatever she took later. Or send a check. After all, inheritance or not, Rod had promised her the diamond. The one filled with strange healing oil…
The showerhead in the hall bath kicked on with a screech.
Just like Livingston.
Right. Livingston. The talking seagull.
Val bit into a Granny Smith apple and leaned against the countertop, everything inside her telling her to make a run for the car and leave this insanity.
Seagulls didn’t talk. Albatrosses didn’t fly over Kansas. Peregrines didn’t dive-bomb cars and oil didn’t miraculously heal stitch-worthy lacerations overnight. Such was the natural order of things.
But now, having seen those things happen, her view on the natural order was skewed upside-down and sideways, so why couldn’t Rod be telling the truth?
She took another bite of the apple, the tart juice washing over her taste buds in a reminder of what was normal in her world.
Mermen weren’t.
Princes spouting tales of mythical islands and non-appearing tails weren’t.
Walking into an ocean she was allergic to and getting a tail wasn’t.
No, what was normal in her world was running away. Taking the first exit out of an uncomfortable situation and moving on to something else—just like she should do right now, diamond be damned. This was his nightmare; let him pick up the pieces. She had enough to deal with in saving the store and getting it operational; she didn’t need this added insanity. She hadn’t signed on for it; she didn’t want it; she ought to leave.
Just like dear ol’ Dad.
Val took another bite of the apple—right into a mushy bitter spot. She spit it into the trash can, tossing the rest of the apple after it, then headed to the sink to rinse the bad taste from her mouth.
She wasn’t like her father.
She refused to be.
That’s what sticking by the store was all about. To prove to herself that she wasn’t like him. That she could make a commitment. That she could be counted on to handle responsibility and not balk at the first sign of trouble, no matter what her genetic pool said.
Yet, with all her protestations that she’d changed, that she wasn’t like him, what had she done at the first sign of trouble with the store? Mention back taxes, and she’d taken off for the quick fix of a promised inheritance.
And what had happened? She found herself right back where she always found herself—with her hopes dashed and nothing resolved.
Val washed her hands of the sticky mess then dried them on a paper towel.
She was going back home. Today. No matter what. Diamond or not. She was not going to let Mom down.
But what about Rod?
That stopped her. What about him?
What did she owe him? He was the one who’d dragged her here, all for something he couldn’t deliver—
Exactly. Something he hadn’t delivered.
That made no sense. Why would he go through all of this if he knew he couldn’t prove it? That was what she couldn’t figure out.
Which had to mean that he honestly believed what he’d told her was true, and, with bird anomalies abounding—up to and including the fact that there was not one single bird anywhere in the sky (and when had that ever happened?)… maybe… maybe… it really was true.
She walked to the breakfast bar, finding the need to sit down once more.
Good thing, too, because he walked in just then, pulling on a black T-shirt, giving her yet another glimpse of those sculpted abs and the seductive line by his hip above low-slung camouflage shorts. Then he shook his head, the waves flinging off drops of water before he ran his fingers through them in a move so utterly masculine she let herself enjoy it, if only for a moment.
He walked to the sink, grabbed a glass from the cabinet, and filled it with water from the tap. All without a word.
Silence made her edgy. Especially when it was screaming with unasked questions.
“Rod, what are you going to do now?”
“That’s a damn good question.” He picked up the saltshaker, then cursed and set it back down. “Since I’m apparently out of a job and a home, I’ll have to find others. I’m sure Reel can always use another deckhand at the marina.”
“You said he lives here, yet, if you two are twins, that’d make him a merman also, right? How is that possible?”
Rod leaned a hip against the sink. “Reel left the sea. He was born with legs and the knowledge that he wouldn’t inherit the throne, so when he fell in love with Erica, it wasn’t a tough decision for him to give up Atlantis and live here with her.”
“Wait. What do you mean he was born with legs? I thought you said merpeople had tails.”
Rod rubbed the back o
f his neck. “I’m—was—The Heir. In our world, there can be only one Heir, and to prevent any challenges from subsequent males in the ruling family, they are born with legs. Makes it pretty obvious who inherits and who doesn’t. There’s never any question.”
“So you were born with a tail?”
Something—pain, maybe—flashed across his face. “I was, yes.”
Good thing she was sitting down. He’d been born with a tail, Reel with legs. Reel gave up the sea; Rod wanted to go back. A council, a talking seagull, the albatross…
“You really are a merman, aren’t you?”
His cockeyed smile appeared and, while it was still sexy, she saw the sadness in it before he stared out the window. “I was. Now? I don’t know what I am. Human, I guess.” He set the glass down and looked out the window. “I never expected this. Never in a thousand selinos—Oh Hades.” His shoulders hunched as he leaned onto his palms.
“Rod? What is it?”
He took a big breath and straightened up, turning around with a bleak look in his eyes that hit home with her. She knew that kind of pain. That alone kind of pain.
“A thousand selinos, Valerie. Do you know how often I’ve said that? A thousand selinos. Up until today, it’d been a number I threw out there in the most unspecific of terms, but now, I never will see a thousand. I’ll be lucky to see a hundred.”
“A hundred what? What’s a selino?”
“Ah, yes, I forgot. ‘Years’ is what my sister-in-law told me Humans call them.”
“A thousand years? You were expecting to see a thousand years?” That response knocked her for a loop, even while she was sitting down.
“Surprised?” His lips thinned as he nodded. “The High Councilman is Immortal, Valerie. I guess this serves me right for what I did to Reel.”
“I’m lost.” About a lot of things, but first things first. “What did you do to Reel and how does any of this relate to you not getting a tail?”
And why on earth had she just asked that question? It made no sense.
Not that any of this did in the first place.
He walked to the breakfast bar and sat next to her.
“That rule I broke? The one I told you about this morning at the motel?” He exhaled again before taking another gulp of his water. “I stripped Reel of his chance at Immortality.”
He set the glass down behind him. “Reel and I were out swimming one day when we were kids and I dared him to approach Erica. She was a Human and we were forbidden from approaching them. We both knew it. Just as I also knew Reel would never pass up the chance to do something daring. In my defense, I knew he could pull it off. If anyone could, it was Reel. Trust me, his antics are legendary in Atlantis.”
Trust him. That was the crux of this, wasn’t it? There hadn’t been many people in her life she could trust, and definitely no men.
“Reel would have pulled it off, too, if she hadn’t heard us talking and looked underwater. According to Reel, when he saw her eyes, that was it for him. He fell head over fin in love with her all those selinos ago, and it’s never changed.”
Rod sat back and raked his hand through his hair again. “But it changed us. That’s when Reel started getting sent out to train, though we didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. We thought he was being punished. That both of us were for risking the exposure of our world.
“What we didn’t know was that he was being sent on challenges for the opportunity to earn the Immortality that didn’t come with legs. I, meanwhile, got stuck studying the damp old texts of Mer doctrine and law. He rebelled while I… didn’t. And he ended up leaving the sea, giving up Immortality, all because of something I’d done. I guess my guilt wasn’t enough for The Council since they’ve finally made the punishment fit the crime.”
Bitterness worse than the taste of that apple dripped from his words, but Val could tell it was aimed at himself. Which was just ridiculous.
And she said so. “Rod, you can’t be held accountable for something you did when you were a kid. You are called kids when you’re young, right?” Yes, it appeared that she actually had gone over to the dark—watery?—side.
Finally—some humor in that sideways smile of his. “Yes, Valerie, we’re called kids. What? Were you expecting ‘fish fry’?”
Okay, levity was good… Both for him, and for allowing her to realize that his story had stopped being so improbable.
“So where does that leave you? What about the throne?”
And what about her? If she believed him that there really was a world beneath Bermuda—okay, did she really just think that?—could she also believe him about her allergy? What if what he’d said was true? That she had to get her tail—and, yes, the room swam at that thought, and no, the pun was not intended—for him to be able to get his?
“I don’t know what it means, Valerie. I honestly don’t know.”
He looked so forlorn, so lost. And that wasn’t Rod. He was a guy used to being in charge. A guy destined for the throne, raised knowing he was going to inherit it and committed to the idea. To his people and his world.
That had to be the biggest irony of all. Here she was, Ms. Lacked-Staying-Power, a trait inherited from a father who had no idea what the word “commitment” meant, who’d never known who or where she was supposed to be, who’d never set down any roots anywhere and was finally ready to do so, only to find Rod—a guy so used to knowing where and who he was that when it was yanked out from under him, he floundered.
She couldn’t be so selfish that she’d leave someone when he needed her, as her father had done.
She wasn’t like her father, and, by God, she was going to prove it.
“Rod, I’ll go in the ocean. For you, I’ll do it.”
His world just got rocked.
And this time, it wasn’t by the gods, but by Valerie. She was setting aside her fear for him. She finally believed him.
And he loved her for it.
His world rocked again and, even though it was metaphorical, he grabbed the armrest on the barstool.
He did. He loved her.
He loved Valerie, and he didn’t give a damn that she was a Hybrid.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a silver lining to this no-tail mess.
As High Councilman, he had to take into consideration that she was half-Human, but as the newly disinherited Heir, he no longer did. A High Councilman had rules and strictures and mandates and a whole pod of regulations to govern his life, but Rod-the-Tailless didn’t.
He finally understood what Reel had known so long ago. That a life—even an Immortal one—without the woman you love is no life at all.
But to be able to choose to live that life with someone was the greatest gift any God or gods could bestow.
“Valerie.” He took her hand. “Thank you. But no. I won’t ask you to do this for me. Even though, as I’ve said, you aren’t allergic, you don’t want to be a part of that world. When you get your tail, you’ll have no choice. Especially if The Council gets their hooks into you. No one has the right to tell you what to do with your life. No matter who you are, or what they think you’re supposed to do with your life, no one—most certainly not The Council—should decide that for you. It’s your life, and if you want to live it in Kansas, then that’s where we’ll go.”
“We?”
He cupped her cheek with his palm, her curls reminding him how they’d felt against his chest as he’d held her this morning.
“Yes. We. If you’ll have me.”
“Rod, I… what are you saying? That you want to come to Kansas? Give up the ocean?”
He ran the backs of his fingers over her cheek, feeling a lightness in his soul he hadn’t had in, well, forever. For the first time, he was in charge of his life. Where he’d go, what he’d do. “Yes. I do. I’d like to help you with your mother’s store. Your store.”
&n
bsp; “But what about the prophecy and the coup and everything else? Your family? You’re ready to give it all up? Why would you do that?”
He smiled, and it came from deep within him. “Because the one thing I’ve learned from the way I’ve lived my life is that living for the sake of existing isn’t a life at all. Reel made his choice and I’ve never understood it until right this moment. I have no reason to feel guilty for ruining his life because I didn’t.
“That day, the day he met Erica, was the beginning for him. As my brother, he had no chance of being anything more than what he was. Throne insurance. But with Erica, he could be his own man. Be more than the position he’d been born into. He knew that and chose to live with her. The Council has taken that decision from me, but you, Valerie, just now, you gave it back.”
He lifted her hand, running his fingertips over her palm and along her fingers, the spark of electricity zipping along every place their skin met. He traced the back of her hand with his other one, enfolding it between his. “Don’t you see, Valerie? If I ask you to go in the water and I get my tail because of yours, I’m right back within the rigid confines of a royal life, always having to follow the prescribed patterns. It won’t be my life. It’ll be the throne’s. And it’s one that doesn’t allow for a relationship with a Human. Even one who’s half-Human.”
“Half-Human? Relationship?”
The words were out of her mouth before she considered the ramifications of what she was asking.
“Yes, Valerie. Half-Human.” Rod brought their joined hands to his mouth and kissed the back side of her wrist with the softest brush of his lips, his eyes warm and mossy green above it. “You, Valerie. I’m in love with you.”
And that, more than the tail, more than the birds, more than the story of Atlantis, was what threw her world into a tail… spin.
“You love me?” She looked at their joined hands, his large ones encompassing just one of hers. “How is that possible?”
“Fishing for compliments?” He tilted her chin up with one finger. “You’re what I’ve always wanted to be, but couldn’t. You’ve chosen your path in life. Every job you’ve taken, every decision you made were yours. Even threatening to leave me at the airport if I didn’t give you what you wanted. The inner strength that takes, the ability to claim what you want… I like that in you, Valerie. I admire that in you and need that—you—in my life. Someone who can and does take what she wants.”