by Mia Malone
“Bisque,” he muttered, knowing what would happen.
His mother would start yapping about soup being soup and what was good for the goose, move on to ask what the hell a gander was and somehow make it all into an invitation to come over for dinner that evening.
“I let someone rent the Mermaid house,” she said.
Brody straightened and stared at her.
“You let someone rent the Mermaid house?” he echoed. “Why?”
“Why not?”
Relevant question, he thought, and unfortunately not one he had an answer to.
“Tourists?” he asked instead.
“No. An artist who needed some time away. She’ll rent it for six months.”
“She?”
“Some woman from the Midwest.” Dorothea Baker frowned. “Is Minnesota in the Midwest?” She didn't wait for him to confirm that it was, and added happily, “Anyway. I have to run a few errands, and then go and get milk because I am out of it. I also need saffron. She'll be here at two. Tell her to wait for me if I'm late?”
“But –”
Brody watched his mother prance through the door, calling out a greeting to a few of the customers. There were colored ribbons braided into her long hair, he noticed, and her wide coat flapped in the wind as she walked briskly along the dock. The woman was approaching eighty and still moved as if she was twenty, he thought.
And now she’d let some old, artsy-fartsy Midwestern woman live in the Mermaid house.
The Mermaid house was a small, pink house with one bedroom and a combined living room and kitchenette. It was squeezed in between his home, and his brother's, and the family had used it as a guesthouse for the past ten years.
Brody really didn’t want anyone from anywhere living seven feet from his bedroom window, so he sighed and muttered a sour, “Fuck.”
He should call his brother, who had his own bedroom window seven feet away on the other side to see if they could come up with alternative accommodation for what most likely would turn out to be some kooky old geezer, sticking her nose into everyone’s business. Not that he had any business for anyone to stick their nose in, but still.
A group of customers walked in, and then another one, so he was busy until fifteen minutes before the artist would arrive. Still time to make an emergency call to Pat, he decided, and reached for his phone.
“Excuse me?” someone murmured.
A short woman with brown hair in soft curls around a cute face had walked up to the counter and all thoughts of tenants, his brother and whatever it was he’d reached for vanished.
Her eyes were curious and happy.
“What can I get you?” he asked.
“Could I get a cup of coffee?” the woman asked.
“Sure,” Brody said and reached for the pot. “What brings you to Bakersville?”
“It seemed right,” the woman said.
“Okay.”
“I’m renting a pink house with a mermaid painted on the wall, and since I’m a hippie, it seemed like the right thing to do,” the woman elaborated, and Brody froze.
“You’re a hippie,” he echoed slowly.
“Yes.”
He looked at her neat and clean, dark blue jeans which fit her curves perfectly. Then he looked at her utilitarian, dark blue and thick parka style jacket which she held over her arm. From there, his eyes moved to survey a navy-blue tee with no print whatsoever, and it fit her perfectly too. He quickly raised his eyes because ogling the customers might have been something his uncle had enjoyed doing, but Brody didn't think it was appropriate. Their eyes met, and hers were the same blue as the sky outside. She smiled, but he thought he saw shadows behind the soft humor.
“You don’t look like a hippie,” he said.
“I, um,” she mumbled. “I haven’t exactly bought any hippie clothes just yet.”
Brody felt his brows go way up on his forehead and a strange feeling passed through him.
“Okay,” he said because what the fuck else was he going to say to that?
“I will,” she insisted.
“Okay,” he repeated and collected himself. “We'll be neighbors then,” he said, realized he was holding a cup stupidly in front of him, and placed it in front of her.
“Really?”
“Yup. I’m Brody.”
“I’m Marie.”
“Marie.”
“Yes.”
“Not exactly a hippie-name,” Brody said, and that weird feeling moved through his core again.
“I know,” Marie said with a smile. “I haven’t decided on one yet.”
“What are your options?” Brody asked and leaned his elbows on the counter, waiting to see what the hell would pop out of her mouth next.
She watched him with narrowed brows.
“Are you laughing at me?” she asked.
“Not much,” Brody heard himself answer and realized to his surprise that he was.
“God, I’m such an idiot,” she sighed. “I’ll just walk around for a while, I think. Do you know Dorothea Baker?”
“Yes,” Brody said.
She held out her credit card and smiled again, but some of the humor was gone from her eyes, and he wanted it back.
“If she comes in, could you please tell her I’ll be here at two as per our agreement?”
“Mom isn't hip on being on time, so she's probably not gonna be here until two-thirty,” Brody said. “If you sit down, I’ll make you something to eat.”
“Mom?”
“I’m Brody Baker. Dottie is my mother.”
“Oh.”
“And she's a hippie,” he said calmly and tried to push her card away. “Coffee's on the house.”
She pushed her card forward again, but it slipped out of her hand and flew down behind the counter.
“Shit,” she murmured. “I'm such a ditz.”
Brody blinked.
“Okay,” he drawled out and bent down to retrieve the card. “Mar –”
He stared at the card, and at her.
“Just charge me for the coffee,” she said and indicated the cup she hadn’t touched.
“Tiziana Marie Johnson?”
She sighed.
“Yes.”
“Tiziana?” he asked again.
“My mother loved cheesy regency romance novels. By Barbara Cartland,” she said, and added weakly, “And the likes.”
“Okay,” Brody said and felt his belly quiver.
“You’re laughing again, and I can’t blame you.”
“It didn’t occur to you that Tiziana would be a pretty good name for a hippie?” he asked curiously.
Her eyes widened, and she stared at him.
“Well, shit,” she breathed out.
“Drink your coffee, Marie. Mom just walked into the store over there,” He pointed at a small pottery store on the other side of the harbor. “She’ll be here in fifteen.”
She gulped down her coffee so fast Brody worried she'd get second degree burns on her tongue. Then she licked her bottom lip, and he quickly decided that thinking about her tongue was not neighborly and pushed her card toward her.
“Not charging for the coffee,” he said, and couldn’t help himself, so he added, “Tiziana.”
“I’m going to leave now,” she said, and the humor was back in her eyes again. “Thank you for the coffee, Brody Baker.”
“You’re welcome. Come back another day and have a bite to eat.”
“I will...” She bit her lower lip and leaned forward slightly. Brody did too and looked into her blue eyes as she whispered, “It is my name, but I don't like to be called Tiziana. Because of the obvious nickname.”
She looked a little uncomfortable and Brody tried to get his stunned brain to figure out what she meant.
“Annie?” he whispered back.
She winced, and murmured, “No. The other end of the name.”
Then she quickly walked out o
f his small café-style lunch restaurant, and it took him a few moments to figure out what she meant.
Tits.
He was still leaning his elbows on the counter and hung his head down between them when he started laughing.
“Hey, Bro, are you okay?”
Brody raised his head and laughed right into his brother’s worried face.
“We’re getting a new neighbor,” he pressed out, straightened and kept laughing until his belly hurt.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed. Not like that.
Not as if he were happy.
Chapter Two
The Mermaid house
Marie
I was such a fool.
To my defense; I hadn’t experienced a yowza-induced brain freeze in the past twenty-five years and hadn’t expected one.
I walked into the small café with a fantastic sign and a décor in serious need of an upgrade, and there he was. Tall, broad and watching the food in front of him with a peculiar intensity. Making a lobster roll hardly required such absolute focus, so I wondered if I should perhaps wait outside instead. Then he turned, our eyes met, and that's when my brain stopped working.
His grayish blue gaze had the same color as the February ocean outside, and it was just as unsettling. He was also well beyond super-hot. I couldn't be entirely legal to be that attractive at his age, which seemed to be more or less my age. There were gray streaks in his hair which he kept tied back and covered by a black bandana-style cap. His beard, or goatee, or whatever it was called which looked like he possibly lacked shaving tools, was mostly gray but it had been the same dark blonde as his hair.
Sometime during his life, his nose had been broken, making him look more like a badass bar-brawler and a whole lot less like a roll-making and soup-ladling middle-aged man in a small town. The café was squeaky clean, but I couldn’t for the life of me see this man wiping off tables and chairs.
And then there was his chest.
Broad, lean, muscular, black-tee-covered... and yeah. Broad.
Yowww-za. Big time.
He asked a polite and very relevant question, and I heard myself blurt out that I was a hippie. Why the hell I told him that was beyond me, and I tried to recover, but his eyes were suddenly full of surprised humor, and the stormy gray shifted into a pale blue.
It went downhill from there.
I fumbled with my credit card and subsequently dropped it, and then he was laughing silently again, at my name, and quite possibly at me. Before walking out of the café with what was left of my dignity, I told him about the nickname I’d hated my whole life.
Tits.
Titty-Tits.
My sister gave me that nickname when I was six. At that age, I wasn't even sure why it was bad, but I heard the snickers and knew that it was. It had resurfaced when I was thirteen, but my mother had intervened, and it stopped after a few agonizing weeks. And I hadn't willingly told anyone about it since then, which made my surprising confession... well, surprising.
So, I left Brody Baker and his unsettling gaze (and his chest) behind and let the cold air sweep my blush away as I walked over to where he had indicated that his mother would be. When I stood outside the small pottery store at the other side of the equally small harbor, waiting for the old woman with a peacock-blue coat and turquoise ribbons in her braids, I turned to look back at the café.
Brody was laughing with a customer who stared at him, looking somewhere between amused and baffled. I was staring too and wondered what the joke had been about. I also wondered what they fed the boys in this town because the customer in front of Brody was another somewhat gray-haired and ridiculously brawny man.
Dorothea Baker was indeed what I imagined a hippie would be like. She was tall and thin and looked a little crazy but in a good way. Her eyes were a pale brown her son hadn’t inherited, and they were kind and full of humor. The lines on her face indicated her age but also that she’d spent most of her years on this earth laughing. I’d never seen anyone look so thoroughly satisfied with life.
She told me to call her Dottie and wiggled a set of keys.
“Let’s go look at your new home,” she said and walked off.
I followed her small and surprisingly beige car the five minutes it took to drive the short distance to a small, pink house, cowering between two big, white buildings. There was parking space at the back, but Dorothea shuffled us around the house, and I stopped to stare.
Next to the front door facing a paved walking path was the mermaid. Someone had painted it right on the wooden planks, and it had looked absolutely fantastic on the pictures I’d seen on the internet.
In real life; Not so much.
It looked more like something a child would have done. The colors were flat, and it was done in broad strokes which some of them seemed to be a little wobbly. They also made the girl’s eyes more astonished than anything else.
“Here she is,” Dorothea said.
“I can see that,” I murmured noncommittally.
“You like?” she asked, laughing down at me as if it was a trick question.
“Of course,” I murmured politely.
“Thank you!” she squealed. “I painted her a few years ago, and I wasn’t sure... everyone says she’s just perfect, but I always felt she lacked something. When I find the time, I’ll fix some of the parts that I’m not entirely happy with.”
Oh, God.
I thanked the Lord for my diplomatic answer, and smiled at Dottie, wondering if fixing the parts that needed fixing might involve a roller and a bucket of pink paint.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you around.”
Showing me around took five minutes because the place was small.
Bedroom. Livingroom which was also kitchen and dining area. Bathroom. Done.
I turned to look at the fantastic view over the water, and since she hadn’t closed the door, I inhaled the tangy scent of the ocean.
This would be perfect, I promised myself.
I could be happy here.
Then it started raining, although it was February, so it wasn’t rain as much as it was sleet coming from the dark gray sky.
Okay, I thought. People were happy in sleet too, right?
Brody
He closed the Café early and walked home through the cold afternoon, taking the detour along the water like he did most days. Boone ambled next to him, stopping to pee with a frequency only a male dog would manage to achieve.
“Come on now, boy,” Brody murmured and glanced down at the big dog. “This is your turf. We all know it, and it’s fucking raining again.”
Boone seemed oblivious to the current weather, and Brody sighed, knowing that he'd spend a good while trying to get water out of the dog's fur, and then half the evening wiping off the floor, some of the walls, most of the furniture and probably himself. He had a mudroom, and if he got around to cleaning it out, and replacing the door, then he could bring Boone in that way and let him dry off for a while instead of having the dog happily shake half of Maine off on the couch.
He'd planned to do sort the room out when he moved back, but it had still been summer, so he'd added to the mess by shoving most of the boxes from his old condo in there, and figured he'd do it later.
Later had probably both come and gone, but he made a silent promise to himself to get to it once the weekend was over. The Café was closed Sundays and Mondays. He’d have time then. Or after next weekend at the latest.
The dog barked happily suddenly, and Brody saw what the dog was running toward. Or rather; who the dog was running toward.
His new neighbor was unloading bags from a small, dark blue car, and she was laughing. A man stood next to her, and he was laughing too.
Patrick.
His goddamned brother.
What the hell was that moron doing out there in the rain, laughing and carrying bags like some fucking prince charming?
Brody
scowled when he reached them.
“Bro.”
“Pat,” Brody said and turned to Marie.
Her eyes were so goddamned happy. It was as if she was laughing her ass off at some secret joke only she knew.
“Hey,” he added, felt his mouth form a smile, and wondered if he sounded like a moron.
He felt like one.
“Hello,” she mumbled. “We should –”
She wiped rain off her face with an arm and gestured toward the house.
Jesus. He was standing there, smiling like a smitten fool when it was pouring down.
“Yeah,” he said, pulled her bags out of Pat’s hands and walked up the steps to put them down on the porch outside her back door.
Marie was giggling at something Patrick murmured as they joined him, and Brody raised a brow expectantly. He appreciated a good joke too, didn't he?
“Let us know if you need anything,” Pat said and patted her shoulder. “One of us is usually at home so just come on over if you need milk for your coffee or whatever.”
“Thanks,” Marie said with a sweet smile. “I went grocery shopping, so I’ll be fine for weeks.”
Brody looked at the two bags he had put down and wondered how anyone could survive even two days on that, but she was tiny, so maybe she did. He'd make sure he had milk in his fridge, he decided. And that there wasn't any in Pat's, even if he had to gulp it down himself.
There was a brief silence during which Brody glanced at his brother, wondering why the idiot wasn't leaving for the bar, or whatever.
“You like navy,” he said to Marie when the silence stretched out toward embarrassing.
This was a relevant observation as far as he could tell.
“I'm sure she does,” Patrick quipped with a grin.
Brody barked out a short laugh through his annoyance because that had actually been funny.
“What?” Marie asked.
“Pat used to be a navy seal,” Brody clarified and regretted it immediately when he saw her eyes widen.
“Oh, wow. Really?”
“Long time ago,” Pat said and leaned in to murmur, “I could tell you all about it, but then I'd have to kill you because it's top-secret. We went on dangerous missions and saved the country more than once.”