Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes)

by Cusack, Louise

  Someone came in behind him and Rand turned, nerves catching up with him finally, but he managed to say, “Wilson,” and nod in acknowledgement of his former nemesis.

  “Budjenski,” Wilson replied, politely enough. He was sporting a shiny gold ring on his left hand and a fresh tan at the edges of his expensive suit. Honeymoon? “Please, sit,” he said, gesturing to the coffee table between two couches in the corner. There was a tray on it with cups and cakes and a coffeepot. They sat opposite each other and Wilson poured himself a cup but Rand shook his head. Nervous stomach.

  They were alone at least, which confirmed Rand’s suspicions that this was therapy, and not the heavy hand of the law descending, but Wilson’s hospitality seemed overly polite. It made Rand’s butterflies dance. “Is this about Venus?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

  “In a way,” Wilson replied and sipped his coffee, then he glanced at Rand and said, “You took some valuables from my house when you left.”

  Rand looked into those unreadable brown eyes and felt the butterflies turn into lead. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so wrong. He was about to go to jail, and the only reason Betty would visit him to be to say I told you so. Then Poss’s ex–pimp would ‘repossess’ the kid and put him back to work. Fuck! So much for learning trust. “What sort of things?” he asked Baz, and glanced at the door, wondering if there were police on the other side of it now.

  “Nothing of importance to me,” Wilson replied, and Rand glanced back at him, surprised.

  “What?” he asked, not quite daring to hope.

  “I’m just establishing facts,” Wilson replied and put his cup down. “So, let me see if I have this straight.” He raised a hand and started counting off fingers. “First you make contact with my father under false pretences in an unsuccessful bid to gain ownership of my inheritance, then you arrive at my home and make love to my virgin housekeeper, before capturing and threatening my father with a gun you brought with you, then you handcuff him to a wall inside a cave, after which you steal my cleaning lady and my silverware and leave. In a stolen car. Have I missed anything?”

  “Sounds really bad when you say it like that,” Rand replied, feeling an inappropriate surge of pride at his list of accomplishments. “And I didn’t give your father to Venus —”

  “I know,” Baz said, then he glanced away, as though still coming to terms with the fact that his father was dead. A few seconds later he met Rand’s gaze again and said, “He got himself free and went after Venus.”

  “She got away okay?” Rand had leant forward on the seat, his heart racing now in a way that it hadn’t when he’d thought his own liberty was threatened.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Baz said, and there was nothing in his expression that wasn’t open and honest.

  Rand nodded at that and sighed, relieved.

  “I’d like to put all that behind us,” Baz said, and Rand could only nod in agreement. Especially the criminal sections. “I have something to discuss with you, Randolph,” Baz said. “May I call you Randolph?”

  “Well, I’d prefer that to what you called me in your father’s study,” Rand replied, remembering the old man’s indignation All this fuss over a simple manly hug. It still sent chills through Rand, realizing the whole ‘doddering old man’ thing had been an act. He was very glad that fucker was dead. Although it might be best not to mention that to his son.

  “Venus is coming back in twenty years,” Baz said.

  Rand instantly sat forward on his seat again, cursing the way his dick woke up as well. “Do you believe that?” he asked, not really daring to hope, and at the same time wondering why it meant so much to him, why she meant so much to him, and had done even before he’d found out about… her tail.

  “I have no reason to doubt it,” Baz said. “Her sister came to us twenty years ago, to the day, that Venus arrived. So unless something happens to her wherever she is now…” He shrugged.

  “She said she’d be back.”

  “Then she will.”

  “I want to be there,” Rand said.

  “I thought so.” Baz relaxed back on the couch, watching Rand. At last he said, “You want to be the first person she sees when she bellies up onto that beach as a human, don’t you?”

  “Oh yeah.” Rand nodded.

  “And you’ll do anything to have that opportunity.”

  “Just tell me who I have to kill,” Rand quipped, but the moment the words were out of his mouth, he realised what he’d said. “Sorry. We’ve been there.”

  “Yes we have,” Baz replied quietly, and they looked at each other for so long the suspense started eating at Rand. At last Baz said, “So you’re prepared to wait?”

  “Absolutely,” Rand answered truthfully. “There isn’t going to be anyone else like her.”

  Baz nodded. “If I hadn’t fallen in love with Wynne, I might be fighting you for that weekend.”

  “You’d lose,” Rand said, hot jealousy stomping all over commonsense.

  “Perhaps,” Baz replied, “But that’s irrelevant now. What is relevant to me is that you saved her life when you could have taken my father’s money.”

  Rand relaxed enough to smile. “The old bastard would have shafted me if I had.”

  “Probably,” Baz agreed. “But I’m different to my father,” he said, and leant forward, lowering his voice. “Like you, I believe people are more important than money. And Saltwood is full of bad memories for me. I don’t want to live there.”

  “That sucks,” Rand said politely, while he wondered where the conversation was going.

  “So that’s why I wanted to see you,” Baz said. “Because, unlikely though it might seem, I have a business proposition for you …”

  Twenty years after that fateful weekend…

  Epilogue

  Rand stood in the driveway of Saltwood, waving goodbye to his ‘family’ as they drove off: Henpecked Possum, Bossy–boots Betty and their tribe of delinquent teenagers. Their black Humvee crunched up the drive and stopped just beyond the white wrought iron gates, bordered by flowering jacaranda trees. Betty jumped out and locked the gates, gave Rand another wave, then set up the sign they put out at this time every year: Saltwood historical homestead is closed for the weekend.

  Rand gave them a final wave and then headed back into the empty house, trying not to remember the last thing his niece Roo had said before she’d left: “Thirty–eight isn’t old, Uncle Randy. It’s ancient.”

  He sighed, and really hoped it wasn’t. Because the woman of his dreams — or at least, the woman who’d lived only in his dreams for two decades — was coming back to him tomorrow, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her turning her beautiful nose up at him.

  Consequently his stomach was in knots, but for some reason he was also smiling. Because chances were she’d fuck him even if she didn’t like the look of him — she was that kind of girl. But that’s not what Rand had been waiting for all these years. Not a fuck. Not even a spectacular fuck like Venus.

  No, the reason he’d never been able to settle with anyone else was because as stupid and romantic and pointless as it may turn out to be, he was desperately in love with her — a mermaid he’d known for only a day, a mermaid he’d only ever see one long weekend every twenty years.

  This fixation with her had driven him mad for the first ten years, and the only way he’d kept sane was to keep busy, filling up his life with looking out for Betty & Poss and their brood, and running the Saltwood Heritage Estate for Baz who’d moved to Hawaii with Wynne and raised a couple of kids of their own.

  As the manager of Saltwood, Rand even hosted lunches for Traci Knowles’ Fantasy Reef Hover Tours where she took punters ‘mermaid spotting’. Tourists loved the idea, but Traci was serious.

  Even after all this time, she was determined to get proof, and Rand was just as determined that she wouldn’t. So he hosted her lunches at the estate, which meant that one weekend every year, on the anniversary of Baz’s mother’s
death, Saltwood was closed and there was no lunch and subsequently no hover tour.

  At the start Traci had been suspicious, sniffing around Saltwood, looking for mermaids, but as each anniversary came and went with no mermaids visiting, Traci must have decided it really was to honor the death of ‘the lady of the house’, and she’d planned her holidays around it. This year she and Liam were in the South of France.

  Poss, Betty and the kids were on their way to Cairns, and the only other person in the big wide world who also knew Venus was visiting this weekend — Balthazar Wilson — was on Maui planning his son’s engagement party.

  Rand had her all to himself.

  No wonder he was grinning as he stepped back into the house, closing the front doors firmly behind him. No tourists for five days, and it would be at least twenty hours before Venus arrived. Rand planned to sleep for some of that time, and try not to stress through the rest.

  Okay, no sleep, but he was minimizing the stress. Dawn the next day saw him pacing the beach in a restrained fashion, scanning the water, hoping like hell that she made landfall somewhere along the estate coastline instead of the public beach she’d washed up on last time. In any case, he had remote access to cameras set up on the adjacent beaches, and he checked those on his mobile phone every five minutes. A gassed–up hover boat sat below the cliffs if he needed it.

  There was nothing to do but wait.

  All day.

  And every hour he checked the secret cave, in case she’d somehow got past him and… well, he wasn’t sure how he thought she’d get in there, but he checked it anyway, checked his mobile phone, scanned the water, waited.

  By five in the afternoon he was sunburnt, dehydrated and starting to entertain the unimaginable and wholly unacceptable idea that she wasn’t coming. And he’d never thought that before. Not once in twenty years. She’d said she was coming back.

  He’d believed her.

  Then, just as the sun was starting to dip, he saw a sparkle on the water, and he turned, scanning, desperate, because that had to be her. Yet waves continued to rise and fall on the gentle mermaid–less swell, foaming up onto a beach that remained as empty and lonely as it had been at first light. A lump rose in his throat and suddenly the tears he’d been fighting all afternoon stung his eyes.

  Rand turned his back on the ocean and wiped at his cheeks. “She is coming,” he told himself, because she had to be. But the stinging only grew worse, and wetter, so he distracted himself by wondering if he should check the cave again. Then he glanced at the stone staircase and wondered if he should get some supplies, because if she didn’t arrive before dark he was definitely camping on the beach. She’d need help to walk when she arrived, and —

  “Randolph!”

  His heart slammed into his ribs, and after that it was all slow motion: his turn, the dipping sun spreading gold across the water, obscuring his vision until he realised she was already on the sand fifty meters away, one hand up waving to him.

  Then he ran, skidding to stop on his knees which sprayed sand across her. “Shit! Sorry!” he said before he pulled into his arms and kissed her, hard. Kissed her until his lips hurt and his eyes stung again, he’d been waiting so long.

  Finally he pulled back enough to look into her eyes and she grinned at him. “I’ve got my clitoris back,” she said, not looking a day older than the last time he’d seen her, so clearly time moved more slowly where she was.

  “So I see,” he whispered, then he couldn’t help saying, “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “Yes, yes, but let’s stop talking. I came back to be fucked.”

  He laughed at that. “I’ve really missed you,” he said, but before he could give her what she so obviously wanted, a tiny head popped up from behind her — an adorable mini–me with honey–blonde hair and enormous blue eyes. “S’da?” she lisped, and Rand felt the air drop out of his lungs.

  Venus reached behind herself and pulled the toddler into her arms. “This is Pipi,” she said. “She has your wide forehead.”

  “S’da?” the little girl said again, looking at him curiously.

  “Yes, that’s your da,” Venus told her, and Rand felt as if his heart would melt.

  “I never thought…” He shook his head, then he turned dewy eyes on Venus. “Is she a mermaid too?”

  “We’re both human now, for as long as you want us —”

  “I want you,” he told her.

  “Then you must lock us in when the whirlpool calls us. But after that…”

  “You can stay?”

  “We can stay.”

  Rand shook his head, overwhelmed. And in love. With them both. Then Venus put Pipi carefully into his arms and as his daughter gazed up at him he saw the depths of the ocean in her eyes. Her perfect little eyelashes were like tiny black starfish and her hair smelt salty and sweet and so comforting he wanted to squeeze her against himself and never let her go. But instead he held her gently and said, “Welcome to Saltwood, baby girl. Welcome home.”

  ≈The End≈

  I hope you enjoyed Marriage & The Mermaid. If you’d like to read more of the Hapless Heroes series they’re available in the Amazon Kindle store. My complete booklist is here on my Amazon page.

  About the author

  Louise Cusack lives in a tiny seaside village on the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. She’s a vegetarian ex–animal rights activist, cricket tragic and caffeine addict who mentors other writers when she isn’t writing herself. A Trekkie from way back, she loves all thing science fiction and fantasy, especially if it has a good love story.

  Website & blog: http://louisecusack.com

  Twitter: http://twitter.com/Louise_Cusack

  Reviews: If you go back to where you purchased this story and review it, you will earn my eternal gratitude. There is nothing an author wants more than to know that readers care enough to comment. Likewise, all efforts to publicize your enjoyment of my work (Twitter, Facebook etc) will be genuinely appreciated!

  Further reading in the Hapless Heroes series

  Goddess & the Geek (novella): Computer whiz Julian Wilde has a month booked at an island hideaway to finish his PhD, but when he arrives, sexy oyster farmer Natasha Barri grabs him thinking he’s a burglar and suddenly asthma isn’t the only thing making Julian breathless. The house has been double booked so they’re forced to share and Julian readily agrees to cook, hoping to use the voodoo potions he’s discovered online to make Tasha fall in love with him. Disaster follows debacle as Julian tries to impress her, and she tries not to kill him.

  Read Goddess & the Geek to see if Julian can crack open Tasha’s hermit–shell heart and prove he’s the geek for her.

  Sex & the Stand In (short story): Justin DuBois is in love with his co–worker, but not only does Marianne think he’s too young to be taken seriously, she’s convinced he’s gay. In desperation to win her, Justin recreates her teenage fantasy of a circus, a carnie, and a splash of Old Spice…

  Read Sex & the Stand In to find out whether Justin’s crazy plan actually works.