by Judi Fennell
Copyright © 2009 by Judi Fennell
Cover and internal design © 2009 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover Design by Anne Cain
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
A sneak peek of Catch of a Lifetime
Back Cover
As always, to my family, for supporting and encouraging me. You all are my real-life heroes.
To my grandmother, Fran. (Because I can.)
To the real Valerie, for friendship and Fudge Stripes.
To Beth Hill, for all of your time, generosity, and wonderful insights.
To Steven, because I always said I’d do this if I got the chance. You told me, “Jude, you have a story for everything.” Bet you never saw this one coming!
And to Maynard, because he asked.
“That which was lost must be found…
or that which is known will be lost.”
—Mer Prophecy
Chapter 1
“So you’re really going to give up your tail and leave the sea? On purpose? First your brother, now you… What is wrong with this family?”
If Rod Tritone heard that question one more time, he was going to strangle Chumley Masticar’s thin, white-striped neck. The fish didn’t know when to quit.
It wasn’t as if he wanted to do this, but when The Council decreed something, it had to be done. Gods knew, when he became the High Councilman, he’d demand the same obedience.
“Yes, Chum, I’m going. Right after I grab my bag.” Rod kicked his tail for a burst of speed to outswim the fish and headed to his lair in the hills of Atlantis. The one thing he had to remember to pack was the gods’ oil that would ensure his tail returned when he did.
“Lose it and lose the tail forever,” his father, the current High Councilman, had said. As if that was an option.
“Do you want company?” The suckerless remora wriggled his long body for all it was worth to catch up, and Rod didn’t have the heart not to let him. “Reel said he’d put in a saltwater tank so I could visit. Not that I’d be thrilled being in a cage, but still, it would be nice to see where he and his wife live. Check out the Human world without worrying about someone wanting to eat me or anything.”
Humans ate remora? Rod couldn’t imagine why. Unless it was to shut them up.
Rod swerved around the magma well whose emissions refracted through seawater and off the gold-covered walls of the cavern city, turning the darkness into light. He skimmed above the coral topiaries, nodding to the parrotfish who kept Atlantis so beautiful. He’d traveled the world’s oceans from Bimini to the South Pacific, from the icy waters of the north to the crystal blue glacial waters of the south, but nothing compared to the beauty of the Mer capital.
“Sorry, Chum, but this is a solo mission. Simple recovery.”
One that involved him getting legs, traveling to the middle of the landmass, and retrieving a Human. Of all things to pull him off his Trench Survey for.
“Oh. Right. Gotcha.” Chum glided beneath a ray who had emerged from a sand pond inside a circle of stone-faced statues. Without a sucker on his head, the remora wouldn’t have much luck sticking to the ray for a meal.
Poor guy. Always trying to relive his glory days.
“So,” Chum said, returning to Rod’s side, “tell me why The Council thinks this Human is the answer to The Prophecy. I mean, how old is she? I thought only the royal family lived forever. That Prophecy is almost two millennia old, and The Oracles haven’t come up with an answer yet. I don’t get it.”
“Well, first of all, she’s not Human. Not completely.” Rod veered up to the top of the Commerce Building for one last look at the city before venturing into the shark’s nest that was land.
One day, this would all be his. The rule of the seas, the unlimited wealth of the diamond Vault, the history of his people. All of it his to protect and serve. Just like his father. And his grandfather. And generations before him.
The responsibility settled on him like an anchor. Rod sucked in a pint of seawater, shook off the feeling, and headed toward home. “Before he died, Lance Dumere admitted to an affair with a Human that resulted in a child.”
Chum puckered his lips and tried to whistle. He’d never been successful before, and this time wasn’t any different.
“Once Lance came clean,” Rod continued as they reached the ornamental gates to his neighborhood, “The Council started its own search. The Members didn’t want to start a panic, but they couldn’t leave a landed Mer out there for Humans to discover.”
“So now they’ve found her and want you to go after her?”
“That’s it in a conch shell.” Rod swam over the marble-domed roof of his lair and opened the weathered oak door, grimacing as it shuddered on its hinges. Seawater had a corrosive effect on the hinges after a while, no matter what they were made of. He had hoped to be living in the High Councilman quarters before they needed to be replaced.
“So how’s she supposed to fulfill The Prophecy? She’s a Hybrid, for Apollo’s sake.” Chum swam in behind him, wending through a natural fissure in the lava statue in the foyer that Rod’s sister, Mariana, had sculpted.
A flick of Rod’s tail propelled him to the sofa, which a sea cucumber colony had overtaken, and where his sister, Angel, had dropped off a watertight pack
age containing a duffel bag and clothing for his trip. Angel was the repository of all things Human these days. “Since she’s Dumere’s long-lost offspring, The Council feels she’s the ‘that which was lost’ part of The Prophecy. By bringing her back, they’re hoping to prevent the world—‘that which is known’—from being lost.”
“Huh?”
Pretty much his reaction when his father, Fisher, had explained it. He’d figured it to be another of the many tests the gods had put to him throughout his life to prepare him for his title. Although as far as Rod was concerned, The Prophecy was more the drunken ramblings of one of the gods after too much ouzo and ambrosia than any great revelation. No test the gods devised would include sending The Heir onto land without a valid reason.
Saving the planet was a valid reason.
Rod flipped open a pirate’s chest that held the diamond decanter containing the gods’ oil, as well as the packet of paperwork The Council had included to convince Lance’s daughter. “The polar regions are melting, Chum. The Council hopes to mitigate that damage by fulfilling The Prophecy.”
“So what’s she going to do? Give the ice caps the cold shoulder to keep them stable?” Chum laughed at his own joke.
The short seaquake that hit the Mer capital proved the gods didn’t find it a laughing matter. The Humans on Bermuda—the island directly above Atlantis—probably didn’t think so either.
Rod sure as Hades didn’t. As soon as he finished this mission, he could get back to the business at fin by finally claiming the throne—the job he’d been born to do—and figuring out some way to work on his Trench Survey.
Cataloging the offshoot of the world’s deepest ocean trench, one Humans had yet to discover, was his chance to be known as someone other than the lucky Son of a Mer who’d inherited the oldest throne on Earth simply by virtue of his birthright. A way to become the Mer he could be if he weren’t The Heir.
And a way to erase the collective memory of that damn dare to Reel so long ago. Rod had broken the biggest rule of their world with it by risking Humans learning about Mers, thereby setting the pattern for the rest of his and Reel’s lives.
“But what happens if something goes wrong? What if you don’t get your tail back? Or fall in love with her and opt to stay on land like Reel did? Isn’t Drake next in line? Do they really want that idiot running the show?” Chum helped himself to a piece of the calamari Rod’s mother had sent over.
Opt to stay on land? Fall in love with her? As if that would happen. The High Councilman couldn’t dilute the bloodline of future generations, and this woman was a Hybrid.
No, losing Reel from their world was more than enough of an incentive for him. Add in everything he’d had to do since the fallout from that dare—studying, learning, memorizing, following every rule, statute, dictate, edict, and proclamation the gods had set down—and he wasn’t about to blow it now.
One failure in his life was enough.
Rod tucked the Human items inside the chest and latched it closed.
The last thing this family—and the Mer world—needed was another Mer hooking up with a Human.
Chapter 2
After years of hopping from job to job, of moving from town to town, searching for that one thing to give her life meaning, trying to find her place in this world, Valerie Dumere had decided that, truly, there’s no place like home.
And how ironic was that?
Val parked her battered old Nissan in the gravel lot behind Therese’s Treasure Trove. She never would have thought that selling ocean tchotchkes in the middle of Kansas would be her life’s work, but then, she’d thought a nine-to-five office job was. And driving a cab. Vet assistant. Pizza delivery person. Construction worker.
It was the fiasco of that last one that’d made her realize that the only place she’d ever felt she “fit” had been Mom’s shop.
Val gathered her things, ready to spend the afternoon cataloging an inventory of sand globes, seashell jewelry, and delicate, glass wind chimes. And if that didn’t make her heart go pitter-pat, at least she had the satisfaction of making Mom’s dream come true and honoring her memory—and finally having her own life on a path.
Dashing from the car to the back door, Val kept an eye on one of the sparrows that had been following her around recently, laughing when she shut the door behind herself without so much as a single bird-dropping mishap.
Get a grip, Dumere. There are no such things as stalking birds.
Oh? Then what about the seagull attack?
Val shrugged and picked up the latest delivery slip on the metal desk beside the door. Seagulls were known for stealing food out of your hand. She shouldn’t have tempted them—although, what had made them yank a hunk of hair from her head was anybody’s guess.
Oh, well. The whole thing had happened three weeks ago, and she highly doubted a sparrow could do that kind of coiffure damage.
“Val!” Tricia, her best friend and co-worker, poked her head through the sheers that divided the front of the store from the workroom at the back. “There’s someone out here I think you’ll want to talk to.”
“I will? Who?” Val dropped the packing slip and her bag onto the pile of boxes beside the door as Tricia swished through the curtains while practically hopping up and down.
“I have no idea who he is, but he asked for you, and, God, if I had someone like that asking about me, I’d be damn sure to get out there as quick as possible.”
“Tricia, what are you babbling about? He’s just a guy.”
Tricia snorted. “That’s like saying the David is just a statue. Val, this guy is hot.”
“Every guy who comes in here is hot. It’s summertime in Kansas, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Huffing, Tricia crossed her arms and cocked a hip. “Fine. Don’t believe me. But you are going to want to prepare yourself before going out there.”
Jeez. You’d think a movie star had walked into the place the way Tricia, married mother of four, was acting.
Then Val peeled back the side of the curtain and saw why.
The guy could be a movie star. Cross Matthew McConaughey with Hugh Jackman, toss in some extra brawn, a few more inches in height, and, yeah, that’s about what you’d get.
“Sooo?” Tricia leaned over her shoulder. “What d’ya think?”
Long legs encased in dark blue jeans that hugged a damn-near-delicious set of glutes, a yellow golf shirt stretched across flat abs and broad shoulders, square jaw, black, wavy hair that brushed just above his collar…
“Impressive.” She got the David reference with one look. “But what’s he doing here?”
The guy held a duffel bag in one hand and was picking through the coral sculptures—faux coral sculptures, as her mother had liked to call them—with the other, as if he was on a treasure hunt. He picked each one up, turned it upside down, sniffed it—sniffed it?—then went on to the next one.
When he was done there, he moved to the next table and peered into each of the sand globes as if he’d never seen one before. Sure, snow globes were more common, but sand wasn’t off-the-charts odd. They were some of her best sellers.
“I think he needs help selecting the right one,” Tricia, the self-appointed head—and only member—of the Valerie Dumere Matchmaking Initiative, whispered.
“Tricia, they’re all the same. And that was lame, even for you.”
“Well, you aren’t marching out there on your own. Too bad you weren’t the early bird today. You could have caught that big, juicy worm yourself, but, no, you had to sleep in. Just be thankful I’m happily married.”
Val slid her eyes sideways to glare at Tricia.
“Oh. Right. Birds are a touchy subject. Sorry. I forgot.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Besides, a hot guy was a good way to banish bad bird memories. “Oh, and for the record, I wasn’t sleeping in. I was finishing
packing. I had to be out of my rental today.”
“Good. Now you can move in with him instead of the apartment upstairs.” Tricia lifted one of the curtains.
Val rolled her eyes and adjusted the lay of the cute, pink, scooped-neck shirt she’d paired with her jean shorts, tucked a few short, blonde curls behind her ears, then straightened her shoulders and stepped into the front of the store.
“Hello? I’m Valerie Dumere. Can I help you?” Not the most auspicious of beginnings, but still, it got his attention.
The smile he gave her after a quick once-over with his deep green eyes got her attention, too. Kicked back to one side, a deep dimple slashing the back of it, making little crinkles appear around those eyes… Oh, yeah. That got her attention.
So did the nicely muscled bicep that flexed when he held up the sand globe. “Is this really supposed to be Atlantis?”
She walked over and picked up another one, and gave it a shake, sending sand and glitter shimmering around the spires of the castle and the not-to-scale seahorses twirling among open clamshells and treasure chests. She smiled at him. “What? You don’t like marble castles? Or is this one going to be too drafty for you?”
“Drafty? Don’t you mean wet? Atlantis is in the ocean, you know. You might want to read up on your history.” He smiled that devastating smile again and set the globe down.
She set hers down next to it. “You mean my mythology.”
“Oh. Right. Mythology.” He switched the duffel bag to his left hand and held out his right one. “Hi. I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Rod Tritone. I’m here to take you away from all of this.”
“That’s a hell of an introduction.” She couldn’t help laughing as she took his hand. Big, enveloping, warm, just the right amount of roughness to let her know he was a man and she was a woman.
He laughed along with her, rich and deep and sending shivers down her spine, which also made her acutely aware of her femininity.
“Then how about this one? I’m here to make all your dreams come true.”
Yeah, that worked. She could imagine some fairly wild dreams.
“Is your name Prince Charming, by any chance?” Tricia added, emerging from the back.
