by Judi Fennell
Rod took his time swallowing the mouthful of water he’d taken. “Something like that.”
“Something like that, how?”
Rod raised the glass, ready for another gulp. “Valerie, I’d really rather wait—”
She grabbed his arm, not caring that water sloshed over the edge. “And I’d really rather not. You can’t just throw my father into a conversation about a mythical land—”
“Island.”
“Whatever. You can’t just include him with Atlantian-dwelling council members and leave it at that. I mean, he’s not going to be waiting on the beach for me, is he?”
Rod set his glass down and picked up her hand, intertwining his fingers with hers. Val held her breath. Would Lance be waiting for her? Was this about to get more surreal than it already was?
“No, Valerie, your father won’t be there. I’m sorry. But he really did leave you an inheritance, and yes, he was Atlantian. He was also royal.”
“What?” She turned in her seat so quickly she wrenched the seat belt across her gut. That was what caused the pain there, nothing else.
“He was an heir to a throne of our kingdom.”
“So I’m related to you?” Oh no no no no. That was just so wrong.
“No.” A silky black wave of his hair fell across Rod’s forehead as he shook his head. “Gods, no.”
“Thank God,” she said at the same time.
Rod smiled then, the dimple in his cheek winking at her. “I’ll pass that along.”
“So… if he was royal, that makes me… what?”
“A princess.”
Please tell her it was turbulence that made her head swim and not the fact that he’d said something about her being a princess.
“You’re an Atlantian princess, Valerie. That’s why you need to meet with The Council.” He reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, his fingertips lingering on her cheek, then brushing softly over her lips. He tilted her chin up slightly. “Now do you see why I wanted to wait to tell you? I know how odd this is. Trust me. I do.”
She was a princess. That made her sit back and shut up.
And if she was a princess, that made her father… what? A prince?
She couldn’t stop the snort. Right. He was a prince, all right. A real prince of a guy. So princely, he’d left her.
Why?
Val looked out the window to the model-train-sized world beneath her. That was the question that had haunted her since she’d overheard her grandmother’s comment. Why had Dad found it easy to leave?
Why hadn’t he wanted her?
Wasn’t she worth wanting?
She bit her lip and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to do this, but stuck in a the middle of a metal tube thousands of feet above the earth with nothing but wind speed and a crying baby a few rows back to listen to—or the guy from Atlantis sitting next to her—nothing could stop her thoughts from going into overdrive. And in overdrive they were. Atlantis, royalty… and the man who’d left her.
That gut-wrenching, hole-in-her-stomach, wallop of pain didn’t have a damn thing to do with the seat belt, unfortunately. She sucked in a breath, praying the engine sounds would hide it from Rod. She didn’t want to have to explain it to him; hell, she didn’t want to go there herself.
Of course, her subconscious went there anyway. It had years of practice, just as she had years of practice trying to put it aside. She’d done fairly well until Grandmom’s little diatribe.
She’d never understood why she hadn’t been happy at home. Why she’d always felt the need to go. Why there’d always been something missing in her life and if she just looked around the next bend or in the next town, maybe she’d find it. So she’d gone, every time, figuring it was just something inside of her.
Something defective, actually.
Then she’d overheard that conversation. Or rather, that argument. An apparent rehashing of the same old story and the same old parental disappointment on the part of her grandmother.
Aside from the shock of learning that she’d been abandoned by the man who was supposed to love her, Val had realized why she was the way she was.
She was like him.
And the thought had destroyed her.
Once she’d known the truth, she’d looked at the scenes of her childhood differently. Mom’s quiet looks, the bitten lips, the quick-blinking eyes, they hadn’t been from the sadness that he’d died too early. No, they’d been abandonment, hurt, lost love. Hopefully, anger.
And what had Mom done? Instead of bad-mouthing him, telling Val the truth, she’d created memories with the store of the beach where they’d met, and had allowed Val to grow up thinking she’d been short-changed by Fate instead of a fickle father.
How unselfish of her mother.
Val didn’t think she could be.
No, she was worried that she’d end up just like him. What if she found someone—and, no, she wasn’t thinking Rod, in particular—but what if she did, and married him. Had children. Raised them, then one day decided, Wham! That’s it. I’ve had enough.
Would she do to her family what that man had done to his?
That was really why she was going back. Why she’d make a success of that store. To prove to herself that she wasn’t like him. That she didn’t take off when the going got tough. That she had what it took to stick it out.
That she wouldn’t let Mom, someone she loved, down.
Rod looked at her profile, at the lashes that were blinking a little too fast. At the knuckle she held between her teeth, the shallow breaths she tried to hide. He knew what this must sound like to her. He knew how it had sounded to him when he’d found out, and he had the advantage of knowing all the history. Gods, the last thing he wanted to do was make this hard for her.
But to tell her the rest of it now would be cruel. Bad enough she was adjusting to Atlantis and her title; a tail would put her over the top.
Besides, it wouldn’t be much longer.
He was proud of how she handled everything. She hadn’t backed down from any of this. She’d outrun JR and his posse. She hadn’t fallen apart. She hadn’t turned into a quivering flounder who’d figuratively buried her head in the sand. Instead, she’d fought back. She’d outmaneuvered the birds, driven through the storm, and taken care of him in what must have been an unbelievable and frightening situation.
And she’d kissed him. Wanted him.
Dear gods, he’d wanted her, too. And sitting here next to her, seeing her huddled against the window trying to face the fact that she was suddenly something she’d never expected, he wanted her all over again.
The thing was… Rod rubbed his chest, just over his heart. The thing was, she’d behaved as a royal Mer should—so much so that it no longer mattered to him that she was only half-Mer. That she was an assignment The Council had sent him on. That she was the answer to The Prophecy.
Right here, right now, she was just Valerie.
And he wanted her.
He was amazed by that desire. She had Human blood—he shouldn’t be attracted to her. He couldn’t be. He was going to be the High Councilman. Hades, they were hours away from that event, and he wanted her.
Was this what Reel had felt? Was this why his brother had given up Immortality to stay with Erica?
But Reel loved Erica. This wasn’t love; it couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be because it could have no future. His future was to marry a Mer and beget full-blooded Mer children. No matter that he didn’t care that she was half-Human, diluting the bloodline was not an option for the High Councilman. The second son? Sure. But not the one through whom the dynastic line would continue.
He knew this because he’d checked every slate when Reel had declined Immortality, trying to find some way to convince his brother to remain in their world.
But there’d been nothing
about second sons. Reel had been free to make his choice and live happily ever after, while Rod’s ever-after was governed by the rules set down by the gods.
So it was written; so it must be done.
And he was so screwed.
Chapter 29
Briny air streamed in through the open car windows. The smell of the ocean. Val recognized it at once. She didn’t know how she recognized it, but she did. Crisp, sharp, so pungent she could all but taste it.
And in yet another shocker for the day, she felt as if the ocean called to her.
Almost without realizing, Val lowered her foot on the gas pedal as they crossed the last bridge over the bay that separated Peck Island from the mainland. She sped around the families lined up for the first bridge—so many bicycles and suitcases loaded onto the cars they no longer looked like cars—and headed down to the next one, not wanting to think about the last time she’d been here. The only time she’d been here.
Yet, the pull of the ocean made her feel as if she’d been here more than that one time. As if the waves were waiting for her. As if her senses were on alert for the first caress of a sea breeze, her skin thirsting for the warmth of the sun, her toes itching to dig into the sand.
The Atlantis thing wasn’t bad enough? Now she had a weird compulsion to go running onto the beach and throw herself into the water, risking almost certain death?
What did it mean that the ocean called to her?
Rod leaned out his window and took a long, deep breath of the salt-laden air.
Val took a tentative one, rolling it around inside her mouth, letting it float down her throat, waiting for her air passages to react.
Nothing.
She took a deeper one, holding it in her lungs, waiting for that searing pain she remembered from her childhood.
Still nothing.
She could hear the waves beyond the dunes where the cross streets dead-ended at the beach, and her skin felt as if it was being tugged toward the sea—as if it were metal and the ocean a magnet, none of which made any sense to her.
Mom had told her she was allergic; she remembered the pain. So why did she feel compelled to go toward the water?
She chose, instead, to follow Rod’s direction to his brother’s home, though she still waited for that pain. But, if anything, the sea breeze relaxed her. It filled her lungs with deep cleansing breaths, and when she got her first glimpse of the ocean, it was as if the water flowed through her—a reaction so odd she considered, just for a second, that maybe Rod was right. Maybe she wasn’t allergic.
But why would Mom lie?
The feeling of being pulled toward the water grew when she arrived at Reel’s pale yellow Victorian house. The waves flowed onto the beach behind it, mesmerizing her.
They carried their bags up the half-dozen steps to the front porch beneath the blue-and-yellow-striped awnings and gingerbread trim, where pink impatiens overflowed whimsical planters and purple petunias cascaded over the wrought-iron railing.
Rod opened the front door into a homey living room, the furniture tan and peach and comfortable. Seashell floor lamps flanked a thick-cushioned sofa, the coffee table in front of it covered in boating magazines. The fireplace mantel held dozens of pictures beneath a large photograph of a smiling couple at their beach wedding.
“Your brother?” she asked. Not that she needed to. They did look alike. The same build, the same electric green eyes, the same black hair, only Reel’s was curlier. Or maybe that was the way the breeze had tossed it that day.
Even the smile was the same, with the deep slash of dimple by the side of Reel’s mouth, although she didn’t know that she’d seen quite that look on Rod’s face. Reel’s look was one of happiness, genuine and carefree—and matched by his wife’s smile.
He wouldn’t leave his family. Not looking like that.
Rod’s parents, too, had been married forever, according to Rod, and his sisters all lived near them. A close-knit family who stood by each other. Was that so much to ask for in life?
Apparently, in hers, it was.
Val shook off the thought. It only had been too much to ask for before. Now, things were going to be different. She would make them that way.
Rod opened the doors to the deck, sliding the screen door with a set-your-teeth-on-edge metallic screech. He braced himself in the doorframe and inhaled. Deeply. A few times.
Living on an island, he’d probably missed the scents, the breeze. She had to admit, after summertime Kansas, she could see the appeal.
Then he walked onto the deck and down the steps.
“Rod? What are you doing?”
He turned around, whipping his shirt over his head. “No time like the present, Valerie. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
Get it over with? They’d just gotten here.
Oh. Right. She did want to get it over with. Collect her inheritance and that diamond, if she still needed it, and go home.
That was what she wanted… right?
He should wait for her, he knew, but gods! It’d been too long since he’d felt the sand against his skin, the breeze in his hair, the moist weight of the air filling his lungs.
Rod headed down the steps leading to the beach. He flung off that offensive piece of clothing and let the dry, wind-tossed grains of sand ping against his chest, wanting to shed his shorts, too. But he’d wait until he’d explained everything before diving into the water so his tail could shred them from his body.
He scratched the spot on his back just above his soon-to-return scale line where the royal trident tattoo would appear. He could feel it inside his skin, waiting for the first brush of salt water to bring it out.
He couldn’t wait to get back into the ocean and bring her with him. To finally earn the throne and show Val her destiny.
And, maybe, to ask her to share it with him.
The thought stopped him six steps onto the beach.
His toes flexed in the sand.
Ask her to share it?
That sounded precariously close to love.
But he was smarter than that. Loving her would only bring heartache, and he didn’t mean the unrequited kind. Oh, she wanted him, there was no denying that, but love?
Whether she did or not, whether she could or not, it didn’t matter. A relationship between a Human and High Councilman was forbidden by the succession laws to ensure the line remained pure. He hadn’t lived his entire life by those laws to break one now.
Rod shook it off. Physical. That’s all it was. She was beautiful and she was brave and she’d held her own during this coup attempt and all the impossibilities he’d thrown at her. That’s why he wanted her, but as soon as she was whisked off to wherever The Council and the gods needed her to go to fulfill The Prophecy, he’d be too busy, gods willing, taking over his birthright to think about her.
The sliding door slid closed with a soft whump, and Rod heard her footsteps on the deck. He turned, struck again by how beautiful she was with the sun dancing through her curls, her eyes as blue as the sea, and her smile so tremulous it made him want to comfort her.
He held out his hand. “Ready?”
“Is it safe?” She nibbled on her lip and looked at the sky.
“Don’t worry. JR’s not here. Even he can’t fly as fast as an airplane. And while he might be a whiz at recruiting land birds into service, the birds here belong to The Council. As you can see, they’ve all been told to retreat. That’s why there aren’t any in the skies. Today, this is a no-fly zone.”
She smiled then and came down the stairs. “A no-fly zone. A few days ago, that would have seemed so incredibly odd, but now?” She took his hand and he got a close-up glimpse of the sun-dots trickling across her nose. Mers didn’t have sun-dots.
“Now I say, ‘Thank God for no-fly zones.’ I can only imagine what they could find here to drop on us.”
He couldn’t stop himself from tucking a few curls behind her ear before he took a deep breath, bracing himself. “What they could drop on you, Valerie, is nothing compared to what I’m about to. Are you ready for this?”
She nibbled her lip again. “I have no idea, but I can’t imagine there’s much left that will shock me. Do your worst, Rod.”
Chapter 30
“I’m done, Drake.” JR swooped over the waves, his massive wingspan inches above the tops of the crests as he circled around him.
“What do you mean, you’re done? You’re not done until I say you’re done.” Drake swished his tail at a jellyfish that unfurled a tentacle to see what it was sharing the water with. Stupid, brainless Cnidaria.
“Oh, give it up already, will you?” The albatross kept one eye on him as he completed another revolution. The spinning—and JR’s words—were making Drake sick. “It’s over. I’m off duty.”
“What? You can’t be! I paid you.”
“Did you? Hmm.”
The bird took more air under his wings and drifted upward—beyond arm’s reach. Which, at this minute, was a good thing because Drake wanted to wring his slender, white neck.
“What, exactly, do you think an albatross is going to do with diamonds, Drake? It’s not as if I’ve got any place to store them. Or use them. They’re Mer currency. Avians don’t use diamonds.”
“What? Then why in Hades did you want them? Do you know what a pain in the tail it was to get them? How many near-misses I had trying to get the information from my father’s desk for the combination to the Vault? How many times it almost didn’t happen? I worked my tail off to get you those and you’re damn well going to finish this.” He pounded his fists against the ocean’s surface, but all that did was splash water in his eyes.
JR circled ten feet higher. “Make me.”
Drake wanted to kill him. Make him? The damn bird knew he couldn’t reach him. “Come on, JR. We had a deal.”
“A deal between criminals is unenforceable, Drake. Unless you can put every resource you’ve got into tracking me down, I’d say we’re finished here.” He circled higher.
