by Munt, S. K
Besides, she had always been promised to another, something Lincoln had never known. Their time together had an expiration date since the very beginning, and for all of Ivyanne’s power, that was the one thing she could never change.
So she had accepted her mother’s decision to stop frequenting the Seaview with little protest. She knew he would have been crushed, and so many times she wanted to run back into his arms, but that would have been unfair towards her own people, to whom she owed more than to herself. She figured time would eventually heal his heart, and her own.
But she’d never stopped loving Lincoln. That was why she had come back to The Seaview this time-to remember what love had felt like, so she could recognize it in her heart when she contemplated the candidates for her hand now.
Sven suddenly froze in the water, motioning back towards the beach. ‘Is that your boss now girls?’
Ivyanne turned around, forcing herself to look casual and uninterested, despite her sudden light-headedness. Sure enough, she could make out Lincoln’s figure, trotting ungracefully along the beach. She almost panicked, thinking that maybe he had decided to fight his own logic and confront her (after all, Ivanna and Ivyanne? Even a dense human would find the coincidence baffling!) but then noticed his path was horizontal to the shore.
‘Yep!’ Remi whispered, sounding grateful for the subject change. ‘Is he actually jogging? It’s eight thirty on a Saturday night!’
‘He’s supposed to be working,’ Dalton agreed. ‘That’s weird.’ He turned to Ivyanne. ‘Do you know that he and his dad used to be guests here? Before they bought it? Maybe you remember them.’
‘No.’ Ivyanne lied. Her pulse quickened.
Dalton was nodding. ‘They used to come here every year. The year you guys first went to Hawaii, Chase told me that his wife had died so he was going to buy the place-which he did. I think Lincoln had been working as a lifeguard then. He and Marcus go way back.’
Ivyanne was finding it difficult to draw breath or think straight. Lincoln’s mother had died? It was a horrifying thing to learn in front of so many witnesses. His mother had died, and that had been the year Ivyanne hadn’t shown up again! Had he waited for her? Had he needed her support? Ivyanne felt uncharacteristic tears welling in her eyes, tears she couldn’t afford to spill in front of people.
Remi turned to Ivyanne. ‘He wasn’t one of the ones you hooked up with, was he?’
‘I doubt it,’ Ivyanne said. ‘I met him earlier and he didn’t say anything. And I’m fairly certain I would have left an impression...’
More laughter.
‘The future ruler is a little minx,’ Sven said happily. ‘I like it!’
‘Leading by example!’ Dalton chimed in.
‘Atta girl.’ Remi patted her back.
Ivyanne grinned and disappeared under the water, sinking under the weight of her self-loathing.
5.
The run-in with Ivyanne had rendered Lincoln a space cadet. Eventually, Adele shooed him out, telling him he was hindering her and Liv more than helping. She told him she’d come spend the night with him when the bar closed.
Lincoln was happy to oblige. He went out the back, past the kitchen and through the function room so dated that it hadn’t functioned in years, except as a storage space. He let himself out through the glass door which faced the guest accommodation side of the resort and on auto-pilot, began retracing his footsteps from the night before.
The memories he’d been trying to hold back for days flooded him now that he’d had a run in with the doppelganger. Ivanna. His mind instantly twisted itself around the little information she had ever divulged about herself. She had been his age, and so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her. Her golden skin and hair had blended with sand and sunlight, making her seem more of the environment then adjacent to it. She came from nowhere specific-she’d always given the impression that her family moved around a lot.
His first memory of her was still an embarrassing one-he’d been crippled by a stitch in the middle of a nasty set of waves, and Ivanna had appeared from seemingly nowhere and dragged him to the safety of Oyster point as he’d drifted in and out of consciousness.
Lincoln stopped to unlace his polished black shoes, leaving them at the beginning of the boardwalk before pressing on to the beach.
Being rescued by a gangly eleven year old would have been insufferable for a boy of the same tender age-had his savior not been so beautiful. Lincoln had just started noticing girls that year, and Ivanna had been in a different league to the ones at his school. He’d fallen for her in the way only a naive pre-pubescent boy could-wholeheartedly. It was his first real summer vacation, and it had set the bar for every one to come.
The sand under the last few planks had eroded away, and he was careful to walk around them, frowning as he contemplated Ivanna’s family. And what a family! They travelled in a pack, each one of them so beautiful but without resembling the other in the slightest. Ivanna had never actually said so (she was very private about her personal life) but Lincoln got the feeling that at least three or four of the ‘kids’ were adopted. Not Ivanna though-that golden blonde hair and vibrant green eyes were definitely inherited from her stunning mother, who Lincoln had never been formally introduced to.
To his amazement, he and the pretty girl became fast friends, even if it had been a friendship which had developed as a secret, so her overprotective parents wouldn’t give her a hard time. The only thing that mattered was that every single summer, Ivanna would come, prettier and warmer than the year before.
Thinking about it all caused a warm glow to spread through him. Reaching the open space of the beach, Lincoln began to jog, a smile on his face as his memory forwarded to his late teen years.
Somewhere between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, Lincoln had begun to grow into his enormous feet and suddenly, it was the girls who noticed him. To earn a bit of pocket money, Lincoln combined work and play, getting a job as a lifeguard for the resort. He’d been motivated by Ivanna’s constant cajoling to get back into the water and face his fear, but he’d spent more time pouring vinegar of jellyfish stings and rubbing lotion on girls’ backs then he did saving lives. The teenage female guests had been mad about him, constantly shuffling to get his attention, like horses nudging each other out of the way at a hay trough.
But his eyes had followed only Ivanna. He could still remember the way she’d looked, leaning against the lifeguard tower, smiling at him seductively without even knowing it, humming as she ran her hands through her salty, tangled hair, waiting patiently for him.........
Lincoln stopped in his tracks an stared out at Oyster point, savoring the memory, inhaling and exhaling deeply as his calves burned and his heart pounded from the spontaneous exercise. The moment when he’d looked into those limpid green eyes and seen his affections mirrored back at him remained the most triumphant moment of his life. He could swum to Brampton and back that day, he’d felt so tall.....
Lincoln resumed his jaunt, feeling freshly energized. Once that charge had hit the air between them, the farce of ‘friendship’ between the two disintegrated. For the rest of the summer, when it came to Ivanna, Lincoln became all hands and lips and heart. When they parted that year, it was with promise and anticipation.
Then the awful year had come. Lincoln ducked his head low against the wind and increased his speed, as though he could run from the memory. Losing his mother in a boating accident in October in Bas Strait had been a terrible blow, and his father had fallen apart. Chase Grey hadn’t wanted to go back to the resort without his wife-but Lincoln had begged to return. He’d believed that seeing Ivanna again would fill some of the void left by his mother. He was almost seventeen and about to move out into the big bad world-the days of vacationing with his parents were over, yet he wanted that last year with his mermaid, to take their relationship from annual to constant, if it was a possibility.
But she never came and Lincoln’s world had collapsed. Nothing mattered that
summer-he made himself sick with worry and longing and grief. But what hurt him made his father stronger- Chase Grey decided to invest his wife’s life insurance where they had made their fondest memories-by buying The Seaview. So they’d packed up their life in Launceston and headed for the tropics, permanently, and Lincoln’s heaven turned hell became his prison. He’d been working there ever since, and every year he’d prayed for a reunion with his childhood sweetheart which had never transpired.
And then two years ago, he’d met Adele. She was a socialite of sorts from Sydney-well travelled and educated and attending university as an English major for the second year. She hadn’t needed the job or the money, but had been in it for fun. Adele had been so vibrant, and so openly interested in him, that he’d been taken in immediately. But she’d never made his heart race the way Ivanna had.
Lincoln reached the first boulder of Oyster point, leaning against it, his chest heaving up and down as past and present Lincoln Grey collided and brought him to a halt. He pressed his back against the cool, smooth surface and stared moodily out at the blackened seascape, wondering if Adele was the problem in their relationship, or him. How could he demand certainty of Adele, when his heart still threatened to burst at the sight of a girl who resembled a ghost from his past?
Lincoln turned, shaking his head at his own emotional messiness, and began to slowly walk back in the direction he’d come, mulling it all over. He had to get his act together. His father was only a few months short of retirement-soon the resort would belong to Lincoln alone. He couldn’t marry a woman he didn’t trust to stay with him, but he couldn’t keep her at arm’s length because he was in love with a facet of his past that was never going to be a part of his future either. Were they two separate issues, or one?
Lincoln sighed. Inheriting the resort should have been a grand thing to imagine, but the Seaview had stopped being his paradise years ago. Not only did Lincoln find it difficult to imagine spending the rest of his life with Adele, but the thought of spending the rest of his life at the Seaview Resort was suffocating. Put both concepts together....and all Lincoln wanted to do was run.
And so, alone on the darkened beach, he did.
⁓
‘We can finish this up later, Vana,’ Saraya said, backing away from Tristan, cheeks aflame. ‘I think I’m due for a swim anyway.’
‘Sure,’ Vana grinned, knowing it was a flat-out lie. ‘Go cool down.’
‘Have a good night,’ Tristan said without turning. He rubbed at his eyes-clearly impatient to get his full vision back. That was the hardest part about the transformation-that period when the eyes re-adjusted themselves. Tristan’s would be normal in minutes-but at Vana’s age, it took the better part of an hours for the lens in her eye to recede.
Saraya backed into the stately old plantation house and slammed the screen door shut behind her. Vana could hear the girls’ footsteps increase rapidly as she bolted up the stairs, clearly intent on spreading the word that their heartthrob was downstairs and scantily clad, talking to the queen.
Vana regarded Tristan with a smile. ‘Tell me, you’ve been on the earth what, forty years now? Have you tired of all of the fuss that surrounds you?’
He winked at her. ‘Have you, your majesty?’
‘Four hundred years ago.’
‘Then ask me again in sixty years,’ he grinned, his pale blue eyes dancing merrily. They were more focused now, less confused.
Vana laughed. She enjoyed seeing someone enjoy their privileged existence. Five lifetimes of hearing practiced modesty amongst the worlds’ most beautiful had grown tedious. She wished her own daughter were as proud as the confident Tristan. The qualities revered in humans-humility, modesty, kindness, affability...they were the least useful to their species. The tougher the spine and the broader the ego, the better. And if she were to be in charge of an entire species...Ivyanne needed to start believing in herself. Only when a woman loved herself, could she select a worthy mate.
‘Good to hear it. You look terrific, by the way.’
‘As do you,’ he responded with a dazzling smile.
‘Why thank you,’ Vana was not a young woman anymore. Age, pollution, global warming, stress had marred her looks considerably, most notably in the previous decade. She still looked good for her age-not a day over sixty five at the most, and yet she was ancient in appearance, compared to her grandmother, who could have passed for a forty year old at Vana’s age.
The planet had gone to hell in the four hundred years since Vana’s birth, and that made Vana fear for her daughter’s life expectancy, something she was supposed to be absolved of, as the mother of a mermaid. She wished the humans would take greater heed. But as their ability to destroy the environment increased, so did their ability to delay the effects of aging which came hand and hand with it.
‘I assume you summoned me here to talk about Ivyanne again?’ Tristan reclined in the cane chair Saraya had vacated, brushing a few grains of sand and remaining scales off the back of his leg absently. ‘I’ve attempted to contact her but have been with polite abhorrence, at the most.’ He smiled. ‘Has she had a rapid change of heart?’
Vana sighed ‘Well she’s made it through the first night, and my sources tell me she seems content there, for the time being.’
‘I suppose that’s for the best-give her time to clear her head.’
‘Perhaps...’ Vana hated being separated from her only child, and yet she knew Ivyanne had to face certain things before she would be fit to rule. ‘Still, I want her home Tristan, and happy and safe.’
He arched a brow. ‘Please tell me you think I’m the one who can deliver her back? Because nothing would please me more.’
Vana leaned forward in her chair. ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’ Ivyanne had not, made up her mind yet, but her mother had. ‘Bane Londeree is a good man and has a strong, steadfast family...’ she had to add that-being that Tristan’s own sister was Bane’s mother, and she didn’t want to offend him, ‘but Bane hasn’t showed much interest in the union or leaving Hawaii. It’s your sister lobbying on his behalf, is it not? Won’t she be just as happy if her own brother wins the heart of the princess anyway?’
‘True,’ Tristan said with a small smile. ‘I’m fond of my nephew, but I don’t really think they’re well-matched at all. I’m sure Isabelle will be content if I win the princesses hand instead.’
Vana smiled, relieved that they didn’t have to quarrel over the subject. ‘Exactly.’
‘But what of Ardhi? Surely you can acknowledge that his claim to Ivyanne is a strong one. I hear they’ve been great friends for some time.’
‘Their connection was forged within friendship, Tristan,’ Vana said forcibly. ‘Without passion or intensity or mystery...if Ivyanne chooses him, the only life she will ever know is the one she’s always had. He hasn’t it within him to influence or challenge her, and I want a full life for my girl.’ Vana had other reasons, but she kept them to herself.
He inclined his head towards her. ‘As grateful as I am that you’re giving me permission to intervene with her new life, won’t this backfire? I was under the impression that Ivyanne left because she could not stand the thought of any of us, let alone our presence.’
Vana scowled. ‘Young Ardhi was the cause of her discomfort-not Bane and yourself.’ She sat up straighter and leaned towards him. ‘I’m not saying to shadow every move she makes, but I am suggesting you find a way to keep yourself at the forefront of her mind.’
‘I’m familiar with that maneuver.’ He made a face. ‘But it will be difficult. Ivyanne is so innocent...will she be able to overlook my, uh past?’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ Vana reclined again, studying him. Even perturbed, he was astonishingly attractive. ‘Ivyanne finds the best in everybody. You were born fifteen years before her, and she was originally promised to your brother. You couldn’t have anticipated courting her one day, so why would she expect you to have saved yourself?’
It was tru
e. Tristan could not be reprimanded for being a womanizer. All mermen were granted the freedom to do as they pleased with human women to compensate for their limited options within their own species. The Marked Daughters were forbidden from having sex until an ideal marriage was arranged for them, and the Court-Zara women were off-limits to most mermen to avoid cross-breeding.
So while Ivyanne had remained chaste and guarded her entire life, Tristan had been making the most of his freedom on the mainland. All mermen were guilty of the same thing, but Tristan had drawn gossip because his looks and charisma drew women like bees to a flower. Most mermaids knew of one human friend who’d been taken in, and turned inside out, by Tristan Loveridge. And all mermaids were desperate to experience the thrall firsthand.
It wasn’t a character flaw in Vana’s opinion, only a minor hurdle. If Ivyanne could come to terms with the fact that she was not Tristan's first (unlike Ardhi, who at twenty-five had not yet explored the world) Vana didn’t see how it could affect anything in the long run. Especially if he was as good a lover as his reputation promised!
It was hard for the Court women to have children. Vana and her mother, Ivy, had only managed one child each, and Ivyanne hadn’t come along until well after Vana’s four hundredth birthday. Vana wanted Ivyanne to do better, and faster-and something about Tristan screamed virility. Their family tree was so sparse, yet blessed with genetic perfection. But if Ivyanne didn’t have children, their line would end with her.
Ironically, two of Ivyanne’s potential husbands only existed because their parents had each broken the rules, and bred with other ‘Marked’ partners.
Joakim Fire and Eka Wood had been the worst offenders. They had intertwined two families for a selfish reason-love. Their union had produced Ardhi, Lumi and Pintang, and because of the merged families, Joakim and Eka had created a new surname for themselves…‘Kayu-Api’ which meant Wood-fire in Indonesian. Yes the children were all amazing mer-specimens, but the union had not been sanctioned. Adding Ivyanne’s own name, Court to that would be a foolish idea. How would Vana make an example out of the rule breaking Kayu-Api clan if she allowed her daughter to make Ardhi a prince as well?
