Wanda looked up from her phone. “I just texted him. He was in the parking lot waiting for me. And please, Nina, don’t be so crude. You’ll make her think we don’t care. Plus, it’s not like you don’t have nine-frillion hours. You, my dear, have eternity.”
Sam must be the baby with the strange complexion Nina had been carrying around in the pool along with her little girl Charlie. He was quite small, in Esther’s opinion, for a swim class. But then, who was she to talk? She was in her thirties and still afraid of bathtub water deeper than four inches.
A tall, devastatingly handsome man with dark hair and gorgeous eyes, wearing a casual navy-blue pullover shirt and low-slung jeans, appeared behind Nina, carrying Sam. He put a hand to Wanda’s waist and asked in a husky tone, “Trouble, honey?”
She patted his cheek lovingly and smiled, pressing a kiss to the baby’s cheek and nuzzling his button nose. “Or something.”
“Remember what we discussed, okay? Please?” he reminded her in a tone that spoke of a serious conversation they’d had.
Wanda smiled coquettishly at Heath and batted her eyelashes, rubbing her belly. “Promise, no heavy lifting today. I have to watch out for junior. He’s my first priority. Always.”
“First, that’s my daughter you’re carrying around. And that’s not what you said when you picked up the car to collect Sam’s teething ring, young lady,” he teased good-naturedly.
Picked up the car? Like, the car-car or a toy car?
“Oh, stop. The SUV’s not that heavy. I certainly wasn’t crawling under it with this belly, and that’s Sam’s favorite teething ring. How could I leave it there until you got back from your golf game? And this?” She pointed to her belly. “Is a boy, Heath Jefferson.”
Okay, So Wanda had picked up a car-car. Not a toy car.
What the fresh hell?
Standing on tiptoe, Wanda kissed her husband’s lips. “You take the children home, would you, please? I promise to be very careful. No heavy lifting. Okay?”
Nina nudged Heath’s wide shoulder. “Don’t worry. I got her back. We won’t let her do anything she shouldn’t do. Text Greg before you leave and he’ll come get Charlie from you. Carl’ll worry if she’s gone for too long, and Calamity’ll have a cow if Carl gets upset.” Nina plopped kisses on each baby’s forehead and waved them off.
“Stop being a worrywart, Heath. Would we, in a million years, let anything happen to Wanda and baby Jefferson? Never. We got this,” Marty said, blowing kisses to the babies and waving to Heath before she turned around and narrowed her gaze on Esther, like she had a purpose and Esther was her mission.
Esther, who still hadn’t spoken a word, fought a cringe under Marty’s scrutiny.
As a general rule, she liked to observe people, situations, life, more than she liked to interact. At least at first. Her job as a divorce mediator required she pay close attention to body language and inflection and all sorts of things. But right now, after what had happened when she’d been the last in the class to climb out of the pool, she didn’t have any words left to offer.
Instead, she’d just sit here under the diving board until this thing attached to her like some sort of colorful, yet, admittedly beautiful growth went away. It would go away, right? It had to go away…
On a sigh, Wanda slipped her arm through Marty’s and they made their way the short distance to the diving board.
Marty sat on her haunches and looked at Esther with the prettiest sapphire-blue eyes Esther had ever seen. “I’m Marty Flaherty. What’s your name?”
“Swear to fuck, if it’s Ariel, I’ll piss myself,” Nina cackled, coming to stand behind her friends.
Marty reached behind her back and swatted Nina’s leg without even looking. “Find your inner marshmallow, Elvira, and show some empathy,” she ordered, as though the order made any sense at all.
Now Wanda gazed at her, genuine concern on her finely boned face. “You’re frightening us, honey. Please say something. We want to help. I promise you, we can help if you’ll let us.”
Yet, Esther cringed, attempting to inch farther away. After everything she’d heard, she was convinced these people were either all part of some weird cult of unbelievably pretty people who believed they had superpowers, like super-strength, or she was having a nightmare. A stone-cold, really real, scary-AF nightmare.
“Fuck, Wanda. Am I gonna have to haul this chick out to the car?” Nina complained, as though she hauled chicks with multicolored tails every day. “Because I’m tellin’ ya, Marty’s gonna have to move that shit-show of Bobbie-Sue crap out of the backseat. Her car’s the biggest one we have, and we’ll never stuff her ass in there with all that lip gloss.”
Suddenly, and quite without warning, Esther found her voice. “Bobbie-Sue? Do you sell Bobbie-Sue?” She’d sold Bobbie-Sue once, in order to pay for college.
She’d been about as bad at it as a breast implant salesman at a porn convention, worse at trying to put all that makeup on her face, let alone anyone else’s. All that talk of color wheels and blend, blend, blend was not her gift.
Marty smiled warmly, her eyes lighting up. “She speaks! Yay! Now we’re getting somewhere. And I own Bobbie-Sue, honey. I’m an honest, reputable businesswoman. And my husband owns Pack Cosmetics. We’re in the process of merging the two companies right now. Which is why I missed Mommy and Me class tonight with my little girl, Hollis. But now you can see, you have nothing to be afraid of.”
Tentatively gazing at the women, Esther confessed, “I tried to sell Bobbie-Sue to help pay for some college courses.”
“Yeah, and you bought what with that pile of cash, a pack of pencils? Some Ramen noodles for a week?” Nina asked on a cynical snort.
“Actually, it was a loaf of bread and a bottle of mustard from the Andes. Did you know they even had their own mustard in the Andes?”
Marty shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Sounds like you didn’t work the program… What’s your name?”
“I’m not sure I want to tell you because I’m pretty sure you’ll laugh.” After that Ariel crack, she knew they would.
“Aw, they won’t laugh,” Nina reassured her. “I will, for damn sure. Trust and believe. But these two sensitive snowflakes would rather die than hurt your fucking feelings.”
Giving them all a sheepish glance, she winced even before she spoke. “It’s Esther…”
Wanda leaned in, her eyes questioning. “Esther…?” she coaxed with a hopeful glance.
She swallowed, smoothing her hands over the long length of her new locks. Just say it and get it over with. You’ve lived with it all your life, for pity’s sake.
Well, sure I have. But that was just a bunch of lame jokes about being named after a famous synchronized swimmer and not actually being able to swim.
It wasn’t because I had a tail with a fin.
“Esther Williams…er, Sanchez. Esther Williams Sanchez,” she finally blurted out.
There was a short silence while each woman processed who Esther Williams was as the lights from the pool played against the ceiling and the floor continued to dry around her.
“Like the famous synchronized swimmer?” Nina crowed, holding her belly before she doubled over at the waist.
And then they all began to laugh.
Wanda was the first to recover, sputtering against the back of her hand and using her thumb to wipe tears from her eyes. “Ladies! Stahhp!” And then she choked out another string of hyena-ish giggles before she straightened and cleared her throat, composing herself. “Girls. Knock it off! There’s someone in need. Also,” she said, her eyes imploring Esther’s, “please forgive me for behaving so poorly. I’m given to fits and spurts of all sorts of crazy emotions since I got knocked up. I wasn’t laughing at you.”
“But I wasn’t laughing,” Esther protested, catching a glimmer of her yellow and aqua tail under the pool lights before briefly clenching her eyes shut.
Wanda bit her lip to keep from laughing again. “Okay. I was laughing
at you. But you have to admit, it’s kind of funny, your name being…and you ending up a mermaid.” Wanda shook her head as if it would help clear it. “Never mind. My apologies for being so rude.”
Esther watched this all play out, but simply said, “No sweat.”
Marty plopped down on the ground, holding her belly after laughing too hard, then she reached out a hand and placed it on Esther’s arm. “I’m sorry, too. Now let’s get down to business, Esther Williams Sanchez. How did this happen?”
“I’m not sorry, ’cuz that shit’s funny, but yeah. How the fuck did this happen? Like, how do you have legs one minute and a tail the next?” Nina inquired.
Esther stared at the length of her body, and then she looked up at the ladies, all expectantly waiting for her to answer. The pressure to explain became intense. “I…I don’t…”
Tears began to form in the corner of her eyes and panic swelled in her chest. Her heart raced, crashing against her ribs until she thought surely it would burst through the wall of her chest.
Nina rasped a sigh, planting her hands on her hips. “Fuck. Here we go, girlies. Meltdown in three, two—”
And then Esther screamed.
She screamed loud. So loud, it reverberated around the Olympic-size swimming pool, swirling and swishing as it wended its way into one ear and out the other.
And she didn’t even care if she came off as some hysterical, screeching shrew—something she despised in most women.
She had a tail.
A fin.
A whateverthehell you wanted to label it.
She had it and it was attached to her and she didn’t know how to get away from it.
So, she gulped in a fresh breath of air and screamed again.
Even louder.
Chapter 2
“Shut the fuck up, Rainbow Brite!” Nina roared at Esther, hiking her up on her shoulder as she stomped her way out the back door of the Y into the early fall air. “You’re killing me, for fuck’s sake!”
Still, she struggled against this woman who had to be as strong as Thor, her grip was so tight.
Then there was a hand on her bare back, soothing, warm. Wanda’s voice wafted to her ears. “Esther! Listen to me. Stop screaming. You’re going to draw attention to us, and you, and I’m thinking you’d prefer not to be seen this way just yet. Also, I don’t relish the idea I’ll go to jail for aiding in the kidnapping of a mermaid. Now, I swear to you, we’re going to help, but you have to stop screaming.”
“Wanda? I swear on my GD blood supply for the next year, I’m gonna sock her in the mouth if she doesn’t quit squirming! She’s damn slimy! I’m gonna end up dropping her headfirst if she doesn’t knock it the fuck off!”
“Esther!” Marty yelled into the near-empty parking lot, putting a hand on Nina’s shoulder to thwart her movement. She took hold of Esther’s face with both hands and lifted her head until their eyes met. “Stop. Struggling. Stop. Screaming. Understood? I’ve had a brutally long day. My head is pounding, which is crazy because I’m a werewolf and we don’t get headaches. My feet are tired, my eyeliner’s running, my back hurts, and my Spanx are too damn tight. Now, knock it off, shut your face, and let us help you!”
Whatever it was in Marty’s tone, whatever words she used, or maybe it was just that she was disgusted with herself for screaming like some hysterical, out-of-control girl, Esther instantly stopped struggling and blew out a breath, letting the cleansing, cool air of early fall seep into her lungs.
“Okay,” she murmured as they stopped in front of an enormous black SUV with tinted windows.
Marty patted her cheek and smiled a weary smile. “All right then. Now, let’s get you in the back of the car, and very calmly, you’re going to tell us what happened and how this came to be while we get you somewhere safe. Okay?”
She took in three or four more gulps of fresh air and nodded with a bit of difficulty, due to the weight of her new hair. “Okay.”
“No more screaming?” Marty asked as she pulled something from the back of the SUV and put the backseat down.
Esther shook her head, so heavy with hair, her body trembling violently. “Not a sound.”
Throwing a blanket around Esther’s shoulders, Marty opened the back of the SUV. “Nina? You push her through the back, I’ll pull her in, got it? Wanda, turn the car on and turn the heat up, please.”
Wanda sighed a pretty, delicate sigh. “I can help, you know.”
But Marty shook her head, along with her finger, her bracelets clacking together. “No—no you cannot. Bun in the oven means nothing arduous. Heath would plain eat our faces off if we let you get hurt. Or are you forgetting our last OOPS meeting, where he threatened to tie you to a chair and have Arch force-feed you so much of his delicious food you’d be too fat to walk, let alone chase after a client?”
OOPS? What the hell was an OOPS meeting? Some kind of acronym for a weird addiction?
Wanda chuckled, a sound so light and as pretty as her sigh; it almost made Esther smile. This Heath wasn’t just handsome, he clearly loved his wife, and she hadn’t seen that kind of love since her grandparents.
“I remember the conversation well. Didn’t that happen while I was stuffing my face with that insane smoked brisket he made on the Fourth of July?”
Marty’s nod was sharp as she tucked the blanket tighter around Esther. “It was, and OMG, that brisket. It’s still slathered on my thighs. Now, please start the car.”
Wanda made a face at her friend, but she smiled as she did, and it was warm and fond. “I rather feel like we’ve switched roles, and you’re suddenly the one with a level head on her shoulders and I’m the one who needs direction and patience.”
Marty tweaked her cheek. “Well, don’t get used too it. There’s only so much nice I have in me before Nina Hulk smashes it right the hell outta me.”
“Hey! Yippy and Yappy? I’m carrying a fucking mermaid on my back like a sack of GD potatoes from the Shop Rite down the road. Get your pats on the back out of the way before I beat your asses with her tail.”
Nina stalked her way to the back of the SUV and let Esther slide down the front of her body until they were eye to eye.
“You’re strong,” she commented. Yes, it was a silly thing to say in light of the situation, but now that she was mentally mostly back in the saddle, she couldn’t help but mention it as she stared at this woman with eyes so black, they looked like coal.
“I’m also deaf now, too.”
“I’m sorry. It just hit me all at once, and I lost it.”
“Well, pay attention. I’m gonna hit you and your yellowness all at once if you scream like that again. I have sensitive ears. You feel what I’m puttin’ out?”
Esther’s breath shuddered in and out, condensation creating small puffs of clouds that escaped her lips. “I do.”
And she did. This woman was formidable. Everything about her—her strength, her body language, her piercing gaze—all said she was a force Esther didn’t want to reckon with.
“Good. Now, I’m going to turn your sparkly rainbow ass around and shove you in there on your side like I’m stuffing a sausage back into its casing, and Marty’ll haul you inside. One peep out of your big-ass mouth—one peep—and I beat the shit out of you with your tail. I’m not gonna end up on Cell Block D, fighting my way for top-dog status and making shower shoes out of panty liners and duct-tape, because I tried to do the decent thing. Understand?”
“We have simpatico,” Esther agreed, then biting the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out. She wanted to ask where they were taking her, but at this point, she was beyond hysterical and well into shock.
It almost didn’t matter what they did with her.
Nina nodded, her swirly hair falling around her glowingly pale face. “Good. Here we go.” Repositioning her so that Esther was literally tucked under her arm like a 2x4 length of wood, Nina put her upper body into the back of the SUV, laying Esther on her side before rolling her onto her stomach with a gru
nt.
Marty crawled into the driver’s side and reached over the top of the seat, her cheeks red, a bead of perspiration on her lip, and grabbed her upper arms, pulling on them as Nina latched onto the lower half of her body. They lifted and shoved until Esther was almost all the way in.
“Marty? Hold up. Problem,” Nina said, and Esther heard the concern in her tone.
Marty blew a strand of hair from her face, the SUV lights revealing tired lines around her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Her fin’s hanging out the back of the SUV, dude. She’s too damn long to fit. We can’t drive around Staten Island with her fin hanging out the back. People will think we’re batshit.”
They didn’t already think that? Surely, with all this talk of werewolves and lifting cars, someone had labeled them crazy at least once.
Rising to her elbows, Esther tried to make herself as small as possible and scrunch upward, but the weight of the tail made it almost impossible to move the lower half of her body.
But Wanda had an answer as she held up something Esther couldn’t quite see. “Tarp. Nina had a tarp in the back of her car. We’ll wrap it around her tail and bungee the back shut.”
That settled, they made quick work of things while Esther stayed as quiet as promised, afraid to ask what was next—because really, what could be next?
A gig at Sea World?
Tamping down another wave of rising panic, helpless as a newborn kitten, she still didn’t say anything as Marty roared the engine and shot out of the parking lot, with Wanda in the passenger seat and Nina in her car, following behind them. The exposed part of her tail and her fins flapped like flags in a hurricane, but the women had done a pretty decent job of disguising her.
“Where do you live, Esther? Can we get you into your place relatively unnoticed?” Wanda asked as they drove away from the lights of the YMCA.
Now hold on. Whoa and Nellie. She wasn’t bringing these people to her house. Where she slept. Wasn’t that akin to suicide?
But then, what were her choices? For all the kooky conversations they’d had around her about werewolves and such, they appeared to know what they were talking about. They’d swept in and taken charge and she’d hardly said a word.
The Accidental Mermaid (Accidentally Paranormal Series Book 16) Page 2
