“I’m not going back, Loucan!”

Damn! It was his own fault, Loucan realized. He’d declared himself way too soon. “I’m not looking for any kind of decision right away, Lass,” he said calmly.

“Well, you’re getting one!” Her green eyes blazed and her full lower lip jutted angrily. “My decision is made. I’m not going back to Pacifica. I want you to leave.”

“This isn’t over, Lass.”

“Is that a threat? Are you planning to kidnap me?”

Loucan’s jaw tightened in frustration. Kidnap her? What a good idea. “Yes, Lass,” he said through clenched teeth, “if I have to.”

A Tale of the Sea

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE by Carla Cassidy

IN DEEP WATERS by Melissa McClone

CAUGHT BY SURPRISE by Sandra Paul

FOR THE TAKING by Lilian Darcy

For the Taking
Lilian Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LILIAN DARCY

has written nearly fifty books for Silhouette Romance and Harlequin Mills & Boon Medical Romance (Prescription Romance). Her first book for Silhouette appeared on the Waldenbooks Series Romance bestsellers list, and she’s hoping readers go on responding strongly to her work. Happily married with four active children and a very patient cat, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do—including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and traveling. She currently lives in Australia, but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family. Lilian loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at P.O. Box 381, Hackensack, NJ 07602 or e-mail her at lildarcy@austarmetro.com.au.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Epilogue

Prologue

This time they met in a bar.

Loucan was at home in places like this. He’d worked in one, a long time ago, for about six months. The yeasty tang of beer in the air was familiar, and the other drinkers didn’t think there was anything strange about two men sitting hunched over their filled glasses in the darkest corner of the establishment, locked in conversation.

“So, how is married life?” he asked Kevin Cartwright. It sounded like a casual question, but it wasn’t.

“Uh, you know, it’s okay,” the big man answered. “It’s not bad.”

Yeah, right! The guy was actually wrestling with his uncontrollable grin, and the grin was winning. It just wouldn’t stay off his face, no matter how hard he tried. Marriage to Phoebe Jones was clearly a lot better than “not bad.”

“I’ve brought some wedding pictures, if you want to see them,” Kevin added.

Loucan didn’t waste any time. Ignoring the mention of such a trivial thing as wedding pictures, he pounced at once. “Because I get the impression it’s too much of a distraction,” he said. “What progress have you made in locating Thalassa since your marriage?”

Kevin sat up straight, gulped some beer and swore. “Where is this coming from, Loucan?” he demanded. “I thought we were here to celebrate three successes, not fling accusations about one failure.”

Loucan ignored him. “Have you narrowed down the search?” he asked. “You’ve been working on this for four years, on and off. Phoebe, Kai and Saegar have all been found. Yes, that’s success, but it doesn’t mean anything without Lass. She’s your sole focus now. I need results, and I have to wonder, is wedded bliss with Phoebe taking the edge off your hunger to close this case?”

“Easy, Loucan…!” Kevin slumped back in his chair. He shook his head slowly several times as he swirled the beer in his glass.

Loucan wasn’t fooled by the apparently relaxed posture. They were both strong men. Direct. Sure of themselves. He’d gone on the attack with the deliberate aim of getting the straightest possible answers from the man he’d hired to track down the four far-flung Pacifican royal siblings.

Kevin didn’t disappoint him. Leaning forward again with new energy, he took another long gulp of beer, fixed his deep blue eyes on Loucan and said, “Okay. You want the truth? The only thing that finding the other three has done is made me face facts.”

“What facts?” Loucan said. “I’m interested in facts. I like them.”

“Loucan, we have nothing left to go on. There weren’t many avenues to pursue to begin with, and those turned into dead ends real fast. Thalassa and Cyria are both unusual names, but I ran searches through every database and archive I could think of in two hemispheres, and the handful of hits I turned up didn’t pan out. Australia and New Zealand, where you think they’re located, both have small populations compared to the United States, but that didn’t seem to help. I’ve told you all this.”

“Tell me again. Tell me what point you’re at now.”

“I’m guessing Cyria changed her name, and maybe Lass’s as well. I’m guessing she got them each forged identity documents—birth certificates—through some South Pacific nation where bribes get results. We found the other three mainly through luck. Now it seems like our luck has run out.”

“You’re throwing in the towel?” Loucan felt his scalp tighten with anger. “Giving up the search? This is because of Phoebe!”

“It’s not,” Kevin insisted. “And I’m not throwing it in. I’ve got one thing left to suggest, the only thing I believe can get a result.”

“Yeah? Then I want to hear it. Straight.”

“You knew Thalassa,” Kevin said. “How old was she when you left Pacifica that first time?

Loucan shrugged impatiently. “That was twenty-five years ago. She was eight and I was fourteen. What does that have to do with anything?”

“You knew her then,” Kevin repeated. “And you knew Cyria, who was her guardian. And whatever has happened to both of them since, there are ways in which people don’t change. Think, Loucan!” It wasn’t quite a command, yet much more than a plea. “You’re the one with something to go on. Memories. Impressions. Things you couldn’t communicate to me even if you tried, because you’re not going to realize what’s significant until you’re actually living the search.”

“Me? Living the search? You want me to find her?”

“Yes. If anyone can find Thalassa after all this time, it’s you.”

Kevin’s eyes blazed intently, and he’d balled one hand into a fist. Given the kind of man Kevin Cartwright was, that meant the idea deserved at least Loucan’s consideration.

He nodded slowly and narrowed his eyes, thinking, struggling….

Memories? Impressions? Lord, it was hard! He’d last seen Thalassa twenty-five years ago, back in Pacifica, when he was just a boy. Since then, he’d had adventures enough for three lifetimes.

He’d spent ten years, and more, roaming the world. He’d swum with pods of whales on their great migrations around the Pacific rim, until he knew every current in that vast ocean. Living on land, he’d worked as a commercial fisherman, an Arizona ranch hand and a Wall Street bond trader. He’d swapped identities easily, and he had hungrily absorbed knowledge and understanding from every experience.

He’d never done anything seriously illegal, but he had been in prison once for several days, arrested by mistake. He’d even been married. That wasn’t a memory he liked to dwell on, since it carried with it so much guilt and grief.

For the past fifteen years, he’d spent most of his time in Pacifica, relearning its ways, working to bring together the two warring factions that had divided the mer people for a generation.

But before all of that…

Yes, he realized. He still had memories. One in particular flooded into his mind as he sat and thought, his beer untouched on the table in front of him.

His parents and Thalassa’s had been friends once, before Lass’s father, King Okeana, had come under the malign influence of an evil, manipulative merman named Joran, and his dangerous ideas. The friendship had already begun to fracture by the time Loucan reached his teens, but the two women, Okeana’s wife, Wailele, and Loucan’s own mother, Ondina, were still managing to hold it together, the way women sometimes did. There had been no open rift, and no violence, as yet.

The two families had left the safe confines of Pacifica’s underwater world and gone on a picnic together, at a secret coral island beach. Around a closed fire made from phosphorus distilled out of the ocean itself, they’d feasted on freshly cooked marine delicacies as well as the exotic and expensive treats of earth-grown foods—bananas, coconuts and baked yams.

Loucan remembered Wailele’s frailty. She’d never fully recovered from the difficult birth of the twins, Phoebe and Kai, and could take little part in the day-to-day rearing of her children, particularly lively Lass. Cyria, he remembered, was the dominant influence in Lass’s life even then. He remembered her doting strictness. He wouldn’t have put up with it, he’d thought at fourteen. He remembered Cyria’s unwillingness to share Thalassa with others, and her pride in the bright, pretty child.

Take Lass’s long, rippling, red-gold hair, for example. It had never been cut.

“And never will, while I have breath in my body!” Cyria had declared in his hearing. “It’s far too beautiful, and it sets her apart, as a princess should be.”

Lass had seemed unconcerned by Cyria’s attitude back then. She had delighted in playing with her toddling sisters, entertaining them by building sand castles and digging holes for the sea to fill.

She’d casually obeyed Cyria’s order, “Braid your hair! Keep it out of the sand!” then had gone back to her sisters, with a laugh and a kiss for each of them. She’d made herself a frivolous pair of “shoes” out of shells and strips of seaweed, and all three sisters had giggled as she pranced around in them on the beach. She’d been so full of life and happiness.

But what might have changed since? Cyria and Lass had left Pacifica together, just the two of them, and Cyria’s influence could only have grown stronger.

Still, Lass’s spirit would have been hard to break. Loucan remembered how she’d left the beach and swum far out into the ocean, lazing there during the minutes it took for her tail membrane to form. He had followed her at a distance, unwillingly impressed by her boldness. She was only a little kid!

Then some dolphins had swum past and she’d joined them, surfing and frolicking in the waves….

Yes, Kevin was right. There were memories.

Kevin was watching him. And watching his untouched beer. Loucan blinked and quirked his lips in a reluctant and self-conscious smile. His voice came out slightly husky as he told the younger man, “I see what you mean. You’re right. Maybe I am the only one who has a chance of finding her.”

And with Kevin’s thoughtful and curious gaze still fixed on him, Loucan was struck by a sudden intuition that, after all, finding Thalassa was going to be the easy part.

Chapter One

Thalassa came toward Loucan across a lush field of green grass, where several sleek and well-fed horses grazed.

Her red-gold hair, which still shocked him with its almost boyish length, glinted like polished copper. A clingy, cream knit tank top showed off smooth pale skin and a figure that was just as shapely above the waist as it was below. Her legs were neat and athletic in a pair of khaki stretch pants, and she had brown leather boots on her feet, making her walk easy and confident. She was as graceful and sure in her body as one of the horses she’d just been tending.

Something stirred inside Loucan, and he recognized the feeling with ease. He’d felt it the other night, too—the night they’d first met. He could be attracted to this woman. Very easily. There was something so lush and physical about her. The rich color of her hair. The fullness of her breasts.

There was something very contained and self-sufficient in her emotional makeup, as well. He suspected she wouldn’t open up to him easily. She had reasons for that—reasons to do with the past. She’d probably trained herself to be mistrustful.

But it wasn’t just a matter of history, of discordant beliefs and opposing factions. It went deeper than that, to the very heart of her. The powerful sensuality he detected in her seemed dormant, as if she hadn’t yet discovered it.

Or as if she feared it, and kept it hidden.

As soon as Lass registered his presence on her land, the whole aura of her body changed. She tensed and lifted a hand to shield her eyes against the Australian summer sunlight, which was strong even at nine in the morning.

Yes, she’d recognized him, and she wasn’t surprised. Loucan had told her on the beach the other night that he would give her two days—time in which to think, to get used to this, to understand that he wasn’t a part of the violence of the past—and then he would come looking for her. In the end, he’d given her three days, but now, as promised, he was here.

She wouldn’t even acknowledge him at first. They were still some distance apart. He leaned against the side of his dark blue rental car and took in the details of her place, while she swung two feed buckets in her hands and scowled up at the leafy tops of the eucalyptus trees, moving in a light breeze.

Lass had found a pretty incredible home for herself, Loucan decided. At the end of a gravel path lined with nasturtiums and lavender stood a quaint old building with a veneer of pale yellow stucco and a mantle of leafy green wisteria.

According to an elegantly carved and painted sign, this was The Old Dairy—Tearoom and Gallery. The sign listed its opening hours, as well as the fact that “light meals and Devonshire teas” were served. Lass owned the place, and the land it was situated on. Several acres, if he was judging it right.

Beyond the tearoom building, and connected to it by another path, was a low, gracious house built in the Australian colonial style, with a galvanized metal roof that curved down to form what Loucan now knew was called a bull-nosed veranda.

At the moment, the veranda was filled with morning sunshine. It made the terra-cotta pots of bright flowers stand out like beacons. Later, though, as the day grew hot, the long sweep of stone flagging would be darkened by cool shade.

Behind the house was a stable and a shed or two, neatly kept, then more green fields and forest, and finally, in the distance, the mountains. Wild mountains, Loucan observed, clothed in forests of sage-green eucalyptus.

This view to the west was impressive enough, but behind Loucan, in the opposite direction, it was even better. More significant, too. It told him much more about Lass than she probably wanted him to know. About three miles away, beyond lush dairy country, beyond a scattering of small towns, beyond tidal lakes, rocky headlands and miles of pristine sandy beaches, was the beckoning sea.

Technically, it was the Tasman Sea, this two-thousand-mile stretch between the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, but in reality it was an integral part of the Pacific Ocean. It stretched, blue and sparkling, in a long, wide ribbon from north to south, and in the summer haze its horizon blurred indistinctly with the almost garishly blue sky. The whole scene was breathtaking.

“You came,” Lass said.

He turned to find her watching him from a distance of twenty feet or so. “I said I would.”

“I hoped you wouldn’t. I didn’t want to see you again.”

“I know.”

He had a sudden flashback to the other night’s most shocking moment. After he had told her who he was and how he had found her, she had fled from him across the sand in the darkness to hide among the jagged piles of rocks on the nearby headland. He had followed her, and found her sobbing wildly, in anger and fear, while hacking at her gorgeous fall of hair—it reached to her thighs—with a jagged piece of oyster shell.

“I like your hair that way,” he said to her now. He wasn’t going to let her avoid the difficult issues between them. He couldn’t pretend. They both needed to confront this.

“I’m getting used to it,” she answered guardedly. Self-conscious, she ran her fingers through its short, bright strands, making it seem more alive than ever. The gesture momentarily deepened the cleft between her breasts and drew his gaze. “I went to my hairdresser on Wednesday morning to get it properly shaped,” she added.

“What did you tell her?”

She shrugged. “That I’d grown sick of it, suddenly. That it was too much work, so I’d chopped it off.”

She was so prickly and distant and defensive! Loucan knew how emotional she had been the other night when he’d found her on the beach and told her who he was, but she was trying to pretend her outburst had never happened.

“Why did you hack it off like that?” he persisted.

“You know why.”

Yes, but I want to hear it from your own mouth.

She had a passionate mouth, he observed. It was full-lipped, sensuous and strong. With a surge of understanding, he gave in and said it for her. “Because your hair was the thing that led me to you.”

Her nod was just a brief jerk of her jutting chin, and her green eyes were narrowed.

“Does this mean you’re going to hurt the dolphins, too?” He asked, then ignored her shocked hiss of breath. “Hearing that you’d been seen surfing with them at sunset was what clinched it for me. I knew you were the woman I’d been looking for, and I knew where to find you.”

“Hurt the—!” She shook her head and swallowed, outraged.

Maybe he’d gone too far. He wanted to push her into talking about what she believed and why she was so scared, but this wasn’t the way. She wasn’t like Kevin Cartwright, who rose to the bait of a direct attack. She was a woman—a mer woman, if she could accept that—and therefore very different.

He was about to apologize, but she hadn’t stopped speaking. “Why are you doing this? I won’t tolerate it. Leave my property, please!”

She turned in the direction of the house, ignoring him as he followed her. When she reached the veranda, she clumsily levered off her elastic-sided riding boots and socks, and tossed them into a basket beside the door. Retrieving a pair of flimsy, high-heeled cream sandals from the same basket, she slipped them onto her feet and tottered inside.

Still he followed her. Still she ignored him. It would get to be a habit between them, soon. Almost immediately, as if hardly noticing what she’d done, she kicked the sandals off again and frowned down at her pink manicured toes.

Did she have a love-hate relationship with her footwear? Or with her feet?

She tipped her head to one side thoughtfully and said, “Is it enough to tell you that I’m busy this morning? Or should I phone the police?”

“Thalassa—”

“My name is Lass. Or Letitia Susan Morgan, if you want the full, legal version.”

“Cyria did change your name, then.”

“Who? Oh, you mean Aunt Catherine?”

“Do I?” His gaze held hers for a moment, and it was a toss-up whose was the most stubborn. He changed tack. “You have a fabulous view of the ocean, Lass.”

“I prefer the view in the other direction. To the mountains.”

“No, you don’t,” he told her softly. “It’s not the mountains you watch. It’s not the mountains that call you. You couldn’t stay away, could you? You couldn’t when you bought this place, and you still can’t.”

She lifted her chin, and he appreciated the stubborn yet delicate line of her jaw. “I go for weeks, sometimes, without setting foot on the beach.”

He laughed. “You sound like a gambler, talking about visits to the track. You do without it for weeks, but you think about it every day. Are you really going to call the police?”

“Yes! And I really don’t have time to talk! The tearoom opens at ten, and there’s a ton of stuff to do to prepare. My staff will be here any minute.”

“I have something for you from your sisters, Lass.”

Loucan didn’t wait for another defensive answer, another threat to throw him off the property. He just reached into the breast pocket of his conservative and anonymous navy T-shirt and pulled out a paper packet.

“Wedding pictures,” he said, and took the sheaf of prints out of the packet to show her. He knew exactly what effect it would have. It was his one asset in all this, and he was counting on it.

Watching her reaction, he saw that he wasn’t wrong.

Lass gasped and clamped a fist to her heart. Pictures? Of Phoebe and Kai? She had long ago shut off any hope of finding them, had often wondered if they were even still alive. She had thought of trying to trace them somehow, but it had seemed like such a hopeless quest. She didn’t even know to which part of the world or with whom her father had sent them. Didn’t know if they were together or apart.

She hadn’t seen them since they were two years old. They’d been the light of her life, back then—the beings she’d loved most in the world. She still remembered the soft, plump feel of their little cheeks pressed against hers for a “Tiss, Lassie. I want a tiss!” She remembered the exuberant embrace of their little arms, the innocent joyousness of their laughter and the equal intensity of their tears. And now they were grown women, old enough to be married.

She wanted to hear about her sisters.

Set against this longing, all her bravado toward Loucan was fake. For the sake of her sisters, she would make herself believe what he said—that he hadn’t been part of the violence. Because of her sisters, she wouldn’t turn him off her property.

And he knew it, too. Oh, he knew it.

He’d brought those pictures with him on purpose, and he’d mentioned them at exactly the right moment. Now he was cradling them closely in his hand. On the surface, it was a casual gesture, but she knew he was doing it with deliberate intent. She wasn’t going to get to touch those pictures until he chose to let her, and since they were so precious to her, she didn’t dare try and grab them from him by force.

Against a man like Loucan, she would have no hope of success. His strength had been apparent to her from the beginning. It wasn’t just about his powerful size or his almost intimidating good looks. There was an unusual force of will displayed in those incredible blue eyes. This man knew what he wanted.

His thick, dark hair was pulled into a short, tight braid that lay against the back of his neck, making him look like an English sailor from two hundred years ago. The style revealed the regal height and breadth of his forehead and emphasized his square jaw and very masculine bone structure.

He’d frightened her on the beach the other night, from the moment his strong, deep voice had uttered her name. Her full, real name. No one had used it since Cyria died.

Thalassa.

It meant “one who comes from the sea.”

She shivered a little, and wished she was wearing something more substantial than this snug top this morning. She felt vulnerable, physically and emotionally, but wasn’t going to let it show if she could possibly help it.

“Show me the photos!” she demanded.

In his hand she caught the tiniest glimpse of a gorgeous couple dressed in wedding finery, and her heart did a flip against her rib cage. Was that lovely woman with the honey-colored hair Phoebe? Or was it Kai? Oh lord, she should know! A woman should be able to recognize her own sisters!

The phone rang—so perfectly timed that she almost suspected Loucan of engineering the call somehow.

She was tempted to let it ring, except that when you ran a small business essentially on your own, you couldn’t afford to do that. All her calls were potentially important. In any case, Loucan had taken advantage of the moment and had hidden the photos back in their packet.

“Take the call,” he said. “This can wait.”

She was already running to the phone that was fixed to the kitchen wall. It was her decision to take the call, not his! She refused to respond to his arrogant orders, and she wasn’t going to let him underestimate her.

“Lass?” The voice on the other end of the line was shaky, but she recognized it right away.

“Susie? What’s up?”

“We’ve just had an accident. Rob was driving, but it wasn’t his fault….”

“Oh, Lord, Susie, are you all okay?”

Susie and her sister Megan helped in the tearoom kitchen every day, while Susie’s husband, Rob, came part-time to keep the garden in shape and handle maintenance. Susie and Rob were in their late twenties, hoping to start a family soon, and Lass was close to them.

Well, as close as she ever let herself get to anybody.

“We’re fine.” Susie burst into tears.

They were obviously not fine. In a rambling account, Lass heard the details. Susie had lacerations on her face, Megan was being assessed for a head injury and Rob had probably broken something, but they weren’t yet sure what. They were at the emergency department of the local hospital.

“I’ll try to get out to you as soon as I can,” Susie promised, “but they want to put dressings on the cuts, and—”

“Susie, you’re not coming in today, okay? None of you. Or tomorrow. Not till you’re ready. It should be quiet. I’ll—”

“Quiet? It’s the middle of school summer break!”

“I’ll manage. We can still get quiet days sometimes. You just look after yourself and Megan and Rob.”

The fact that Susie stopped arguing at once was proof that neither she, her sister nor Rob were fit to come in. Lass put down the phone, and faced the knowledge that “managing” wouldn’t be nearly as easy as she’d claimed. She opened in less than an hour, and still had the salads and sandwich ingredients to set out, the quiche fillings to prepare, the coffee machine to start, the scones to make, the cream to whip….

And she didn’t care.

“Show me the photos, Loucan.”

Coming through the doorway from the kitchen, her bare feet cool on the polished hardwood floor, she found him standing in front of one of the two sets of French doors that opened onto the veranda, in the direction of the sea.

He was watching the sparkling blue ocean, just the way she always did. Silent, still and totally absorbed. Hungry for it. Listening to its call.

But he couldn’t hate the power of that call, the way she did.

He turned at her words, and he wasn’t holding the photos anymore. Where had he hidden them? She couldn’t tell. Not in the T-shirt pocket.

“I heard your conversation,” he said. “Your help can’t make it today?”

She shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m worried about them, not me. It seems as if none of them is seriously hurt, fortunately. Please show me the photos of Phoebe and Kai. And—and Saegar, too.” The brother and playmate she’d loved. “Do you have pictures of him?”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“News about him, then? You told me the other day you were in touch with him.”

“You didn’t believe me.”

“I do now. Tell me. Show me.”

“Not yet. Tell me what’s in it for me, first, Thalassa.” His blue eyes burned with a cool fire, an assessing look she didn’t trust. “Meet me halfway. If I give you what you want, will you listen to me? Will you give me—?”

“No!” she cried, pressing her palms to her ears. “How can you talk about giving? Your father and his supporters took from me something that can never be replaced. They took my mother’s life with unspeakable violence, and without warning.” She drew a shuddery breath and had to struggle to keep going. “I’m giving you nothing, Loucan!”

As always, when she thought about her mother’s death, she couldn’t fight the secret, nightmare memory. Cyria—she’d only ever called her guardian Aunt Catherine in public—was the only other person who knew what Lass had witnessed as an eight-year-old child, and now Cyria was dead, too. That death, at least, had been peaceful.

Her mother’s, Wailele’s, wasn’t.

Oh, dear God, must I see it in my memory for the rest of my life?

Still, after twenty-five years, the sight of blood in the water panicked and terrified her, and she had told Cyria time and again that she would never go back to Pacifica, where such violence might happen once more.

“Then I guess the photos aren’t needed today,” Loucan said, cutting across her relentless unfolding of memory. He still seemed cool and totally in control.

“How do I even know they’re genuine?” she argued. “I haven’t seen Phoebe or Kai in so long, those couples could be anyone.” She didn’t really believe that. She knew in her heart that they were Phoebe and Kai, and their new husbands. All the same… “I don’t trust you, Loucan!”

“That’s obvious,” he said. “And I can understand it.”

“I hope so!”

“What I can’t understand is that you’d deny yourself the chance to connect with your brother and your sisters purely because you don’t want to have anything to do with me.”

“Not so surprising, if you’d think about it a little more.” Deliberately, she kept her voice hard. “You’re apparently willing to blackmail me by keeping me in ignorance of the only family I have left. What that says about your character doesn’t inspire me to get to know you any better. But you’ve given me some facts about Phoebe and Kai and Saegar. Where they’re living. The names they use. I’ll be patient.”

“You’re saying—”

“Yes. I’ll track them down myself, or I’ll employ someone to do it. I don’t need you, Loucan. Your blackmail attempt has failed. And now I need to open up the tearoom. You can let yourself out.”

She slipped her feet into her sandals, pulled a bunch of keys from her pocket and opened the door, quaking inside. What would he do? Would he call her bluff? Could she bear it if he gave up and left, without telling her more about her siblings and without showing her the photos? Would the facts she now had be enough to trace her family on her own, as she’d suggested?

The heels of her silly, impractical shoes rapped like gunshots on the stone flagging of the veranda. Why did she buy these things? She had a dozen pairs and they killed her feet all day. Her clientele wouldn’t raise their eyebrows if she wore flats. Half the time she kicked her shoes off behind the counter and didn’t even notice.

She felt her breasts bounce as she clicked along to the end of the veranda, and was self-conscious again, aware of her own body in a way that was unusual. She didn’t like to think about where Loucan’s gaze might be focused.

He was a powerful man. Powerful in his position at the center of the chaotic situation that apparently still existed in Pacifica. Powerful in the aura of determination and ruthlessness that he exuded. He hadn’t given up. He would call her bluff; she was sure of it. Was he watching? Why didn’t he say something?

Loucan didn’t find his voice until Lass had reached the end of the veranda. He couldn’t understand his own reluctance to speak. She wouldn’t carry through on her threat, he was sure.

And yet he heard himself saying, with a husky note in his strong voice, “Wait!”

“Yes?” She turned, and he saw that he’d been right. She wasn’t remotely cool about this. He saw her hands shaking and her eyes glittering with hot tears.

“I’m not going to blackmail you.” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness that he couldn’t remember ever using before in his life. “And I was wrong to imply that I would. I want your alliance and your trust, not this.”

“Sure you do, Loucan.” She pivoted and stepped from the veranda onto the paved path that led to the tearoom.

“Lass, listen to me—”

“No!”

He followed her, faster than she was in those frivolous, kittenish heels. Hearing him gaining on her, she kicked them off once more, and abandoned them in the grass at the side of the path. He caught up to her anyway, grasped her shoulder and spun her around. He pinned her to the spot with the sheer force of his will.

“This is how wars start,” he said urgently. “This is where violence comes from. When people can’t find a way to talk.”

She lifted that strong, stubborn chin. “Is that what happened in Pacifica, all those years ago? Not as far as I’m concerned!”

“You were too young to understand. If you’d listen to me, I could tell you. My father had nothing to do with your mother’s death.”

“Oh, he didn’t?”

“No. He was horrified that one of his supporters had taken a speech of his and interpreted it in that way. The man was acting totally alone.”

He heard the smallest tremor of doubt in his own voice, and wondered if Lass had picked up on it. He still wasn’t sure of the whole truth himself. There was a tiny thread of evidence—the report of one witness—that suggested Joran, one of Okeana’s own supporters, had incited the fanatical assassin to murder Okeana’s wife in order to further the unrest that Joran sought.

For the moment, however, Loucan ignored the possibility. It was a detail that didn’t affect his own innocence. He had been three thousand miles from Pacifica when Wailele died.

He pressed on.

“Listen to me, Lass. Trust me at least long enough for us to talk about Phoebe and Kai and Saegar, and for me to tell you why I’m here. I’m not just looking for your belief in my version of the past. There’s more than that. I’ve spent years searching for you. Give me some time. Let me help you in the tearoom today, and we’ll—”

She laughed. “You? The self-styled rightful king of Pacifica, Loucan the Triumphant, or whatever you’ve decided to call yourself, cutting tomatoes and stacking the dishwasher? What could your royal majesty possibly know about my kitchen?”

He grinned, seeing the chance to soften her with humor, and grabbing it.

“I admit I’m more experienced at tending bar than pouring coffee,” he said, still smiling as he invited her to share his amusement. “But I’ve worked in the galley of a commercial fishing boat, cooking a hot breakfast for twelve hungry men after we’ve been up all night hauling nets. I know which side of a teapot to hold, and which to pour from.”

“Big deal!”

“I bussed tables once for a few months, a long time ago, when I was around seventeen. You should see how fast I can flick a wet cloth around, when it’s needed. You need help today, and I’m offering. For less than minimum wage. Couldn’t we start from there?”

His smile was as hot as summer sunlight and as powerful as the sea itself. It pulled at Lass’s emotions, the way the ocean did in all its moods.

Loucan knew all about that. He was a creature of the ocean himself. Even so, she would have forced herself to stay immune to his smile if he hadn’t pulled the packet of photos from the tight back pocket of his jeans, and added casually, “Tell me what to do to start setting up, and you can look at these while I work.”

“All right. Okay. Uh…I’m not— This isn’t a capitulation, Loucan,” she insisted. “All it is…it’s for Saegar and my sisters.”

“I know that,” he said quietly. “I understand. By the end of the day, I hope your reasons will change, but for now it’s good enough.”

“Okay,” she said again. The word hardly had meaning. “Good.”

Unlocking the door that opened directly into the gallery, she led the way past blue-green seascapes, glazed ceramics and trays of delicate jewelry, feeling as if she was walking with Loucan into a new future she hadn’t even imagined three days ago. She was terrified of everything about it.

Chapter Two

Cyria was the one who had taught her to be afraid, and to set herself apart.

Time and again, she had held Lass close to her and whispered, “No one should have to see what you’ve seen. We’ll never go back. Not unless your father himself comes to claim you and tells us that Pacifica is safe for us again. Promise me that.”

“I promise, Cyria. Only if it’s safe.”

As Lass grew older, she heard the same message from Cyria in more sophisticated language.

“We’ll stay hidden here,” Cyria said. “Forever, if we have to. King Okeana will come for us only if it’s safe. If we’re careful, no one will suspect that we are mer. These land-dwellers, they have no soul and no sense. It would never occur to them that all their silly legends about mer people could possibly contain an element of truth. Joran was right in what he told your father. We must use our kinship with the land-dwellers to take what we need from them, but we must never make the mistake of thinking they are our equals. You in particular, Thalassa. You are a mer princess, and you must never forget it.”

Of course, Lass hadn’t blindly accepted everything Cyria told her. Young girls didn’t, particularly once they reached the adolescent years of rebellion and quest for selfhood. But enough of it had stuck, enough had grafted itself to her nature and helped to form the woman she now was.

When she swam, she did so secretly, and almost always after dark, because she never knew exactly how long it would take for her tail membrane to form. She’d had no one to tutor her in the chemistry and physiology of the process, and had worked out a hazy understanding of it by herself, through trial and error.

It was quicker at the full moon. Slower when the water was cold. Something to do with the sea’s saltiness, too, because it always took longer to happen when she swam near the mouth of the tidal lake next to her favorite beach, where a freshwater stream emptied into the sea.

If Cyria knew the science of it, she hadn’t passed on the knowledge. She had forbidden Lass to swim in the ocean at all.

“You could be killed as if you were a fish, before you could even cry out, if anyone saw your tail. Or you could be captured and tortured in the name of science.”

Lass had tried to argue at first. It would be perfectly safe to take a short swim, even in broad daylight, as long as she left the water in time. Her tail membrane did not even begin to form for at least fifteen minutes.

But Cyria wouldn’t hear of it, so Lass swam guiltily as well as secretly. She’d been doing it since the age of fourteen, but there had been defiance rather than guilt in the act until she was twenty. The guilt came after Cyria’s death. The old woman had worked so hard and sacrificed so much for Lass’s safety. She’d sincerely believed that the ocean was too dangerous.

“But I can’t give it up. I can’t!” Lass had told herself, over and over, in the first acute days of mourning her guardian’s loss. “I’ll do everything else Cyria wanted. I’ll keep my hair. I’ll run a business that’s under my own control and where there’s never anyone I have to get too close to. She’s right. Friendships are dangerous. Ondina and my mother thought that their friendship was enough to keep peace in Pacifica, and they were wrong. And I’ll never fall in love with a land-dwelling man.”

She’d already had proof that Cyria was right in that area. She’d had a boyfriend at college who’d taken her out several times and then told her, just as she was beginning to let down her guard, “There’s something weird about you. I don’t think I want to go on with this. I’m sorry.” She hadn’t accepted any dates after that, and after a while, word got around and no one asked.

“I’ll never have a child, who could turn out to be mer. But I have to swim…sometimes. Not too often. Or I might as well just die….”

Even so, she kept trying to give it up. She learned to love horseback riding and hiking in the wild Australian bush country. She told herself that eventually she would wean herself away from the sea.

But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. And so Loucan, son of her father’s enemy, had found her….

Summer was the most dangerous time of year—the season when Lass tried hardest, and failed most often, to stay away. The water was at its warmest, so her tail formed faster. The beaches were more crowded, so she had to be watchful and seek the most isolated places.

Lass hadn’t been to the ocean for weeks—not since the start of school summer vacation in mid-December. And now Christmas and New Year had passed, and it was late January.

And she was ready to snap. She had snapped. Three times today, at Susie and Megan, over trivialities. That was out of character. Normally, she didn’t have a flashing temper, and in any case she’d found long ago that a cheerful attitude toward others invited less curiosity, and fewer questions.

Today, she knew that the pressure inside her would keep building until she flooded it away with the cold, salty, healing caress of the ocean.

It was a hot day, and even the big ceiling fans and the thick stone walls of the old dairy weren’t enough to keep away the heat. She closed as usual at five, quickly ate the left-over pasta special she’d served in the tearoom at lunch, rebraided her long hair, grabbed her swimsuit and her towel, and jumped into her car to speed down to the north end of the beach where she could hide among the rocks at the base of the cliff if anyone came.

It was perfect. The beach was deserted and the sky glowed with mauve and orange near the western horizon. There was no wind, but there’d been storms at sea for the past few days and the surf was high, rolling in long, even waves onto the sand. The foam was so white it was almost iridescent.

And the dolphins were there. She tried to surf with them, but they weren’t interested tonight. Maybe because her tail hadn’t formed yet and they didn’t recognize her as a kindred creature. Or maybe because the fishing was good, out where the sea floor shelved down, and eating was more important to them than having fun.

So she surfed alone, and didn’t regret the solitude. Didn’t use a board, just her body, timing the moment when she launched herself ahead of the breaking wave and let it carry her to the beach in a tumble of cold foam. Her whole body was tingling so much with the buffeting of the waves that it took her a while to recognize the special, deeper sensation that signaled her membrane was starting to form.

And then suddenly she saw him—a strong, athletic-looking man not twenty yards from where she swam. She hadn’t noticed his approach at all. He was walking in the shallows and peering out at her, and beyond her, as well, to where the dolphins cruised back and forth, feasting on fish.

Hastily, she waded to shore and ran up the beach to grab her towel, as water streamed from her heavy rope of braided hair and down her torso and legs. When the transformation was imminent, she would wriggle out of her swimsuit and swim naked, but somehow even in this conservatively cut suit, she felt more exposed and more vulnerable this evening than she’d ever felt in the nude.

Why was he watching her?

She was as strongly aware of the stranger’s body as she was of her own. She took in the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his thighs and the deep tan of his skin. Beyond these details, he had an aura, a presence that she couldn’t name. And he was looking at her as if he was seeking something.

She began to rub herself dry immediately. A couple of times in the past, when she hadn’t dried the seawater away, her membrane had begun to form as she lay on the sand. From a distance, it had only looked like a rather bizarre and serious case of peeling sunburn, but if anyone had peered too closely…

As this man was. He was studying her with serious intent. Oh, Lord, what had he seen? He was coming over to her, and there was definitely something about him… He was so big and broad and strong, utterly male from top to toe. Look at that long, sure stride! And those eyes! Even in the washed out, dusky light she could see how blue they were, as if filled with the ocean itself.

Filled with the ocean…

She had a strange moment of intuition, and he confirmed it with just one word.

“Thalassa.”

Her reaction came at gut level, making a mockery of her recent awareness of him. This wasn’t awareness. This was terror.

She scrambled to her feet, screamed and ran toward the headland, fifty yards away. Didn’t get far. Not against those long, powerful male legs. He caught up to her within yards and pulled hard on her shoulder to turn her around. His big hand was warm on her cold skin. He let it trail down her arm, and his fingers came within an inch of her breast, leaving an imprint of sensation there as they passed.

“Don’t run away, Thalassa,” he said. His voice was resonant and deep. “It is you. I knew it. I saw you with the dolphins. And look…”

He dropped his hand to point, and she saw at once what had convinced him. She hadn’t rubbed hard enough with her towel. Or else she’d stayed in the water too long.

On her outer thighs there were rough patches of scale, already beginning to flake away. Normally, her tail wasn’t like that. When properly formed it was smooth, silvery-green and glistening. But when she left the water at the wrong moment, as she had tonight, the scales were rough and white, and stood out strangely on her skin.

“Who are you?” she said in a voice that refused to work as it normally did. He had her cornered, with the sea at her back, the highest reach of the waves lapping occasionally at her heels, which were still tingling.

She saw a couple strolling along the beach, hand in hand, getting closer every second. She couldn’t run past them in a panic. If they tried to help her, how on earth would she explain? And the sea was no refuge. She already sensed that this stranger was far more at home there than she was. So she had to face him, confront him in a way that Cyria’s fearful directives had never prepared her for.

He was mer.

He had to be, to have known the name she hadn’t heard on anyone’s lips since Cyria’s death thirteen years ago. Lass registered his clothes—the rough, off-white sailcloth shirt, loosely covering his broad, smooth chest, and the close-fitting sealskin pants that ended, unhemmed, at the knotted swell of his calf muscles. She hadn’t seen clothing like this since she was eight.

He was mer, all right.

But who? Her father’s messenger? Cyria had always said that Okeana would come for them himself.

The stranger didn’t keep her in doubt about his identity for long.

“I am Loucan, son of Galen and now king of the Pacifican people. I have been looking for you for a long time, Thalassa.”

“To kill me,” she said. Her heart beat even faster. “You’re here to kill me, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m not your enemy.”

“Your father was.”

“Things have changed in Pacifica now. We are bringing the two factions together. I have no desire to harm you in any way.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then I’ll have to convince you. Thalassa, I know this must be a shock for you, after so long. Your father, King Okeana, is dead. You couldn’t have known that.”

Lass swallowed. “No.” But she wasn’t surprised at the news. He would have been an old man. In her heart, she had been mourning him for years, certain she would never see him again. “So how did you find me?” she demanded to know, the fear and anger surging through her again.

“It took a long time. But it started when I remembered your beautiful hair….”

Before he could reach her lustrous mass of waves, Lass ran from him, intent on destroying the very thing that led him to her.

Hours later, when he’d left her with his promise—or his threat—to return, and she was lying in her own bed with her now-shorn locks telling herself she was safe, her whole body still refused to stop shaking.

Lass’s hands shook again as she studied the pictures Loucan had spread for her on one of the tearoom tables.

Phoebe’s wedding to Kevin Cartwright was the more formal and traditional occasion, but Kai’s simple ceremony with rakishly handsome Ben was just as beautiful to Lass’s eyes. Both women looked radiantly lovely, with love and happiness sketched in every line of their bodies.

Pictures weren’t enough. She wanted to hear their voices, catch up on twenty-five years of lost time, hold them against her and hug them just as she used to when they were tiny.

How would she get through the day?

Looking up, she realized that Loucan wasn’t doing what she’d asked him to. Despite what he’d said a few minutes ago about bussing tables and tending bar, and despite his obvious intelligence and strength, she honestly wasn’t expecting him to be of much help. He seemed too powerful and too driven to have the necessary practical skills.

Susie had left the chairs stacked upside down on the tabletops after she’d cleaned last night, and Lass had simply asked Loucan to put them back in place. But he’d already done that, and now he was setting the tables, with the deft, experienced movements of someone who’d done this before.

His big hands flicked back and forth, unloading floral centerpieces, place mats, pepper and salt and sugar. The sight was incongruous, but apparently bothered him not at all. Evidently, he didn’t set much store by his image when he had a higher goal in view. Unwillingly, she was intrigued by what this said about the man who now ruled her ancestral home.

As he leaned over the tables, the fabric of his faded jeans tightened over his backside, emphasizing its compact, muscular shape. The sleeves of his T-shirt stretched taut around the hard bulk of his upper arms. Something softened and grew heavy inside her, making her deeply uncomfortable.

She quickly refocused on the photos.

He didn’t pause or look up, but he must have seen that she had been watching him, and that she wasn’t anymore.

“They’ve both married good men,” he said. “Men who deserve them. Because they’re great women, Lass. You’ll think so when you meet them again. Both of them are bright and loving and happy.”

“Oh, of course they are….”

“Saegar had a tough time, growing up. His guardian, Bali, kept him pretty isolated. He never spent any time on land until he met Beth—her father captured him and was planning to go public. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. And when Saegar fell in love with Beth, he made the decision to lose his tail.”

“He’ll never get it back.”

Saegar was one of the cursed among the mer people, able to grow his tail just once. His decision to shed it for the sake of his new love was irreversible. After living as a merman all his life, he must love his new bride very much to have made such a choice.

Lass’s chest tightened, as if an unseen hand was squeezing her heart. The idea of taking a step like that frightened her. There was no room for such a dramatic change in her own life. No room for love. Cyria had convinced her of that. Lass was happy here. She was safe, and she wanted to stay. She had promised Cyria that she wouldn’t go back. Pacifica held too many memories.

“Have they decided…” She stopped. Her voice was so scratchy it was barely intelligible. She cleared her throat. “Have they each decided where they’ll live now? If they’ve married land-dwellers, they won’t be returning to Pacifica, will they? Even if peace is fully restored there?”

“No. They’re all hoping to visit together very soon, but it’s not the same.”

She expected him to make more of an issue of it, but he didn’t. He had his back to her, setting the last of the tables, and she couldn’t read him. She knew he hadn’t come here just to tell her about her siblings. He wanted something from her. He’d told her that, and instinct told her to dread what it could be.

He obviously didn’t want to talk about it yet. Instead, he said in a matter-of-fact way, “I’m finished here. Tell me what you want done in the kitchen, and the gallery.”

“The gallery’s fine. Everything’s set up.”

“I liked some of the things I saw, coming through,” he said, following her into the adjoining kitchen. “Particularly those semiabstract paintings of the sea.”

Yes, those are my favorites, too.

She didn’t say it out loud.

“I have a rotating group of local artists and craftspeople who exhibit and sell through the gallery,” she explained instead, grabbing on to the subject like a lifeline. “And a stockroom out the back for people to browse through. The tearoom takes more work, but I need both things, to pull in the business. People will stop to browse and stay to eat, or the other way around. I’m not on a main road, so I don’t tend to get big tour groups, or anything like that. I’m not making a fortune, but I’m very happy.”

And I’m staying.

Her meaning was clear, although she didn’t say it.

“Not lonely?”

“With people coming through all day?”

It wasn’t an answer, and they both knew it. “People” weren’t friends. But she didn’t want him to challenge her on any of the choices she’d made in her life. They were necessary, considering who and what she was.

Mer.

Like Loucan himself.

Somehow, though, he was far more at ease inside his own skin than she was. At ease on land, too, from what she’d seen so far. He didn’t seem to have built up the same defenses, the same complex web of fear and longing for the mer world, the same deeply in-grained instinct to set herself slightly apart from the land-dwellers among whom she’d lived for so long.

He didn’t see his mother die.

“Okay, now salads.” Loucan opened her commercial-size refrigerator and began to take out ingredients. “You probably make the quiche fillings and the pastry crusts in advance, right? Just add filling to the base when they’re about to hit the oven, a little later on? And are you doing a pasta special?”

“How did you—”

“I read your blackboard menu while I was unstacking the chairs. What about the cakes?”

“Those are delivered. There’s a local woman who makes them for me. But I do the scones. I need to get those in the oven soon.”

“The same as American biscuits, right, only not with gravy?”

“Here we serve them with jam and whipped cream and a pot of tea or coffee, and it’s called a Devonshire Tea. They’re very popular, all through the day. Even things like sandwiches and pasta people want as late as three or four o’clock.”

“Tricky. Hot dogs or chicken nuggets would be easier.”

“Hot dogs and chicken nuggets would be a disaster. My gallery clientele doesn’t have that sort of taste. They want something a little more up market and fancy. I tried a more substantial hot meal for a while. A curry or a casserole. But I found…”

Lass stopped. His face was wooden.

“I’m boring you stupid with this,” she said.

Lord, what was happening to her, confiding the petty details of her business to him like this? She was rattling on like a runaway train! She, solitary Lass Morgan, who rationed small talk as if words were an endangered species, and never had deeper conversations at all. She was babbling.

Loucan laughed. “Wait until I tell you about my past life as a bond trader. That’ll bore you stupid. This is nice. It reminds me of…well, of some good times I had once, in America, hanging out with someone I liked.”

She went still. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” He kept on deftly cutting green pepper and slicing mushrooms with his big hands, while Lass set up the mixer to put together the day’s batch of scone dough. Her own hands were clumsy today, and she couldn’t seem to get the dough hook to click into its slot.

“Don’t try and act as if we’re friends,” she said. “Don’t try to get through to me that way.”

She dropped the metal mixing bowl and crossed the kitchen to the CD player. One press of a button brought music into the room—Susie’s favorite classic rock radio. Lass didn’t care what it was, as long as it was loud and fast and broke the illusion of intimacy.

“Is that what you thought I was doing?” Loucan said. “Trying to get through to you?”

“Yes. Weren’t you?”

“I’m not a manipulative man, Thalassa. I don’t sneak my way into people’s good graces through flattery and insincerity.”

His head was held at a proud angle, emphasizing the straight strength of his nose. His brown skin was incredibly smooth, considering he had to be forty years old by now. He was an able man in the prime of life, and Lass felt foolish at having accused him of behaving like a two-faced schoolgirl.

She flushed and said weakly, “Don’t you?”

“I go after what I want,” he continued. “But I do it openly. I’ve told you, we’ll talk at the end of the day, and then I’m sure things will get rocky and tense again.”

“You got that right!”

“I know you don’t want this to be happening. For now, if we can enjoy each other’s company, is that a sin?”

“I’ll…I’ll get back to you on that,” she told him awkwardly. Lifting the lid of the big flour bin, she would gladly have crawled inside.

A moment later, the driving, upbeat rhythm and lyrics of a song on the radio threw her back into gear at last. This was familiar. It was what she did every day, and if she didn’t get through the routine by ten or close after…

Loucan needed her to tell him what to do from time to time, but apart from that she ignored him. She and Susie and Megan usually chatted a bit. Light stuff about local events and the doings of the women’s extended family.

Susie and Megan always did most of the talking, while Lass asked just enough questions to keep the flow going. It was one of the things she liked about the two sisters—the easy flow of their chatter. Since she didn’t have to give away much of herself, it kept her feeling safe. Loucan wasn’t nearly such a restful presence.

“What time do you usually get your first arrivals?” he asked at around quarter after ten. The clock above the old stone fireplace was ticking loudly, and the scones had just come out of the oven.

“About now.”

“I’ll wait tables while you take care of things in here. Is that okay?”

“Yes.”

If anybody ever showed up. She had been counting on a steady summer crowd today. Like the music, it would add a distance between the two of them that she increasingly needed. It would be ironic if this turned out to be one of their rare days when, for no reason that they could ever predict or discern, almost nobody came.

She hated her awareness of Loucan. Tried to tell herself that it was purely self-defense, but deep down, she knew it was much more.

Loucan was mer.

Lass hadn’t seen a merman in twenty-five years, and she’d been just a child then. Over the past fifteen years of her adult life, she had never allowed herself to fall for a land-dwelling man. That one clumsy attempt at a relationship during her college years had quickly convinced her that Cyria was right on this issue. Physically, she and Gordon had never gotten beyond a few unsatisfying kisses.

But Loucan was mer.

That had to be the reason she was feeling like this.

She was so conscious of exactly where he was in the big kitchen. So conscious of her own body—of its lush curves, of its weight and shape and the way it moved, of the sensitivity of her skin.

In the days following one of her guilty trips to the ocean, she was always more sensitized, always yearned for…for something. For years this something had been quite nameless and out of reach. Painfully, frustratingly so. But suddenly now she understood.

She wanted a man’s touch.

She wanted the sensations of lovemaking that she’d only imagined and read about, never experienced. Cyria had told her it must not happen, not with a land-dwelling man. She’d always implied that one day, in the future, when King Okeana came for them and everything was safe, there would then be someone for Lass to give her heart to—someone in Pacifica. Unconsciously, she’d believed that, waited for that.

And Loucan was mer.

Mer, and the son of her father’s enemy. It was because of Galen and the escalating violence that her father had secretly sent all four of his children away, each with a different guardian, and each to a different part of the world. It was because of Galen that her mother had died.

The hair on Lass’s arms and on the back of her neck stood on end, and her stomach began to churn.

What am I thinking? she wondered. What kind of a trick is my body playing on me? I can’t start wanting him. I still don’t know why he’s really here. This instinct to trust him could all be coming from…from this physical frustration. Because he’s mer, and I want—I want… Oh lord, Cyria was wrong to tell me to live my life like this!

Chapter Three

“So is it often like that?” Loucan asked.

“No, thank goodness.” Lass combed her hand through her hair several times. The gesture was jerky, as if she still expected her fingers to get tangled in the long, living strands that had recently reached to her thighs. As if she couldn’t get used to the change.

She looked tired, and Loucan wasn’t surprised. It was nearly six-thirty. The kitchen was squeaky clean and the chairs were stacked on the tables. He’d just vacuumed the gallery floor, while Lass was still mopping the tearoom.

They hadn’t had a single customer until noon, when three cars had pulled in within two minutes of each other. After that, it hadn’t stopped all day. Lass had shuttled back and forth between cash desk, kitchen and gallery, while Loucan had waited tables and washed dishes. He’d also sold two of the seascapes and a big and very ugly vase. He hadn’t told her about that yet, actually.

He remedied the oversight, and Lass’s opalescent green eyes widened.

“You sold that? The big—? The green—? With the knobbly things?”

“Yep. That’s the one.”

“Good grief, I thought I’d never get rid of that.” Her relief broke a little of the simmering tension between them—a tension they’d managed to put on hold since noon.

She leaned on the mop handle. Her hands shook a little and she seemed giddy and light-headed all of a sudden, as if she’d gone beyond exhaustion and was running purely on nerves. Loucan guessed she hadn’t been sleeping well since the other night, and felt bad about that.

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