For the Taking

“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.