For the Taking

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.