in the familiar image. Being near her former lover, with all their physical history, churned up memories and feelings she’d rather forget.
Don’t even think about it. Jet lifted her chin and met his amused smile. Conceited ass. Perry’s shoulder-length brown hair curled in waves, while a faint bit of stubble lined his jaw.
He gave a slow, knowing wink. “You are as beautiful as ever.”
“Prison seems to have suited you,” Jet snapped.
Perry’s smile didn’t falter. “Direct as always.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me in? I’m getting soaked out here, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Since when has water ever bothered you? I remember you love rain.” He stepped aside and waved an arm. “But do come in,” he added, as if offering the keys to the palace.
She swept past, careful not to brush against him. Still, she caught a whiff of his designer aftershave, which smelled of male skin warmed by the sun. Unable to pronounce the Italian product’s name, Jet had dubbed it Aqua de Sexy. It tugged at memories of them together, her face pressed against his chest.
But the memory didn’t devastate her as she expected. Instead, Jet recalled Landry Fields’s soapy after-shower scent: simple, unpretentious and casually masculine. No use dwelling on that. Fields was not potential boyfriend material. Besides, getting seriously involved with anyone would mean again confiding that she was a mermaid, which compounded the risk of their secret race being exposed to scrutiny.
Jet drew a deep breath. “I’ve just come from the IRS office. The auditor asked all kinds of questions about my investments with Gulf Coast Treasures and Salvage.”
Perry shrugged.
“Has anyone from the IRS contacted you?”
“Nope. The only good thing about prison is that there’s no paperwork to file. I haven’t had an income to report in years, so there’s nothing they could question me about.”
“You were sentenced to ten years. Why did you get released early?”
“Good behavior.” He lowered his chin and waggled his eyebrows. “You know how good I can be.”
He crossed the distance between them, but Jet turned away and walked to the window. She was too unnerved to handle the closeness. “How well do you know the owners of that company?”
He scowled. “Who said I knew them?”
“You did. When we first started selling stuff we pulled from the ocean, you claimed to know a company willing to accept our merchandise with no questions asked.”
“I heard about them from other divers and met up with a couple of them a time or two.” Perry laid his hands on her shoulders and guided her toward him.
Jet clenched her jaw, willed her body not to respond to the steady pressure of his palms.
“We have far more interesting things—” he gave a smoldering once-over gaze from the top of her body to the bottom “—to discuss.”
“Like how you tried to screw me over three years ago?”
He ran a hand through his long brown locks. “Yeah, that.”
Jet shook off his hands and paced. The cottage was sparsely furnished, like most rentals, but clean despite a dirty dish on the kitchen table and a newspaper spread out on a coffee table.
“I only told the police you were a mermaid to protect you.”
Jet stopped in her tracks. Somehow, he always managed to catch her off guard, like he had since they met five years ago. He’d reeled her in like a dumb, hungry fish. She’d been so lonely, so damned grateful he accepted her shape-shifting body. And when Perry went away, Jet was left gasping and flailing on land, like the same stupid fish she’d been all along.
Her jaw dropped and she snorted in disbelief. “You did it to protect me?”
Perry clasped her arms in one swift movement, his eyes a mask of concern. “I knew if I didn’t piss you off, you’d stay with me out of stubbornness. No sense both of us going to jail.”
She found herself drawn into an embrace. “Stop it.” She pulled away and inhaled deeply. “If I’d been captured and interrogated, my fate would have been far worse than your jail time.”
“Nobody would have believed me.”
“Not at first. No. But if they probed enough, saw holes in our story of how we accidentally found treasure, ran background checks on our enterprises...”
“I wouldn’t have told them anything else,” Perry insisted.
“And what if I’d gotten sick and they had a doctor find freaky things in my medical tests? Or what if the police had thrown me into the sea to test if I changed? You didn’t put only me in jeopardy. You put my entire race at risk of exposure.”
He gave a disarming grin. “Ah, come on, sweetie. Don’t get melodramatic on me now.”
Of all the nerve. “You really are a son of a bitch, you know that? You knew about my nightmare.”
His brow crinkled, then cleared. “The aquarium thing?”
Jet dug her nails into her fists, concentrated on the painful half-moon indentations in her fleshy palm, recalling one of the few times she’d shown her vulnerability to Perry. She’d awakened one night from that recurring nightmare, gasping for air, and spilled all about it. “Yeah, that thing,” she snapped.
“Never going to happen. But if it does—” he flashed a grin “—I’ll rescue you like a knight in shining armor.”
Right. Perry would be a hero only if it suited his own purposes. Jet sucked in the pheromone-filled air of the tiny room. The man grinned so confidently, as if the past three years had never happened. As if he’d been some noble person when he’d ratted her out.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Why wouldn’t I come back?” He ran a hand down her hair and neck, pausing slightly as his fingers brushed the trace of her gills. “I missed you.” His lips brushed her forehead. “Missed this.” His lips dropped to her mouth.
Jet gasped as Perry’s hands cupped her ass and drew her against his body. It would be so easy to surrender, enjoy the moment before—
“No.” Jet tore away and drew in a few ragged breaths, unexpectedly grateful for the IRS meeting earlier. Landry Fields’s questions served to make her more wary of Perry’s lies and manipulation. “I need to set you straight on a few things.”
Perry scowled and flung himself onto the sofa. “I explained why I told the police you were a mermaid. What else do you expect me to say?”
“For starters, how come I didn’t hear from you the whole time you were locked up?”
“They wouldn’t let me post mail.”
“Bull.
