been doing her best for the past month. Everywhere Hugh had gone, there she’d been. In his shop, at the landing pad, on the dock, in the hammock on his porch this morning, for heaven’s sake!
“I wondered if you wanted to go for a swim?” she’d said hopefully.
“Can’t.” He’d been polite but brisk. It was a small island. People had to get along. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. He just wanted her to understand she wasn’t for him.
“Oh.” She’d looked crestfallen. “I’ll see you later, then?”
He’d grunted. “Gonna be gone all day.”
“I could come along. It’s my day off.”
He’d shaken his head. “Sorry. It’s business.”
Stretching the truth, perhaps. Molly would have called him a liar. But he wasn’t. He needed to know where the good fishing was, didn’t he? That way he could direct his clients who wanted to know where to drop their lines.
He’d been taking care of business all day, enjoying every moment with only Belle, his dog, for company. He especially enjoyed the fact that the entire landscape was Lisa-free.
Now Hugh stretched expansively, lounged back and, one last time before he headed home, jiggled his line.
It jiggled back.
“Whoa.” He sat up straight and grinned, patience rewarded. He played the line out a little, then drew it in, testing to be sure he hadn’t simply snagged a piece of driftwood.
He got a responding twitch. The twitch became a tug. A strong tug.
Hugh laughed delightedly. No driftwood this! Whistling through his teeth, he began hauling it in.
“Look at that!” he said happily to Belle when it jerked hard against his hand. “We’ve got a live one.”
The dog opened one eye and looked mildly interested, then started to close it again when the rod behind Hugh began to jerk and rattle as well.
Startled, Hugh swiveled around to see it bending and rocking like mad in the twilight as Belle jumped up and barked at it. “Hang on.” He reached to grab it, too, just as he caught sight of a thrashing movement off the side of the boat.
One hell of a big thrashing movement. The line he held jerked hard and he wrapped it quickly and tightly around his hand.
What in God’s name had he caught? A bloody whale?
He braced his feet and began to haul it in again when all of a sudden his catch broke the surface.
A woman—an absolutely furious woman—sputtered up. “For heaven’s sake, stop yanking on that line! You’re going to rip my dress right off!”
Hugh goggled.
A woman?
He’d caught a woman?
No. Not possible. He gave his heat-baked brain a quick hard shake.
But even as he doubted and wondered if he’d had too much sun and too many beers, the line jerked in his hand, the rod bobbed madly and Belle leaned eagerly over the edge and wagged her tail and barked.
So she was real.
He wasn’t seeing things.
It was a woman. Or a…mermaid?
His mind wouldn’t even go there.
“Shut up, you stupid dog,” he muttered. Then, “Stop thrashing around,” he snapped at the woman.
“I’m not thrashing,” she retorted furiously. “I’m trying to get this damn hook out!” And abruptly she disappeared underwater leaving Hugh to stare at the empty ocean in the sudden silence and doubt his sanity once more.
Belle whined and leaned precariously over the edge. Hugh grabbed her collar and hauled her back just as the woman bobbed up again and the line jerked furiously in his hand, meaning she hadn’t got the hook out.
“Damned beaded dresses,” she said with annoyance.
Beaded dresses?
Hugh’s jaw sagged. But he could see that she did appear to be wearing something with sparkly silver straps over her shoulders. A beaded dress? Who the hell went swimming in a beaded dress?
She gave one more futile yank, then stopped fighting with the hook and took a couple of overhand strokes, which brought her closer to the boat but tangled her even further with his lines.
“Do you have a knife?” she demanded.
Did fish swim in the sea? “Of course I’ve got a knife.”
“Then give it here. Or cut the line and pull me out,” she ordered, stretching out a hand and sounding like Barrett, his old commanding officer, the one they’d called Captain Ahab behind his back because he was as irrational and stubborn as Melville’s legendary captain.
Barrett—and Ahab—had nothing on this woman. If she’d acted the least bit desperate, he would have handed over his knife in an instant. But he was damned if he was taking orders from a bossy mermaid.
“Well?” she demanded impatiently when he didn’t move. “What are you waiting for?”
“The magic word?” he drawled, raising one brow.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She began kicking again, splashing him.
“You might not want to do that,” he suggested. “You’ll attract sharks.”
Her eyes widened. “There aren’t—”
“Of course there are,” he said. “Big ones. Hungry ones. In case,” he added, “you thought Jaws was just a movie.” He cocked his head, and smiled at her, all the while thinking this was the most surreal experience he’d ever had in his life.
Belle whined and peered over the side.
The woman looked from him to his dog and back again. She pressed her lips together tightly, then rolled her eyes and shrugged, nearly sinking as she did so. Then she muttered a less than gracious, “Please.”
“By all means,” Hugh said affably and nudging Belle out of the way, grasped the woman’s outstretched hand and pulled. As she came out of the water, he got both of her hands, and she floundered, kicking and slithering, and landed against him, cold and wet as a fish.
But she didn’t feel like a fish.
She felt like 100 percent woman with soft breasts and shapely hips. And feet.
He felt both relieved—and irritated—that she had feet.
“What the hell were you doing out there swimming around in the middle of the damn ocean?” he demanded, gripping her arms.
She twisted
