Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes) (3 page)

Matt looked out the window then, flinching occasionally as a tea–tree smacked into the car. Baz was trying to think of a comment to make when Matt started up again, “Didn’t think we’d ever see her again, but we came out this morning to sit on the beach. Been there an hour I reckon before we saw her in the water, floating face down.”

Baz frowned, twisting the wheel to avoid another tree, trying to minimize the scratches he was making in the expensive paintwork. “You didn’t see her go in?”

“Didn’t hear her car. Didn’t see her walk into the water. I reckon she must have gone in further north and floated down. Steve was upset. I told him, you can’t swim, mate. But he… he wanted to get her out.”

Baz heard the edge of hysteria in the younger man’s voice and decided to shut up and drive. They swung around a corner and side–swiped a tree. Twice the car jolted into potholes and Baz fretted that he’d torn the exhaust system off. But he hadn’t. The Rover kept going and soon they were onto the beach and roaring north, skimming the incoming waves as Baz manhandled the vehicle along the narrow strip of hard–packed wet sand between the bog–able dry sand and the bog–able water.

Seconds later Matt broke the tense silence. “There!” He pointed, and Baz saw a body on the beach next to some rocks. It wasn’t moving.

Shit.

“That’s not him,” Matt added.

Baz squinted. “It’s the girl,” he said. The
naked
girl.

“Steve must have got her out.”

Baz spun the Rover away from the water in case the tide was coming in. It wouldn’t help to get the car swamped, so he ran it hard up the dry sand and halted on a grassy hillock, then both of them dove out to run back down the beach to the girl. On the way they passed a couple of bundles that Baz recognized as swags, two cowboy hats and a cooler. Baz had a second of realizing they must be country boys, and that would be why they couldn’t swim, then he reached the naked girl beside the rock pool and dropped to her side.

He winced at the cut on the back of her head, staining her yellow–blonde hair, but it looked crusted, as though the bleeding had stopped. He rolled her from her side onto her back, trying to be professional and not gawp at her nudity while he put a finger to her neck feeling for a heartbeat which was thankfully steady, like her breathing. “She seems okay,” he said, relieved that he didn’t need to use his rusty resuscitation technique.

“That’s not her,” Matt said. “That’s not the same girl. The one who stole his wallet had shorter, whiter hair and she looked different.” Then he turned away to scan the surf while Baz patted along the girl’s limbs checking for breaks and finding none. A second later he heard a sound that raised the hairs on his arms. Matt was making the same boiling noise cats make in their throat when they’re upset. Baz glanced up to find the young cowboy wringing his hands, not even looking at the girl, his gaze on the waterline, his voice choked,
“Steve…”

Sick premonition squeezed Baz’s gut but he forced himself to turn around, and when he saw the lump of flesh that the last breaker had rolled onto the beach, he felt his stomach twist, as though it had physically clenched and rolled. “Oh God,” he whispered. A head and upper torso. The rest was… gone.

Matt said nothing, he just fell to his knees and the contents of his stomach ejected with a flood of tears onto the soft sand as he moaned and rocked and retched.

Baz was up on one knee to go to him when the girl’s hand landed on his arm. He looked back to her fluttering eyelids and saw flashes of silver beneath them that came across sideways, like the nictitating membrane of a lizard. He blinked in shock, then her unnaturally large eyes opened properly and he realised it must have been the sun glinting or contact lenses or something.

She was clearly struggling for consciousness so he leant closer and said, “Hey, you’re okay,” trying to avoid looking at her body. “In half an hour you’ll be in a nice comfy hospital bed.”

She shook her head violently and croaked, “No, please. I can’t.” Her breasts jiggled with the movement of her head and he wondered then if he should take off his shirt to cover her, but a second later he stopped worrying about her nudity because a shiver of unease was working its way through his entrails. Another few seconds and he’d registered what it was.

He knew this girl.

She was someone from his childhood, here at Saltwood. Only… that couldn’t be. She looked like a teenager, and he’d gone away to boarding school at eight, twenty years ago this year, in fact. This month. God, maybe even this week. So he couldn’t know her, but … he did. The sense of familiar was complete, and not only her face, but her body too, like this, naked.

The memory was so strong, so sure, that he felt his skin prickling with heat. Not in embarrassment, but anxiety. It wasn’t his mother. She’d been petite and dark haired, not tall and blond like this girl. But what other woman could he possibly have seen naked so long ago? A visitor? He’d locked his childhood memories away for good reason. Baz didn’t want them to re–emerge. Besides, he didn’t have time for this. He had to get Matt away from what was left of his brother, then get the girl into the car so he could take them both back to Saltwood.

But before he could turn away from her to comfort Matt she snatched at his shoulder and pulled his face down to hers, almost unbalancing him. “Don’t let the authorities take me. Please!”

Baz shook his head. Was she the thief after all? Maybe Matt had been so upset he hadn’t recognized her. People look different when they’re wet. “I’m sorry,” he said, “But I can’t get involved –”

Her grip tightened and before he could say any more her lips opened and her hot breath feathered across his face, salty and sweet, along with something that sparkled in front of his eyes like glitter. Was it sand particles? He couldn’t help sucking in a shocked breath, and was still gazing into her strange blue eyes when whatever the hell it was hit his system like a sledgehammer and a wave of sensation flowed over him.

In the next second his body stiffened.

Really
stiffened.

And then Matt and his dead brother were the last things on Baz’s mind.

Chapter Four

S
tay in your room, Dad. I mean it,” Baz said, struggling to pull the old man’s bedroom door shut with trembling hands. “I’ll sort this out.” But Ted was pulling it open from the other side and he was remarkably strong.

“What’s that smell on your clothes,” he said, starting to get agitated. “What’s going on? Why haven’t we had breakfast?”

“You’ve got an emergency stash of muesli bars in your bedside drawer.” Baz tried to sound reasonable but every nerve in his body was screaming for him to stop this and
get to the girl.
“I’ll call you for lunch.”

“What do you expect me to do in here?”

“I don’t care,” Baz snapped at him, wrestling the door. “Read a book. Watch tv. Have a nap. Just let go the door.
Now,
Dad.” The pressure abruptly released and Baz yanked the door shut and turned to rest his back on it. Then he forced himself to wait. Twenty seconds later the television started up but it was another ten seconds before Baz stepped away from the door and stood by the opposite wall, watching to see if his father was just pretending obedience. Two endless minutes passed while Baz listened to the thundering of his heart before he felt confident to walk away, then he ran. Down the corridor to the guest suite where he’d put the girl, and after letting himself in he locked the door in case Ted decided to get curious. He sure as hell didn’t want his father walking in on… whatever was about to happen.

Baz took his hand off the doorknob and looked at it. Still trembling. An hour since he’d laid eyes on the girl and he was still shaking. He sucked in a ragged breath.
I’ve got to calm down.

From the moment the girl had breathed on him and lapsed back into unconsciousness Baz had been acting like a lunatic, and all he could assume was that the glittering substance he’d inhaled was some sort of drug. The only thing he’d ever experimented with was marijuana, so he had no idea what cocaine or heroin did to you, although he’d always imagined them to be more of a head rush. This sensation was like a body rush, and unfortunately it was focusing 99% of his brain function on his libido, leaving only 1% available for acting normal. It wasn’t Viagra because he knew from overhearing conversations at school that its effect was localized. This felt as if his whole body was throbbing, and not just for any woman, he was completely focused on the girl from the beach, as if she was the only desirable woman in the world and he had to have her
right now!

It had completely unhinged him from the moment he’d breathed it in. He’d acted as if nothing existed but her, and he’d ignored Matt to put her on the back seat of the Range Rover, leaving the poor bereaved cowboy with the horrible half of his brother that the shark hadn’t eaten. Not even bothering with his seat belt, Baz had driven away without a backward glance. The police would assume he’d whisked her away for medical treatment, but nothing could be further from the truth. Baz had abandoned poor Matt and what was left of his brother Steve, simply to keep her to himself. It was a shocking thing to have done — utterly unconscionable, and looking back on the memory now, Baz felt as if it had been someone else inhabiting his body. Controlling it. Because that behavior certainly wasn’t any version of himself that he recognized. At the time, he had rationalized it in his mind as prioritizing: protect the girl. She was the one who was still alive.

But how was he protecting her by denying her medical assistance? He wasn’t
thinking,
well not with all the blood in his brain drained down into his… The very thought of a male doctor even looking at her, let alone touching her, had caused him to tremble with a mixture of fury and violent jealousy. So he’d taken her away before the police could so much as glance at her.

Because they were probably men too.

Besides, she’d said she didn’t want to go to hospital so he’d run with that, literally, somehow managing to get her back to
Saltwood
without crashing the Rover in his haste, and then the most incredible feat of all — he’d put her in the guest suite bed and backed away before anything… foolish had happened.

And here he was, about to face her again, to find out who she was, not to mention: why she’d been naked when he’d found her, and what the hell she’d breathed on him. Baz had seen no other belongings on the beach apart from Matt and Steve’s swags. Did she have a bag somewhere else, further up the beach? Relatives he should be notifying?

A boyfriend?

His hackles rose at that thought and he quickly steered his mind to her
‘Don’t let the authorities take me’
line which needed to be explained. What had she done? Something criminal? She might not be the girl who’d stolen Steve’s wallet, but she’d had drugs in her mouth that she’d sprayed on him and that wasn’t a good start. He needed to talk to her and find out some facts, but as he stood in the foyer of the guest suite, hopelessly overheated, he felt more concerned with his own self–control. He had a second of thinking he shouldn’t go near her, especially while she was naked, but the police were coming. They’d rung to confirm she was at
Saltwood
so they could interview her, and Baz hadn’t had the composure to lie.

Her bedroom was on his left, the bathroom in front of him and a sitting room to the right. There was a bar fridge in that sitting room where he could get a cold drink, and a comfy lounge he could sit on until she woke up. That would be far more sensible than going into her bedroom while she was still naked and he was unable to think of anything other than sex. With her. But he had to do something. Police were authorities and she’d been quite clear about not wanting to be given to them. So was she a runaway? What if the police took her home and it was a bad situation? Baz had seen kids come to school with black eyes after a family party where dad had drunk too much. She definitely shouldn’t have drugging him, but he didn’t want to see her hurt.

In fact, he didn’t want to see her touched by another man. If he’d been smart, he would have told the police she’d run away. Then he could have kept her all to himself. Until he worked out what her situation was. And he could still do that. He could…

Slow seconds ticked over as he blinked at the bathroom door in front of him.

Why was he imagining that he should lie to the police? What was happening to him?
What the hell was in that drug?
He needed to get into that bedroom now and sort this out, and perhaps more importantly, before the police arrived he had to make sure he could be around her without doing something criminal himself!

While she was unconscious he appeared able to stop himself jumping on her, but when she opened those unnaturally large eyes, how would he cope? At the beach, straight after she’d breathed on him he’d been crazed with lust, and if she hadn’t lapsed back into unconsciousness, God only knew what the police would have found when they’d arrived.

It was beyond intense, and even in a drugged state that didn’t feel like normal psychology. Baz had done a couple of units of psych at uni because it had fascinated him, and he knew that out–of–character reactions often had their basis in childhood trauma. He also remembered that the girl had looked familiar to him, before he’d gone all Hugh Heffner. Had that familiarity set him off? If she reminded him of someone, some suppressed memory, maybe some friend of his mother’s, could that explain why he was over–reacting. Maybe twenty years ago he’d walked in on a naked visitor and found the situation erotic?

Baz frowned and shook his head. When he was eight? How likely was that?

“Mm … Oh! Starfish!”

Baz turned to the bedroom on his left. Was she awake? Instinct set his feet moving and he pushed away from the door and tentatively crossed the marble entry tiles to the bedroom door. It was still open as he’d left it, with the timber window shutters drawn, so the room was in semi–darkness. He had to take another step forward to stop blocking the entryway light so he could find her on the four–poster bed. Then he saw where her hand was and spluttered, “Shit!”