Siren's Secret

She lifted her hair from the back of her sticky neck and let the ocean breeze cool the clammy skin. “I see you’re quite the romantic.”

Tillman took her hand and led her closer to the water.

Her sudden pleasure at his touch disappeared. Being in a pool was fine, but if her feet contacted the ocean’s salt water her body would automatically transform. The bare skin of her feet, when mixed with the alchemy of the sea, caused webs to form between her toes. All it took was an unexpected splash around the knees and both legs would fuse into a single tail. Iridescent scales would burst forth, coating human skin, completing the metamorphosis from legs to fins.

She hung back. “Let’s walk here where the sand is dry and warm.”

“Guess this means my fantasy of a skinny-dip together is not going to happen?”

Shelly laughed. If he got her in the sea, it would be beyond any fantasy he could ever imagine. Her laughter choked at the sudden hot ache as she pictured Tillman swimming naked. Her cousins were right—it had been too long since she’d had a man in her life. Probably explained why she was so drawn to Tillman.

He must have caught the drift of her errant thoughts. Tillman pulled her to his side and she snuggled up against his hard body, her head against his chest. The fingers of his right hand traced the outline of a wicked scar on her shoulder. A nasty souvenir from an encounter two years ago when she’d swum too close to a charter fishing boat and a hook had sunk into her flesh. Those fishermen almost got the surprise of their lives.

“Where did this scar come from?”

“Childhood accident from swimming too close to a pier.” Only a half lie.

“Ouch.”

His hand explored further to a smaller scar by her collarbone. “And this?”

“I don’t remember,” she lied. She could hardly tell him it was from struggling to get out of a tuna net last summer. Her torso bore several such scars, especially since returning to live in the Gulf. She hung her head, wondering what he would make of a close examination of her body.

He tilted her chin up with a firm hand.

“I’m too curious,” he said gruffly. “Another occupational hazard. Great for my job, not so much with people.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered, fascinated with the darkening of his gray eyes. He wanted her every bit as much as she wanted him. Dangerous territory, her mind whispered. Remember what happened to your mother when she fell in love with a human. Shelly squeezed her eyes shut, determined to drown the demon voices of doom. Surely there was no harm in a little kiss. She had wanted to get close to him for so long, had fantasized about this moment for over a year.

His lips were upon hers, hot, demanding and probing. She was drowning in sensation, her bones and blood liquefying in pools of desire. And when his tongue explored, she eagerly met it with her own. The sweet, fierce hotness made her toes curl into the warm sand. The pounding of the waves matched the pounding in her blood.

Tillman pulled back first and cupped her face in his large hands. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” he said in a voice husky with desire.

“Thank God. I was beginning to think maybe this date was only your way of thanking me for my work with Eddie.”

“Not a chance.”

His fingers caressed her scalp, then traveled through the length of her hair. He paused, a thoughtful look on his face.

“What is it?”

“The length and color of your hair reminds me of something else.” He shook his head and dropped his arms. “Never mind.” He appeared to hesitate a moment before clasping her hand and continuing their walk on the shore. “If you’d like, we can go to a club in Mobile for a little dancing.”

Shelly thought fast. From what he’d told her at dinner, Tillman must live at home with his family. Not exactly conducive to privacy. The thought of loud music and crowds of people was the last thing she wanted. “Let’s just return to my house for a drink. We can sit on the porch with a glass of wine. Or a beer, if you prefer.”

“Beer sounds good.” He turned a curious sideways glance her way. “I was going to suggest we go back to my fishing cabin, but I’m sure your house is much nicer. From what I understand, not many around here have been invited inside the Bosarge home.”

Shelly followed him nervously back to the car. What had she done? Her physical desire for Tillman made her reckless. If she had been a little more patient, he would have invited her to his cabin where they could have been alone.

If she was lucky, Jet would be off for a swim, or in her bedroom immersed in her old undersea maps and shipwreck books. Her cousin could be tricky with humans—short-tempered, suspicious, condescending. No problem with Lily, she was all sweetness, unless someone bored her. Besides, Lily would be out on another flavor-of-the-month date.

Shelly drew steadying breaths as they drew nearer. Everything would be fine. Sure, they had valuable treasure scattered throughout the place, but a casual observer wouldn’t realize their china was from the Ming Dynasty or that the pottery on display was from ancient civilizations or that the various knickknacks lying about were rare maritime relics.

But when they walked in the den, Jet was sprawled on the sofa watching a Jacques Cousteau documentary.

“What are you doing back so early? Thought you’d—” She broke off at the sight of Tillman.

“Jet, this is Tillman Angier. He’s our sheriff, by the way.” Shelly waved a hand in the direction of the sofa. “Tillman, my cousin Jet.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” He crossed the room in three long strides and shook Jet’s hand.

Jet wasn’t the siren her sister was but was still a stunner with her tall, athletic frame and unusually dark irises that gave the impression her eyes were solid black pupils. Those eyes now flashed in irritation.

Tillman either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Jet shook his hand with the briefest of human contact.

“Surprised we haven’t met before.” He surveyed the room and let out a small whistle of appreciation. “Someone around here’s a collector.”

He crossed to the dozens of swords, mostly Confederate, which hung over the mantel. “Where’d you get all these?”

“Jet used to be an antiques dealer.” Shelly shot Jet a pointed look at the coffee table, its surface strewn with dozens of cartographic and monographic maps of known shipwrecks.

“Here in Bayou La Siryna?” Tillman asked with his back still to them. He strolled over to a mahogany étagère storing their better pieces of seventeenth-century French, Italian and English pottery and ceramics they couldn’t bear to sell on either the open or black market. The pieces were shipwreck finds of several generations of Bosarge mermaids from all seven seas.

“My business was wholesaling to other dealers,” Jet said, turning the treasure maps facedown on the table. “I didn’t have an actual store.” She stuffed her magnifying glass and cartographic measuring tools under the brown leather recliner.

“I know a bit about antiques myself,” Tillman said. “Mom dragged all of us to estate auctions when I was younger.”

Shelly inwardly groaned. Of all the rotten luck, Tillman actually knew something of the worth of these objects. She had brought a law enforcement officer right into their home and introduced him to her errant cousin.

Jet’s business was strictly to black-market vendors on a cash-only basis. That way, she avoided the pesky problem of explaining how the finds were retrieved with no treasure excavation expenses, and no worries of state and federal agents questioning the finds. In other words, it was all extremely illegal.

Jet shrugged and lifted both hands in a what-ya-gonna-do gesture.

Tillman continued his inspection of the room. This time he picked up a restored brass pocket watch from an end table, a pre–Civil War artifact etched with the date 1842.

“Where—?”

“Family heirloom,” Jet said. “We’re the sentimental sort.”

Shelly almost snickered. Jet and Lily didn’t have a sentimental bone or scale on their mermaid bodies. Unless you counted Jet’s unexplained preoccupation with Perry, her human lover and partner in shipwreck recovery crimes—who turned out to be a lying, self-serving scumbag, now serving time.

And good riddance, Shelly and Lily told each other. Unfortunately, Jet was still hung up on the guy, even if she refused to admit it. She probably mistook him for a swashbuckling pirate, à la Johnny Depp.

“Fascinating place you have here,” Tillman said, eyeing the large brass porthole above the fireplace. Shelly couldn’t help but feel a little surge of pride. That porthole had been a lucky discovery on her part when she was only sixteen years old and visiting the Bosarge family for the summer. She’d been swimming five miles from the house when her eyes picked up a reflective glint from a black sand bed. It had been a risky and difficult swim home with her prize, but she’d managed.