Catch of a Lifetime (13 page)

   "So, what do you want to do today?" Logan put the last pan away and flipped the dish towel over his shoulder—and it stayed there.

   Angel bit back the sigh. Fabric tended to float all over her condo; it was a real pain in the tail to keep the place neat.

   And that was the only reason she was sighing.

   "You don't have to work, Logan?" That too-familiar smile lit up Michael's face. "You can come with us?"

   Logan lowered a glass of orange juice from his lips and shook his head. "I was taking off today to find day care for you, remember? Since I don't have to do that anymore, the day is all yours."

   "But I thought Angel was going to babysit me."

   Logan's shoulders dropped ever so slightly. "Well—"

   "I need your dad to show me around, Michael, you know?" Angel jumped in before Michael could hurt his father's feelings any more. "To tell me what you like to eat"—and pray it wasn't difficult to make since, although she might be a whiz with a magma grill and spatula, Human appliances defeated her—"and show me the house. That sort of thing."

   "I can tell you what I like to eat. I'm six now, not a baby." Michael crossed his arms and jutted out his chin—and looked exactly like his father again.

   "I was including Angel, Michael." Logan crossed

his legs and leaned back against the counter, his T-shirt tightening against his abdomen. "We can all spend the day together. What do you think?"

   That got a smile out of the little boy. And the high five to his dad got a smile out of Logan.

   And a sigh out of her. Which, thankfully, she man aged to keep very soft.

   "Cool! Let's go see the manatees."

   "Manatees?"
That
got her wayward thoughts off things they weren't supposed to be considering anyway. While Angel loved the gentle creatures—especially this coastal contingent who were the ones responsible for discover ing the coup attempt against Rod a few
selinos
ago—she couldn't risk even one drop of saltwater reaching her legs. Not in front of Logan, and definitely not in public.

   "Michael, I think I'd like to steer clear of the ocean for a bit, if you don't mind."

   "Actually, Angel…" Logan addressed her directly, and silly her, she couldn't hide the shiver that action sent through her.

   Good gods. What was wrong with her? She was a scientist, for gods' sakes. She should have some control over herself.

   Yes, she'd proved that
so
well last night in this very kitchen … "The refuge is on the river," Logan contin ued as if there were no inappropriate thoughts diving through her mind. "The manatees are brought there for rehabilitation before being set free to find their way back to the open sea. We won't be anywhere near the ocean, and there aren't any sharks."

   Sharks were the least of her worries now, but a river changed everything. Manatees could swim in both saltwater and freshwater, but freshwater wouldn't make her tail return. "Well then, that sounds like a plan. I'm in."

   She would, however, have to make sure the manatees didn't blow her cover. The last thing she needed was them crowding around her and cluing the Humans in that something odd was going on.

   Speaking of odd…

   A quick flash of pink made her glance out the win dow. Ginger stared back with a pointed swish of her head toward the refrigerator.

   "Betcha didn't know sailors thought that manatees were mermaids," Michael whispered loud enough for even Ginger to hear.

   A beak-shaking, neck-undulating laugh caused the flamingo to fall off the one leg she'd been standing on.

   "You don't say." Angel knocked the rim of Michael's cap down so he wouldn't see her glare out the window. Of course she knew that myth. Mers still laughed them selves silly over that bit of Human ignorance. Nothing against manatees, but when Mers could shift into sleek, graceful,
fast-moving
dolphins, why-in-the-sea would anyone think they'd choose a meandering sea cow?

   "It's true. Logan told me. 'Course he also said mer maids don't exist." Michael broke into peals of laughter and Logan joined in, although obviously not getting the
real
joke.

   Although the real joke was on her.

   She could proclaim port and starboard that she was a scientist, that she had an agenda, that she was here for one reason and one reason only, but when Logan smiled like that, she was all woman—staring at a gorgeous man who had held her and kissed her and made her
want…

   "The sailors had probably been at sea for way too long if they found manatees attractive," Logan said when Michael left to get suntan lotion. "Still, you can't blame them. Who wouldn't want to believe in mermaids?"

   "You would?" she asked breathlessly. Could it be that easy? Were Humans ready to accept that Mers existed? Was Logan?

   Logan chuckled and lifted a glass of orange juice to his lips. "Well, sure. Who wouldn't? Beautiful, sexy women who whisk men off to deserted islands and make love to them all day? What's not to like about th—"

   His eyes met hers and the glass hovered by his mouth, tiny ripples sloshing the juice around.

   Was that look generated by Siren Song? Could it last this long? Or was that his honest-to-gods reaction?

   Angel licked her lip. Oh yeah. She could see making love on a deserted island, no one around for leagues. The play of the surf and the sand against their skin—

   Wait a minute.
That's
what he thought of her kind? How could he believe that? How could he
want
that? It made Mers sex objects. Not feeling, thinking people with hopes and dreams and aspirations and—

   And she was taking this too seriously. Kitchen esca pades aside, mermaids were obviously still a myth to him. A legend. A fantasy.

   
Oh to be his fantasy…

   Logan cleared his throat and gulped a mouthful of the juice, his eyes suddenly focused on something outside. Angel hoped it wasn't Ginger trying to mime another command about the prawns. That was the last thing Logan needed to see.

   Or…

She glanced down.

   Okay,
those were the last things Logan needed to see
. Apparently bras weren't designed to be nipple armor. She'd have to make a note of that. When her hands were steady enough to hold a pen.

   "Okay, let's go." Michael, thank the gods, bounded back into the room with all the exuberance and hormonal fog-clearing ability of any child. "I'm ready."

   He wasn't the only one.

Logan peeled his gaze off the panes in the French door and focused it on the white cabinets over the micro wave. Then at the faded-denim curtain the designer had insisted he needed over the window. At the maroon-and navy, rope-design tile along the top of the backsplash the same designer had insisted on.

   It was no use. His eyes wanted to return to Angel. She looked like… He didn't know what she looked like in that outfit.
Perfect
was the only word that came to mind.

   Her long, blonde hair—the soft, silky hair he'd felt trailing over different parts of his anatomy yesterday and wouldn't mind having along
other
parts of his body—hung to her hips, damp loose waves making him think of nights spent in wild abandon. Her face, with those rarest-of-color eyes, was breathtakingly beautiful. Her smile, so generous and quick, a Cupid's bow of a mouth and the dimple high in her cheek… the woman was utterly stunning.

   And he'd had her up against the cabinets, devouring her with his lips and wanting to do the same with the rest of his body.

   His gaze dropped to her breasts, round and full be neath her sexy top. He remembered
exactly
how her nipples had stood out against the dress last night, how they'd felt against his chest, and if he wasn't wrong, he could still seen their outline.

   Nothing was designed to drive him to his knees quicker than the sight of her hardened nipples—except maybe it was that lip-licking thing she did. But nor mally he wasn't a breast man. If asked, he would have said the smile and eyes caught his attention first, fol lowed by the rest of a woman's beauty, both inside and out.

   He was going to have to amend that when it came to Angel. He honestly couldn't say what it was that drew him to her more. Of course, he hadn't had the benefit of seeing other women he'd dated naked before he'd started dating them—

   Logan took a deep breath. It'd been damned hard to exorcise that image of her bare body from his mind last night.

   "Are you ready, Logan?"

   Michael looked at him with an expectantly hopeful smile.

   Oh he was ready, all right, but he was going to fail in the father department if he didn't get his mind and his eyes off Angel.

   "Sounds like a plan to me, sport." He tapped the rim of Michael's cap, praying he hadn't just agreed to something he'd come to regret. But from the smile on Angel's face and Michael's "
Cool!
" as he bounced out, it couldn't be that bad.

   He couldn't get to the wildlife refuge quick enough. If there was one thing guaranteed to cool his libido, it was the sight of nonmermaid-like, elephantine animals.

Harry swung his tail back and forth, lining up his troops a hundred meters offshore. The sun had crept over the horizon, beginning the countdown to sunset.

   Angel's time on land was limited.

   Harry knew it, and he knew that Angel knew it. And he knew that she knew that he knew it.

   It made the anticipation that much sweeter.

   "So how long do we have to wait here?" A.C., the most recent addition to the pack he'd recruited off the coast of New Jersey, didn't like taking things on faith, and the bad-ass attitude was starting to piss Harry off. The kid thought he knew it all, but then, the young al ways did.

   Harry eyed the Hammerhead's pristine tail. For a self-titled tough guy, A.C. was short on battle scars. He'd had an entourage, which was what had caught Harry's attention in the first place, but the shark wasn't living up to his own press. Nah, Mr. A.C. Hammer could take that punk demeanor and stick a harpoon in it. Harry was the boss here. He called the shots, and if the kid didn't learn to take orders, he'd be out on his tail.

   This time, Harry chose to ignore the punk. Let him know he wasn't as important as he thought.

   "Okay, guys, here's the plan." Harry eyed the rest of the Hammerheads he'd assembled. Seven of the most battle-scarred, meanest bounty-hunting 'Heads he could find. "We're going in, in sphere formation, the opening closest to shore. That's where we'll herd her, but no one takes a bite."

   "What the fuck?" A.C. added a swagger to his stroke. "I didn't sign on to be a shepherd."

   "You'll be whatever in Hades I say you are and like it." Harry went snout to snout with the kid.

   Harry's was bigger—and as usual, size mattered.

   But the kid didn't back down. "So if we're not taking a bite, what are we going to do with her? She'll start singing bloody murder, and we'll end up with a feeding frenzy around us."

   "You only get a feeding frenzy if you actually bite her, punk." Harry considered shredding the kid just to make a point to the others, but he'd recruited lean and couldn't afford to lose one member of the formation. Angel, for all her Human studies, was one smart Mer when it came to tactical maneuvers. All the Tritones were. Their father, Fisher, had seen to it.

   Probably for just this reason. Sharks weren't known for taking direction well from Mers. Especially when the members of The Oceanic Council didn't give them one ounce of say in governing the oceans. Not even a seat on The Council. Even after Vincent had saved the day all those
selinos
ago—much as it pained Harry to admit it— he'd thought The Council would recognize the rights of
chondrichthyes
. But no.

   "So what are we supposed to do with her?" Gianni, another recruit, asked.

   Great. Just what the fuck he needed. A mutiny of the bounty hunters.

   "She's our ticket in. The Council will realize we mean business."

   "So we're not going to eat her?" Lou, a hunter lured out of retirement by the promise of a royal tar get, started frothing at the mouth—never a good sign. "Then why the fuck did you trawl me along, Har? This is bullsharkshit."

   Okay, so maybe Harry hadn't exactly explained what this job would entail. But, dammit, he'd needed the best, and Lou was it. Too bad Lou had settled down to raise little 'Heads. But that's what you did when you landed a trophy wife apparently. Harry couldn't see it. Lou's mate had more air between her eyes than water, but hey, to each his own.

   "Look, we can eat her, just not right off the beach. Give me some bargaining power, and if The Council doesn't cave, you each get a bite. But if we turn her into chum right away, we lose any hope of negotiation and will put ourselves on the endangered list. Fisher will be back in the hot seat and rally his troops out in full force, so let's not do anything rash."

   "Rash?" A.C. rolled his eyes. "Rash was following you off on this wild grouper chase. I'm outta here."

   Harry flicked his tail, propelling himself in front of the deserter. He inhaled enough water to inflate his gills to three times their normal size. He could do intimidat ing better than any punk kid.

   "You aren't going anywhere. You signed on for this, and you'll finish it." Harry grinned, all of his teeth gleaming white. He knew because he'd paid those Spanish hogfish to do an extra good job. Intimidation could work wonders in a showdown. He wasn't about to get beat by this piece of floating garbage.