She was facing him, her long hair thrashing about her neck and chest like silken whips. She seemed to stare straight at him—a bizarre sensation, as her eyes were impossible to make out. Unlike the delectable combination of senses emanating from her: air, water and fire.
From gut to groin Alex went hard.
A massive wave crashed just inches from him, spitting saltwater into his face, his mouth and eyes. He scrubbed a hand over his face to clear the mist, then quickly glanced up.
Both boat and mermaid were gone.
Awareness, raw and demanding battled in his blood, but he shoved the feeling away. He’d felt need before, perhaps not this strong, but he’d fight it just the same. No woman would rule him.
Jaw set, Alex stripped bare and dove into the frigid water, determined to remind the lower half of him—just as he had his mind—who was master.
One
Llandaron
Four months later
Fog surrounded the sloop like a perilous curtain, while the influx of seawater slithered into the hull in a snake-like stream.
As she stuffed wet couch cushions into the cavity, Sophia Dunhill cursed herself for forgetting to plot her estimated position.
How could she have been so stupid? So scattered?
Maybe because with her grandfather’s beautiful homeland in her sights, all thoughts of navigation had simply drifted from her mind.
She’d been sitting on the deck with the late-afternoon sun warming her shoulders, staring out at the small island nation just off the coast of Cornwall. She’d felt mesmerized by Llandaron. Her mountains and her beautiful landscape of trees, purple heather and rocks itching with beach grass.
The weather had been absolutely perfect. Blue sky, calm seas. Then everything had changed. Out of nowhere thick fog had rolled in like a milky carpet so fast she’d barely had time to think. And in seconds the Daydream had collided with the rocky coastline.
How was it possible? A sailor for a good ten years and she hadn’t seen this one coming.
Panic surged in her blood as she bolted up the companionway steps to the deck and straight into the thick fog. She couldn’t lose this vessel to her own stupidity and a pile of rock. It was all she had left of her grandfather. The beautiful sloop was his legacy, his dream—and the one thing that only they’d shared. It had to remain afloat. After all, she still had one leg of this voyage, her grandfather’s voyage, to complete. She had to dock the Daydream in the small fishing village of Baratin where her grandfather was born before she could return home to San Diego, to her empty apartment and to the writer’s block that had plagued her since his death.
Baratin wasn’t far, just on the other side of Llandaron, and come hell or rough water she would make it.
With steady hands she hauled a spare sail across the deck and draped it over the gaping hole. But the water was too powerful. The padding wasn’t going to hold for long. Especially bumping against the rocks the way they were.
A fleeting thought born out of panic, shot into her mind and she quickly shoved it away.
Abandon ship.
But to a sailor, abandoning ship was akin to abandoning a child. It wasn’t done.
At that moment seawater burst through a deck plank like a geyser. The boat shifted, groaned in pain.
Abandoning her child.
Sophia’s heart squeezed. She had no choice.
Grabbing the chart and ditch bag she’d packed, Sophia eased her way to the bow of the boat. Was she a coward to take the easy road? she couldn’t help but wonder. For a moment she was reminded of her parents’ funeral, of the decision she’d made that day to defy their will and go and live with her grandfather instead of her stern aunt Helen. After years of living with two domineering spirits, Sophia had felt desperate for freedom. She’d gone on instinct, and finding her grandfather had been one of the best decisions of her life.
Instinct was all she had to cling to now, and it was screaming at her to jump.
Sophia gave one last glance at the chart to make sure she knew which way to swim. Then, with her eyes closed, her breath a little too tight in her lungs, she listened for the sound of the waves just as her grandfather had taught her.
And after snugging up the straps on her life jacket, she slipped into the water.
He’d hoped to keep the world out.
At least for a while.
From the deck of his beach house, Alex Thorne leaned back in his chair, took a pull on his beer and reveled in the shroud of fog that enveloped him. Granted the mystical fog only lasted one hour in Llandaron. But it was an hour of no questions, no answers and it was pure ecstasy.
After returning home from London five days ago, there had been nothing but questions and the demand for answers. As always he’d dealt with each as succinctly and as nonemotionally as possible. His family didn’t need details of his failed marriage, just the facts: he was divorced and back home to resume his duties, face his people.
Given his brusque nature, Alex had thought the news would flow easily from his lips. But it hadn’t. Deep in his gut, shame had paved the road.
His brother, Maxim, and sister, Catherine, had offered their support and their love, while his father had listened with a tight expression, giving off only sighs and an occasional nod.
Alex didn’t scorn the man’s pragmatic reaction. In fact, he understood it. He, too, was worried about Llandaron and how its citizens would take the news of his failure when it was soberly announced at the annual Llandaron Picnic on Saturday. He couldn’t forget how year after year his people waited patiently for news of a child. News that would never come.
Could his people forgive him this, too? Or would they ask him to step down in favor of Maxim?
Alex took another pull on his beer and stared out into the fog-shrouded sea he bowed to whenever he needed some semblance of comfort. There was no getting past the fact that he loved his people more than his own life. And he was ready to do as they wished. Whatever they wished—
Suddenly, Alex stopped short, all thoughts spent, and leaped to his feet. Brow furrowed, he cocked his head to the side and listened.
A sound. A cry—coming from the water, faint, but desperate—echoed over the beach. A sound that made his blood run cold.
Gut in his throat, Alex bolted off the deck, dropped down onto the cool sand and raced to the water’s edge. The fog was thick as butter, but the visual impasse didn’t make him cautious. He could have run that stretch of beach blindfolded, he’d combed it so many times.
There it was again. A woman’s cry. Louder now.
Without pausing to think, Alex thrashed into the surf, then dove beneath the waves. He swam like a demon toward a cry muffled by the swirl of the sea.
When he surfaced, he fought for his bearings. He looked right then left, then behind himself as his legs worked like twin engines in the water.
It took all of five seconds for him to locate the source of that cry. Red hair, wide eyes, pale complexion. A woman thrashing about in the water, the strings of her life vest caught on rock.
Her shouts for help grew hoarse, weak. She was obviously tiring. The erratic tumble of Alex’s heartbeat thumped in his ears as he swam like a sea snake straight for her. Once he reached her side, he wasted no time with words. He ripped the vest from the rock, then eased his arm around her waist and scooped her up.
But in his haste for shore, his leg caught, gripped by a colony of seaweed.