“Nah.” Clancy used his key fob to unlock the Jeep. “If he got leave to come home this year, we would’ve heard by now.”
“Does Ma know?”
He hoisted a dark eyebrow over one of his deep blue eyes and hopped into the driver’s seat. Rowan smiled at her lanky, handsome brother. Everybody knew she and Clancy were tight. He was just a year older than her and a lot closer to own her temperament than Duncan. Clancy was a goofball and a good-natured troublemaker, while their older brother, Duncan, was as intense and serious as they came. Clancy had been forgiving after Rowan convinced her family to invest all their money with Frederick, and he’d helped keep her from drowning in a sea of self-pity. Duncan, on the other hand, had been full of told-you-sos. “What did you expect, Row?” he’d asked her in a Skype call from overseas. “A lot of dudes aren’t as advertised. You can’t take anything at face value these days. You gotta stop being so damn trusting.”
It probably didn’t help that Duncan was even more distant geographically than emotionally—the last time anyone had heard from him, he’d been somewhere in Pakistan. But that had been several weeks earlier.
Clancy started up the engine. “Ma suspects he’s not coming. She doesn’t talk about it, but I think she’s pissed. This is the first cookout he’s missed since basic training. And she’s worried as hell about him.”
“I know. We all are. And I’m worried about her, too.” Rowan leaned in the Jeep door.
“Her arthritis, you mean?”
“Yeah.” Rowan propped her chin in her palm. “I think she’s in a lot more pain than she lets on. Her hands seem more locked up than usual.”
Clancy nodded. “I know. Her constant stressing out about the damn resort has made it worse, but I’ve already made plans to take her to her rheumatologist appointment in Boston this fall. She’ll be okay, Row.”
Just then, the police radio began squawking about an argument between a tourist and one of the island’s taxi drivers. “I gotta run.”
“Thanks for helping me with Hubie.”
“No problem.” Clancy turned the wheel and smiled at her, letting his eyes travel to her left hand. “So you got plans for that sword?”
Rowan looked down and chuckled. “Maybe I’ll hack some weeds out of the daylilies. Or chase the bimbos around some more. Hey, maybe I’ll go after Frederick!”
Clancy shook his head. “Unfortunately, the SEC beat you to it. See ya, sis. Oh, and you might want to get all the guests in from the beach. Gonna be a real bitch of a storm.”
Rowan watched the white Jeep with the iridescent blue lettering pass through the gate. Slowly, she raised her hand and stared at the curved blade with the tarnished but ornately carved silver handle. Hubie always said he’d inherited it from an English uncle who’d fought in the Boer Wars, a claim no one could verify. But Rowan did know this much—Frederick Theissen was damn lucky he’d been convicted of sixteen counts of fraud and embezzlement and was doing ten to fifteen in the Otisville, New York, federal prison camp, where bitter ex-girlfriends with swords generally weren’t given visitation privileges.
* * *
“You picked a hella bad time to break down out here!”
“I know!” Ash stumbled into the protected confines of the tugboat operator’s cabin, checking over his shoulder that the Provenance was safely bobbing along behind. “I didn’t know the storm was going to be this bad!”
The captain glanced over at him with outright contempt, then snorted. “I ain’t talking about the storm, mister. I’m talking about festival week. It’s crazy busy right now. Not sure when we’ll get to the repair.”
“What festival? How long do you think it will take?” Ash had to shout over the drone of the tugboat engine.
“Mermaid.”
“Did you just say ‘mermaid’?”
The captain laughed. “Yup. Every third week of August we got a Mermaid Festival on Bayberry. It’s what we’re famous for.” He quickly glanced at Ash. “Don’t sail much, do ya?”
Ash shrugged. “Occasionally. I inherited the boat from my grandfather. I’m still learning.”
The captain shook his head, not bothering to say aloud what his body language so clearly conveyed—that Ash was a spoiled rich snob from Boston who didn’t deserve such a beautiful boat.
“So how much will a repair like this set me back?” he asked.
The captain shrugged. “Gotta take that up with Sully at the marine yard. He’ll let you know what he finds and how much it’s gonna cost to fix it. But you did a real good job bustin’ up your chain plate. Didn’t notice it was corroded, eh?”
“No! I have a guy who does my maintenance.”
Ash watched the captain squeeze his eyes shut. There was nothing more ridiculous than a sailor who lacked the time or knowledge to care for his own boat.
“And the engine?” There was an edge of sarcasm in the captain’s voice. “Any idea why it didn’t start after I gassed it up? Did you make sure there was oil?”
“Not sure what happened.” Which was a lie, since the engine had seized only because he’d planned it that way. He was prepared for bad news from this Sully character. Either the engine would have to be taken apart and put back together, with uncertain results, or the whole thing would have to be replaced. Either way, he’d write it off as a business expense—all part of the job.
“Boy, the wind has really picked up,” Ash said, craning his neck to look out the Plexiglas windows to the sky. “Will this Sully character let me sleep on board while he works on the boat? Or is there a place I can stay near the marine yard?” Of course Ash knew the answer to this question.
The captain shook his head. “Look, mister. Bayberry Island rooms book a year or more in advance for festival week. I don’t know what to tell you. My job is to tow your ass into the yard. Where you go after that is up to you.”
About forty-five minutes later, Ash was giving his cell phone and credit card numbers to Sully, a man he hoped to God was better with boats than people. Then he locked down his belongings in the Provenance’s cabin and was on his own. He wandered through the marine yard, making sure as many people as possible noticed him looking lost and confused. Eventually he found his way toward the center of town and decided to stop at the tourist information kiosk on the public dock.
“Can you recommend a place to stay?”
The girl looked at him and blinked. “You don’t have a reservation on island?”
“Unfortunately not. My sailboat broke down and I got it towed to the marine yard. I don’t know how long it will take to fix.”
The young woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir, but if you don’t have a reservation, I’m not sure what I can do. There are no vacancies at the moment.”
Ash sighed dramatically. “Yeah, I heard there was some kind of festival going on. Mermaids, right?”
The girl looked shocked. “Seriously?” She laughed. “You don’t know about the festival?”
“Not really. The tugboat captain mentioned it. Do you have a brochure?”
Still laughing, she reached underneath her stool and pulled out a stack several inches thick. “If I were you, I’d head over to Frankie’s, just off the dock. You might want to get inside somewhere before the storm hits.” She hitched her thumb over her shoulder. “It’s the best seafood around, and since it’s not peak hours and the storm’s got a lot of tourists taking cover in their hotel rooms, you might not have to wait. If you’ve got a cell, you can start making calls from Frankie’s. All of the motels, hotels, and B and Bs are listed in this brochure, and one might have a last-minute cancellation.” She tapped a finger on the top one. “It would be a miracle if you found anything, though.”
Ash briefly flipped the pages. “All these places look really tiny.”
“Well, yeah. We’re a tiny island. At peak season, we have only about three hundred rooms, and that’s including the locals who rent out their houses for the week and go stay with relatives on the mainland. Most of our festival-we
ek visitors stay on Nantucket or the Vineyard and take the ferry.”
“Hmm. So there’s no resort here or anything?”
“God, no! But some jerk wants to build one.”
Ash flashed her a pleasant smile, and he noticed her blush. “Sounds like a resort might actually be good for the island. Anyway, I do appreciate your help.”
Ash pulled the mermaid legend brochure out from the stack and opened it, grinning. “Wow. This is really something.”
The girl shrugged.
“Huh.” Ash shook his head as if this were his introduction to the legend. “So this Rutherford Flynn guy is out on a fishing boat in a nor’easter and a mermaid rescues him and his crew? And when he gets married, he tells everyone his wife and the mermaid are one and the same?”
“Yeah.” The girl gazed up at him.
“Whoa. And then this Flynn guy becomes a multimillionaire?”
“Yeah. That huge building over there?” She pointed over Ash’s shoulder. “That used to be Flynn Fisheries. It was in operation until the late 1980s, when overfishing led to the collapse of the whole industry. Now it’s our museum. You should really go check it out. That’s where the theater troupe puts on the reenactment on the fourth day of the festival.”
Ash nodded, looking off toward the nineteenth-century redbrick building surrounded by tidy landscaping. “Sounds interesting.” He returned his attention to the brochure. “So this Flynn guy commissions a fountain in the mermaid’s image and people think it has magic powers? Really? What’s the statue supposed to do, anyway?”
She flipped her hair coyly. “If you go to the mermaid with an open heart and no set idea about who your perfect match might be, and you kiss her hand and ask her to help you, she’ll lead you to your one true love.”
Ash chuckled. “Do you believe in the legend?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Not really, I guess.” She leaned forward out the window of the kiosk. “But I’m not supposed to say that to the tourists.”
Ash winked at her. “It’ll stay our little secret.”
Just then, the sound of a large group of kids made Ash direct his attention toward Main Street. He saw about thirty screaming and laughing children under the age of twelve running toward the dock. He laughed with them. “What’s this all about?”
The girl stood up and craned her head out of the information booth, then immediately sat down again. “Looks like the grab has started.”
Ash didn’t even have to feign ignorance on this one—he had no idea what she was talking about, and he thought he’d researched everything about this place and its nut-job festival. “What’s the grab?”
The voices became louder. Then Ash felt the rumble of the kids running on the dock.
“Uh.” The young woman glanced around nervously. “It’s kind of the unofficial start of festival week. Kids run from the mermaid fountain in the square and search for a single male tourist to grab. They drag him back to the fountain, where he has to ask the mermaid to find him his true love, right there in front of everybody.”
Ash laughed. “You’re joking. Poor bastard.”
She shook her head quickly, then bit down on her lower lip. “Um, sir? I hate to tell you this, but—”
Ash’s left elbow was jerked so hard he almost toppled over. Suddenly, he was surrounded by kids pushing him across the dock and toward the Main Street boardwalk. Hundreds of tourists milling around began to clap and cheer, though their enthusiasm was cut short by the low roar of thunder.
“Are you married, mister?” The biggest kid of the bunch was pushing into Ash’s back and yelling into his ear.
“What?”
“Married? Are you married?”
“Uh, no.”
The kid began barking orders to the others. “Hurry up! My mom’s gonna make me go inside in a minute! We need to hurry!”
A flash of lightning cut the sky in half, and the wind picked up. Ash bent his knees and tried to dig his heels into the asphalt of Main Street, but his boat shoes offered little traction. Tourists began to run for cover, but not before some of them took out their smartphones and snapped photos of Ash and his insistent Lilliputians.
He could barely believe his eyes when he saw what appeared to be a professional film crew running along at his side.
“Good luck, fella!” An older man in plaid shorts gave him the thumbs-up sign. “If the mermaid grants your wish, you’re sure as hell gonna need it!”
Ash decided he’d had enough. This wasn’t at all how he’d planned to make his arrival known on Bayberry Island. It was one thing to wander around the marine yard looking like a complete loser, but it was another to be the center of attention, someone’s potential Facebook post, or worse yet, a human interest story on Good Morning America. Something like that would blow his cover. “All right, everyone. Stop, now. Cut it out. I’m not your man.”
“Keep going, mister. We’re almost there.”
“You need to pick someone else. I have no interest in—”
“Here he is!”
Ash gasped in surprise. When the kids corralled him past a stand of trees and into what was clearly fountain square, he was met by a row of human-mermaid hybrids.
“Come along,” said one of them. He realized he was standing before members of the Mermaid Society he’d read about, possibly even Mona Flynn herself, though he couldn’t be sure. How was he supposed to tell with the wig and the costume? “All right, children! You can let him go!”
The kids fell away and Ash staggered for a moment. The mermaid lady touched his arm and led him toward the fountain, whispering in his ear, “We’re going to have to hurry this along, I’m sorry to say. The rain is going to start any moment now.”
“But I really don’t want—”
“What’s your name? Just your first name is fine.” She looked up at him sweetly, blinking as she waited for him to answer.
“You’ve got the wrong guy.”
Her mouth tightened. “First name,” she said, the sweetness now absent from her voice. “Now.”
“Ashton.”
“Lovely.” She grabbed his right forearm and pulled him to the edge of the fountain. The crowd was in motion, some people putting up umbrellas, some backing away and jogging down the street in search of cover, others taking their abandoned spots. The mermaid cleared her throat. “Gather ’round, ye ’maids and ye visitors! We’ve found our lucky winner in this year’s Man Grab!”
Applause, whistles, and cheers exploded all around. Ash felt a big, fat raindrop fall on his forehead.
“Give me your hand, Ashton,” she said with the flair of a master of ceremonies. All Ash could think was that the woman was Vanna White with a flipper. “Now take the mermaid’s hand in yours.”
Ash felt his hand being thrust onto the cold and damp fingers of the bronze fountain. He dared to look up through the plumes of water to the impressive creature towering over them. Waves of thick hair covered only the business ends of her ample breasts. Her beautiful face serenely gazed off toward the sea. A faint smile tickled her lips. Ash let his eyes travel downward to her rounded hips, the delicate indentation of a belly button, and the flirty flip of her tail.
Up close like this, he decided she was quite impressive. Powerful looking. She seemed a lot more human than the pictures and videos he’d studied. And really quite beautiful.
For a statue.
“Ashton, you may kiss her hand.”
The crowd broke into giggles.
“Kiss it!” a female voice yelled out.
Ash’s head began to spin. His arms and legs tingled. “Hold up,” he said, looking into the upturned face of the real woman in the fake mermaid outfit. He leaned down close to her ear. “You’ve got to cut me some slack, lady. I’m not here for love. Seriously. My sailboat broke down and I only wanted—”
She smacked him in the arm. “Oh, Ashton, you are such a funny young man!” The mermaid woman glanced over her shoulder and rolled her eyes at the crowd. “Someone remin
d him this is a G-rated event!”
“Oh, for the love of God,” he mumbled.
“You may kiss her hand,” the woman repeated. Something about the steely, no-bullshit gaze made him think this was, in fact, Mona Flynn. Sure, she was in costume and it was difficult to tell with certainty, but it would fit. The school principal had single-handedly brought the Mermaid Island Resort to a halt with her stubborn refusal to negotiate.
Fine. Whatever. He’d kiss the hand. What could it hurt? Maybe doing so would earn a few points with Mona, and later, when he casually brought up the subject of the resort, she might even listen.
Ash lifted his mouth to the wet, slick coolness of the bronze. He pursed his lips. It was a short peck, but there was definitely some lip-to-statue contact, enough that for a split second, Ash wondered if maybe he’d been electrocuted. Because his lips were on fire.
He straightened. “Happy now?” he whispered.
The woman smiled at him, then continued on with her three-ring-circus voice. “Repeat these words after me!”
Another drop of rain. Another. And another.
“I, Ashton, come to the mermaid in search of my heart-mate.”
He complied, though the words I come to the mermaid because I’ve been abducted by a bunch of unruly brats would have been more accurate.
“I understand that true love is like the sea . . .”
He repeated those words, too.
“It is beautiful, deep, and life-giving . . .”
Those, too.
“Yet it can be unpredictable, powerful, and even dangerous.”
Done.
“I set out on my journey with a heart that is pure and true . . .”
More rain. Harder. He repeated her words, noting that the crowd had begun to disperse, though the professional camera crew was still there, tarps now draped over their equipment.
“I am prepared to be tossed by waves of passion.”
Whatever.
“I am willing to drown in love’s undertow.”
God, when would this end?
“I, Ashton, pledge to go wherever love may lead.”