Seduced by the Sea Lord

Chapter 10

"I will give you young fry."

Torun's earnest promise slapped her ears like a sneaker wave. Lucy hurried through the streets as though she could outrun it. "I will give you young fry."

No, you won't.

The reply had been on her tongue. The words had almost come out. Only through force of will had she swallowed them back.

Mel had been an ordinary single woman like Lucy once. They'd met their husbands, gotten engaged, and married within a couple of years of each other. Then Mel glowed with pregnancy after pregnancy. She joked about her post-baby weight, but there was no doubt that her husband still desired her. He shouldered parental duties eagerly, and they both kept up their activities and careers. Children added a rosy wholeness to Mel's life, a huge fulfillment that Lucy craved more than oxygen.

She had so desperately wanted her own family. She'd imagined her husband's love growing as her body grew with their child.

But it didn't. Because her body couldn't.

And now that pain washed over her again, a riptide threatening to drag her under.

She had told Torun over and over she would not be his queen or give him children. He thought she was unwilling to give him babies, not incapable.

No one looking at her would believe she was such a failure of a human being, right? She had all the equipment, didn't she?

"Lucy." Torun's deep bass vibrated soothingly in her ear. Intimate, as if his words in the crazy heart of Cancun's tourist areas were only for her. "You are upset."

He sounded concerned. Like he was going to hold her again and make her heart swell with promises that she knew he couldn't keep.

She scrubbed her face to keep from doing something stupid, like reaching out for Torun and accepting that comfort. "I'm just late."

Lucy ducked into her old dive shop.

Her former boss was out on the trawler resurrecting the engine. As well he should! Selling her a zombie boat was a rotten way to repay their friendship. Lucy headed to the marina and used Elyssa's new credit card to pay for fees and gas.

Busyness kept her from dwelling on the real reason she avoided the burning aquamarine gaze of the so-called marine warrior.

Mel was supposed to have taken one look at Torun and thumped Lucy upside the head. Are you crazy? the Mel in her imagination demanded. He says he's a what? And you want to take him out diving? Is this the expedition I double-mortgaged my house to finance?

But instead, Mel had been completely in favor. When Torun had been distracted meeting the rest of Mel's family, she'd pulled Lucy to the side for a woman-to-woman chat. "Skip the psychiatrist. You must take him back out with you."

"He knows the location of the Sea Opals," Elyssa had chimed in.

"And he's good for you. You haven't been this alive since you signed the divorce papers."

Lucy had put her hands on her hips. "You'll feel bad if he's an ax murderer."

Mel had laughed and patted Lucy. "Honey, I'd still put my money on you."

Elyssa had studied Torun skeptically like he actually might be an ax murderer.

"I'm kidding," Lucy had said. "But come on. Who goes around claiming to be a merman?"

"Maybe he's not lying. He did the foot thing."

"Foot thing?"

"Yeah, a thing." Elyssa had flexed her foot and nearly toppled over. She'd grabbed a chair for balance. "And he didn't drown, and he's sort of blue."