Free Born Ready by Lori Wilde

“C’mon. I’ll walk you home.”
     
     
    JACKIE DID NOT WANT to admit that she was enjoying herself and Scott’s company. She wasn’t prone to infatuation. If she felt lusty, she usually took care of it in the most efficient way possible, got the urges out of her system and then went back to work. She found anything that distracted her from her research an irritant.
    But now, here, walking along the beach with her sandals clutched between her fingers, her feet digging into the sand, the sound of the surf whispering a sweet lullaby, and Scott walking beside her, she felt…well…feminine.
    Normal.
    Startled by this thought, she drew in a deep breath. Who was this guy and why was he interested in her? Bigger question, why was she interested in him? Yes, she was interested. There. She’d dared to admit it.
    He carried her book and notes under his arm. She sneaked a glance over at him. The moonlight cast his profile in shadows. He had a strong nose and an equally strong chin, high cheekbones and piercing eyes. Her stomach jumped at the acknowledgment of her desire.
    Hormones. Chemicals. That was all.
    She was a scientist. She understood that. It was okay. Part of the human condition. One thing she did not believe in was the softer feelings of the heart. Emotions were transient. Shifting. As evidenced by her parents’ tumultuous relationships and her mother’s abandonment. She pushed that thought aside. She didn’t even miss her mother. Not really. Not anymore. She’d learned to comfort herself with science. Jack had taught her that. Her father had his faults, but he’d stuck by her and he’d shown her that the best way to cope with emotions was simply to ignore them.
    Weigh the facts, evaluate the empirical data, draw rational conclusions from the evidence, don’t allow your mind to be swayed by anything as ethereal as emotions.
    So perhaps that was why she was so startled by the strength of attraction she felt for Scott Everly.
    Let it go. It will pass.
    She took a deep breath, watched the moonlight shimmer over the water.
    The ocean.
    The one thing she truly loved unequivocally. As unfathomable as the ocean was, she understood it far more than she understood human nature.
    Scott, on the other hand, seemed to have a knack for reading people. It was a knack she envied. A knack that made her feel ineffective and socially backward.
    “I love the ocean,” Scott murmured.
    “What’s not to love? It’s mysterious and haunting. Thrilling and calming all at the same time.”
    “Yeah.” His voice husky.
    She could feel the heat of his gaze upon her. She stopped, turned away from him and toward the sea. “I suppose it’s the one thing we have in common.”
    “You don’t know me well enough to say that.” He moved to stand beside her. He was so close all she had to do was reach out and touch him.
    Do not touch him.
    “Do you like scuba diving?” he asked.
    “I took my first dive when I was seven,” she said.
    “I was six.”
    “Show-off.”
    “When your father is Coast Guard, you learn early.”
    “Or when your dad is Jack Birchard.”
    “That’s got to be weird.”
    She shrugged. “To me, it’s normal.”
    “There is nothing normal about you, mermaid.”
    She knew that. A pang of something she could not name squeezed her. “Why do you call me that?”
    “It’s the first thought that popped into my head when I saw you on your boat. Now here’s a mermaid.”
    “What made you think that?”
    He didn’t answer for a while. She could hear the sound of his breathing.
    “When I was a kid I had a crush on the Little Mermaid. Not the Disney version, but the Hans Christian Andersen story. My father read it to me as a bedtime story.”
    Jackie imagined a young Scott curled up in a bed with seascape sheets and models of Coast Guard helicopters and cutters dangling from the ceiling. The strange twist in her stomach tightened. “Guess what my father read me as a bedtime story.”
    “Oceanography text