Free For the Taking by Lilian Darcy Page B

of how vulnerable she was. He would remember the way she’d kissed him. That kind of response didn’t go away overnight, did it?
    Even sitting as straight as a Victorian schoolmarm in a whalebone corset, she couldn’t get far enough away from him on this blanket. He knew what he did to her. The only thing she could do was to make it clear that her attraction to him didn’t make her vulnerable, after all. She wasn’t going to give him everything he asked for.
    She expected him to argue, but he didn’t. “Are you planning to go through them yourself?” he asked instead.
    Maybe he could read her mind. The mer weren’t psychic, but so far he’d been pretty good at reading her body language, and her emotional needs. On this occasion, there was no point in lying to him.
    “Yes, when I get a chance,” she answered him. “Carefully. When I’m not tired. Or distracted. Otherwise there’s no point in doing it at all. If there wasany obvious information about the whereabouts of the key, I’d have found it before this. If Cyria did leave me a message, or a clue of some kind, it’s pretty well hidden.”
    “Which means I’d have more chance of finding it than you would, since I’m far more familiar with mer culture, and with the symbols she might use.”
    “I’m not showing you her things, Loucan.” Lass didn’t need any more opportunities for him to watch her emotional barriers breaking down.
    “It’s your decision,” he answered.
    “Yes. Remember that!”
    She glared at him again, feeling like a mother bird trying to protect its nest from a marauding cat. She could chirp and flutter all she wanted, but in the long run she doubted that her behavior would change the outcome. He would prowl, undeflected, toward his goal.
    They ate the salad rolls, the fruit, cheese and crackers, washing the meal down with strong coffee followed by fresh water from the stream.
    “Tell me why you love this place so much,” he said, and she couldn’t see any danger or intent behind the question, so she told him.
    “Not hard to understand, is it? The beauty. The peace. The fact that it’s unspoiled enough that we can drink the water from the creek and not get sick.”
    “And why the gallery, and the tearoom?”
    “I like selling beautiful things that people will treasure.”
    “Like the green vase?”
    She had to laugh. “Well, the woman who bought it obviously thought it was beautiful and worth treasuring.”
    “True.”
    “And I like serving meals that give people pleasure.”
    “Yet you don’t trust people—land people—very much, do you?”
    Her scalp tightened, and so did her mouth. “I should have known you weren’t just making casual conversation, Loucan. What point are you trying to prove this time? That I’m not truly at home here, so I should go back with you to Pacifica?”
    “I wasn’t trying to prove a point. I was just making an observation.”
    “A very pointed observation. Okay, yes, I don’t trust people. Can you blame me? Should I have a heart-to-heart talk with Susie over the scone dough one day? She’s started throwing out hints about how satisfying marriage can be, and how if you want to meet a good man you have to go out and find one, not just sit back and wait for it to happen. Should I tell her, ‘Well, actually, yes, I’d love to meet a man, only, you see, I grow gills and a tail when I stay in the water too long, and I’m not sure if he’d be able to deal with that.”’
    “Susie and Megan are the kind of people you should tell,” he insisted. “People you trust.”
    “But I don’t trust them! Not enough to be sure they’d react the right way. I’ve never met anyone I trust that much.”
    “Because Cyria taught you not to.”
    “That’s part of it. What about you, Loucan?” she asked desperately. “You were married to a land woman, once. Did you tell her that you were mer?”
    She hadn’t expected it to be a match-winning question, but she could see at once that it