Chapter Four
Maddy was caught off guard a second time that day when a tall, rather imposing man silently walked up to her nurses’ station at ten minutes to four. Apparently realizing that it took her a moment to recognize him, her cousin’s mouth lifted in the beginning of a smile—only it disappeared when his sharp, piercing gray eyes suddenly narrowed on her face.
“Who in hell hit you?” he growled instead of the warm greeting she’d expected.
Maddy touched her cheek. “I, um, tripped and fell off my porch last week. And it’s wonderful to see you, too, even if you are four hours late.”
Instantly contrite, Trace stepped behind the counter, pulled her up out of her chair, and hugged her fiercely. “I’m sorry for growling at you like that, and for missing our lunch date.” He blew out a sigh. “Damn, Peeps, I’ve missed you. Every time I caught a whiff of antiseptic in the last five years, I saw your beautiful face.”
“My signature cologne,” she said with a laugh, hugging him back just as fiercely. She leaned away to look at him. “Oh, Trace, it’s so good to see you. Are you really home for good?”
“I’m not leaving Midnight Bay ever again.” His eyes crinkled at the corners with another hint of a smile. “Except to drive my two favorite girls over to Port Stone. Just as soon as you get off work, we’ll strap Sarah’s booster seat in my truck, and the three of us will go pig out on lobster down at the pier.”
Maddy stepped away with a laugh. “Sarah hasn’t used a booster seat in four years; she’s nearly ten, Trace, and already quite a young lady. And I’m sorry, but old man Walsh died three years ago, and rumor is they buried him in his lobster shack.”
Trace stared at her in disbelief, but then his gaze strayed to her cheek, and his eyes hardened again. Maddy laced her fingers through his and started down the hall, stopping to peek into the sitting room.
“Katy, I’m heading out back to the gazebo for a few minutes. If you need anything, just give me a holler.”
Katy looked up from the newspaper she was reading to some of the residents, her eyes widening when she noticed the man holding Maddy’s hand. “Oh. Sure. I’ll give you a holler,” the young girl stammered. “Um, shouldn’t the others be back by now?” she asked—though Maddy wasn’t sure if she was asking her or Trace, as the poor girl couldn’t seem to stop staring at her cousin.
“They’ll be here soon. When they arrive you should probably check them for sunburn, and if anyone’s tired, tell them they can have supper in their rooms.”
“I’ll get them settled in for the evening,” Katy promised.
Maddy gave her a nod and started down the hall again. “Instead of taking us out to eat, you can follow me home when I get off work in an hour, and I’ll feed you,” she told Trace, leading him outside into the bright August sun. She stopped to make a face at him. “Mom said you bought a fishing boat. Mind telling me what in hell possessed you to become a fisherman?”
“There’s not much call for soldiering around here,” he snapped. “And I’m sure as hell not going to work at the textile mill.”
“That mill closed two years ago,” Maddy whispered.
He gave her hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry, Peeps. That was an uncivilized response to a very reasonable question.” He started them off again, and they walked across the lawn in companionable silence. “Do you have any plans for this Saturday?” he asked when they reached the gazebo overlooking the river.
“Nothing pressing. Why?”
“Can you get a babysitter for Sarah?”
“She stays with Billy most weekends. Why? What’s up?”
He sat down on the gazebo step and stared out at the gently flowing water. “I’d like you to spend the day with me on my boat.”
She snorted. “You know I love you to pieces, and that I’m dying for us to catch up, but you also know that the smell of bait makes me puke out my guts. Why don’t we just take a ride to Acadia National Park? I’m sure we can find a lobster shack in Bar Harbor that’s falling-down dirty like old man Walsh’s.”
Trace shot her a quick glance before looking away again, but it was long enough for Maddy to see the guarded look in his eyes. “Because what I want to show you is out on the water,” he said quietly. “And because you’re the only person I can trust to tell me the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
“About whether or not I’ve gone insane.”
“Excuse me?” She reached out to grasp his forearm. “Trace, what are you talking about?”
“Have you heard a rumor going around town about a . . . mermaid being spotted ten miles offshore early last week?”
“I’ve only heard bits and pieces.”
“Well, I’m the one who started it.”
Caught completely off guard again, Maddy could only gape at him.
He looked down at her hand on his arm, then took it between his callused palms and turned on the step to face her. “When I was out putting my new boat through its paces last Monday, I spotted something splashing in the distance off my port side, so I headed toward it. But when I reached where it should have been, whatever had been making those splashes had vanished. Only it reappeared not fifty yards off my stern, and I saw . . .” His hands tightened on hers. “I saw a woman in the water, watching me.”
“A woman? Ten miles out? Were there any other boats around?”
He shook his head. “And when I shouted at her to hold on, that I’d throw her a buoy, she looked as startled as I was, and suddenly started swimming away. I dug around for a buoy, but when I went to throw it, she’d disappeared again. So I stripped down to just my jeans, and dove in.”
“Trace! The ocean is freezing!”
“It sure as hell wasn’t bathwater. But what else could I do? I had no idea how long she’d been out there. She was in a lot more danger of getting hypothermia than I was.” He shook his head, dropping his gaze to her hand still clasped in his. “I dove again and again searching for her. I swear I’d catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye, but when I swam toward it, there was never anything there.”
He looked up at her, and if he’d been guarded before, he appeared positively haunted now. “One time when I came up for air, I found her treading water not twenty feet away from me and realized she was as naked as a newborn. And dammit, Maddy, she smiled at me,” he growled, squeezing her hand. “I was so stunned I just bobbed there like flotsam, completely speechless. She suddenly laughed, and then dove under the surface again. I got my wits back just in time to put my face in the water and see her swim underneath me, so close she actually tugged on my toes. And then . . . then she simply vanished again.”
“She vanished?”
Trace stood up, his hands balled into fists as he faced her. “I swam back to my boat and put out a Mayday to the Coast Guard and to any other boats in the area. I told them there was a woman in the water, gave the coordinates, and then started scanning the waves again.”
“You broadcast a Mayday? Saying what . . . that there was a naked, laughing woman swimming in the Gulf of Maine?” she asked, hoping to make light of what he was saying, as she sure as hell couldn’t comprehend it.
He glowered at her. “You of all people know the symptoms of hypothermia: mental confusion, the sensation of warmth, euphoria.”
“But a person can’t survive more than an hour—two hours tops—in water that cold, Trace.” Maddy also stood up. “And you’d been swimming around in it for what? Half an hour yourself? Have you considered that maybe you were the one experiencing confusion? You probably mistook a seal or a porpoise for a person at first, and only thought it was a naked woman once the cold started getting to you.”
“I’m trained not to let the cold get to me. I could have swum the ten miles to shore if I’d had to. Dammit, Maddy, I need you to believe me!” He started to say more, but suddenly turned away and stood rigid, staring at the river.
Maddy had no idea what to say, either.
Or do.
Or even think.
“And because of my Mayday,” he said, his back still to her, “now there’s a rumor going around town that poor Trace Huntsman must have snapped over in Afghanistan, because he called the Coast Guard to come rescue a mermaid.”
“And did you snap in Afghanistan?” she asked softly. “Is that why you came home, Trace, because they sent you home?”
He turned to her, and Maddy nearly cried out at the pain in his eyes. “I took myself out of the game before I snapped.” Apparently in an attempt to appear indifferent, he gave a shrug, though Maddy knew he was anything but. “If they chose to believe my beating a man nearly to death meant I was losing it, who was I to argue with them?”
She took a shuddering breath. “And did you . . . when you . . . had you reached some point of no return, Trace?”
“I beat the bastard because he deserved it.” He slashed the air with his hand. “And that’s all I’m saying on the subject, so let’s get back to my mermaid.”
“But—”
“I returned to the same spot the very next day,” he continued, “and have gone there every day since, except today.” His hands balled into fists again. “And I saw her three more times: last Thursday, again Friday, and then again yesterday.” He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. “Yesterday she surfaced not ten feet from my boat and hit me square in the chest with this,” he said, holding his hand toward her.
Maddy stared at the tiny metal object.
“I’ve decided it’s a coin,” he said, taking her wrist to lift her hand, and pressing the object into her palm. “An ancient coin made of some metal I don’t recognize. I spent today at the library searching the stacks and online, but I wasn’t able to find anything like it. I couldn’t find anything resembling the symbol stamped on it, either.”
When she still said nothing, he turned the coin over, leaving it sitting in her palm. “But I think the marking on the back is a word, and near as I can tell, it’s Sanskrit.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “Sanskrit?”
“It’s an ancient Indic language used around twelve hundred to four hundred B.C.”
“Indic?”
“It was spoken in India and is still used in some parts of it today. Sanskrit is supposedly as old as Latin and Greek.”
She squinted down at the coin. “Do you know what the word is?”
He lifted it out of her hand and held it up to study the marking. “No. It’s worn smooth in places, and I don’t know jack about ancient languages.”
“Do you know anyone who does?”
He shoved the coin back into his pocket and clasped both of her hands between his. “What’s on the coin doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it’s real. And now I need you to confirm for me that the woman is also real.”
Maddy felt a bit like flotsam, herself. “I-I don’t know what to say, Trace.”
“Say you’ll come out on my boat with me Saturday. And once you see her, say you’ll help me figure out how a woman can be swimming around in the Gulf of Maine as if it were a heated pool.”
“And if I don’t see her?”
“Then we go back out on Sunday.”
“And if I go out there with you every day and I still don’t see her?”
He took hold of her shoulders—more to anchor himself than hold her in place, Maddy suspected. “Then we concentrate on figuring out where that coin came from.”
She pressed her palms to his chest, but instead of feeling a racing heartbeat like she’d expected, she felt a strong, steady, surprisingly slow thumping; and Maddy realized that Trace wasn’t nearly as desperate to confirm his sanity as he was deadly serious about proving that the coin-throwing woman actually existed.
“You’ve been deployed to Afghanistan at least twice that I know of in the last five years,” she said. “Which, if I remember my high school geography, is one country away from India. There’s a good chance you came across the coin during one of your tours, forgot about it, and just found it again in the pocket of an old pair of your jeans.”
“I came home with only the clothes on my back. I gave everything I owned to some kid and his mother in Kabul.”
“Everything? But why?”
He shrugged again, and this time she knew he truly was indifferent. “I figured they needed it more than I did.”
Maddy looked deep into his storm-gray eyes. “Oh, Trace. What happened to you over there? Where’s the boy who chased me halfway home when he caught me watching him screwing Leslie Simpson in the woods and then threatened to cut off all my hair if I told anyone?”
“He left Midnight Bay ten years ago.” He enveloped her in a heartbreakingly fierce embrace. “And for the last three years, he’s been trying his damnedest to get back here in one piece.”
Maddy felt him suddenly tense; his arms around her coiling with energy, every muscle in his body poised to respond.
“Ye’d best be telling me you’re her brother,” a deep, threatening voice said from directly behind her.
Maddy gasped and tried to step back, but Trace held her firmly, threading his fingers through her hair to hold her head pressed against his chest. “Are you the bastard who put that bruise on her face?” he asked far too softly.
“Well now, I was just about to ask you the same question.”
Trace’s grip slackened ever so slightly, though he continued to hold her facing him. “Is this your boyfriend, Peeps?” he asked—loud enough for William to hear.
Maddy tensed. Damn. Saying yes would only encourage William, but saying no might get him beat up. And with both men being equal in strength and stature, and apparently temperament, well . . . things could get really ugly real fast.
Trace gave a chuckle, though it lacked any humor. “Are you still hung up on jocks, Maddy? I would have thought you learned your lesson with Billy.”
“Trust me, I did,” she muttered into his shirt.
“Then why does this . . . gentleman look like he wants to rip out my throat if I don’t get my hands off what he obviously considers his property?”
“Please don’t antagonize him, Trace.”
“Why? Because he might suddenly turn violent? Tell me who hit you.”
“I fell off the porch.”
“I don’t doubt you did—right after someone slapped your face. Tell me who, Maddy. I promise I won’t kill the bastard; I just want to have a little talk with him. Or,” he said when she said nothing, “at least give me your word that this guy isn’t the bastard.”
“He isn’t.”
He suddenly opened his arms, but when she started to turn, Trace took hold of her shoulder to stop her. “Okay then, prove it to me.”
She blinked at him. “Prove what?”
“That he’s your boyfriend.” He gave her a nudge. “Go on, prove it.”
“How?” she growled, fully aware that William could hear every damn last word of their crazy conversation.
“By kissing him.”
Maddy narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out what he was up to. “What in hell would that prove?”
Trace crossed his arms over his chest and relaxed his weight back on his hips. “Well for starters, it would prove you’re not afraid of him, which would go a long way in convincing me that it’s not his handprint on your face. And second, it would go an even longer way in convincing him that I’m not your boyfriend.”
Dammit all to hell and back! If she knew anything about Trace, it was that once he went off on a tangent, nothing short of a nuclear explosion could make him change course. “I am so going to make you pay for this,” she hissed, pivoting around and marching up to William. “I feel even a hint of your tongue, Killkenny, I will bite it off. You got that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” William said, his eyes sparkling like sapphires in the sunlight. He held his arms out from his sides. “Give me your best shot, lass.”
She so wanted to punch him in the stomach, if for no other reason than to wipe that grin off his face. Honest to God, all men were trouble, every damn last one of them. Maddy clapped her hands on William’s clean-shaven cheeks and yanked his head down; and with her lips pursed as tight as a clam hanging over a pot of boiling water, she pressed her mouth against his—all while trying her damnedest not to notice how really nice he smelled.
Or how really good he tasted.
Or how badly she wanted to stick her tongue in his mouth.
She tried stepping away the moment she felt his arms start to wrap around her, but she wasn’t fast enough. William canted her head into the crook of his arm and kissed her so soundly that a herd of bumblebees started buzzing around in her belly. Only before she could even think about poking him in the ribs he suddenly set her away, but then had to grab hold of her shoulders when her knees started to buckle.
“No wonder you’re still single after six years,” Trace said with a chuckle from right behind her. “That wasn’t a kiss, Peeps, that was an assault. Good thing at least one of you knows what you’re doing.” He extended his hand to William. “Trace Huntsman, Maddy’s cousin.”
“William Killkenny, Maddy’s boyfriend,” William said, tucking her against his side to return Trace’s handshake.
It was as she was trying to figure out just how much trouble that kiss was going to cause her that Maddy suddenly noticed something more than a handshake was happening. Apparently in some secret code only men knew, they reached some sort of unspoken agreement as their eyes locked and they both nodded ever so slightly.
Wonderful. Now there would be no dealing with either one of them.
Only semiconfident that her knees wouldn’t buckle again—seeing how that herd of bumblebees was still buzzing inside her—Maddy glanced toward the nursing home so neither of them would see her licking her lips. But she stopped in mid-lick when she spotted several sets of eyes staring out the window.
She immediately reared back. “Omigod,” she muttered, covering her face with her hands. “We have an audience.” She glared up at William when he chuckled, then turned her glare on Trace when he snickered. “This is not funny! It’s bad enough they’re after me to ask out every single male who walks in the door—regardless of age; I didn’t need them to see me kissing their new pet project.”
When they both only laughed harder, Maddy gave them one final glare and stormed limping toward the door. She suddenly stopped with her hand on the knob and looked back. “Oh, okay, dammit! You’re still invited to dinner tonight.”
Trace nodded. “Thanks, Peeps. William and I will be there at six sharp.”
Maddy’s chin dropped nearly down to her chest.
“I hope your brother will be home this evening,” William added, “as I am quite looking forward to meeting Rick.”
Maddy snapped her mouth shut then opened it again, but she couldn’t seem to so much as squeak. Her shoulders slumping in defeat, she turned around and quietly limped inside.