Mermaid Read Online Free Page B

the teaching business, he calculated. He’d guessed her age to be around thirty. Now he upped that by three, maybe four years. And in spite of the bright smile that curved her pink mouth, something bleak in her tone and pained in her eyes told him there was a lot more to her choice to leave teaching than just having “decided” to take a break. He wondered if something had gone wrong with her job, and she’d been forced out of it.
    “Where were you teaching, Jillian?”
    “In Seattle. In a school downtown.” Her eyes still seemed to smile, but he thought he saw sorrow in their depths. “Downtown” was an ambiguous word that could mean a lot of things, but coupled with teaching, it normally meant “inner-city”, and inner city could mean tough kids, knives, drugs, danger, constantly having to be on the alert, constantly having to be on edge.
    Burnout? No, probably not, he decided, not when her eyes lit up the way they did when she spoke of her former career. Yet there was a sadness about her that suggested she hadn’t left of her own free will.
    “What about another district?” he suggested. “Did you try to find a position in a school up this way?”
    She gave him a faint smile. “No,” she said, amazed at the intensity of his gaze. With those blue eyes of his fixed on her face, it was as if he could read all the conflicting emotions that ran: through her whenever she thought about what she’d like to do with her life, whenever she remembered the plans she had made and how circumstances had changed them. With anyone else, she would have looked away, hidden her feelings, kept herself private as she always did, but somehow his knowing she felt sad about having left the school system didn’t seem to threaten her. She was comfortable with it and with him.
    She wondered if she would feel as comfortable if Mark actually knew why she had left and suspected she would not. That was something she hadn’t been able to deal with yet, at least not, adequately, and she doubted that she ever would, which made meeting a man like Mark Forsythe doubly difficult. Because as attracted as she was to him, and even though he had a smile that warmed her right down deep inside, she didn’t think she could let their relationship go any farther than it already had, which was nowhere at all.
    “Who do you tutor and in what subject?” he asked.
    “Mostly high school kids who are having trouble. Some math and remedial English plus college level science for a university junior who was forced out for a semester due to illness.”
    His smile deepened. “All that and mermaiding too? What else do you do?”
    “Not a lot, I admit. There isn’t time for much more. I also have a d—”
    She broke off when a tall, lean man with a gray mustache and a military bearing came in carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and slices of what looked like banana bread spread with butter and served on fine china.
    He set the tray down and looked impassively at Jillian’s tail hanging out from beneath the edge of her robe. Only his rapidly blinking eyes betrayed any surprise he might be feeling.
    “I understood you were intending to catch a salmon for dinner, Mr. Mark,” he said with a hint an English accent. “Shall I thaw steak instead?”
    Mark laughed and nodded. “Good idea, Edward. This is Ms. Lockstead.”
    “Miss Lockstead.” Edward gave a little bow and left. Mark poured out two cups of coffee from the china pot.
    “Sugar? Milk?”
    Smiling, she said, “Just the way it comes out of the pot, thanks.” She couldn’t help laughing softly. “He acted as if you had a mermaid in for coffee every morning of your life.”
    “Edward is British. He prides himself on being unflappable.” Mark passed her the cup, and she balanced her saucer on her lap.
    Mark looked more closely at the tail draping across the carpet. Now that it was dry, he could see that it was made of rubber, and despite how carefully it had been crafted to give the