Chapter 1 Seduced by a Selkie
SEDUCED BY A SELKIE
DELTA
When my father died, he left me a lake house, and I hate him for it. As if losing him suddenly wasn’t bad enough, now, I’m back in this middle-of-nowhere town in northern Georgia, forced to set his estate to rights.
Estate. Ha. That word makes his house sound impressive. Maybe from the outside. But step in the door, and everything turns into a death trap.
When I got the call from Folk Haven’s police chief about my father’s passing a few months back, I half-expected the cause of death to be something more gruesome than a heart attack.
Not that I wanted my father to suffer. They told me his death was quick, and even if someone had been nearby, there would have been an infinitesimal chance he could have survived.
With Dimitri Novac’s hermit lifestyle, that chance had turned into zero.
Which leaves me here, sitting alone on the end of his dock in the early morning, listening to the hollow lap of the water against wood, contemplating Lake Galen and mortality.
Maybe my morbid thoughts manifest a response because, suddenly, I’m sure I’m staring straight at a lifeless body floating facedown in the water.
“Oh hell,” I mutter, scrambling to my feet, unsteady on the floating dock.
The higher vantage point shows me the same image. Just past the mouth of the inlet, maybe a hundred feet away, a person is rocking in the waves like the leavings of a shipwreck.
Adrenaline and panic make my decision for me.
I rip off my long-sleeved shirt and unzip my jeans, pushing the denim off my legs without the hindrance of shoes because I walked down here, barefoot.
Pulling on my muscle memory from a long-ago summer swim team, I dive into the water and plow toward the prone figure, using a strong freestyle.
The distance first appeared closer than it is, and as I continue to pump my arms, I try to remember how long a human can go without oxygen and still survive.
Is it long enough for me to reach them, drag them to shore, and start performing CPR?
Doesn’t matter. I have to try.
When I lift my head, shaking water from my eyes, I spot the lifeless form only a few strokes away. With a powerful kick of my feet, I cross the final distance. Despite my hope, the logical part of my brain informs me I am about to grab hold of a dead body.
Which is why I scream when the head pops up at my touch.
The man—because I see now that it is a man—jerks back at my holler, raising his hands above the water, as if surrendering.
“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” he assures me in a rumble of a voice.
“You’re not dead!” I shout, as if him being alive were an inconvenience.
His eyebrows creep up. “Would you prefer I was?”
“No.” I suck in a deep breath, winded from my sprinting swim. “I …” Words slip away from me as I glance behind him. At this new angle in the water, I spy a pontoon boat floating outside the mouth of the inlet.
Unnecessary adrenaline keeps my heart pounding hard and makes it difficult to organize all this new information.
“Hey.” The deep voice recaptures my attention, and I meet the set of soft brown eyes in an otherwise blockish white face. “Hi.” He greets me again, his smile easing the harder angles of his jaw. “You were swimming up to a dead body?”
“I wasn’t sure you were dead,” I correct.
That only has him smiling wider. “You’re here to save me?”
As understanding of the new situation dawns, I struggle to keep afloat—literally and figuratively. My body tries to remind me it’s been a few years since I trod water for any length of time.
“Do you need saving?” My breathlessness comes from a combination of the swimming and his focused gaze.
At some point, we must have drifted closer, pushed around by the subtle lake waves.
The swimmer’s hand rises from the water, catching a strand of my hair on the ascent. The black threads spill like ink about my pale shoulders, my skin turning a ghostly shade from the chill of the lake. He stares at where the lock wraps around his finger in a tentacle-like grasp.
“People rarely admit to needing help.” His gaze laughs as his grin goes lopsided. “Please, continue saving me. Likely as not, I need it.”
If I had time, I’d put in the needed mental energy to identify the subtext of his words. But a movement over his shoulder distracts me.
The good news: I don’t need to come up with a response to his oddly philosophical statement.
The bad news: our conversation pauses because I’m transfixed by the sight of a head breaching the lake surface behind my not-dead acquaintance.
The appearance is only the beginning. One to my left.
One on the right. All around me, more heads appear, all equipped with goggles and breathing pieces, identifying this crew as a gathering of scuba divers.
Seems I’ve shown up in the middle of a scuba lesson.
Soon, we’re floating in a crowd of heads.
And every single one is facing me.
That’s when I remember my outfit. Without my shirt and pants, I’m left with the most basic coverings. A matching bra and underwear set I got on sale at a department store. Both scraps of fabric are blue and covered in pictures of cartoon bananas.
No doubt, that’s why they were on sale.
This group got an unobstructed view of my bargain boy shorts as they surfaced.
I hate this fucking lake.
I keep my curses to myself. “Well, looks like you’ve got this under control.”
The man lets my hair return to the water as I paddle backward. Once I’m clear of the group, I turn on my stomach and swim back to my father’s dock, possibly moving faster than when I thought someone’s life was at risk.
Embarrassment is powerful fuel.
When I reach the dock, I grab the metal ladder and place my feet on the slick, algae-covered steps sinking below the surface.
“Please don’t let them be watching me,” I mutter as I pull myself out of the lake, soaked underwear clinging to my backside and rigid nipples. Note to self: swimming in April is cold, even in Georgia.
When I’m standing tall—because I refuse to cower and hunch over in my half-naked state—a quick glance behind me shows my audience is still watching the show.
“Fucking peachy,” I mutter.
Thoroughly done with this miserable morning, I offer the lot of them a salute, gather up my armful of clothes, and march toward the shore, reminding myself with each step that I will probably never see any of those people again, especially when I leave Folk Haven and Lake Galen for good.
So, what does it matter if they all have a permanent memory of soggy bananas decorating my ass?
This story continues in SEDUCED BY A SELKIE…