Undead and Underwater (10 page)

“You spend your days in Savage looking out for our families and friends while also pretending you hate looking out for our families and friends. Which is weird, by the way. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know what it costs. You have
no
life. So we back you up whenever we can. You didn’t—Come on. You knew we knew, right?”

“Toldja,” Linus coughed into his fist.

“Oh, sure. Yes. Of course. I—” She was smiling and dashing tears away with the back of her hand. “But I have to go home now and cry for a while. And then have sex with Linus.”

“Weird,” Audrey the Receptionist commented.

“And inappropriate. In my day, HR heads did not run around foiling evil and banging new accountants.”

“Shut up, Coot,” Hailey said, and kissed him on the cheek, and hugged Audrey so hard she groaned and clutched her ribs, and seized Linus’s hand and dragged him out.

“Tell you what, Aud, they didn’t do that, either,” he mused, rubbing his cheek. “Hmm. Maybe we should get her something extra-nice for Dan Patch Day.”

“Pass. I’m gonna take my seventy-four days of accumulated sick time and grow back my ribs. Workers’ comp might hear about this!” Audrey the Receptionist shouted after the departed It Girl. “But probably not! Let that be a lesson to you! Ow, my ribs . . . How many shopping days is it until Lammas Day?”

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

They had every intention of making it to his apartment. No, her apartment . . . it was a shorter drive. No, the Red Roof Inn was shorter still. No, the secret park.

“Secret park?” Hailey managed between kisses. They’d gotten into her car and kissed. She’d stopped at the stop sign and they kissed. She stopped at the yield sign and they kissed. She didn’t stop and they kissed. “Where do I live again?”

“No, here . . . take a left. Over here.” He pointed and she drove and then she’d stopped the car and he’d gotten out so quickly the seat belt hung on and almost yanked him back inside the car. He wrestled free of it while she leaned against the hood so as to not fall down laughing, and they ran toward a bunch of trees to the left of the small road leading away from Ramouette.

She gasped in wonder at the small secret park, not perfectly trimmed and manicured like non-secret parks, but overgrown and just wild enough to be interesting but not ugly. The pond, about fifteen feet wide, looked so tranquil as to not seem quite real, reflecting the willow trees, which waved gently in the breeze.

His fingers were on her blouse and she tried to help him, then realized she didn’t give a good damn about the buttons and yanked.

“Ow!” He clapped a hand to one eye.

“Oh my God!” Stupid It Girl strength; it hadn’t worn off yet. “I’m so sorry, let me see.”

She bent forward, intent on his face, and he snatched her to him for a sound, searching kiss. Then he pulled back with a breathless, “Psych! Just kidding. Can you fly like Superman? Can I be Lois Lane, except without that weird chiffon dress she wore in the first movie? She looked like she was wearing my mom’s bathroom curtains.”

“Please shut up now.” She’d shrugged out of her blouse, her bra. “You’ve never seen anyone here?”

“Not once. Uh, take off more clothes, please.” He reached out and cupped her breasts in both hands, then leaned down and breathed on her nipples, and then kissed them. She nearly lost her footing; it felt like he was kissing her somewhere else entirely. She (gently) grabbed his ears and pulled him to her mouth and kissed him with the intensity she’d felt, but tried to control, since he said, “Hero, hero.” He didn’t know her, then, and he said that. He knew the truth now, and he was still here.

She had no idea that simple acceptance could make her so wet.

She wouldn’t break the kiss, so they managed to undress and help each other without once coming up for air, and then she was carefully pushing him onto the soft grass and climbing on top of him. She’d pushed him down on the bank and his head was actually pointing down toward the pond, but she didn’t care if he didn’t, and he didn’t seem like he did. It was possible he’d forgotten the park entirely.

Her knees were on either side of his hips and, while she steadied herself with one palm on his chest, she reached back and found his hot hard length. She squeezed gently and smiled at his groan, then lifted up just a bit and slooooowly lowered herself onto him, closing her eyes at the pure sweetness of it.

“Oh, Christ.”

Yes, those were her exact sentiments.

She began to ride, getting used to him, letting him get used to her, easing up and down, surprised and thrilled at how slippery she was, how slippery he was making her.

“Don’t stop. Anything you want. If you don’t stop. Money, fur, jewels. Farmland, puppies, caterpillars. Orange juice. A Starbucks franchise. A gift card for Red Lobster. Don’t stop.”

She leaned down and kissed him. “I have no need for caterpillars and I hate lobster,” she whispered into his mouth, and she felt him reach around and grip her ass. “Ummm . . . that’s nice. Do that harder. I’m charged up enough . . . you can do that a
lot
harder.”

So he clutched and kneaded her pale flesh until his knuckles whitened and the veins stood out on his neck, touching her with force that would have badly bruised anyone else, force that made her want only more of it, more of him. Watching him lose himself in her tipped her over and she fell into her orgasm; it hit her with such rapidity that she was surprised.

Still shuddering, she felt his warmth burst inside her and was surprised once again.

“Hailey,” he managed after several minutes. “I’m officially ruined for other women, forever.”

“I should hope so.” She licked the sweat from his collarbone.

“Also, I fell in love with you after you abandoned me at Big Bowl to help that mom free her kid.”

“Well, good.”

“And my head’s gonna pop off.”

She pulled back and looked; he
was
quite red-faced. “Oh, Linus! Your head was pointing down but I didn’t think you cared at the time.”

“I
still
don’t care. I was just letting you know the situation. My head can keep filling with blood until I burst something; I don’t give a shit. Won’t even feel it. Won’t notice . . . aaahhhhh.” She’d pulled him to a sitting position. “So, this is what it’s like to not pass out.”

She hugged him to her and heard an, “Oof!” and then got a hug back. He grinned at her. “We’re gonna have fun, aren’t we?”

“For the rest of our lives,” she promised, and carried him to the car.

EPILOGUE

“Hi. I’m Audrey the Receptionist.”

He smiled. First days were always the worst, but everyone had been pleasant so far. With the economy only starting to recover, he was grateful for a good job with a good company.

And Ramouette had of late been making quite a name for itself; it had always pulled a profit, which was a good trick given Minnesota’s economic woes. But now it was making waves with its innovative benefits options, big number one being, “As long as your work is getting done, take all the vacation time you want.”
§
No one in the business world was quite sure what had changed in the last several months, and as someone whose first love was marketing, he’d been anxious to join the team.

“This is Gerry, our new marketing director.” The HR rep—who insisted on referring to herself as one of Hailey’s twisted minions and had never actually given him a name except Minion Number Four—had been taking him around. He took that with an internal shrug: there was one in every company.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Gerry said, shaking her hand.

“Same. Hailey’s on her way,” Audrey the Receptionist told the minion. Audrey was short, with ebony skin and a square-shaped face she emphasized with square glasses set in purple lenses. Her handshake was quick and firm. “She says she’ll finish the new-hire stuff when she gets here. Hailey’s our head of HR . . . She’s running a little late.”

Gerry said graciously, “That’s how it goes sometimes. And Four-ninety-four was awful.”

“Yeah, that’s how it goes with Hailey sometimes, and by sometimes I mean always, and every day is Monday and Four-ninety-four is continually awful. Hey, Coot, what are you getting them for the engagement party?”

“Them?”

“She and Linus are getting married next spring,” the young man—who was surely not a day over thirty—explained.

Did she call this boy Coot?
All right: there were
two
in every company.

“Did you say Linus?”

“Yeah, Jamie Linus,” Audrey the Receptionist replied. “Don’t call him Jamie because nobody will know who you’re talking about, including him. He started here a few months ago . . . He’s an accounting stud with the eyes of Marlon Brando and the freckles of Howdy Doody. Somehow he makes it work.”

“Marlon Brando, now there’s a true Hollywood god. In my day—”

“Shut up, Coot. Gerry, don’t pay any attention to his feeble mutterings.”

“All right,” he replied cautiously. A transplant from New York, he’d assumed midwesterners would be a little more bland.

Just then the front door opened and two more young people came in. The man had the most startling large brown eyes Gerry had ever seen, eyes that went oddly with (the receptionist had nailed it) the Howdy Doody freckles.

But it was the woman who caught most of his attention, and not just because she was a striking, slender brunette with a pretty mouth and lovely pale skin. She looked as though she’d been in an accident—torn panty hose, smudged skirt and blouse, hair straggling out of its ponytail.

“Hey,” the coot and the receptionist said in perfect, unsurprised unison.

The woman greeted them with, “Sorry. Nasty one on the way in—the cops were waiting for the firemen to grab the jaws of life. But it wasn’t as bad as they thought. They were able to get the door off after all, jaw-less. You must be Gerry.” She held out a small, dirty hand for him to shake.

“Yes, my God, are you all right?”

“Hailey likes to work out in garages, not gyms,” Audrey the Receptionist explained as if that made sense to a normal person. “She feels that if you don’t leave with oil in your hair and a torn shirt, you didn’t do it right.”

“I’ve got to stop commuting with you,” the freckled man groaned. “You’ve made me late three times this week. And it’s Tuesday.”

“Gerry, I’ll just clean up and we can get to it,” Hailey said, unperturbed by the comments. She was a lovely woman, glowing and proud even in her dishevelment. “You’re going to like it here.”

“I’m sure I will.”
All right, there are three in every company . . . no, four . . . Still, they seem like fun. Not much point going in to work if you don’t like the people you work with. Nice kids, for sure.

“We all love it,” she explained. “A lot of companies say they are, but they aren’t, not really. But Ramouette is.” The woman seemed to almost glow with contentment and joy. “We’re a family.”

Undead and Underwater

Hey, Davidson! What’s your deal with vampires and mermaids, anyway? Are you unable to write stories about regular people with regular problems?

Apparently, yes. So I figured I’d better cough up some background. Although the next story can be read as a stand-alone (my editor and I work hard to make sure any of my books can be read on their own, and by
my editor and I
I mean
my editor
), it’s got characters from my
Undead
series as well as my Fred the Mermaid series. Betsy Taylor is a young vampire (age thirty when she died, and less than five years dead) as well as the (reluctant, annoyed, and annoying) queen of the undead. She’s trying to run things without running things, as she finds it absurd that she’s the boss of thousands of vampires, most of whom are older and (supposedly) wiser. At the least, she figures they shouldn’t need a scolding mommy type looking over their lives. But whether the vampire in question is
in
trouble or
causing
trouble, Betsy and/or her husband, Eric Sinclair, have to look into it. The first book in the series is
Undead and Unwed
but, as above, any of the books can be read out of sequence.

The Laurel to Betsy’s Hardy is Dr. Fredrika Bimm, a half human, half mermaid marine biologist with the social warmth of Lisbeth Salander, and none of the hacking skills. Her mother (Moon Bimm) is a hippie; her father was a traitor to his people, the Undersea Folk. The Fred trilogy covers her childhood, education, love life, struggles as the world’s only known human/Undersea Folk hybrid, and her eventual outing of the Undersea Folk to the rest of the world. Once engaged to Prince Artur of the Folk, Fred fell in love with a colleague, Dr. Thomas Pearson, and they’re now engaged to be married. Fred is on excellent terms with the Undersea’s royal family, but some of her father’s people don’t like her and/or don’t trust her. Fortunately Fred, unlike Betsy, is not a recovering Miss Congeniality, and has never given much of a hoo-ha about being disliked.

Seen by both humans and the Undersea Folk as a sort of goodwill (ha!) ambassadress, Fred does have one thing in common with Betsy: they think the vast majority of their “people” can and should take care of themselves.

Post-outing, although most people on the planet are embracing the idea of real mermaids, many also think that the whole Undersea Folk reveal is a hoax.

Fred’s stories can be found in
Sleeping with the Fishes
,
Fish Out of Water
, and
Swimming Without a Net.
The events of the next story take place after
Undead and Unstable.

Author’s Note

I was scared when it was time to move to Boston. Although I’d lived all over as an Air Force brat, most of my time had been spent in the Midwest, and all I knew about Boston was what I’d seen in my future in-laws. Naturally, I was terrified. (“If we don’t yell,” my mother-in-law explained, “they don’t listen. It’s the natural order of things. I said,
it’s the natural order of things
!”)