Page 53 of A Line in the Sand

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“Thanks for wishing me luck, but being a mermaid is what I do best.” Or that had been the case before Max had entered the picture. It was like riding a bicycle though, wasn’t it? A frown tugged at Molly’s lips.Small yet crucial detail—mermaids don’t have legs and they definitely can’t ride bikes.

Bad analogy.

She cleared her throat. “Everything’s going to be great. Easy peasy.”

Exactly. Easy peasy.

Molly nodded to herself as she waved goodbye and led Ursula to the boardwalk. But as the puppy trotted alongside her, glancing up at Molly every now and then as if she knew the answers to all of life’s big questions, a familiar three-word phrase kept spinning through her mind.

Famous

last

words…

***

The amount of optimism that stirred inside Max as he waited for Henry’s percolator to do its thing on Sunday morning far outweighed whatever actual difference the aquarium’s recent ten-thousand-dollar windfall would afford. His head told him not to let his guard down. He still had a monumental problem on his hands—a problem that would require an equally monumental solution. And Max’s problem equaled a heck of a lot more than ten grand. Mountain, meet molehill.

Today was different, though. Dare he think it? Special. It was Molly’s first day back as the aquarium’s resident mermaid. At long last, he wouldn’t be fielding questions all day from visitors who’d been hoping for an “Ariel experience,” as someone had put it last week…as if Max ran a theme park instead of a public aquarium.

No matter. The important thing was that Molly would be there when he went in to work today. And even though they’d yet to spend a single day working side by side, Max couldn’t help feeling that Opal was right. Everything was going to be okay.

Max added a celebratory spoonful of sugar to his coffee. The percolator was a bona fide relic, and Max was tired of starting his day dark and bitter. Maybe a dash of sweetness was just what his life needed. Preferably, sweetness in the form of a mermaid with cotton-candy-hued streaks in her hair and glitter on her skin. But the coffee was a start. A few hours later, he strolled into the lobby of the aquarium feeling like a new man…

And he was immediately greeted by a wiggling Cavalier King Charles spaniel dressed in a lobster costume.

Max stared down at Ursula. He’d had a few whiskey shots with the Charlie’s Angels before he talked to Molly the night before, but he hadn’t been so hammered that he couldn’t recall their conversation. He remembered every last detail, from spilling the dog biscuits to Molly throwing herself into his arms when he’d told her he wanted them to work on saving the aquarium together. What he didn’t remember, however, was telling her that she could bring Ursula to work.

Because he hadn’t.

The puppy squirmed at Max’s feet, and the ridiculous googly eyes on her lobster costume spun round and round. Max sighed. There was no way he could send the dog home without looking like a total jerk. Perhaps he could just talk to Molly and gently remind her that Ursula didn’t work here. In fact, there were rules against this sort of thing—actual laws that forbade random animals from entering public aquariums.

Ursula peered up at him with her huge, sad eyes. Max shook his head.

“I’m not going to pet you,” he said quietly. “You shouldn’t even be here.”

At the sound of his voice, Ursula’s tail beat against the floor with a cheerythump thump thump.

“Please don’t. I mean it, Ursula.”

When the little Cavalier refused to budge, Max gritted his teeth, picked her up, and carried her across the lobby to the mermaid grotto.

Having come through the employee entrance in the corner of the lobby near the Seahorse Dude Ranch, Max was facing the back of Molly’s grand throne. He could only see her blonde and pink curls tumbling over her shoulders and her dazzling emerald green fishtail wrapped around the base of the throne as he approached. Her singsong voice rose above the chatter of guests. She seemed to be saying something about angelfish and halos that had no basis in reality.

Should Max talk to her about that? Or were they simply going to ignore science altogether in this little corner of the aquarium? Max suddenly realized that having a mermaid on the staff was going to be complicated—even a mermaid for whom he was developing a soft spot.

Who was he kidding? His growing feelings for Molly were going to make this situationespeciallycomplicated. But they’d moved beyond their initial skirmish, hadn’t they? They were on the same team now.

Ursula shifted in the crook of his elbow until one of her lobster antennae came dangerously close to poking Max in the eye. Okay, so maybe there were still a few obstacles they’d need to deal with. Mainly the one that had four legs and a tail.

But then Max rounded the corner and got his first full-on glimpse of Molly the mermaid at home in her grotto, and all of his breath seemed to bottle up tight in his chest. It had been a while since he’d seen her in costume. Somehow he’d forgotten about the ropes of pearls and the sparkly pink starfish that were part of her mermaid look. Today, she even had a delicate starfish painted on her cheek in glittery copper-colored paint. Little silver bubbles rose from the seahorse’s snout toward the corner of Molly’s eye, adorned with sweeping purple eye crayon.

A line of children stretched from the mermaid grotto all the way to the front entrance to the aquarium. As Molly greeted each little boy and girl, she painted a fanciful sea creature of choice on their cheeks. Turtles, octopuses, seahorses, and starfish, all whipped up in mere seconds from a palette she held in her left hand and slender lavender paintbrush in her right. Then she’d pose for photos with the child while flashing a blinding smile, or sometimes pinching her nose and holding her breath to act like she was comically swimming underwater.

Max was confused. Weren’t mermaids by their very nature supposed to be able to breathe underwater? He needed some sort of manual to keep up with this nonsense.

But his confusion was secondary to a lot of other feelings wrestling for attention inside him—fascination, awe, and a longing that made his head spin. She was the missing piece to the puzzle that he’d inherited from Uncle Henry. She brought life and laughter to the aquarium. Mermaid magic. He could see it already, in a single glance. No wonder the town had taken her side after he’d fired her.