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two minutes of each other. After that, it hadn’t stopped all day. Lass had shuttled back and forth between cash desk, kitchen and gallery, while Loucan had waited tables and washed dishes. He’d also sold two of the seascapes and a big and very ugly vase. He hadn’t told her about that yet, actually.
    He remedied the oversight, and Lass’s opalescent green eyes widened.
    “You sold that? The big—? The green—? With the knobbly things?”
    “Yep. That’s the one.”
    “Good grief, I thought I’d never get rid of that.” Her relief broke a little of the simmering tension between them—a tension they’d managed to put on hold since noon.
    She leaned on the mop handle. Her hands shook a little and she seemed giddy and light-headed all of a sudden, as if she’d gone beyond exhaustion and was running purely on nerves. Loucan guessed she hadn’t been sleeping well since the other night, and felt bad about that.
    His fault. And yet he didn’t see how he could have softened the blow of his sudden appearance in her life.
    “It was left over from an exhibition that didn’t do very well,” she was saying. “And the artist has left the area, now. How did you manage to—”
    “Hypnosis,” he told her, straight-faced.
    There was a beat of silence, and then she laughed. The sound was a musical gurgle and came from deep inside her. This was the first time he’d seen her do it, and she seemed surprised that it had happened. He got the impression that maybe it didn’t happen that often, Lass’s pretty laughter. He was sure she spent too much time alone.
    Now with her face lit up, her eyes looked greener than ever. The mop handle swayed in her hands, and she swayed with it.
    “Lord, I am tired!” she said. “I almost believed you.”
    She laughed again, a lighter, easier sound this time.
    “No, seriously,” he said, “I just agreed with the customer when she spoke of its lyrical form and the tonal depth of the glaze.”
    “Yeah? Well, I’m grateful!” She pushed her hair up off her forehead again.
    So that she wouldn’t have time to regret saying it, he interjected quickly, “Listen, are you done?”
    Lass looked vaguely at the floor. “Oh, probably. I’ve lost track of where I started.”
    “It looks spotless. You should close up and eat. We should eat. Quiche and salad and some limp pasta and stale scones, right?”
    “Already packed up in a basket in the kitchen.”
    “You always live on leftovers from the tearoom?”
    “No, sometimes I make some local pigs very happy.” She grinned again, and again it did something to him, made him want to get her to laugh and lighten up more often. “But not tonight,” she added. “We’ll get the leftovers tonight, because I’m too tired to go into town, and the local take-out places don’t deliver this far.”
    She went through her short ritual of locking up, and they walked toward the house, both of them silent until he heard a husky, “Thanks. For today. I would have been swamped. I know you…want something from me, Loucan. You’ve been honest about that. You didn’t have to work your butt off to give yourself a better chance of getting it.”
    “I know that,” he answered. “I wasn’t doing that.”
    “No, I know. I’m going to take it as a reason to at least listen to what you’ve got to say.”
    “Not tonight.”
    “Yes, I want to hear it tonight. Or I won’t sleep again, and I need to, because I’m wiped. I’ve got questions, Loucan.”
    “Fire away,” he invited her.
    “How come you’re so at home on land?”
    Lass wasn’t sure why this was the number one question on her list, but after a day spent with Loucan, it definitely was. To her eyes, the other night, he had been so obviously mer. His clothing. His smooth brown skin, nourished by the seawater, which was so much better than any expensive cream or lotion. The way he belonged in the seascape of sky and sand and water. The way he smelled like fresh sea air and salt.
    Today,