Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes) by Louise Cusack

sex with them?” she asked and rolled towards him, her breasts jiggling and distracting him for a moment before he remembered the question, then adrenalin surged through his body, and not in a good way.
    “No!”
    She frowned, as though wondering at the vehemence in his tone.
    Baz knew he was over–reacting but the damned drug was still clearly in his system. He tried to moderate his tone. “They’ll be offended if you ask that,” he told her, and “They’re not allowed to anyway. It conflicts with their job.”
    She yawned and shook her head. “Then why do I need to see these police if there’s no sex involved?”
    “They want to ask questions …” She’d closed her eyes and was snuggling into the pillow. “But let’s get you dressed first. I brought some clothes.” He retrieved them from the chaise lounge and put them on the bed beside her.
    “Do I have to?” She opened one eye and in the semi–darkness of the room with afternoon light leaking in through the timber shutters she looked adorable, like a sleek kitten who just wanted to sleep.
    Baz was struck with an almost insatiable urge to curl up on the bed with her, spooning, just feeling the warmth of her body. But as soon as he imagined his thighs pressed against that cute tush he started visualizing what his hands might be doing and he had to physically clasp them together behind his back to stop from touching her. “Please don’t go to sleep,” he said. If she was lying here naked when the police arrived he’d be in all sorts of trouble, and he just didn’t trust himself to put those clothes on her himself.
    But she just lay there, so he added, “The police are authorities, remember. You didn’t want to be taken by authorities.”
    Her eyelids fluttered for a second before they snapped open. “Are they coming to take me?” she asked, struggling to sit up. “To lock me in a room?” She wriggled to the edge of the bed. “I have to hide.”
    Baz started to feel bad. He shouldn’t have frightened her, but at the same time he felt reassured that she wasn’t some cool criminal who was ready to talk herself out of things. She was genuinely frightened.
    “Hey, it’s okay,” he said and crouched in front of her, taking her cold hands in his. “It’s routine for the police to ask questions when someone dies.”
    Her mouth opened and she stared at Baz in surprise.
    He stared back for long seconds until he realised what the problem was. “Oh sorry, you don’t know. You were unconscious when we found Steve.”
    All she knew was waking up in his guestroom.
    “Who?”
    “The man who tried to rescue you this morning. A shark got him. He’s dead.”
    “ Rescue me?”
    Baz wasn’t sure what response he’d expected, but that wasn’t it. “His brother had said you were drowning. Steve went in to save you and a shark got him. Lucky it didn’t get you too.”
    She shrugged that off. “Then the police aren’t coming to take me away?”
    He shook his head, wondering why she wasn’t reacting to the news that a man had died. Denial? “They just want to know who you are to wrap up their investigation. They don’t think you did anything wrong.” She nodded, not saying anything, so he rubbed her palms with his thumbs. Soothing her? He wasn’t sure. “They’ll want to know your name and address.”
    She frowned and looked at him helplessly, those enormous blue eyes gazing into his and Baz felt himself slipping, his body starting to tingle, to harden. Damn it! When was this drug going to wear off? At last she said, “I … don’t remember,” but it sounded more like a question than an answer.
    He let go her hands and stood, realizing this was the point where he could get tough, where he could say, Look sister, I don’t want your trouble on my doorstep, but he wasn’t sure if that was true. A wicked part of him was enjoying the trouble she’d brought to Saltwood, which was crazy and maybe drug induced, but nothing like this had ever