Page 121 of Sucker For You

Sadly faded, a shell of herself when she’d never had a shell’s protection to begin with, instinct nevertheless raised a shudderof papillae across the two-spot’s white, slack skin. A quiver darted through her hydrostatic muscles. Her fourth arm flexed. The dark bar of a pupil appeared in one cloudy eye.Flash—a scintilla of electric blue. Then a flush of opalescent pink. Instinct, or joy. Suction kissed Isabel’s knuckles, exploring her and the ocean waves. Another flex came, another blush of excitement.

Recognition.

“Wes, look, she’s. . .”

But of course—even now and despite her condition, their octopus (Thalassa, mercurial goddess of the sea) gave them no warning. One moment the mischievous creature was pliable and rosy in her hands, basking under their wonder within the swell of the kelp forest, beneath the wide, radiant sky. The next?

A spout of water jetted up Isabel’s nose.

“Gah—”

“Argh!”

A second blast from her siphon caught Wes squarely in the mouth. It choked off his awe with a gurgle—and that propulsion also swept the two-spot out of Isabel’s hold. Impish Thalassa drifted just beyond their reach: savoring the mild warmth of sunlight on her skin, pivoting in the tide with lucent grace, blowing an impenitent bubble. She stayed near them while they snorted and sputtered, however, while they righted themselves in the soft swells with forage fish flitting between their legs, while they undulated through octopus time in the water. Her dominant eye remained turned on them as her arms tasted and curled, sampling her new environment, her homecoming. . . and when she finally sank down into the embrace of the kelp to anchor herself within the fronds and stipes, her argent irises closing, a last bubble rising to the surface—despite the burn in her nose and under her eyelids, somehow Isabel could still smile.

It’s all right.

She anchored her own body to Wes and let the tears come.

This is right.

And it was. . .

“Good?” he murmured sometime later against her wet hair, when the tide had drawn them out of the kelp forest, back toward the beach and the Monterey Courthouse. Sand shimmered over their feet. His mouth warmed the cold waves and sweetened their salt.

Good?It really, truly was.

“Yes,” she told him. “Yes, because she—Thalassa. . . I’m glad we could give her a choice. To stay or return to the sea. I’m glad that she got to choose. Like we did.”

“Like we had a choice about. . . us?”

“Yes.”

“Well, maybeyouhad a choice, Buttercup.” The corner of his mouth twitched into a sudden dimple. Sunlight sparked off his earring and the glimmering droplets in his eyelashes. He shook his head, showering them with more iridescent seawater. “If I’m being honest, I don’t think I ever had a choice. Or a chance. Right from the start, from that very first night, when you were more interested in a fish tank than a naked stranger in your beach house, I knew—”

Knowing Wes Monaghan, she had a good idea of how his sentence would end.

She couldn’t resist the bait, though. She didn’t want to. “Knew what?”

His smile was unrepentant and beautiful. “That I was a sucker for you.”

THREE MONTHS LATER

Nosing into San Francisco’s Marina Yacht Harbor with her 800-horsepower engines rumbling an idle purr, Mediterranean barnacles clinging to her hull, her cockpit lit with a December sunset, her bow thrusters engaged, theNauti Thalassa’s fenders bumped a welcome against her rental berth and she drifted to a halt.

Wes leaped into action.

Jumping down the three steps leading from her salon to the stern deck, he shouldered a coil of rope and sprang over the railing. He landed on the dock with a slap of sandals and twisted a neat cleat hitch to secure their vessel in her slot. Several months of habit should have seen Isabel running out a hydraulic gangway while he worked. But after powering down the navigation dashboard and cutting the fuel injection, she left the cockpit—decorated with a wall-mounted guitar and a Santa Cruz caricature, strewn with half-eaten packets of dried pineapple—and just watched him for a moment, admiring the freckles on his forearms, the hair clustering in untidy, salty curls at his nape. . . and his sly, bronze-eyed glint of awareness when he caught her staring. She quickly extended the moveable platform. He straightened to rake back his bun into its elastic and raised an eyebrow, watching her in turn.

“What?”

He knew what. Despite the brisk air frisking through her light, bright cotton dress, warmth bloomed between her thighs.The tanned skin on her arms pebbled. Her neck and cheeks flushed with anticipation. She stepped swiftly along the gangway toward him. When her feet would have touched down onto the marina’s mooring planks, however, he whisked her into his arms.

“Wes—”

She squirmed. Laughing as flounces of sun-thinned tie-dye rode up over her knees, she risked toppling both of them into the harbor while he wobbled by ranks of other pleasure and live-aboard craft, down the dock past a security kiosk, then on in the direction of the tidal marshes, beaches, and picnic slopes of Crissy Field. Neither of them had set foot on land since they had overnighted in Panama during their return voyage from the Aegean Islands. Now the wind blowing off the grass and asphalt was briny but sweet, the scent of sun-heated bicycle tires tickling her nose. The distantwhooshof traffic and the happy barking of a dog rang in her ears beside the vibration of Wes’s own laughter, his heartbeat sounding in her ribs, swooping through her stomach—and her impulse to kiss him was too strong to resist. She raised her head from his shoulder and her mouth to his, eager to catch him by surprise, when—

“Wes! Isabel!”