Page 6 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

He’s standing there, tall and handsome and nerdy with his glasses, with a battered Tupperware in one hand.

I lift one headphone cup, pretending I didn’t hear him perfectly well before and do my best impression of an unenthusiastic customs officer.

“Can I help you?”

“Other way around, actually.”

His stupid snow-white smile stretches even more and he holds up the Tupperware and pops the lid. The butter-sugar-berry situation escalates to weapons-grade and another loud-as-heck growl rises from my treacherous stomach. Heat creeps up my face as his brows lift and I briefly contemplate the possibility of jumping into the ocean and swimming to shore. Briefly.

“Blueberry and brown butter,” he continues like nothing happened. “I made them yesterday. Boat rules say food tastes better when shared, and I’ve got more than any reasonable man needs.”

“No, thank you.”

“You’re sure?”

I’ll be double-damned if he doesn’t look as disappointed as a puppy whose owner refuses to toss a ball.

“I ate,” I say, with dignity.

My stomach, that Judas, growls for the third time. Louder. It echoes slightly off the wheelhouse.

He doesn’t laugh, which is somehow worse. The corners of his mouth do heroic load-bearing work while he stands there holding his container of delicious home-baked muffins like the world’s most patient bomb technician.

“Just take one muffin,” he says. “You’ll be doing me a favor. Storage space is limited at sea.”

And here is the thing about principles: they are load-rated. Mine are rated for prejudiced faculty, condescending peers, and those who call me “the pretty mermaid.” They are not rated for brown butter at nautical midday on an empty stomach. Every structure has a failure point. Mine happens to smell like blueberries.

It doesn’t hurt that there’s not a single bit of condescension in his entire demeanor.

“Fine, I’ll take one,” I say, like I’m agreeing to help him move apartments. “For storage reasons.”

God knows how, but the muffin is still faintly warm. Must be some galley alchemy or sexy-professor witchcraft. It’s dense in the way that means someone actually creamed the butter, and the top has crunchy sugar on it, and there are real berries in there that burst.

I take one bite, and my entire body produces a sound I’m not particularly proud of.

I want to be precise about this sound, because precision is my whole personality. It is not a polite mmm. It is not an appreciative hum. It is a full, throaty, from-the-diaphragm groan, the kind of sound a person makes in contexts that have absolutely nothing to do with baked goods, and it comes out of me before I can do one single thing about it.

The silence that follows has texture.

I open my eyes. When did I close my eyes?

Rafael Vasquez is watching me with the expression of a man witnessing a rare astronomical event, and then he laughs, bright and delighted and completely without malice, head tipped back, glasses flashing in the sun.

My entire face catches fire. I can feel the blush go down my neck, which means it’s visible, which means it’s feeding on itself, which means I am now a small teal-haired furnace sitting on a bench holding a half-eaten muffin like the murder weapon in a murder mystery game.

“I’m sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t look sorry at all. He has both hands pressed to his chest and his grin is wide enough that it splits his entire face in half. It’s an annoyingly endearing grin and it makes him somehow even more attractive. “That’s the best review I’ve ever gotten. And my mother once cried at my strawberry cheesecake, so the bar was high.”

Shit. He bakes for his mother? This guy has to have some dark secret about him. Maybe he’s a serial killer or likes to litter on the highway? No one can be this freaking perfect.

“I was clearing my throat.”

“Sure.”

“The sea air,” I say, “it makes me hungry.”

“Absolutely.” He sits down on the bench across from me, uninvited, but at a respectful distance. It’s even more annoying because it’s so respectful. “For what it’s worth, my muffins get that reaction a lot. Department meetings run forty percent longer when I bring them. It’s become a real problem.”

I take another bite, because the damage is done and I’m not letting mortification win twice. Also, they are really fabulous.