Сандра Паул – Caught By Surprise (страница 3)

Beth leaned against the doorjamb. Pushing her wet hair back from her face with a trembling hand, she forced her own breathing to slow while she waited for her father’s coughing spell to stop.

Carl’s paroxysm finally eased. He rested for a few moments against the pillow, staring up at the mahogany-paneled ceiling. Then he turned his head to look at her again. The color in his face had faded, but his gaze still held the glittering sharpness it used to have whenever one of his theories had proven correct as he asked, “How did he look?”

Beth stared back at him unseeingly, images whirling in her mind. A bronzed, muscular chest. Shimmering, golden scales. “Incredible,” she whispered. Hard-edged features and a dark, fathomless gaze. “Dangerous,” she added with a shudder. “Dad, that merman is very, very angry.”

She jumped as Ralph spoke from behind her. “Please, keep your voice down, Elizabeth,” he admonished her. With a murmured apology, he brushed past her into the room, closing the door deliberately behind him. “We want to keep the merman’s existence a secret for the time being.”

She stared at him in astonishment. “A secret! The whole crew must know about him by now.”

Ralph shook his head. “No, they don’t. Even the captain has no idea what we’ve captured. Only you, your father, and the Delano brothers know what’s actually in the tank. After we netted our find, I wrapped him up in canvas before we brought him back to the ship. Oh, the rest of the men probably know we’ve snared something of interest,” he admitted, “but who among them would ever suspect the truth?”

“I knew that one day we’d find one,” Carl declared with pride in his voice. “It was just a matter of time.”

“And you were right, sir,” Ralph agreed fervently. His pale eyes lit with excitement as he added, “Think of the coverage, the attention, this will garner when it hits the media. A live merman! We’ll be famous!”

Nausea twisted in Beth’s stomach. She didn’t want to be famous. She just wanted that merman off the ship. Back in the sea where he belonged before he did something more dangerous than splashing her.

“But he hates being in that tank,” she protested, glancing from Ralph to her father. “He threw water all over me!”

“An accident, I’m sure,” Ralph told her. “If anything he’s probably just playful. Apt to splash a bit if one gets too close…” His gaze swept over her, and disapproval thinned his full mouth. “As you apparently did.”

Glancing down, Beth realized what a mess she was. Her gown was ruined; her bra showed clearly through the wet material. Crossing her arms protectively across her chest, she opened her mouth to argue, but Ralph cut her off with a wave of his stocky hand.

“You’ve had a shock,” he said in a soothing tone that merely annoyed her. “Let me get you a towel. You’re dripping all over your father’s carpet.” Without waiting for her answer, he headed into the adjoining bathroom.

He’s worried about the carpet? Beth thought in amazement. When there was a merman down in the hold?

“Listen to me,” she insisted, watching him through the open door. “That merman is really upset.”

“Nonsense, Elizabeth. You’re the one who’s upset.” Ralph opened a cupboard and reached inside. “The merman doesn’t have real emotions. Not like people do.”

She stared at him in surprise. “You can’t know that.”

“Of course I can. I’ve been observing him most of the day,” Ralph informed her as he came back into the room. “We’ve made numerous efforts to communicate, but the creature hasn’t responded at all—not even on the most primitive level. He can’t understand a thing.”

“If anyone should know, Ralph should,” her father reminded her. “His expertise is working with sea mammals.”

“But he hasn’t worked with mermen—no one has,” Beth pointed out. “And I’m sure the merman understands something at least. Why, he’s wearing some kind of medallion around his neck. Would a fish do that?”

Amusement caused Ralph’s mustache to twitch. “Sometimes. I’ve trained dolphins to slide chains around their necks, after all. Perhaps he picked it up from the bottom of the ocean and slipped it on. Chimps put things around their necks, too. Even in the wild.”

“But he’s not a dolphin or a chimp! He’s half-human—”

“Shush, you’re getting all excited.” Draping the towel around her, Ralph brought the ends together beneath her chin and looked down into her face. “Don’t be deceived by appearances,” he chided softly. “It’s not a man, just a fish. With no more sensibility than a cichlid in a bowl.”

His thick knuckles nudged her chin, encouraging her to meet his eyes. Aware of her father watching, Beth forced herself to do so. Ralph’s pale eyes looked sincere, confident. Her worry eased a little…yet refused to disappear completely. The merman had looked so—so intense.

She stepped away, forcing Ralph to release his grip. Clutching the towel closer around her, she turned back to her father. “Even a fish can feel pain.”

Carl smiled reassuringly at her. “Of course they can, my dear. But he’s not in pain…or at least—” he hesitated, glancing at his assistant “—did you tend to that wound yet, Ralph?”

“No, not yet, sir.”

“He’s hurt?” Beth glanced at Ralph in concern. “Where? I didn’t see anything.”

“It’s on his back. High up on his shoulder. Rather minor, in my opinion.”

“How did it happen?”

Ralph shrugged, spreading his hands in puzzlement. “Who knows? Maybe he scraped himself on some coral. Or possibly got bitten by another fish. It’s hard to say until I have a chance to examine the injury more closely.”

He glanced over at her father as he added, “I’ll have to contain him in a smaller crate in order to do that, sir. We’ll get right on it tomorrow. I thought it would be best to give him a chance to settle down in the tank today. To acclimate himself to his new environment.”

Carl nodded with approval. “Good idea.”

“Yes, that is a good idea,” Beth agreed. “If the wound needs attention, then take care of it. And after that…” Taking a deep breath, she resolutely met her father’s eyes. “Well, after that, I think you should let him go.”

“Let him go!” Carl’s incredulous tones cut off Ralph’s exclamation of protest. He stared at his daughter in amazement. “Elizabeth, do you realize what you’re asking?”

She clasped her hands tightly together. “I know this has been your lifelong quest—”

“Not just my quest—the quest of every man throughout history who’s ever glimpsed the creatures,” Carl said, his voice rising sharply. “The Greeks—the Romans. Even Captain John Smith spied a mermaid in 1614 when he reached the coast of Maine. But I am the first—the very first man in thousands of years—to actually manage to capture one of the creatures.” His thin chest heaved as he gasped for breath, but the intensity of his gaze didn’t ease. “And you want me to let him go?”

Beth stared back at him helplessly. “Yes. It’s amazing—wonderful—that you found him,” she said, trying to calm him down. “But we can’t just kidnap him—”

“Kidnap!” Ralph laughed heartily. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he gave her a squeeze. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth. Your imagination is running wild. You can’t kidnap a sea animal. We’re simply holding him in the name of science.”

“Well, can’t we simply videotape him?” she asked with sudden inspiration. “Take some pictures and release him?”

Ralph released her instead. “You’re being naive,” he told her, with a hint of contempt. “No one will believe a videotape. This is the kind of find that scientists will insist on seeing for themselves.”

Carl nodded somberly. “He’s right, Elizabeth. No one knows that better than I do. In fact, Ralph has convinced me to keep our find a secret for a couple of weeks until the Fall Science Exposition opens in San Diego. We’ll gain more validity by revealing the merman there, where the world’s scientists can see for themselves that it isn’t a hoax.”

“But, Dad…”

He waved her to silence, and lay quietly for a moment. Staring unseeingly ahead, he collected his thoughts, his thin, restless fingers plucking at the blue silk bedspread lying across his legs. Then he looked back at Beth. His mouth twisted as he slowly admitted, “It hurt, daughter, to have lifelong colleagues turn away from me the way they did when I announced my belief in the existence of mermaids. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t believed in me, and I want your support now, too.”

Guilt—hot and heavy—flooded Beth’s chest. The truth was, she hadn’t believed in him. She loved him with all her heart—she worried about him constantly—but not since she was a little girl had she considered the notion that his claim might be valid.

Until today.

She stifled a sigh. Who was she to think she knew better than he did? She’d majored in sociology, not marine biology. Besides, she’d only seen the merman for a minute or so—met his eyes for barely seconds. Even if it had been anger in his gaze, that didn’t make him human. Animals got angry, too. Maybe he didn’t mind being in the tank as much as she thought. If Ralph—who’d worked with sea mammals for over a decade—was sure the merman had the sensibility of a fish, then who was she to say differently?