Page 15 of Catch of a Lifetime
“Nothing to discuss. You’re not keeping a quad bike at my house.”
“To be decided,” he said cheerfully, dismounting with a happy bounce.
“Already decided.”
He winked, ran a quick, assessing look over Dave, and opened the small storage locker at the back of the bike. “Give us a hand,” he said to me.
Dave had flopped back to resting his head on my lap, deciding that Jerry and whatever he was doing could be disregarded, and I lifted it carefully as I eased out from beneath him.
Between us, Jerry and I got the hammock, a small coil of rope, and my bundled-up spare duvet covers out and laid on the sand.
Jerry unrolled the hammock and bustled around to the back of the quad bike with it and the rope. “I’ll hitch this up. You bag him.”
“He’s not fruit,” I muttered as I grabbed the first duvet cover and unpoppered the bottom. I rolled it like a giant sock to make it easier to get on, and knelt by Dave’s tail.
Dave propped himself up on his elbows and cocked his head. He gave an inquisitive hum. When I ignored him, he flexed his tail and slapped his fluke gently across my face.
I swatted it away. “Dave.”
He hummed, one of his low, throbbing siren-sounds.
Usually I enjoyed them. Not right now.
“Jerry,” I said, my cheeks burning. “Can you not?”
Jerry coughed loudly, as if that could cover the noise he just inadvertently made in response to Dave. His cheeks were even redder than mine. “Sorry. Popped out of me. Is…uh? Wow. That was quite the sound wasn’t it? I mean, you’ve told me about his sexy noises before, but hearing one is, uh. Yeah. Sorry.”
Dave’s fluke slapped me in the face again. Lingeringly. Tenderly.
Good grief.
I grabbed it and stuffed it in the duvet cover.
I tried to, anyway. It was huge—much, much bigger than I’d realised. I’d seen Dave in his beautiful merman form many times, but we’d always been in the water. Seeing him on land like this gave me a whole other perspective.
“Can you come and help me fold his fin?” I asked Jerry. “This is a two-man job.”
“Yup.” He finished testing the hammock knots and trotted around to join me.
A second later, he was flat on his back, wheezing at the sky.
“Dave!” I yelled. I wrestled his tail off Jerry. He’d smacked Jerry in the face as he had me, but there was nothing teasing ortender about it. It was a sharp bop that had knocked Jerry flat, and he finished it up by dropping the whole fin on top of him. “Rude!”
“’S okay,” Jerry said, getting on his hands and knees.
“I am so sorry.”
Jerry waved it off. “Now we know he has boundaries. Dave. Dave.”
Dave raised a brow.
“Can I touch your tail, mate?” He reached out cautiously, then said, “Hard no on that,” from under Dave’s fin, which was once again pancaking him to the sand.
Once again, I hauled it off him. “You hold the duvet cover, and I’ll do the touching.”
“Yep. Let’s try that.”
I passed Jerry the rolled-up duvet and he held it ready. After a few false starts, I folded and tucked Dave’s fin away in the king-size cover, and we pulled it up his tail as far as it would go.
