Page 32 of Catch of a Lifetime
He sat there at my kitchen table with my blood pressure monitor in front of him, and fixed me with his beady little stone-green eyes. “I’ll tell Marcy you’re looking peaky.”
I huffed over to the table and dropped into the chair opposite him. “Give me the cuff. I’ll do it.”
“No. Arm.”
“Jerry.”
“I will sit here all day. It’s Sunday. I don’t have to work.”
“For god’s sake, Jerry. I’m fine. My blood pressure is fine. You can stop fussing.”
“Yep. Roll your sleeve up.”
This was what came of confiding in people. They thought it gave them the right to get all up in your business.
I rolled up my sleeve and stuck out my hand. “Let me do it myself.”
Avoiding eye contact, I went through the familiar routine, slipping the cuff around my arm and waiting with pinched lips while it tightened until I felt my pulse banging unpleasantly in my inner bicep. The cuff gave a little wheeze as it deflated. We both leaned forward and read off the pressure.
I winced.
Jerry’s nostrils flared with disapproval.
“I’ll step up the yoga, for fuck’s sake,” I said.
“Damn right you will. I’m sending Charlotte over to make sure.”
“Jerry, no.”
Charlotte Barnes, Jerry’s oldest daughter, was the spitting image of her mother. She was small and delightfully round, with bouncy brown curls and rosy cheeks, and she took absolutely no shit whatsoever from anyone. She was also a yoga instructor. I’d hired her for some private sessions when she started her business a couple of years ago, to help her get things going.
It took me six months, some serious hours logged on the mat, and a double high five from my doctor for getting my blood pressure down and consistently steady before I realised it had been a set-up.
I wasn’t helping her. She was helping me.
Andshe’d given me a discount.
“Please stop threatening me with your family members,” I said.
“What about Biscuit?”
“Biscuit, I’ll accept.”
Biscuit was Jerry’s featherbrained cocker spaniel. She had two goals in life. The first was to attach herself to Jerry. The second—and only if Jerry wasn’t around—was to find the nearest human being and sit on them.
I kind of loved her, actually. I could confirm that having the uncomplicated company of a small furry idiot was excellent for lowering blood pressure. It took a lot less effort than being put through your paces by a yoga enthusiast with no mercy, that was for sure.
My heart situation was manageable. I didn’t even get all that stressed these days. Why would I? I had a home I loved, in a place I loved, with…fine. Good friends I loved.
And Dave.
My merman soulmate, who’d nearly died in the tentacles of a kraken somewhere out there in the wild ocean, and I’d never have known what happened, and would have spent the rest of my life waiting for him to come back.
My beloved, who for the first time since Jerry and I had found him washed up on the beach years ago, didn’t want me.
Nothing to be stressed about at all.
Three mornings later,I came out of my little front gate and, instead of treading the well-worn path down to the beach, I turned right and walked along the headland.
