Mermaid Lessons

What happens when the man who can't swim falls for the woman who keeps him afloat? Casey Cunningham has a cabin the size of a generous coffin, a porthole sealed with marine tape, and a job she secretly loves — teaching six-year-olds to blow bubbles and pretend they're mermaids on the cruise liner Pacific Jewel. At twenty-two, she's escaped small-town Oregon, her mother's quiet disappointment, and a community college degree she finished but never used. The ocean is her whole world now, and she's learned to keep her loneliness tucked somewhere below the waterline where it doesn't show. So when her boss assigns her to private swimming lessons with a VIP passenger, Casey expects some wealthy retiree afraid of the deep end. She does not expect Chris Haymarket. As in that Chris Haymarket — the superhero franchise guy, the one three separate magazines have named the most attractive person alive, the man who looks like someone Photoshopped a human being and then gave him a twenty-million-dollar smile. He's charming. Self-deprecating. Clearly used to winning people over in seconds. And he is genuinely terrified of water. The charm drains from his face the moment she asks him to get in the pool. His knuckles go white on the ladder. His breathing changes. And Casey watches something raw and almost childlike replace all that Hollywood polish. They talk in the water and out of it. In stolen moments on deck at night when she's technically off-duty and he's technically just another passenger she shouldn't be touching. But every lesson requires exactly that — her hands adjusting his arms, pressing his lower back, holding him afloat while he learns to breathe. She becomes acutely aware of the heat of his skin through the water. He watches her mouth when she talks. But Casey knows this has an expiration date. His world is Malibu and managed relationships and paparazzi outside restaurants. Hers is a cracked porthole and a roommate who snores like a chainsaw. Her boss is building a case to fire her for flirting with a guest. A little girl in Casey's mermaid club is growing quieter under her cruel stepfather's sharp tongue. And somewhere between Fiji and Samoa, the ocean will demand something from both of them that no swimming lesson could have prepared them for. Mermaid Lessons is a sweet, sexy standalone romance set aboard a Pacific cruise ship in the summer of 2005. Expect: forced proximity that literally requires hands on bodies, a cinnamon-roll hero who's terrified of the deep end, a heroine who's braver than she knows, and love scenes in a cabin so small you'll feel the ocean rocking.