“Yes, that was also strange. During your welcome speech, you said that you have an open-door policy, and yet, when we came to investigate the cries for help, we had to break open your door.”
Ah.
She looked into their innocent, sweet, but also very capable faces. “I should have said, ‘Please ask any questions.’ Let’s not break any more doors.”
“What if you are behind a door when we have a question?” warrior Nilun demanded.
“You can wait.” Dannika stood at her door. “Knock, at the very least. Or you could ask another warrior, or—”
“Your leader.” Their leader sauntered up the cottage path. “Me.”
Her heart stumbled. He was back. She suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Ciran?”
Unlike the nude warriors, Ciran wore dark blue Bermuda shorts and an unbuttoned shirt that showed off his well-defined six-pack and belly button. He had a relentless rhythm to his stride, an obdurate resistance that could withstand a hurricane.
He fixed his unusual two-tone eyes on her. His irises were coffee brown mixed with leaf green, like his tattoos. The marks curled across his skin, but their colors never quite touched. “Dannika.”
Her heart picked itself up and started beating faster and faster.
I turned you down, but I never stopped thinking of you, and now you came back.
She took a half step off the porch to run to him, throw her arms around his broad shoulders, and do something crazy like sob with relief.
The bright, interested stares of the other warriors brought her up sharply.
She forced herself up onto the porch again, smoothed her sleep-wrinkled robe, and brushed down her wild black hair. “Well…uh…when did you arrive?”
“Last night.” He returned the other warriors’ salutes—pressing their pinched fingers together at chest level—and surveyed the gathering. “Where is your guard?”
“Oh, Zoan?” She tried to lean casually against the doorframe, almost slid off, and straightened abruptly. “I, um, let him go.”
His gaze bored into her. “You let him go?”
“Yes, I…” She waved in the direction of the hibiscus hedge. “Zoan met his soul mate. She came by last night to take him to meet her family. They’ll be back after breakfast.”
“He left his post?”
“I told him to.”
“That is—”
“Ordered. I ordered him to.”
His eyes narrowed.
You should have told me you were coming. Someone should have told me. Why don’t mermen have personal assistants? If they had put you on my calendar, then I wouldn’t be a mess right now.
Gailen spoke up. “Then we did cause a problem, Dannika?”
“Yes,” Ciran said.
“No, no.” She peered over Ciran’s looming shoulder. “You didn’t know. It’s fine.”
Ciran turned to the warriors. “Go to Lotar.”
They saluted uneasily and hurried down the beach path.
“They didn’t mean it,” she told Ciran. “I hope you’re not mad.”
“Mad? No.” He swung back to Dannika. “You live on the surface. You are the expert in human affairs.”
“Yes, thank you. I am.”
“And therefore you know whether or not you need a guard.”
“Yes, well…I don’t think it hurts to have a guard. But my mission is to match warriors with their soul mates, and I won’t stop, even if it puts me in danger.”
He stepped closer. “Then you are in danger?”
She held her ground. “No more than anyone else at MerMatch.com.”
“You are its leader.”
“And that’s why I need us to get along. If you have a problem—” She made a sweeping gesture at herself—“tell me now.”
His gaze followed the path of her hand down her body, trailing over her breasts, caressing below the navel, down bare legs and all the way back up. “Hmm.”
Oh. God.
Her throat went dry.
She coughed. “What? You have a problem?”
“Yes.” He rested a forearm on the doorjamb above her cottage and leaned in, scanning her bedroom and then back to her. Protective, but sensual. “Do not sacrifice your safety for our happiness.”
“My mission—”
“Is honorable. Our warriors do need mates, and we desperately need young fry. But Dannika, you also must be safe.”
“If I don’t support your warriors once they find their soul mates, I’m not a very good matchmaker, am I?”
“You are an excellent matchmaker.”
Her heart throbbed. “Oh?”
“Yes.” Ciran’s true belief blazed into her. “You have brought happiness to many warriors, and you shine like a beacon of hope those who are still searching. But Zoan would never forgive himself if you were hurt in his absence. Please value yourself as we do.”
“Oh.” She swallowed hard. “You are so sweet.”
He tilted his head. “And you will value yourself?”
“I hear what you’re saying. But when you’ve met your special someone and you’re falling in love, every moment is precious. You need to spend it together.”