Things I Know
1321 Words
Cora narrowed her eyes behind her sunglasses. The harbor looked offensively normal in daylight.
Fishing boats rocked lazily against their moorings. Tourists wandered along the waterfront carrying beach bags and cameras, and somewhere farther down the promenade a child was loudly negotiating for a second scoop of gelato.
No one seemed concerned that mythical sea creatures apparently lived twenty feet from shore.
Cora sat beneath the striped awning of a small café with an espresso strong enough to qualify as a controlled substance and a notebook open in front of her.
At the top of the page she'd written:
THINGS I KNOW
Underneath it her list:
1. People leave the water before sunset.
2. I heard singing coming from the water. Twice.
3. Luka knows about the singing.
4. Luka knows I heard the singing.
5. Luka told me to leave the island because I heard the singing.
5. I saw Luka underwater in the middle of the Adriatic Sea.
6. Luka had a tail.
Cora stared at number six.
She took another sip of her espresso.
Then added:
7. I can breathe/breathed underwater.
That somehow looked even more ridiculous written down.
She tapped her pen against the notebook.
The problem was that she had no independent verification for the most impossible and crazy parts of that list. She had been exhausted, mildly, maybe more than mildly, intoxicated, dehydrated, terrified, and deprived of oxygen. Under virtually any other circumstances, Cora would have considered hallucination the obvious explanation.
Except she was adamant Luka had been there.
Twice.
And Luka knew about the singing.
Cora drew a line beneath the list.
QUESTIONS
She had barely written the word when movement across the harbor caught her attention.
Cora froze with the pen still touching the paper.
Dark hair.
Tall.
Broad shoulders.
Luka emerged from a narrow alley between two limestone buildings as though Cora had summoned him by sheer irritation.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
She watched him cross the street and enter a small grocery shop.
Cora tossed several euros onto the table, shoved the notebook and pen into her bag, and followed.
By the time she reached the grocer, Luka was already on his way out with a paper bag tucked beneath one arm. He exchanged a few words with the elderly man behind the counter, who smiled broadly and reached across to clasp Luka's hand.
Interesting.
Cora stayed back. Sunglasses back on. Incognito.
Luka continued down the street.
At a tiny produce stand, he bought figs from a woman who looked at least ninety. At a bakery, he emerged carrying a loaf of bread and stopped long enough to speak with the owner about something that made both men laugh.
Cora frowned.
This was not helpful.
She'd been hoping for something sinister. A secret meeting. A coded exchange. Possibly an ominous hooded figure.
Instead, Luka Varek appeared to be grocery shopping.
Worse than that, he was charming while doing it.
People greeted him by name. Older shopkeepers seemed particularly pleased to see him, and Luka never rushed them and seemed to know them intimately. He bought something almost everywhere he stopped, even when Cora couldn't imagine he actually needed it.
At one point, he purchased a small jar of honey from an elderly woman, listened patiently while she spoke to him for nearly five minutes, then leaned down so she could kiss both of his cheeks.
Cora stared down her glasses from behind a display of postcards.
"Seriously?"
The rude, arrogant man who had ordered her off the island apparently spent his afternoons financially supporting every grandmother in Vela Luka.
Fantastic.
As Luka headed toward the harbor, Cora followed at a distance.
She lost him near the docks.
One moment he was ahead of her, disappearing past a row of fishing boats. The next, he was gone.
Cora slowed.
"Damn it."
"You are not very good at this."
She spun around.
Luka sat beneath the awning of a waterfront restaurant ten feet behind her.
A table had been set for two.
Cora stared at him.
Luka gestured casually toward the empty chair opposite him.
"I was beginning to wonder how long you intended to follow me."
"I wasn't following you."
"No?"
"No."
His eyes flicked toward the postcard display half a block away that she had been standing behind.
Cora narrowed hers.
Luka's mouth curved. Not quite a smile. Somehow worse.
"Sit."
"I don't take orders well."
"I noticed."
Cora should have walked away.
That would have been the sensible thing to do when the man inviting you to lunch might also be a mythical apex predator capable of surviving several hundred feet beneath the Adriatic.
She knew this. And she sat anyway.
Luka watched her settle into the chair with an expression that suggested he had known she would.
Annoying.
He reached for the bottle already waiting on the table.
“Drink?”
Cora eyed it suspiciously. “What is it?”
“Cherry rakija.”
Her mouth fell open.
For a second, she simply stared at him.
Then at the bottle.
Then back at him.
“No.”
One dark eyebrow lifted. “No?”
“No, not no thank you. No as in, are you making a reference, and if so, how the hell do you know I was drinking cherry rakija yesterday?”
Something flickered across his face before disappearing.
Cora leaned forward.
The cherry liquor had come from the Irish women on Petar’s boat. She hadn’t mentioned it to Marija. She certainly hadn’t mentioned it to Luka. As far as she knew, he hadn’t been anywhere near the boat.
Luka's expression remained perfectly composed.
Cora pointed toward the bottle. “That was on the boat I was on yesterday.”
“So?”
This time he smiled.
Actually smiled.
Cora's stomach dropped.
She'd already established that Luka was ridiculously and annoyingly attractive. That wasn't new information. But she'd never seen him smile like that before. His whole face changed, wide and genuine, the sharpness giving way to something warm and boyishly charming
It was the kind of smile that could make a woman temporarily forget several extremely relevant concerns.
Like the tail.
"You don't like it?" he asked.
"I nearly died after drinking that yesterday."
"I believe the Adriatic deserves more of the blame."
Cora leaned forward, all thoughts of his devastating smile temporarily forgotten.
“Well that's interesting.”
“What is?”
“I said I nearly died yesterday. I didn't say how.” She watched him carefully. “So why bring up the water?”
Luka lowered his glass. His expression gave away nothing now, but it was too late.
“I didn't tell you I was on a boat. I didn't tell you I fell overboard. And I definitely didn't tell you I spent nearly two hours swimming around in the middle of the Adriatic.”
Silence.
Cora felt a small surge of satisfaction.
“So either Vela Luka has the most efficient gossip network in Croatia,” she continued, “or you know exactly what happened to me yesterday.”
Luka regarded her quietly.
Cora leaned farther across the table.
“Excellent. Now we're getting somewhere.” She held his gaze. “Let's talk about the Adriatic, shall we?”
Luka said nothing.
He simply raised his glass again, as though taking another leisurely sip might somehow end the conversation.
Cora wasn't about to let him off that easily.
“I saw you.”
The glass stopped just short of his mouth.
His gaze shifted to hers over the rim.
“Did you?”
“In the middle of the ocean.”
Luka finally took the sip, infuriatingly calm, before lowering the glass.
“You were in the middle of the ocean?”
“So were you.”
“I think you'll find that's difficult to prove.”
Cora stared at him.
“You had a tail.”
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