Monday Morsels: Restoring Ainsley

RESTORING AINSLEY

by Tara Eldana

Just do it,” Sara said. “What have you got to lose?”

“Everything,” Ainsley said.

It was the last week of school, and she was not on the permanent hire list. All the other teachers who were hired with her last year were offered tenure.

She was on probation for next year or until old man Hackett sacked her. She’d pissed him off when she’d asked for a different mentor, not knowing the asshole he’d assigned her to was his son-in-law.

Next week she would be leaving for Hawaii. Her Aunt Cathy had asked Ainsley to stay in her house on Hawaii’s Big Island while she went to Africa for four weeks. The plane ticket from Michigan would blow through most of Ainsley’s savings.

And vast expanses of water terrified her, despite growing up in Michigan, the mitten state surrounded by water.

How would she stand being on an island?

She took a sip of the awful teacher’s lounge coffee. “I could teach summer school, make extra money,” she said. “It might help me get tenure, if they see I’m determined to quote, unquote, improve.”

Sara put her hand on her arm. “Ains, are you sure you even want to teach?”

Ainsley recoiled.

“You’re wonderful with kids,” Sara said. “But you seem like a fish out of water. You had to start teaching a bunch of third graders two weeks after your mother died. You never shared that with Hackett, did you?”

“No,” she said. “I was afraid he’d give my job to someone else, and I have my lease and student loans.” She took another sip of coffee and winced. It was swill.

“Truth was you weren’t ready.” Sara lowered her voice.

“I love you, sweets. But your heart isn’t here.”

Ainsley knew that.

But where was it?

“This coffee sucks,” she said, in an attempt to change the subject.

Sara cringed.

Hackett stood behind her.

“Why don’t you make a fresh pot, Ms. Peters? The pot is empty.”

Ainsley twisted her mouth into a smile and stood up. “Happy to.”

Not.

She put the filter in, switched the setting to strong, and flipped the switch to brew. How could he be pissed that she didn’t like teacher’s lounge coffee?

Who did?

Her only hope of keeping her job was if he retired.

Sara was right.

Ainsley should take a real break and figure out what she wanted to do, put her big girl pants on, face her fear of endless water, and go to Hawaii. She could spread her mother’s ashes in the ocean like she’d wanted.

Cora, her mother, casually mentioned it to her over coffee a few weeks before a sudden stroke killed her at fifty.

Ainsley had never known her father. Cora said she had “joined with him,” and she believed he had died at sea, because he never returned to her. She never said what “joined with” meant. Her mother got so sad whenever Ainsley asked about her father, so she stopped asking.

She’d only said her father’s name was Reston, and he’d lived on a tiny island near American Samoa. Cora was a nurse, and she met him there when she went to help after a tidal wave devastated the island. Her mother never said what his last name was, and Ainsley had taken her mother’s last name.

Her grandparents were a huge part of Ainsley’s life until they’d died within a year of each other ten years ago. Aunt Cathy was the only family member she had left. She sat back down, pulled out her Smart phone and credit card, and sent an email to her aunt saying she would come and got an immediate smiley face emoticon. Then she booked her plane ticket.

She lifted her hair off her neck, wishing she had put it up today. Sweat trickled down her back.

“I’m jealous,” Sara said. “We’re going out on the boat tonight. Why don’t you come?”

Ainsley had never told her friend about her fear.

Sara and her husband Mike kept their speedboat in a harbor in the suburbs of Detroit. The other times they’d taken Ainsley out on Lake St. Clair, the stretch of water leading to the Detroit River, she could see the shoreline. It could be good practice to get over her stupid fear of wide-open water.

“Sure,” she said.

###

Gareth, a merman, will do anything to shark fight…

Even if it means entering the dreams of Ainsley Peters and making love to her so he can convince her to return with him under the tides to the Crystal Caves. Gareth faces sanctions and won’t be able to shark fight unless he gets Ainsley, who thinks she is human, to see her grandfather. Problem is his love for Ainsley blindsides him. Can he convince her she is his destiny and he loves her more than shark fighting?

Ainsley longs to see her grandfather, but Gareth is asking more than she can give…

Ainsley Peters is afraid of the water. She thinks she’s an ordinary elementary school teacher in Michigan. She can’t forget the hot guy who shows up at her school. She has no idea the father she never knew was a merman. But then she dreams of Gareth—and he shows up in Hawaii where she is on vacation. He asks her to forsake everything she knows to follow him under the sea. Can she trust him with her heart and stay with him under the waves, the last place she wants to be?

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