Betina Krahn by The Mermaid

the boathouse onto the evening air. “Either you have these dolphin creatures at your beck and call, or you don’t.”
    “It is not quite as simple as that.” She entered the darkened boathouse and slid a hand along the wall, feeling for a shelf and then along the shelf until she found a lantern and matches.
    “It isn’t?”
    “This is not a safe, predictable laboratory, Professor. This is the sea.”
    “Science is science, Miss Ashton,” he declared, tugging his vest irritably. “Either you can do what you claimed or you cannot.”
    A light bloomed in the darkness. He ducked inside and saw her standing in the center of it, holding up the lantern. He stood silent for a moment, taking in her heart-shaped face, framed in a halo of glowing golden hair … cheeks brushed with warm, rosy tones … big, dark-centeredeyes … lips that seemed indecently full and red and almost …
edible
.
    He suddenly realized she was speaking again.
    “… more than one way to call a dolphin.”
    She thrust the lantern into his hands. Then she lifted a large sheet of corrugated tin that had rope attached at two corners, and a pair of wooden dowels that had been made into mallets. Skirting him, she ducked out the door, and he was left staring at the glowing flame of the lamp, trying desperately to remember what objection he had meant to raise.
    Something about calling dolphins … at night …
    It was nothing short of absurd, he thought. The brazen chit … showing him dolphins in the dark … where they couldn’t be seen clearly except by
her
. This was her clever plan? Did she really think him that gullible?
    He exited the boathouse and found her where the dock formed a ledge along the side of the crude building. “This way,” she said, flattening her back against the boathouse and edging along that narrow decking. He lost track of her after she rounded the corner, until he heard her call, “Aren’t you coming, Professor?”
    Expelling a ragged breath, he pressed his back to the wall and slid his feet along that narrow ledge. At the far end of the boathouse, the dock continued at full width for several feet before dropping off into the watery abyss. He inched his way along until he could slide around the corner, onto the relative security of the wider dock. There, he sagged against the boathouse wall to catch up on the breath he had missed in transit.
    She had sunk to her knees on the decking and was hanging the large piece of tin between two of the dock posts, so that it was half suspended in the water. Then she settled on the edge of the dock herself, took a mallet in each hand, and began to rap on the tin: five short raps, a pause, then a single lower-pitched rap. After repeating that pattern several times, she paused.
    “You’d better have a seat, Professor,” she said, looking up at him. “This may take a while.”
    She was calling her dolphins, he realized.
Supposedly
calling. In her book she had said that she rapped on the side of the boat … a pattern of sound that the dolphins recognized as coming from her.
Allegedly
recognized.
    “Very well,” he said, approaching the edge of the dock and kneeling down stiffly on the splintery boards. “I suppose I have nothing better to do.”
    The deepening crimson of the sunset slid gently into purple, then almost imperceptibly into the last dark blues of twilight. The sea darkened for a while, then seemed to brighten, as if drawing the last available light from the sky itself. The regular lapping of the water and the measured pounding of her makeshift drum complemented each other, producing a curiously agreeable rhythm.
    The longer he listened, the more pronounced and compelling it seemed. Slowly, it invaded his senses, vibrated along his nerves, and founded an unsettling resonance in his blood. Tension built in him, a persuasive sensual imperative … making him uncomfortably aware of his body. Then the drumming ceased and only the soft, expectant whispers of lapping water