Now You See Her Read Online Free PDF Page B

the end of the sunset, even before he reached across the table and held my hand, I knew.
    We both knew. Despite our ten-year age difference, we’d both known it from pretty much the moment we looked at each other through his cruiser’s backseat mesh.
    He proposed two weeks later. Teaching me how to fish, he asked me to reel in the line so he could change the bait. Only instead of a hook, my ring was tied to the end of the line, and I turned to find Peter down on one knee.
    We were married in a city hall wedding six months after that.
    I knew the whole thing was crazy. I knew that I was too young, that things were happening too fast, that I was being impulsive. But the craziest thing of all was that it kept working.
    “Jeanine?” Peter said.
    I opened one of my eyes.
    “Yes, Peter,” I said.
    “I thought you mermaids never wore shirts.”
    “That’s only under the sea, silly,” I said. “On land among you mortals, we have to keep the devastating, beguiling power of our boobies in check or nothing would ever get done.”
    “Except you?” Peter said.
    I closed my eye. “Now you’re getting it.”
    “Jeanine?” Peter said, laying down the sea pole.
    “Yes, Peter?”
    “You know what I’m in the mood for?”
    “Devastating beguilement?”
    “How’d you know?” he said.
    “Mermaids know,” I said, standing and taking my husband by the hand.

Chapter 14
    BACK TO THE PRESENT, and I’d just put in a load of whites when I heard the beeping. I padded into the kitchen and turned off the microwave timer before I headed to the rear of our cozy beach bungalow and into the master bath.
    Then I took a monster breath and held it as I turned and lifted the pregnancy test off the toilet lid.
    Time and my heart stopped at the exact same moment as I stared at the display window with its two identical blue lines. My breath whooshed out of me as though I were a seven-year-old blowing out birthday candles.
    Because I’d already read the math on the box.
    One blue line plus one blue line equaled one pregnant Jeanine.
    Over the past two weeks, I’d been in panic mode. More and more as another day passed and I didn’t get my period. I kept thinking about those three pills that I’d somehowmissed. I must have experienced brain freeze in the middle of last month’s cycle.
    Peter had elected me the head of the contraception department, and I’d definitely dropped the ball. Talk about a whoops.
    I also thought about what a baby would do to my twenty-three-year-old body, my twenty-three-year-old future.
    But as I stood there, staring down the two blue lines, something odd and unexpected happened. A warmth started in the center of my chest and for a quicksilver second, I could actually feel my baby, skin on skin, soft in my arms.
    Why not? I thought, suddenly dazzled with the life-affirming awesomeness of it. Why couldn’t Malibu Jeanine bring a Malibu baby to the luau? Hell, why not two? I’d always wanted kids. Peter and I had planned for some in the vague future anyway, so why not start early?
    Life was crazy. You had to roll with it. If the last two years and Key West had taught me anything, it was that.
Mi vida
really was
loca
. Besides, plans were for making God laugh.
    I dropped the test, sending the trusty stick flying, when there was a pounding on the door followed by a deafening electronic squawk.
    What the?
    “THIS IS THE POLICE!” Peter called through a police megaphone. “WE KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP AND YOUR PANTIES OFF!”
    I couldn’t stop laughing. He was always so crazy and funny, a holy terror of a rascal. All he did was make me laugh. When he wasn’t making me do even better stuff. I knew right then that Peter would make the best dad on earth.
    Should I tell him about the test? I thought. No, I quickly decided, hiding it under the sink. In two weeks we were going up to the Breakers in Palm Beach, where we’d spent our honeymoon. I’d drop it on him at dinner. Blow his doors