I Taught a Siren to Court... Then Became His Mate novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: The Bait Shed

I said yes before she finished the sentence.

Then I said it again, louder, in case the line was bad.

The dean laughed.

"There's a condition," I said.

"Go on."

"I pick my new advisor. And I don't finish at the station."

"The station's director is in a county jail," the dean said dryly. "I don't think anybody's going to ask you to."

She was wrong about that.

The woman in the yellow rain jacket came out to Margie's dock that afternoon in a hired boat.

Up close she was older than I'd thought, with sensible shoes and a foundation lanyard still around her neck.

She stood on the planks and looked at the bait shed, and at the herring barrels, and at me in my field shorts with a hose in my hand, rinsing out my drysuit.

"Ms. Colcord," she said. "I'm the chair of the foundation board."

"I know who you are. You clapped."

She had the grace to flinch.

"I did," she said. "In April. I'm sorry for it."

"Okay."

"The board met this morning. The station needs a director." She held out an envelope. "It's an interim offer. Full salary, the house on the south harbor, the lab, the boat. Your own staff. You could run Siren Net any way you like."

I turned off the hose.

"There isn't going to be a Siren Net," I said.

"Then call it something else."

"No," I said. "I mean there isn't going to be one."

She looked at me for a long time.

"You're turning down a directorship at twenty-eight."

"I'm turning down his building," I said. "His office. His glass case. I don't want to sit behind that desk."

"What do you want?"

I looked out past Margie's dock at the water.

"I want that cove left alone," I said. "And I want to be the one who listens to it."

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