Thomas sat back and smiled. “Alrighty then.”

Artur was also smiling, which wiped Thomas’s smile away. “Yes, well said.”

“So it’s settled.”

“Indeed; and well said.”

Fred briefly toyed with the idea of leaping into the harbor, striking out for the horizon, and never looking back, not once.

Chapter Seventeen

“So here it is,” Thomas announced, zipping his key card through the slot and throwing open the door to the Presidential Suite. “It’s not home, but it’s much. I stole that,” he added cheerfully, “from Olivia Goldsmith, God rest her lipo’d soul.”

Fred, raised by far-from-poor parents, and Artur, son of royalty, were both impressed, and said so.

Thomas shrugged. “Well, like I said my first day… You remember,” he said to Fred. “I write romance novels.”

“Of course I remember. It was—” She looked at her watch. “The day before yesterday.”

“Right. Has it really only been two days?”

“Tell me about it,” she muttered.

“Well, when I’m running around doing this stuff, I try to pay for my own lodging. It’s not much to me, but sometimes it helps them. You know how the water programs…”

Fred nodded. At Artur’s puzzled look, she elaborated. “A lot of the programs for water fellows got their government funding slashed. Or don’t have much to begin with. Not just the water fellow programs, either. Just about every aquarium in the country depends on private contributions.”

Artur’s mouth thinned. “I was not aware, but I am not surprised.” In unison, they said, “Bipeds.”

“Now cut that out,” Thomas said, tossing his key card on the eight-foot-long mahogany dining room table. “We’re not all like that. I’m the one who came out here to try to fix the toxin problem, remember?”

“Congratulations,” Artur said silkily, wandering around the suite. “One out of a thousand bipeds maintains awareness that the planet is not yours to ruin.”

Fred snorted and Thomas said, “Now you’re just being mean. Uh, the other bedroom is back there, on your left. There’s another bathroom back there, too.” As Artur disappeared from sight, Thomas beckoned.

Curious, Fred walked over to him. He put his warm hands on her shoulders, leaned down and whispered, “There’s plenty of room for you, too.”

She grabbed his hands, ignored his yelp of pain, and wrenched them, off of her body. “Tempting, but no.”

“Ow ow ow. I meant the couches are all fold outs.”

“Oh, that’s even more tempting. Sleeping on a bar while you two save the world, refreshed from sleeping on queen mattresses.”

“King. And hey, I didn’t want to team up with Aquaman,” he growled. “That was your idea.” Then added hastily, “Not that I mind. I’ve got about a thousand questions for him. Think he’d let me run an MRI on him?”

“I doubt it. But go ahead and ask.” Out of sorts, and not really sure if she should stay or leave (and even more out of sorts that she was wondering… usually if she had to leave, she left, and didn’t waste a second wondering about it, either), Fred wandered around the suite.