McGillivray's Mistress Read online

“Unless—” he suggested “—you want me to sleep with you.”

  She gaped at him. “You can’t—I won’t—!”

  “Look, Fiona. Be sensible. It’s almost one-thirty, as you just pointed out,” he said. “It will take me until two to get home—”

  “Not if you call Maurice.”

  “—and I have to be up before five to get back over here. No. Thanks. I need more sleep than that. Not that I would sleep anyway, worrying about you. No. I’m staying. That way I can check on you.” He folded his arms and smiled amiably at her. “Or you could try to throw me out.”

  Fiona muttered under her breath. She scowled. She kicked at the rug underfoot. Finally she glared at him. “Fine,” she said at last. “Stay. Go ahead. Try to sleep on it. It’s lumpy. Very lumpy.”

  He barely spared it a glance. “It will do.” He had undoubtedly slept on worse.

  “But you’re not ‘checking’ on me.”

  That’s what you think. But he didn’t say it. “Got a blanket?” he asked.

  She made a huffing sound, then stalked back upstairs and came down moments later with a cotton blanket which she flung at him. “Sleep tight.”

  Then she turned and stomped back up the stairs.

  Lachlan listened to her bang the door to her bedroom. He heard sounds of her moving around, then all was quiet. He started to move to shut off the light when he heard a sudden slapping noise and Fiona’s cat was sitting just inside the cat flap, eyeing him curiously.

  “Don’t mind me,” he told the cat. “I’m just watching out for your pain in the neck mistress.”

  The cat didn’t seem perturbed. He washed his paws, then yawned and found a comfortable chair to sleep in.

  Lachlan stripped off his damp cutoffs and settled on the couch under the blanket. Fiona was right. The couch was lumpy. Very lumpy.

  But he had no intention of leaving. He hadn’t been joking about what had happened to Joaquin. It had been a freaky thing, but when you’d been there and seen it happen, you didn’t forget. Please, God, it wouldn’t happen to Fiona. But better safe than sorry.

  He stretched and settled in, elbowing the most annoying of the lumps. It wasn’t a bad place to be—in Fiona’s living room. It wasn’t her bedroom, but it was close.

  A lot closer to her than Lord David Bloody Grantham was.

  Lachlan felt as if he’d made a particularly spectacular save.

  “ARGH!” FIONA REACHED OUT and groped for her alarm clock, which was perversely tootling “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”

  It had been a joke gift from her brother Mike who knew how badly she hated to get up early. It wasn’t so bad to have it doing its zip-a-dee-do-dah best at the crack of noon whenever she needed to make an afternoon appointment.

  But it was dire to hear it warbling before first light.

  How could anyone tell what kind of a morning it was, Fiona thought, gnashing her teeth and smacking it into silence, when the sun wasn’t even up yet?

  Her head was pounding. Her mouth tasted like the bottom of her brothers’ boat. She ached all over. And she couldn’t imagine why in God’s name she had set the damn thing when she never—

  Oh God!

  Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod.

  She didn’t have to imagine. She remembered.

  She sat up straight, groaned and fell back against the pillows.

  It all came back now—the dinner at Beaches, the promise of work for David Grantham, the walk home with Lachlan.

  The Kiss.

  Dear God, yes, The Kiss.

  And later—after The Kiss—when she’d been taking down The King of the Beach, Lachlan had appeared out of nowhere, shouting at her, startling her, making her lose her balance and fall.

  That explained the aches. She’d got the wind knocked out of her. And Lachlan had come to crouch beside her and drip water all over her because he’d obviously been swimming, the idiot, all by himself which everyone knew you weren’t supposed to do. And she’d scrambled to her feet, tried to brush him off, and Lachlan had refused to be brushed.

  He’d walked her all the way home. Barefoot. He’d come in with her.

  And, ye gods, he’d insisted on staying the night!

  Yikes. He was likely—at this very moment—asleep downstairs on her very lumpy sofa.

  That was the most horrible scenario she could come up with—until she heard a groan and the rustle of movement from the chair beside the bed.

  “What the hell was that?” a gruff masculine voice growled.

  Fiona sat bolt upright again, staring in horror. “Lachlan?”

  “You were expecting Lord Bloody Grantham?”

  Fiona scrabbled for her T-shirt and dragged it hastily over her head. Why hadn’t her father installed central air-conditioning years ago? Why had she ever thought it was a good idea to sleep in the buff?

  She hauled the sheet over her. He hadn’t seen—surely he hadn’t!

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone!” she bit out, poking her head out from the T-shirt and reaching for her shorts. “You were downstairs.”

  He stood, yawned, stretched. The silhouette of a hard masculine frame was mouthwatering even in the semidarkness. “I was. Then I came up to see if you were dead yet.”

  “Oh, ha ha.”

  He shrugged and scrubbed a hand through his hair, then rubbed it over his face. “Been smarter if I’d kept an eye on Joaquin that night. I didn’t and he damn near died. So I figured I ought to keep an eye on you.”

  “You were sleeping,” Fiona reminded him.

  “I dozed off. You weren’t doing anything interesting.”

  And thank God for that, Fiona thought, mortified. She tried to untangle her feet from the sheet and poke them into her shorts.

  “Don’t bother on my account,” Lachlan said, sounding amused. “I’ve already seen everything.”

  “You had no right!”

  “Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all.

  “You should be!”

  “Did I lay a hand on you?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Then don’t complain.” He yawned again, so widely that she heard his jaw crack. Then he scratched his chest and ambled toward the bathroom.

  “You’re naked!”

  “That makes two of us, then. See, I can count.” White teeth flashed. “My shorts were wet, Fiona,” he said patiently. “Sleeping in them didn’t much appeal. Besides, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

  “Yes, but—” But somehow it seemed a lot more personal in her bedroom!

  “Fifteen minutes,” Lachlan said, not waiting to hear her objection. “I’ll meet you in the studio. Bring coffee.”

  SHE BROUGHT COFFEE.

  Lachlan brought his watch—and wore it. It was the only thing he had on when he came into the studio twenty minutes later.

  “I’ve got an eight o’clock meeting,” he told her gruffly as he picked up one of the mugs and took a swallow. “I’m not missing this one.”

  “Of course not,” Fiona said quickly. She was scurrying around businesslike and efficient, setting out her tools and uncovering the sculpture. “You’re the one who said fifteen minutes,” she reminded him. “I could have been ready in five.”

  Yeah, well, he couldn’t have been. It had taken him time to get things under control. He was used to the early-morning behavior of his body. Awakening with an erection was no big deal. Happened all the time. Had nothing to do with lust. Ordinarily.

  But then, ordinarily, he did not spend the night watching Fiona Dunbar sleep naked.

  This morning lust had been a complicating issue.

  It had taken an icy shower to resolve the problem. But even now it didn’t feel settled. He felt twitchy, wired, edgy—walking the fine line of control.

  Fiona was all business, just as she’d been yesterday. She focused on the sculpture, studying it from this angle and that, running her fingers over it, murmuring to herself. Then she nodded and scooped up some clay, slapped it on to the buttocks of
her sculpture and set to work.

  Lachlan stared off into space, did a few multiplication tables, tried to maintain his composure. But his mind kept drifting back to the woman across the room.

  If she had been flustered by discovering he’d seen her naked, she’d got over it quick.

  A whole lot quicker than he was getting over it, that was for damn sure.

  He’d been absolutely serious when he’d told her he intended to check on her. Joaquin’s injury had been too recent. It had been too nearly fatal. Of course such a thing wasn’t likely to happen again. But blunt trauma was blunt trauma. And how likely had it been to happen in the first place?

  So he’d stayed on the sofa, had got acquainted with each and every lump. And finally, after an hour, he’d got up and, wrapping the blanket around him, had quietly climbed the stairs and eased open the door to her room. He hadn’t gone to spy on her. He’d simply wanted to check to be sure she was still breathing.

  She was breathing, all right.

  But one look at her lying nude on top of the sheets and he nearly wasn’t!

  He’d stood transfixed in the doorway, heart slamming against the wall of his chest, as he’d stared at her asleep in the moonlit room.

  All the rampaging lust he’d attempted to work off during his midnight swim came flooding back. His mouth went dry, his palms got damp, and his whole body grew taut at the sight of her.

  She’d been sound asleep. Resting easily. Comfortably. He could see the rise and fall of her moon-washed breasts. He couldn’t look away.

  In fact, he’d moved closer. He had slipped right into the room and had gone to stand by the side of the bed. There he’d stood looking down on her, clenching his fists against the longing to lie down next to her and touch her, to stroke her smooth skin, to cup her breasts in his palms, to kiss the line of her jaw and run his hands down her thighs to part—

  Oh hell, he couldn’t go there! Not now!

  Quick! Penguins! Icebergs!

  The sinking of the bloody Titanic!

  But it didn’t do a damn bit of good.

  He bolted off the modeling stand, spilling his coffee as he headed for the bathroom. “Gotta leave!” he muttered, leaving Fiona to look up from the sculpture and stare after him, openmouthed in his wake.

  “But—” Footsteps came pattering after him.

  He banged shut the bathroom door.

  “Lachlan? Is something wrong?”

  Body quivering, he panted. “Nothing’s wrong!”

  “Then why—?”

  Oh hell, oh hell, oh hell.

  “Lachlan?”

  “I’ve got an appointment I just remembered!”

  “At six-thirty in the morning?”

  “Yes.” He dragged on his damp cold shorts and hoped they would do the job that the iceberg and the Titanic hadn’t. It took a while. He waited to hear the footsteps moving away.

  As soon as he was presentable, he rubbed a hand over his face, sucked in a deep breath and opened the door.

  Fiona was standing in the doorway to her studio, looking at him irritably. “What’s going on?”

  “Sorry. Just…remembered something I had to do.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “I was just getting started, Lachlan.”

  He grimaced wryly as he hurried past her down the stairs. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  SHE HAD MISSED SOMETHING. Fiona was sure of it.

  Lachlan had been there, standing perfectly still one minute—and gone the next.

  She banged around the studio after he left, trying to make sense of his vanishing act, trying to work on the sculpture without him, getting nowhere.

  Was it something she had done? Something she had said?

  But she had done nothing except begin to work. And she’d said absolutely nothing at all.

  If she didn’t know better, she would think he had panicked.

  But that was ridiculous.

  She was the one who had reason to panic! She was the one who’d awakened and discovered he’d spent the night within touching distance of her naked body!

  And been so inspired that he’d fallen asleep! Whatever passion last night’s kiss had stirred in him, the sight of her in the nude had obviously given him definite second thoughts. Unfortunately it still had the power to heat her blood.

  And the sight of a nude Lachlan McGillivray was driving her nuts.

  She’d managed to sublimate her avid interest yesterday by channeling it into the clay, by trying to capture his planes and angles, muscles and bones. On an artistic level she’d begun to succeed.

  But far from encouraging her indifference, it had made her want Lachlan McGillivray more than she ever had before.

  “Bah!” She tossed a damp towel over the sculpture of his nakedness and tried to focus on this week’s cutouts for Carin. But she couldn’t get lost in her work the way she usually did.

  And when the phone rang, she was grateful for the diversion. “Hello?”

  “Is it true?” Julie asked without preamble. “Are you and Lachlan McGillivray having an affair?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “WHAT?”

  Fiona sat down with a thump. Lucky for Sparks he’d just vacated the chair she landed in.

  “Trina said she saw him coming out of your place when she got off work this morning,” Julie reported. “And Miss Saffron said she saw him hightailing up the hill at the crack of dawn.”

  Oh God.

  At Fiona’s total stunned silence, Julie went on quickly, “Of course it’s really none of anybody’s business, but—”

  No, it wasn’t. But this was Pelican Cay and one person’s business was always everyone else’s business. Trina was the weather girl on the local radio station. Miss Saffron was the source of much of what passed for island “news.” Between the two of them—

  “No!” Fiona blurted before it went any further. “Lachlan and I are not having an affair.”

  “Oh.” Julie sounded almost disappointed.

  “Julie!”

  “I mean, of course you’re not,” her sister-in-law said hastily. “That’s what I told them…” she added, her voice trailing off inconclusively.

  But…

  Fiona could hear the word even though it wasn’t there.

  “You’re an adult, after all,” Julie said after a moment. “And they did see him. So if you were…”

  “Lachlan McGillivray and I are not having an affair!”

  Julie went silent on the other end of the line.

  “Look,” Fiona said desperately, knowing she couldn’t tell Julie why Lachlan had really been here. He’d have her head if she did that. But she clearly wasn’t going to be able to pretend both Miss Saffron and Trina had been seeing things. “Yes, Lachlan was here this morning, but it was no big deal.”

  “No big deal,” her sister-in-law echoed in the tone she might have used if Ahab had said Moby Dick was not a very big whale.

  “There’s a simple explanation,” Fiona insisted. “Last night, after I got home from the dinner at Beaches—the dress was great, by the way—I went to bed. By myself,” she added firmly before Julie could ask. “And I suddenly realized, about midnight, that I’d promised to move The King of the Beach.”

  “Move the—?” Julie sputtered. “Why? Where?”

  “I thought I’d take him over by the cricket ground,” Fiona said, deliberately answering the second question and not the first. “So I went down to get started.”

  “At midnight?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. David—Lord Grantham—really liked my work. He thought the King was super, but he liked the rest of it, too. He thinks I have talent—”

  “Of course you have talent!” Julie said staunchly.

  “And he wants to feature me. He wants me to give talks to the groups that come on tours.”

  “Talks? To the tourists? Oh, Fee! That’s marvelous! No wonder you couldn’t sleep!” Julie, as Fiona had known she would, completely bought this as a reason for lying awake. Ther
e was no need to explain about The Kiss at all.

  “He wants to use a photo of it for his tour brochure,” she went on. “So I thought I’d better get it moved quick.”

  “But why move it at all?”

  “Because I told Lachlan I would. It does sort of interfere with the serene upscale ambience of the Moonstone.”

  “I thought that was the whole point,” Julie said drily.

  “Yes, well, I think I made my point. And I sort of, um, owe Lachlan one.” Not that she was going to say what for, of course. “Anyway, I was taking it down, and I was right up at the top, taking off the head—that big bucket, you know? And all of a sudden I heard this voice yell at me, and I lost my balance and fell.”

  “Oh my God! Are you—?”

  “I’m fine,” Fiona said firmly. “I just got the wind knocked out of me.”

  “Thank heavens. Who yelled? Those rackety boys go down to the beach at night, I know. If they—”

  “Lachlan yelled. He thought I was a vandal wrecking the sculpture.”

  “I’d have thought he would have paid any vandal who did that,” Julie said.

  “That’s what I said. But he’s changed his tune a little. He wants to keep Grantham happy. Anyway, he was worried about my having fallen, so he walked home with me.”

  “And spent the night?” Julie said doubtfully.

  “Actually, yes. He said a friend of his had almost died of a blunt trauma injury. He was worried I would. He wanted me to go to the doctor, and I wouldn’t. Can you imagine me getting Gerry up in the middle of the night and saying I’d fallen off my sculpture?”

  “Not really.” Julie knew Gerry Rasmussen as well as Fiona did.

  “Exactly. So he stayed.”

  “All night?” Julie repeated. Obviously this was the difficult part to get past.

  “On the couch.”

  “Lachlan McGillivray spent all night on your lumpy couch?” Julie said after a long moment. She still sounded doubtful, but at least she wasn’t saying, Oh, go on! That’s the biggest laugh I’ve had in months.

  “Yes.”

  “To make sure you didn’t die?”

  “Exactly.”

  There was another very long assessing pause on the other end of the line.