In McGillivray's Bed Read online

  “Are you crazy? You jumped? In the middle of the bloody ocean? What the hell did you do a stupid thing like that for?”

  The crazy woman drew herself up as tall as she could manage, which meant she was almost as tall as he was, and looked down her definitely Captain Ahab nose. “It was,” she informed him, “the proactive thing to do.”

  Hugh sputtered. “Proactive?”

  How like a ditsy female to use business babble to justify temporary insanity. At least he hoped it was temporary. He jerked his baseball cap off, ran a hand through his hair, jammed it back on again and shook his head.

  “You don’t have to be embarrassed just because you drank a bit too much,” he told her. “Lots of people get a little wasted when they have a day’s holiday.”

  But her chin just went higher. “It wasn’t a holiday. And I did not touch a drop. I never drink on business occasions.”

  “You jump often?” Hugh inquired. “On business occasions?” His mouth twitched.

  She gave him a fulminating glare, then wrapped her arms around her dripping dress and scowled. “Fine. Don’t believe me. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me whether you believe me or not.” Pause. “But I would appreciate a towel.”

  He didn’t move.

  The scowl grew deeper, the glare more intense. Their eyes dueled. Then Miss Captain Ahab pressed her lips together tightly. There was a long pause. Finally she gave an irritable huff and added with bad grace, “Please.”

  Hugh grinned. “Coming right up!”

  He fished a not-very-clean towel out from beneath the bow of the boat where he always stowed his sleeping bag and cooler and other sundry gear and tossed it back to her. “It’s all yours.”

  She caught it, wiped her face, then met his gaze over the top of it. “Thank you,” she said with exaggerated politeness.

  Still grinning, he dipped his head. “Anytime.”

  She looked away then and began drying off. Hugh stood there watching, fascinated, as she rubbed her arms and legs to dry them, then tried to sop up as much water from the beaded dress as she possibly could. It was a losing battle.

  “You could take it off,” he offered helpfully.

  “Yes, I could,” she reflected aloud.

  And damned if she didn’t!

  Right then. Right there.

  Well, actually it took a few moments for her to get the dress off. Palm-dampening, mouth-parching, body-hardening moments as far as Hugh was concerned. Soaking-wet and clingy beaded dresses were obviously not easy to shed.

  But as he stood there gaping, the crazy woman peeled the silvery straps of her beaded dress right down her arms and wriggled and shimmied and squirmed until the dress pooled at her feet and she was wearing a strapless bra and a pair of itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikini panties and nothing more.

  Hugh’s mouth went dry. His body got hot. He gaped, then tried to speak, but all he could manage was a croak like a frog’s. Abruptly he shut his mouth.

  The woman didn’t seem to notice. She gave a huge sigh as she stepped neatly out of the pool of dress. “Thank God. You have no idea how heavy a wet beaded dress is.”

  No, he didn’t. And if he tried to think about it, his mind whirled. All the blood that ordinarily made his brain function was far too busy elsewhere.

  Without thinking, he sat down. Belle came and put her head on his knee, but her gaze was still on the crazy woman.

  So was Hugh’s.

  “If we’re going to be polite,” the woman told him firmly, “you shouldn’t stare. My father always told me it wasn’t polite to stare.”

  Hugh swallowed, but he didn’t stop staring. The ability to move his eyes was beyond him. His brain was still in neutral. Certain parts of his body, however, were on high alert.

  “Huh?” he managed to croak at last, his gaze still impolitely roving over her slim but decidedly curvy form.

  “What?” he said, aware that she had spoken yet unable to find the sense in her words.

  “Whoa,” he murmured as his brain finally engaged and he managed to both avert his gaze and shut his mouth at the same time. Major accomplishment. While his blood was otherwise occupied, the beer seemed to have gone to his head.

  Now he tipped his head back and took a couple of deep, desperate breaths.

  “Can I use this?” the crazy woman asked.

  Her words made him jerk his head up, and he saw her holding up the quilt that Belle normally slept on. Belle was wagging her tail and grinning, apparently quite willing to share.

  “Do you have to?”

  He wasn’t thinking, of course. He was just saying what came into his head. And what came into his head was how much he was enjoying the sight of all that lovely female flesh. And he was loath to lose sight of it, even when she gave him a seriously disdainful look.

  “Then perhaps you could lend me your shirt.” She looked at it pointedly. “Please,” she added with more than a hint of irony.

  He could. But leaving it flapping over his baggy shorts, thus hiding the evidence of his unfortunate arousal was probably a better idea.

  “Use the quilt,” he said gruffly.

  She blinked, taken aback. But when he didn’t change his mind, she shrugged and wrapped it around her shoulders, then clutched it over her middle, giving the impression that she had turned into an overstuffed chair.

  Or she would have if Hugh hadn’t had a good imagination and an even better memory. He knew damned well what was under the padding. He could still see it all in his mind’s eye.

  He was definitely glad he’d kept his shirt.

  “So,” he said, determined to focus on her less appealing characteristics, “tell me about this proactive jump of yours.”

  She glanced over her shoulder toward where the running lights of the yacht were still barely visible. “Could we, um, just get moving first?”

  “Catch up with them, you mean?” Hugh said doubtfully. It would be a hell of a ride in the dark.

  “No!” The word burst out from her, surprising him. Then she gave herself a little shake. “I mean, no, thank you,” she said with extreme politeness.

  But even spoken with politeness, the words were still surprising. Hugh cocked his head and lifted a brow. “No, you don’t want to catch up with the boat?”

  “No!” Pause. Moderation. “I don’t. In fact, I would very much like to head in the other direction.”

  “I’m not going in the other direction.”

  “Where are you going, then?” She looked suddenly apprehensive.

  He jerked his head toward the lights of Pelican Cay. “There.”

  She turned to see where he’d indicated, and her apprehension faded a bit. She nodded her head. “That’ll be fine,” she said, glancing back at the lights of the yacht, then added, “Just let’s go, okay?”

  Interesting. And odd how she could swim in shark-infested waters with complete aplomb and then freak out when she was perfectly safe. Unless she wasn’t perfectly safe.

  “Did you steal something?” Hugh demanded, gaze narrowing.

  “Steal something?” She looked shocked. “Whatever for?”

  “How the hell should I know? You jumped off a bloody boat. Why the hell else would you run away?”

  “I’m not running away!”

  “Oh, right. I forgot. You were just proactively jumping into shark-infested waters miles from shore.” He kept his tone conversational. It was easy enough to call her a liar with his eyes.

  For an instant her gaze slid away, but then she brought it back and met his squarely and Captain Ahab was back. “I needed to leave. That’s all.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Look, will you just go?” she said. “I’ll tell you. I promise. I haven’t done anything wrong. I just need some space and a little time.” She wasn’t quite begging, but there was a definite urgency in her tone. She met his gaze steadily. “Please.”

  There was, even now, a sense of self-possession about her. As edgy as she was, it was a polite please not a fran
tic please.

  Cripes, maybe it had been a proactive jump.

  He nodded and moved to start the engine. She stepped out of his way. He got it going but didn’t let out the throttle.

  “What are you waiting for?” she demanded.

  “You.”

  She looked blank.

  “Can’t go too fast,” he explained. “I won’t be able to hear you when you tell me why you jumped. And it better be good,” he warned her, “to make up for my record catch that got away.”

  “I DON’T believe it,” the scruffy fisherman said flatly when Sydney told him what had prompted her to jump overboard.

  She glared at him. Who gave him the right to pass judgment, for heaven’s sake? “Well, believe it or not, it’s true.”

  “Let me get this straight. You jumped off a yacht in the middle of nowhere so you wouldn’t have to get married?” He all but rolled his eyes as he repeated the gist of what she’d said.

  Her jaw tightened. “More or less.”

  He rolled his eyes, then cocked his head and fixed his gaze on her. “Are you too young to remember the phrase Just Say No?”

  “That was to say no to drugs.”

  “It is possible,” the grubby fisherman pointed out, “to say no to other things.”

  “Like baths and clean clothes?” she said sweetly, her gaze raking him.

  He had at least a couple of days’ growth of beard on his face and he wore a pair of faded jean cutoffs and an equally faded short-sleeved shirt covered with outrageous cartoon flamingos and palm trees.

  His dark brows drew down. “I’m clean,” he protested. “I took a swim this afternoon.”

  “A swim?”

  “Water’s water. Don’t change the subject. Why didn’t you just say no? No, thank you,” he corrected with a grin.

  “Because,” she told him haughtily, “it wouldn’t have been efficacious.” She doubted he even knew what the word meant.

  He repeated it. “Efficacious. What’s that when it’s at home?”

  “Appropriate. Though I doubt you know what that means, either.”

  “Me?” His brows went clear up into the fringe of hair that flopped over his forehead. “I don’t know what’s appropriate? Who jumped into the ocean miles from shore?”

  She felt her face grow hot, but she refused to acknowledge the foolishness, even though now her knees were feeling like jelly. “It worked. They didn’t see me. No one saw me.”

  “And that makes it appropriate?” He was almost shouting at her. “You’re a flaming idiot, you know that? If I hadn’t fished you out, you’d have drowned. Or been eaten by a shark.”

  “I saw your boat.”

  He stared at her as if she’d just escaped from Bedlam. “You saw my boat? A quarter of a bloody mile away?” He made it sound like rank idiocy. To him it obviously was. To her, at the time, it had been completely sensible and absolutely necessary.

  There had been no other way.

  She certainly couldn’t call Roland Carruthers, her father’s CEO, a liar! Not in front of the entire group of management and investors he’d brought together on the yacht to celebrate the acquisition of Butler Instruments by St. John Electronics.

  And Roland had known it, damn him. That was why he hadn’t said a word to her beforehand, but had simply stepped up to the microphone and announced their impending marriage.

  Tonight, he’d said in his charming, dark whiskey voice, they were in for a delightful surprise. Everyone was going to get a living example of how much of a real family St. John Electronics was because they were all going to be witnesses at his shipboard marriage to Simon St. John’s only daughter, Margaret Sydney St. John.

  Her!

  He had taken marriage—her marriage—and turned it into a business deal.

  And then he’d had the temerity to meet her gaze and smile at her! As if she would approve!

  Sydney had gone cold. And white. Stunned and speechless.

  Which is probably exactly what he’d been counting on. And when she finally got her voice back, as he came over and put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, she still couldn’t say what she was thinking.

  Because she knew better. Simon St. John had taught her well. The company always came first.

  So there was no chance that Syd would undermine her father’s firm or his representatives in public. She always did what was “best for the company.” Corporate from her head to her toes, Syd would never gainsay his claim.

  And Roland knew that. He’d played upon it, had counted on her agreement and on her going through with it because their marriage would be in the best interests of St. John Electronics.

  But even though she might believe that, she couldn’t do it.

  Not like this.

  His announcement had shocked her to her core. Only years of social conditioning had prevented her from showing it on her face. But whether she was more shocked by his announcement or by her own reaction to it was something she was going to have to think about.

  If he’d asked her to marry him, if he’d wooed her, charmed her, pretended to love her, Syd had the sneaking suspicion she might have said yes.

  But he hadn’t. He’d presumed and simply expected her to go along with it—for the good of the company. Not because he loved her. Roland had never ever pretended to love her. They were business associates.

  And yet he would have married her!

  If she had been willing, Syd realized, she’d be Mrs. Roland Carruthers right now. No, she corrected herself, Roland would have been Mr. St. John Electronics.

  Because it was all about business. Nothing else.

  Yet if he had pretended—Syd shuddered to think about how close she might have come to agreeing, if he’d gone about it in a less manipulative fashion—she might have done it.

  Thank God Roland dared to assume! Now she knew there was a line across which she wouldn’t go.

  No matter how good it would be for St. John Electronics, no matter how happy their marriage would make her father, she would not marry for the company.

  She would only marry for love.

  But she couldn’t have said that in front of the guests!

  She’d tried talking him out of it as he’d escorted her below to change into the silvery beaded dress. “This is crazy, Roland,” she’d said. “You’ve had too much sun.”

  “On the contrary,” he’d assured her, “it’s exactly right. For everyone.” He’d turned a deaf ear to all her objections. “You know it’s for the best, Margaret.” He always called her Margaret because her father did. “Don’t act missish, my dear,” he’d said, steering her toward her stateroom. “It’s not like you.”

  No. It wasn’t. But neither was just mindlessly doing what she was bullied into. And so she had shut the stateroom door on him.

  “Hurry and change, Margaret,” he’d said. “Everyone is waiting.”

  “I am not marrying you, Roland,” she’d said through the door.

  “Oh, Margaret, for goodness’ sake,” he’d said with irritating good humor. “Stop fussing and get a move on. I’ll be on deck waiting for my bride.”

  He’d had a long wait.

  Syd had changed into the party dress so she could give the impression of cooperating if anyone saw her, then she’d gone back out and along the passage to the stern. She’d climbed the ladder to the deck, then stayed out of sight until no one was looking.

  And she’d jumped.

  “I’m a strong swimmer,” she told her sceptical rescuer firmly now. “I knew I could make it. And it was better than causing a fuss.”

  “Getting eaten by a shark wouldn’t have caused a fuss?” He sounded furious. She didn’t understand why. He wasn’t the one who would have been fish food. But he was cracking his knuckles furiously and giving a sharp shake of his head.

  “I didn’t think there were any fish around,” she said lamely.

  His eyes flashed. “This is the ocean, sweetheart! Why the hell wouldn’t there be any fish
?”

  “You weren’t catching any,” she pointed out.

  He made a strangled sound, yanked off his ugly faded baseball cap and shoved his hand through shaggy dark hair that could have used cutting. “How could I catch any damn fish,” he demanded, “with you kicking and floundering around out there? You were scaring them all away!”

  “Even the sharks,” she added.

  The glower was mutual this time. And who knew how long it would have lasted if his dog hadn’t nudged her way between them. Obviously a peacemaker. The dog—a border collie, Syd thought—grinned at her, looking much more reputable and a good deal friendlier than the fisherman.

  Venturing a hand out to scratch the dog’s ears, Syd asked, “What’s her name?”

  For a minute she didn’t think he was going to tell her. He pressed his lips together, then shrugged. “Belle.”

  The dog wagged her tail at the sound of her name.

  “Hello, Belle,” Syd crooned, rubbing the soft ears and getting rewarded with a lick of her hands. “You’re beautiful. I’m Syd.”

  “Sid?” Belle’s owner echoed in disbelief.

  “Syd with a Y. Sydney.” She hesitated, too, then told him her full name, “Margaret Sydney St. John,” and waited for the jolt of recognition.

  He looked at her with no recognition at all. No awareness that he was talking to the woman whose father had invented one of the most important telecommunications networks in the world, a woman whose name had been all over the Bahamian papers in recent days as she and Roland Carruthers had been negotiating a buyout of a high-profile Bahamian firm. No clue that, according to people in the know, he was talking to one of the most eligible women in America.

  He just looked blank, then reluctantly stuck out a fishy-smelling hand and said, “Hugh McGillivray.”

  McGillivray. It figured.

  He had that raw Scottish warrior look to him. Syd could imagine him with his face painted blue. She wondered how he’d look in a kilt and was surprised at the direction of her thoughts.

  Abruptly she jerked them back to the moment and, reluctantly, took his offered hand. It was every bit as unnerving as she’d imagined it would be.

  Used to shaking the soft hands of boardroom execs, she felt the difference immediately. Hugh McGillivray’s palm was hard and rough. There was a ragged bloody scratch on the back of his hand.