In McGillivray's Bed Read online

  “Shark bite?” she asked.

  His gaze narrowed. A corner of his mouth twitched. But then he shook his head solemnly. “Barracuda.”

  She jerked and blinked in surprise, then swallowed hastily. “Really?”

  Hugh McGillivray gave her an unholy grin. “Gotcha.”

  HE DIDN’T believe a word of it.

  Nobody jumped overboard to avoid getting married. It was preposterous. Ridiculous. Out of the question.

  But it was her story and she’d stuck to it. Or at least she had so far.

  Crazy woman.

  Hugh shot her a glance now as he slowed the boat and headed it into Pelican Cay’s small harbor. Once she’d told him her amazing tale, he’d revved the engine and headed for the island, full speed ahead. Still, it had taken close to half an hour to get there, and the sun had gone down completely now.

  In the darkness reflections streamed across the water from the row of street lamps along the quay and from the houses that fronted the harbor. The small houses that climbed the low hill of Pelican Town looked almost like dolls’ houses, tidy and laid-back and welcoming all at once.

  Home. Hugh smiled as he always did at the sight, though he doubted it would impress Miss Margaret Sydney St. John. Why ever she did or didn’t jump off the boat, she’d clearly been on it. And that—and the way she looked down her lovely nose at him—told him that she was from a higher rung on the social ladder than him and most of the people who lived in Pelican Town or who made their living on the fishing boats bobbing in the harbor tonight.

  Folks like them didn’t name their girls Sydney for one thing. Hugh snorted, thinking about it. Hell of a stupid name for a girl. He supposed her old man had been counting on a son.

  Probably she was a “junior,” he thought with a wry grin. From what she’d said he gathered that her old man was married to his company and thought his daughter was merely an extension of it.

  Not that she’d been complaining. God, no.

  She had actually defended the old man and St. John Electronics fervently when he’d asked her why the hell she would care if she embarrassed its CEO by telling him hell no she wasn’t going to marry him.

  “I couldn’t do that!” she’d protested. “It would have made the company look bad if Roland and I were at odds. Besides, it would upset my father.”

  “You don’t think maybe hearing his daughter had been eaten by a shark would have upset him?” Hugh had demanded.

  He was almost sorry he’d been so blunt when she’d gone white in the moonlight. It was, he realized, the first time she really seemed to consider the concrete implications of what she’d done.

  But even then she’d given herself a little shake.

  “I wasn’t eaten,” she’d reminded him almost defiantly.

  But her tone didn’t sound quite as firm as it had. And she’d clutched the quilt around her even more tightly and determinedly looked away.

  Hugh had left her to it. He’d kicked up the speed and focused on the island, only glancing her way occasionally and scowling as she looped an arm companionably over Belle and drew his dog inside the quilt with her.

  Belle was still there now, snuggled in. Hugh shut his eyes and tried not to think about it.

  He was having way too strong a reaction to Margaret Sydney St. John. It disconcerted him. The only woman who’d inspired anything like it had been Carin—for all the good that had done him. He had no interest in having reactions like that ever again—and certainly not about a crazy woman!

  It wasn’t really her per se, he assured himself, gorgeous though she was. It was just the lack of any other woman in his life. In his bed.

  Plagued as he had been every waking moment this summer by the determined attentions of the sweet marriageable Lisa, he’d found other women tended to give him a wide berth.

  “You have a girlfriend,” they always explained when they turned him down for dates.

  “She’s not my girlfriend!” Hugh had claimed over and over.

  But the protest fell on deaf ears. And on Lisa’s ears. And Lisa ignored them.

  “Well, if I’m not your girlfriend, who is?” Lisa had asked confidently.

  “I don’t have a girlfriend!” he’d protested.

  Too much.

  Women! Hugh despaired of them. They were all crazy as loons.

  At least this one—Miss Margaret Sydney St. John—would be out of his life damn quick.

  As soon as he got her to shore, he’d take her to the Moonstone, his brother Lachlan’s inn, where she could spend the night. From there she could call Daddy. In the morning her old man could come rescue her, and she’d be gone within the day.

  Hugh would never see her again and that would be fine with him.

  He was still a little nettled that she hadn’t been a big fish.

  She’d jerked his line exactly like a big fish, he thought irritably. Lachlan was going to laugh his head off when he heard that Hugh had caught a woman.

  Behind him the woman he’d caught drew in a sharp breath. He looked around. “What’s the matter now?” he asked gruffly.

  “Nothing’s the matter. It’s—” she waved her hand toward the harbor and the town “—so beautiful. That’s all. It’s like paradise.” She beamed at him.

  Hugh knew what she meant. He felt exactly the same way. But he scowled because he didn’t like the way her approval and her smile had slipped under his defenses. He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck.

  “I like it,” he admitted. He spent a moment savoring it again before he continued, “But it’s not exactly ritzy. There are a few inns and resorts on the windward side of the island. One pretty posh one on the north end. The Mirabelle. My brother owns it. I’ll take you there for the night.”

  “No!” Her rejection was a yelp.

  Hugh frowned. “What do you mean, no?”

  “Sorry. I just mean, I don’t want to go there.”

  “You’ve never even seen it! It’s beautiful. A class place. Maybe not five-star like I’m sure you’re accustomed to…” he drawled, irritated now.

  “I don’t care how many stars it does or doesn’t have. I don’t want to go to an inn or a resort. I want to be…incognito.”

  His mouth quirked. “Incognito, huh?” He doubted if Sydney St. John had ever said the word incognito before, much less applied it to herself. Even in her current padded-blanket guise with salt-encrusted hair clumped and straggly, she was a shockingly beautiful—and memorable—woman.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking her slowly up and down. “I can see you being incognito. Sure. Right.”

  She tossed her head. “I can be. I need to be!” she said fiercely. “I have to think about what to do, how to handle things.”

  “You could already have handled things,” Hugh felt obliged to point out, “if you’d just said no in the first place.”

  She gave him an impatient look. “I already told you, I couldn’t. It would have messed up everything.”

  He couldn’t see that, but obviously he wasn’t as crazy as she was. Nor was he a woman. He figured you’d have to be one or the other to have it make sense to you. “Well, fine. Whatever. Then there’s the Moonstone. It’s pretty cool. An old Victorian place.”

  “No inns.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Then stay at a B&B. We’ve got at least half a dozen of those.”

  “Too public. He’d check.”

  “So what are you planning to do? Sleep on the beach?” he asked sarcastically.

  She missed the sarcasm. “I’d be far too noticeable if I did that.” She cast about and spied the sleeping bag beneath the bow. “I’ll sleep here,” she said brightly.

  “The hell you will!”

  He could just see that—the fishermen of Pelican Cay grumbling and bumbling their way down to their boats in the morning and getting an eyeful of Sydney St. John crawling out of his sleeping bag.

  She’d shock the socks off the entire fleet! And then what would she do? Amble down the dock to use th
e facilities at the Customs house dressed in nothing but Belle’s quilt? Or worse, without Belle’s quilt!

  Hugh shook his head vehemently, cutting the engine off as they drifted toward the dock. “Not on your life. Uh-uh. No way. Don’t even think it.”

  But obviously she was. “I wouldn’t hurt anything. I’d clean up after myself.” She looked around the boat. “After you,” she amended, wrinkling her nose. “This boat could use a good scrubbing.”

  “It’s a boat, for God’s sake, not a floor,” he protested. They bumped against the rubber-tire-edged dock.

  “Even so, a little soap and water wouldn’t hurt it,” she informed him primly.

  “No.” He grabbed the stern line and wrapped it around the cleat on the dock, then jumped out to do the same with the bow.

  The crazy woman followed him, letting Belle out of the quilt and giving Hugh tantalizing glimpses of bare flesh. “Don’t be so negative, McGillivray,” she bargained. “Just one night. Or two. I’ll scrub the decks for you. Slap on some paint. I like being useful.”

  “No. You’d give the fishermen heart attacks.” He jumped back into the boat and brushed past her, reaching for the cooler.

  “I could stay hidden until they left.”

  “No.”

  “Then how about if I stay with you?”

  “Me?” Hugh blanched and jerked around to glare at her. “You don’t want to stay with me.”

  “I certainly don’t,” she agreed readily. “But I need somewhere that Roland won’t find me.”

  “Not my place. I live in a shack.”

  Which wasn’t quite true. His place was small, granted, but it wasn’t falling down. It overlooked the beach on the windward side of the island. It was old and comfortable. Perfect for him—and far too small for entertaining the likes of Sydney St. John.

  “A shack, huh? Why am I not surprised?” she murmured.

  He rose to the bait. “By your standards,” he clarified, “it would be a shack. By mine it’s just right.”

  “I’m sure it is. And for me it will be, too—for a short time. Just until I get my head together, McGillivray. Just until I figure out a plan of action. And give Roland pause for thought. I won’t be any trouble,” she promised.

  And if he believed that, next thing you knew she’d be selling him a bridge from Nassau to Miami.

  “There is no room,” Hugh said firmly. “It’s just a little beach house. Not your style.”

  “How do you know my style?”

  “I know women.”

  “Oh, really?”

  The doubt that dripped from her words infuriated him. He did know women. They’d been coming on to him since he was fourteen years old. And generally speaking they liked what they saw. It was only Sydney St. John who looked at him as if she’d found him on the sole of her shoe.

  “Like I said,” he told her gruffly, “I’m not your style.”

  “I can stand anything for a few days,” she informed him.

  “Well, I can’t. And there is nothing you can say that will—” He broke off at the sound of a shrill, happy voice calling his name from the end of the quay. He gritted his teeth and shut his eyes. “Damn it to hell.”

  Sydney St. John looked at him, startled. “What?”

  “Nothing.” He finished tossing the last of the gear onto the dock, grabbed his bag with one hand and took Syd’s arm none too gently with the other. Then he turned toward the woman approaching them and managed a casual and determinedly indifferent, “Hey, there, Lisa. How you doing?”

  Lisa flashed him her beautiful, dimpled smile even as she looked curiously at the woman he held firmly at his side. “I’m all right,” she said, her voice a little hesitant for once. “But I was a little lonely. I thought you’d get back sooner than this.”

  “I told you I had, um…business,” Hugh said vaguely.

  “Business?” The smile wavered as Lisa looked at Syd. “Of course,” she said, slotting Syd into that role. “I didn’t realize you were bringing a client back with you.” She gave Syd a polite smile, then turned back to Hugh. “I made conch chowder this evening. I figured I’d bring it over when you got back.”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, Lisa. I appreciate the thought. But we’re fine.”

  Lisa’s smile faltered as he had hoped it would. “We?” Perplexed, she looked from Hugh to the woman standing beside him, the woman whose wrist he had a death grip on.

  “We,” Hugh confirmed. He let go of her wrist long enough to loop an arm over her shoulders. “This is Syd—” he began, but Sydney cut him off before he got to her last name.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you,” she said smoothly and offered Lisa a hand.

  Lisa looked at it warily, but finally shook it, giving the quilt—and the bits of bare Sydney she could see—an assessing look. “You, too, um, Syd,” she said doubtfully even as she managed to paste the smile back on. “I’m Lisa. Are you staying at the Mirabelle? Or the Moonstone?”

  “No,” Hugh said before Sydney St. John could say anything at all. “She’s staying with me.”

  If she was astonished at his sudden about-face, at least Syd didn’t say a word. It was what she wanted, after all. She’d practically begged him to let her stay with him, hadn’t she?

  So he was doing them both a favor.

  Roland Wheeler Dealer would get a few days of worrying about whether he’d drowned the boss’s daughter, and Hugh would have a beautiful sexy woman living in his house.

  If that didn’t convince Lisa once and for all that he was not interested in her, he didn’t know what would.

  Yes, of course Sydney St. John was a little bit whacko and more than a little bit gorgeous. And yes, all his hormones had sat up and taken note.

  So what? He could handle it.

  It was one night. Maybe two. At the most, three.

  How bad could it possibly be?

  CHAPTER TWO

  “DON’T go using me to make your girlfriend jealous!” Syd protested as McGillivray, his arm still wrapping her shoulders like a vise, hustled her down the dock toward the quay. Over her shoulder she could see Lisa staring after them, lower lip trembling.

  “She’s not my girlfriend!”

  “Then why is she cooking you conch chowder and meeting your boat?”

  “Because she wants to be my girlfriend,” McGillivray said through gritted teeth, sounding beleaguered as he dragged her along.

  She clutched at the quilt, nearly tripping, as she hurried to keep up. “Really? Your girlfriend? Why? She looks far too sensible to me!”

  “I wish,” McGillivray muttered. “And God knows why,” he added. “I sure don’t.”

  They reached a rusty, topless Jeep parked at the foot of the dock, and he tossed his gear into the back, then jerked open the door for her. “Come on. Get in. We don’t have all day.”

  “Oh?” It was interesting to see how the girl, Lisa, had spooked McGillivray. He didn’t look the sort to be afraid of women. Tucking the quilt up, Syd climbed into the Jeep. “What’s the problem, then? Does she want to save you from yourself?”

  He barely let her get her feet in before he banged the door shut behind her. “That’s what my sister says.” He gave a short sharp whistle and slapped the wheel. “Come on, Belle! Move it.”

  Belle took a leap and landed in the back, on top of McGillivray’s bag, some pots and pans, a few unidentified tools, a couple of grease-streaked T-shirts and some paper bags that looked as if they had once contained take-out meals. K-rations, Syd thought. And they’d probably been there since World War II. General Patton would have been right at home. “What a mess.”

  Her opinion of his Jeep and its contents didn’t seem to matter to McGillivray. He ignored her and ruffled the dog’s fur. Then he turned and loped back up the dock. He stopped to have a brief conversation with Lisa as he piled into her arms a bunch of the stuff he’d taken from the boat and put on the dock. Then he hoisted the cooler into his own arms, and they walked back to the Jeep togethe
r.

  Syd stared. If Lisa wasn’t his girlfriend, what was she? His packhorse?

  “Thanks,” Hugh said cheerfully to Lisa when they got there. “Just toss all that stuff in the back with Belle.”

  Lisa did. And when she did, Syd noted that the “stuff” included her beaded dress. Lisa had obviously noticed it, too. She swallowed hard, but then smiled again with clear determination.

  McGillivray didn’t appear to notice. He was whistling as he stowed the cooler in the back of the Jeep. “Thanks a lot,” he said breezily, then jumped into the Jeep, flicked on the key already stuck in the ignition. “You’re a pal, Lise.”

  Lisa looked stricken.

  McGillivray just stomped the gas pedal, and they shot off up the street.

  “You hurt her feelings!” Syd remonstrated as they bounced along.

  McGillivray shrugged and hit another pothole. The narrow street was paved but there were more potholes than tarmac as it climbed the hill straight up from the dock. On both sides she saw wooden and stucco houses and shops. Most of the people walking about called out a greeting to Hugh, who waved carelessly back as they bounced up the hill.

  Most of the houses they passed had small front gardens or none at all. Some had high walls that butted right against the street. Others had broad overhung porches. All of them, as far as Syd could tell in the minimal light from the few scattered street lamps, looked to be of the same vintage as the Jeep or a hundred or so years older. All of them were in better repair than the street itself.

  “Hang on,” McGillivray suggested as he took a hard right and she nearly bounced out. “I’ve lost a few passengers who haven’t.”

  Slowly, casually—his earlier “gotcha” still ringing in her ears—Syd reached out to take hold of the bar at the side of the windshield. Just then the Jeep hit a particularly wide and deep pothole, and she scrabbled for a grip to save herself from lurching over the side.

  She turned to glare at McGillivray.

  “Warned you.” He grinned.

  A dozen or so potholes later, he took a sharp left past a broad open field, and then right onto a gravel track into the trees. Abruptly they left the small town behind and plunged into the blackness. Now the road seemed barely wider than the Jeep, and the vegetation rose up on both sides to meet above them. Even with the headlights’ illumination, Syd couldn’t make out a thing. Through the foliage Syd caught sight of occasional lights. Lamps in windows, she surmised as the Jeep slowed and McGillivray whipped it sharply first right, then left, then right again and all at once, a wall loomed in front of them. McGillivray braked, spraying dirt and gravel, then cut the engine.