“I hear we’re having an affair.”

Fiona turned as red as her hair. “We’re not!”

“I know.”

“It’s ridiculous!” She was pacing now, waving her hands, color still brilliant in her cheeks. “It’s because they saw you leaving here in the morning. They think you spent the night!”

“I did.”

“They think you slept with me!”

“Not a bad idea,” he murmured.

“The whole damn island thinks that I’m your mistress!”

Lachlan grinned at her. “Now, there’s an even better idea!”

Harlequin Presents® is proud to bring you a brand-new trilogy from international bestselling author

ANNE MCALLISTER

Welcome to

The McGillivrays of Pelican Cay

Meet:

Lachlan McGillivray—he’s ready to take his pretend mistress to bed!

Hugh McGillivray—is about to claim a bride….

Molly McGillivray—her Spanish lover is ready to surrender to passion!

Visit:

the stunning tropical island of Pelican Cay—full of sun-drenched beaches, it’s the perfect place for passion!

Don’t miss this fantastic new trilogy:

McGillivray’s Mistress—(#2357)

McGillivray’s Mistress
Anne McAllister

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Cathy and Steve the best of friends For Sid, the finest of felines For Bob, Dyl and Spiff, who have to put up with him And for Ange and Sparks whose head definitely won’t fit through the cat flap after this!

With thanks to Gail Chavenelle, whose sculptures inspired Fiona’s and who so generously shared her expertise with me

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

SOME PEOPLE called it “sculpture.” Lachlan McGillivray begged to differ.

As far as he was concerned, the monstrosity on the beach in front of his elegant upscale Moonstone Inn was—pure and simple—“trash.”

What else could you possibly call the nightmare—ten feet high and growing—that had begun to arise a month ago from the flotsam and jetsam that washed up on Pelican Cay’s beautiful pink sand beach?

“Delightfully inventive,” an article in last Sunday’s Nassau paper called it. “A creative amalgam,” the Freeport newspaper had said. “Fresh and thought-provoking,” the art critic from a far-reaching Florida daily claimed.

“Deliberate nose-thumbing,” was Lachlan’s opinion. It was just Fiona Dunbar having a go at him.

Again.

Fiona Dunbar had been a pain in the posterior—his posterior!—since he and his family had moved to the small Bahamian island when Lachlan was fifteen.

Life in suburban Virginia with its soccer leagues and its supply of cute blonde cheerleaders had been all he’d ever wanted back then. Being uprooted and transplanted to a remote Caribbean island just so his father could satisfy a need for wanderlust at the same time that he pursued his career as a family physician had infuriated Lachlan, though the rest of the family had come willingly enough.

In fact his brother, Hugh, two years younger, and his sister, Molly, six years his junior, had been delighted to trade their stateside existence for life in the sticks.

“There’s nothing to do there!” Lachlan had complained.

“Exactly,” his father had said happily, looking around at the miles of deserted beach and the softly breaking waves and then up the hill at the higgledy-piggledy scatter of pastel-colored houses, its 350-year-old rusting cannon, and the half-overgrown cricket field with its resident grass-mowing horse. “That’s just the point.”

Lachlan hadn’t been able to see it then. He’d thought it was the most boring place on earth, and he’d said so often.

“So leave,” Molly’s best friend, the supremely irritating Fiona Dunbar had said, sticking her tongue out at him.

“Believe me, carrots, I would if I could,” he’d replied.

And he had—as soon as his acceptance had come from the University of Virginia. He’d been gone four years, returning only occasionally to see his parents. Then he’d gone on to Europe to play soccer in England, Spain and Italy, and had come back even less often, and then only to regale family and friends with tales of life in the fast lane.

But oddly, the longer he was gone, the more he found himself remembering the good things about Pelican Cay. The more he’d awakened in the morning in this big city or that one and listened to the birds cough, the more fondly he’d remembered waking to island birds and island breezes. The more he moved frenetically from one place to another, the more he appreciated the slower island pace. He liked the autobahn and the Louvre and the centuries of European culture. He liked French cuisine and Italian delicacies and Spanish wines. But sometimes he missed a slow amble down a potholed road, a one-room island historical society, the 350-year-old rusty cannon, a plate of conch fritters and a long cold beer.

A couple of years ago, when Hugh had come back to start his island charter service, Fly Guy, in Pelican Cay, even though their parents had moved back to Virginia, Lachlan had thought his brother had the right idea.

“I’ll probably come back when I retire, too,” he’d said.

Hugh had raised dark brows. “And do what?”

Hugh had gone to college, then into the U.S. Navy where he’d been a pilot for eight years. But always a beachcomber at heart, he’d finally bolted the regimented world and was never happier than when he was lying in a hammock, drinking a beer and watching the waves wash up on the shore.

That was not Lachlan. Lachlan had always had goals. He’d made up his mind at the age of twelve that he was going to be “the best damn goalkeeper” in the world and he’d never swerved from his pursuit of that.

While his parents had scowled at his profanity, they’d admired his determination—and his success. He’d spent sixteen years as one of the best goalkeepers in the world. But even he couldn’t play in goal forever.

It was a young man’s game. A young healthy man’s game. Retirement had come last summer, at the age of thirty-four, when a serious knee injury had so compromised his quickness that Lachlan knew it was time. His mind was as quick as ever, his anticipation as great. But he would never get his edge back physically. And he refused to play down a level.

There was only one place to be—at the top.

Fortunately, he’d been buying up real estate for the past four years. Eighteen months ago he’d decided on his post-soccer career and had, with his customary determination, set about accomplishing it. First he’d bought the Mirabelle, a small elegant inn at the far end of Pelican Cay. It was already a thriving business and he could step right in whenever he wanted to. That made sense to everyone.

But when the Moonstone, then called the Sand Dollar, came on the market and he bought that, everyone had been appalled.

“What the hell are you going to do with that?” Hugh had demanded. The eighty-year-old, three-story clapboard structure with its peeling paint and sagging verandas had looked like nothing but work to him.

“I’ll restore it and refurbish it,” Lachlan had said, relishing the prospect.

“What do you know about building restoration?” Hugh raised skeptical brows.

And Lachlan had had to admit he’d known very little. But the challenge drove him. He’d thrown himself into it with vigor and enthusiasm. He’d learned and studied and worked. He’d hired lots of help, but he’d been right in there doing his part, determined to “turn it into the best damn inn in the Caribbean.” It had been open over a year now, and was doing very well.

“Pretty soon,” Lachlan had told Hugh not long ago, “it will become the destination of choice for active discriminating travelers, those who have the brains and the soul to appreciate the true beauty of the islands.”

Hugh had stopped humming along with Jimmy Buffett long enough to look up from his hammock and laugh. “The way you appreciated it?”

But Lachlan just shrugged him off. “You’ll see. It will be great. For the tourists and for the island. The Mirabelle will still take the old guard—those folks who have been coming for years. But the Moonstone will attract the newcomers. And that will be good for Pelican Cay. The island could use a kick in the butt. Something has to jumpstart the economy. Fishing’s not enough now. They need to diversify and—”

“The zeal of the converted,” Hugh had shaken his head and closed his eyes.

Which was true enough, Lachlan supposed. As much as he’d resented Pelican Cay all those years ago, all he could see were possibilities now—

And a ten-foot monstrosity every time he opened the blinds.

He scowled out the window again. The monster seemed to have gained another arm overnight. A bent driftwood spar thrust upward from its side, and something not quite discernible in the early morning half-light fluttered from its outflung hand.

Plastic? Seaweed? Whatever it was, it taunted him.

He turned away again and flung himself into the chair at his desk and tried to focus on the correspondence that his assistant and the Moonstone’s manager, Suzette, had left for him to sign and the mail that had arrived while he was gone.

He’d been away since Saturday, having flown to the Abacos to oversee some renovations at the Sandpiper, the next in the series of inns he was renovating. He’d returned very late last night and had deliberately avoided glancing at the thing when Maurice, one of the island’s taxi drivers, had dropped him off at the door.

Bad enough that he’d felt compelled to open the blinds this morning to see what further effrontery Fiona had achieved.

He tried to ignore it and get back to the business at hand. He had plenty of pressing things to worry about. But his fingers strangled his pen as he scanned and signed half a dozen letters, then read the post that had arrived since he’d left.

The last one was a response to a letter he’d dictated in the spring. The Moonstone had done well all on its own during the winter months. Sun-seeking snowbirds from the northern climes had filled the rooms every night. But summer and fall occupancy was more problematic. So he’d sent notice of its existence to several exclusive tour agencies and travel magazines, encouraging them to send a representative to see what the Moonstone had to offer.

A couple of the tour companies had, including the impressive Grantham Cultural Tours whose founder was arriving later this week. This particular letter, however, was a response from an upscale travel magazine called Island Vistas.

“Will be arriving next week,” the tour rep had written. “The ‘quiet island elegance’ you mention hits exactly the right note. The Moonstone sounds exactly like the sort of place our readers love.”

Quiet island elegance! Oh yeah, right. With a ten-foot steeple of trash growing on its doorstep?

“Well, it’s quiet,” Hugh had said cheerfully last week when Lachlan had complained about it. He was enjoying Fiona’s tactics as they weren’t aimed at him. “Doesn’t make a sound. Does it?”

It didn’t have to. It was a visual scream. It was an affront to him—and to the sensibilities of the inn’s guests. And if that wasn’t annoyance enough, there were always the bagpipes.

“Bagpipes?” Hugh had stared at him.

“Wait,” Lachlan had raised a hand to still his brother’s protest. “Just wait.”

And after they’d eaten in the inn’s dining room, he’d insisted Hugh sit on the deck of the Moonstone and wait until night fell on Pelican Cay—and the miserable tremulous bleat and warble of an off-key Garryowen drifted toward them on the breeze.

Hugh’s stunned expression had given Lachlan considerable satisfaction. But he would gladly have forgone it, for the pleasure of hearing nothing but the waves breaking on the sand. He arched his brows to say Now do you believe me?

“You don’t know it’s Fiona.”

“Who the hell else could it possibly be?”

Fiona Dunbar had been systematically driving him crazy since she was nine years old.

She and his sister, Molly, were the same age and, from the moment they met, had become best friends. Why he—a mature and lordly fifteen at the time—should have had to suffer being constantly plagued by two grubby-faced, sassy, stubborn little monsters was beyond him.

But he had been. Molly and Fiona had followed him everywhere, dogging his footsteps, pestering him continually, watching everything he did—spying on him!—and wanting to do it, too.

“Be nice to them,” his mother had admonished time and time again. “They’re just little girls.”

Little demons, more like. And regardless of his mother’s strictures, Lachlan had done his best to chase them away. He’d snarled at them, growled at them, roared at them. He’d threatened them and slammed his bedroom door on them. But they’d persisted.

“They admire you,” his mother had said.

“They’re trying to drive me crazy,” Lachlan replied.

But nothing had got rid of them until the day Fiona had heard him telling a college girl he’d met on the beach how awful it was living on Pelican Cay and how glad he’d be to leave.

“It’s the end of the earth,” he’d said. “There’s nothing worth having here.”

“So leave,” Fiona had blurted, her fury turning her complexion as red as her hair.

As he hadn’t been talking to her—hadn’t even realized she was nearby—he and the girl he’d been talking to had both stared at her in surprise.

“Just get on a boat and get out of here,” Fiona had gone on angrily. “Or better yet, swim. Maybe you’ll drown! Go to hell, Lachlan McGillivray!” And she’d spun away and run down the beach.

“Who’s that?” the blonde had asked him. “And what’s her problem?”

Lachlan, embarrassed, had shrugged. “Who knows? That’s Fiona. She’s just a nutty kid.”

And he would be extremely glad when she grew up!

Or at least he’d thought he would be.

Somehow, though, Fiona Dunbar, all grown-up, turned out to be worse.

Her stick-straight body had developed curves somewhere along the way. Her carroty red hair, which back then had been ruthlessly tamed into a long ponytail, had, in the past couple of years, become a free loose fiery curtain of auburn silk that begged to be touched. As did her skin which was creamy except where it was golden with freckles. And that was the most perverse thing of all—even her freckles enticed him!

It wasn’t fair.

He hadn’t come back to Pelican Cay to notice Fiona Dunbar! Perversely, though, he couldn’t seem to help it. She was here. She was unattached. And she was, by far, the most beautiful woman on the island.

But unlike every other woman between the ages of seven and seventy—virtually all of whom had fallen all over themselves trying to impress Lachlan McGillivray during his soccer-playing career—Fiona Dunbar wanted nothing to do with him.

So he wasn’t God’s gift to all women. Lachlan still had had more than his share of groupies over the years. And while he didn’t think he was drop-dead handsome, women seemed to like his deep blue eyes, his crooked grin and his hard dark looks.

Wherever he’d gone, certainly plenty of women had followed—chatting him up in bars, tucking their phone numbers in the pockets of his shirts and trousers, ringing him at all hours of the day and night, clamoring to be the one in his bed on any given night—even offering him their underwear!

Four years ago, at the height of Lachlan’s popularity, a magazine interviewer witnessing a woman doing just that, had asked him if that sort of thing happened often.

“Well, sometimes,” Lachlan had admitted honestly because it was only the truth. And then because that sounded arrogant, he’d joked, “But I only keep the red ones.”

And just like that, dear God, an urban legend had been born!

Two days after the magazine hit the stands the first pair of red panties arrived in his mail. Dozens more followed. He’d been deluged—at his home, at the club, at the hotels on the road. More stories followed. And so did more pairs of panties. Before long every scandal sheet across Europe was filled with women claiming their panties were the centerpiece of Lachlan McGillivray’s collection.

It didn’t matter that none of it was true, it was a great story.

Next thing he knew he had a worldwide fan club whose membership was three-quarters women. The club sent out thousands of autographed pictures of him leaping, legs and arms outstretched, to make a spectacular save.

“They admire my ability,” Lachlan said modestly whenever he had been asked about the extent of his popularity.

“They admire your legs,” his sister Molly had said flatly, shaking her head at the extent of female idiocy. “Men in shorts! Some women just can’t get enough of them.”

Most women, in Lachlan’s experience.

Not Fiona Dunbar.

She hated him. Eighteen months ago she’d proved it. He and a couple of his teammates had come to Pelican Cay to visit his brother, Hugh, over Christmas. Molly had gone to see their parents in Virginia, but because he had work to do in the islands, Hugh couldn’t go. So, feeling a bit homesick, he had invited his brother to visit him for the holidays.

“Not that I expect you to come,” he’d said cavalierly. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of other more fascinating places to go.”

Lachlan had. Between the demands of goalkeeping and his frenetic social life—even without the red panties collection it was pretty hectic—there was rarely a dull moment. That Christmas he’d gone to Monaco to live it up day and night with a girl called Lisette. Or was it Claudine? Suzanne?

Or all of the above. The fact was, there had been plenty—more than plenty—of willing women.

Two days before New Year’s, though, exhausted from a season of hard work and a holiday of hard play, he thought that spending a week or so of solitary celibate days on a deserted pink sand beach sounded like heaven.

He’d said as much to Joaquin Santiago and Lars Erik Lindquist, two of his equally hard-driving, hard-living teammates. And twenty-four hours later, the three of them had arrived on Pelican Cay.

Still hung over when Hugh met them in Nassau, Lachlan had sworn, “No booze. No babes. Just sand and sun and sleep.” And at his brother’s disbelieving look, he’d yawned and nodded as firmly as his aching head would permit. “My New Year’s resolutions.”

Bad news, then, that the first person he saw later that day was a Titian-haired beauty in a bikini sashaying past Hugh’s tiny house, heading toward the beach.

“Who the hell is that?”

“Fiona,” Hugh said offhandedly. “Dunbar,” he’d added at Lachlan’s blank look. “You remember—Molly’s friend.”

“Fiona?” Lachlan’s voice had cracked with disbelief. “That’s Fiona Dunbar?” That total knockout?

Hugh grinned. “Doesn’t much look like Fiona the ferret these days, does she?” That was what they had dubbed her at age ten, when she and Molly the mole had been sneaking around after them every day.

Lachlan sucked air. No, she didn’t look much like Fiona the ferret. She looked drop-dead gorgeous. Delectable. Beddable.

His “no babes” resolution began to crack. He kept an eye out for her after that. But while he saw her frequently over the next few days, she never came near.

She was taking care of her father, Hugh told him. A former fisherman, Tom Dunbar had had a stroke some years back, not long after Fiona had graduated from high school. She’d spent the next ten years taking care of him.

“And working,” Hugh said. “She works at Carin Campbell’s gift shop. And she sculpts.”

“Sculpts?” Lachlan had looked doubtful.

“Oh yeah. Sand sculptures. Shells. Even metal. Cuts them and bends them into shape—like paper dolls.”

Lachlan couldn’t imagine. But he wandered down to Carin’s shop later that day to buy some postcards, and he found quite a few of Fiona’s pieces. He had to admit they were pretty impressive—pelicans and other shore birds, palm trees and hammocks and fishermen. She was selling sketches there, too. And caricatures.

Then he realized that the witty sculpture Hugh had hanging in his house—one of him looping the loop in his seaplane—was a Fiona Dunbar piece, as was the caricature of Maurice at the custom’s house taxi stand, and the one of Miss Saffron the straw lady which he spotted hanging on her porch.

She drew caricatures of tourists and sold them the sketches on the beach. She even drew Lars Erik and Joaquin as they’d ogled the bikini-clad women on the beach. He knew that because Lars Erik had bought it from her.

She drew everybody and their dog. But she never drew him.

It rankled. Lachlan didn’t like being ignored—particularly when he hadn’t managed to ignore her.

Finally, when a week had gone by and she hadn’t even said hello to him, he’d had enough, especially since he’d just told Joaquin and Lars Erik that he’d known her for years.

“I don’t believe it,” Lars Erik said.

They were sitting in the Grouper, drinking beer, and Fiona had just come in, carrying a folder with some sketches in it, which she’d hugged against her breasts as she scanned the room. She’d spared Lars Erik a brief smile, but had skipped right over Lachlan as if he were invisible.

“She’s just miffed because a long time ago I didn’t like her precious island,” he explained.

“Oh, right,” Lars Erik said, nodding his head.

“Probably doesn’t even know her,” Joaquin speculated with a sly grin.

“Of course I know her. She’s a friend of my sister’s. Her name is Fiona Dunbar. Isn’t it?” he said to the bartender.

The bartender, Maurice’s son Michael, grinned broadly. “That be Fiona, all right.”

“So you know her name,” Lars Erik said. “So what? Invite her over to have a drink with us.”

“He doesn’t know her,” Joaquin said.

So he had to prove it. With Joaquin and Lars Erik egging him on, he’d strode over to where Fiona had just handed a pair of sketches to a tourist couple. He smiled his best charm-the-ladies smile and invited her to have a drink with him.

She blinked, then shook her head. “With you? I don’t think so.”

He stared at her, astonished at her refusal. “What do you mean, you don’t think so?” He was annoyed that she’d said no, more annoyed that she didn’t seem to recognize him, and most annoyed by the fact that the closer he got to her the more gorgeous she became.

He wanted to see flaws. There weren’t any.

“Maybe you don’t remember me.” It was possible, he supposed. He didn’t think he’d changed that much, but she sure as hell didn’t look the way she used to!

“Oh, I remember you,” she said, and gave him a blinding smile as she slipped between him and the barstool. “That’s why I don’t want to.”

And leaving him standing there staring after her, Fiona sashayed out the door, letting it swing shut after her.

Behind him, over the sounds of the steel drum band playing “Yellow Bird,” Lachlan heard Joaquin and Lars Erik hooting.

“Well, helloooo, darlin’,” a sultry voice sounded in his ear, and Lachlan turned to see a busty blonde sitting on the barstool behind him.

“Hello, yourself,” he said, teeth still clenched, but managing a smile to meet her own.

She put a hand on his arm and slid off the stool to stand next to him, almost pressed against him. “You’re Lachlan, aren’t you? The one they call ‘the gorgeous goalie’?”

“Some people have said that.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Some people are very perceptive,” the blonde purred. She smiled. “I was just heading out for a little walk on the beach. Want to go for a swim?”

“Why not?” It sounded a hell of a lot more appealing than listening to Joaquin and Lars Erik snickering into their beers. He looped an arm around the blonde’s shoulders and steered her out the door.

Fiona, after her grand exit, hadn’t gone far. He spotted her standing on the porch of the gift shop talking to Carin. She didn’t look his way.

Lachlan looked hers—and gave her a long slow smug smile as he and the blonde walked past.

“I knew I’d get lucky,” the blonde was giggling. “I’ve got my red panties on tonight.”

Deliberately Lachlan nibbled the blonde’s ear. “Not for long,” he promised her.

He didn’t remember whether she’d been wearing red panties or not. He didn’t remember anything about her. He’d gone back to England two days later—and the only thing he remembered from the holiday was blasted annoying Fiona!

“The fish that got away,” Joaquin called her.

“Like letting in a goal,” Lars Erik said, “when you’ve kept a clean sheet.”

“We’ll see about that,” Lachlan muttered.

He hadn’t had time then. But when he came back this past winter, sailing over on the boat he’d bought in Nassau, making plans to move to the island permanently that spring, he’d taken another shot.

Hugh had been going out with a model he’d met who was doing a honeymoon photo shoot, so Lachlan had suggested a double date—a blind double date.

“Why not?” He’d made the suggestion casually. “Just ask Fiona Whatshername along.”

Hugh had raised his eyebrows. “She’s busy with her dad.”

“I’ll get someone to stay with her dad,” Lachlan had said. “It will be good for her.” He arranged for Maurice to go by and play dominos with Tom Dunbar and Hugh did the asking.

To say that Fiona had been surprised when Lachlan had been the one to pick her up would have been putting it mildly. She looked stricken when he turned up on the doorstep. Then she said, relieved, “Oh, you must have come to see my dad—”

“No. I’m here for you.”

“But—”

She looked like she might protest. But in the end, she’d let herself be drawn out on to the porch and down the steps. “We’re meeting Hugh and his girl at Beaches.”

“Beaches?” Fiona’s eyes widened.

Beaches was the nicest place on the island. Not a place Hugh could afford.

“I’ll pay,” Lachlan had told him. “You want to impress this girl, don’t you?”

“Yeah. But…” Hugh had shaken his head. “Do you want to impress Fiona Dunbar?”

Lachlan hadn’t known what he wanted to do with Fiona Dunbar. Then. Later that night he’d known exactly what he wanted—

He hadn’t got it.

She’d damned near drowned him instead.

These days he wasn’t touching Fiona Dunbar with a ten-foot pole!

Other than the sympathy note he’d sent when Hugh had told him of her father’s death in March, he’d had no communication with her at all. In fact, ever since he’d moved into the Moonstone a month ago, he’d done his best to avoid her.

Of course he still noticed her. Hard not to when the island wasn’t that big and she was still the most gorgeous woman around. But he didn’t have to have anything to do with her. Pelican Cay was big enough for both of them.

Try telling Fiona Dunbar that.

Less than a week after he’d opened the Moonstone, a letter to the editor had appeared in the local paper decrying the “standard branding” of the island. Fiona Dunbar, signing herself “a concerned citizen” made it sound like he was singlehandedly trying to undermine local culture.

For God’s sake, he was trying to salvage an abandoned architectural treasure and turn it into something tasteful and profitable before time and the weather reduced it to kindling—out of which the artistic Ms. Dunbar would doubtless construct one of her bloody sculptures!

Tactfully as possible, he had attempted a letter to the editor of his own in reply.

A week later there had been another letter, this time about the local youth soccer team.

“People who are going to take advantage of local amenities,” the perennially concerned Ms. Dunbar had written, “should be willing to contribute their skills—however meager—to the betterment of the island’s children.”

Him, she meant. Teach them soccer, she meant.

“Well, it is how you made your millions,” Hugh pointed out.

“It would be such a great thing for the kids,” Carin Campbell agreed.

So did Maurice and Estelle. Their grandsons would love a soccer team with a real coach for a change.

“Or don’t you think you can?” Molly had said in that baiting little-sisterly way she could still dredge up in a pinch.

Of course he damned well could.

And so he had. For the past month Lachlan had spent hours with a rag-tag bunch of ten- to fifteen-year-old kids who called themselves the Pelicans. The Pelicans were never going to win the World Cup, but they were a lot more capable now than they had been when he’d started working with them. Marcus Cash was turning into a pretty decent striker, Tom Dunbar, Fiona’s nephew, was a good defender, and Maurice’s grandson, Lorenzo, had the makings of a born goalkeeper.

Lachlan was proud of them. He was proud of himself as their coach. He was a damned good teacher, and he’d have liked Fiona the ferret to see that—but she’d never once come to watch them play.

She never said a word to him.

She didn’t have to. Her sculpture said it all.

Lachlan shoved himself up from his chair and stalked across the room to glare once again at her message.

And as the full morning sun illuminated Fiona Dunbar’s trash masterpiece, he saw what he’d been unable to make out before—the pair of red women’s panties that flapped—like a red flag in front of a bull—from the sculpture’s outstretched arm.

THE POUNDING ON HER DOOR woke her.

Fiona groaned, then pried open an eyelid and peered at the clock: 7:22.

7:22? Who in God’s name could possibly want to talk to her at 7:22 in the morning? No one who knew her, that was for sure.

Never an early riser, Fiona preferred to start her day when the sun was high in the sky.

It was why she was a sculptor not a painter, she’d told her friend Carin Campbell more than once.

Painters needed to worry about light. Sculptors could work any old time.

Obviously whoever was banging on the door wasn’t aware that she’d been working all night long.

She’d labored until well past midnight on the pieces she sold in Carin’s shop—the metal cutouts and seashell miniatures that were her bread and butter. The paper doll silhouettes she cut and bent and the tiny exquisite sculptures made out of coquina shells, sea glass, bits of driftwood and pebbles were tourist favorites. Easy to transport and immediately evocative of Pelican Cay, they paid the bills and allowed her to keep the old story-and-a-half pink house on the quay that overlooked the harbor.

Normally she finished about two. But last night after she’d done two pelicans, a fisherman, a surfer and a week’s worth of miniature pelicans and dolphins and flying fish and the odd coconut palm or two, she had just begun.

Of course she could have gone to bed, but instead she’d gathered up the treasures she’d found on the shoreline after high tide—the driftwood spar, the sun lotion bottle, the kelp and flipflop and…other things…and set off to add them to her sculpture on the beach.

She hadn’t got home until four.

“All right, already,” she muttered as the pounding continued. She stretched and flexed aching shoulders, then hauled herself up, pulled on a pair of shorts to go with the T-shirt she slept in and padded downstairs to the door. “Hold your horses.”

If it was some befuddled tourist, hung over from a late night at the Grouper and still looking for the house he’d rented for the week, she was going to be hard-pressed to be civil.

Yanking open the door, she began frostily, “Are you aware—?”

And stopped as her words dried up and she found herself staring up into the furious face of Lachlan McGillivray.

He didn’t speak, just thrust something at her. Something small and wadded up and bright red.

Fiona bit back the sudden smile that threatened to touch her lips.

“Yours, I presume?” he drawled.

Fiona snatched them and started to shut the door, but Lachlan pushed past her into the room.

“What do you think you’re doing? I didn’t invite you in.”

“Didn’t you? Seems to me you’ve been inviting me a lot.” He was smiling but it was one of those smiles that sharks had before they ate people.

“I never—!”

A dark brow lifted. “No? Then why put that monstrosity in front of the Moonstone?”

“It’s not a monstrosity!”

“That’s a matter of opinion. Why there?”

“It’s a public beach.”

“There are three miles of public beach.”

“I can put it anywhere I want.”

“Exactly. And you wanted to put it in front of the Moonstone.”

“So?” Fiona lifted her chin. “You should be glad,” she told him. “I’m raising the artistic consciousness of your guests.”

He snorted. “Right. You’re saving them from standard brands, aren’t you?” He made it sound like she was an idiot.

Fiona wrapped her arms across her chest. “That’s one way of putting it,” she said loftily.

“Another way is saying you’re draining away the life blood of the island economy,” Lachlan told her.

“I am not! I would never hurt the island!” Trust a jerk like Lachlan McGillivray to completely misunderstand the whole reason behind her efforts. “This is my home,” she told him. “I was the one who was born here! I’m the one who’s never left!”

“And that makes you better than everyone else?”

“Of course not.”

“Just better than me.”

“You hate it here,” she reminded him.

“Hated it,” he corrected her. “Hell’s bells, Fiona. I was fifteen years old. I’d been dragged away from my home to some godforsaken island in the middle of the ocean. I missed my friends. I missed playing soccer. I didn’t want to be here!”

She pressed her lips together, resisting his words. Of course they made sense now, as they hadn’t back then. Back then she’d taken them personally, as she’d taken everything Lachlan McGillivray had done personally.

“Even so,” she said stubbornly. “You didn’t have to come back.”

“I wanted to come back.”

But she didn’t want him back! She was over Lachlan McGillivray! At least she’d thought she was—until that night he’d taken her to Beaches.

“And I’m staying,” he went on inexorably. “Whether you like it or not, I’m here and the Moonstone’s here, and we’re going to stay.”

“I don’t care if the Moonstone is here. I’m glad it’s here!” At least she would have been if Lachlan weren’t the one running it. And as for Lachlan staying, she doubted that.

Lachlan was glitz-and-glamour personified. He’d lived in England, in Italy, in Spain. He’d dined with kings and dated supermodels. He was not the sort of man to settle down on a tiny out-of-the-way Caribbean island.

She just wished he would hurry up and leave!

And he could obviously read her mind. Slowly Lachlan shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere, babe. But that sculpture is.”

Fiona’s jaw tightened. Her chin thrust out. “No.”

“Look, Fiona, I can take a joke as well as the next guy, but…”

“It’s not a joke!”

Lachlan rolled his eyes, then looked pointedly at the pair of red bikini panties in her hand.

Instinctively Fiona’s fingers tightened around them.

“I found them,” she said stubbornly. “On the beach. Fortuitous, I admit. But I didn’t use anything that I didn’t find. That’s the challenge of it, don’t you see?”

Obviously he didn’t. He was looking flinty and stubborn, glowering the way he always glowered at opponents on the soccer pitch.

“It’s a challenge,” she repeated.

“I don’t need any more challenges, thank you very much.”

“Not to you. To me!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Fiona wetted her lips. She hadn’t put it into words before, hadn’t dared. It seemed presumptuous even now. She wasn’t a sculptor. Not really. She’d never had classes, never studied with anyone. What she did with her shells and sand and steel was craft, not art. But she was fascinated with it. “It’s…teaching me things.”

“Trash is teaching you things?” he said mockingly. “What? Recycling?”

“Composition. Balance. Development. Flexibility. Imagination.” She tried to think of all the abstract artistic terms she could use to explain the things that her nighttime creation had been teaching her.

“Yeah, right.”

It didn’t take any imagination at all to know that Lachlan didn’t believe a word of it.

“It’s what I do,” she said desperately. “I make those little sculptures to sell to the tourists. I cut out metal. I cast sand. I glue rocks. But that’s not all I want to do. I want to be a sculptor,” she whispered. “A real one.”

It wasn’t something she had ever admitted before. Hadn’t dared to. And she felt like an imposter when she said it now. It had been her dream, of course, long ago—when she’d still had dreams. Once upon a time she’d even thought she might go away to study.

But that had been years ago. Before her father’s stroke. Since then she’d been on the island. She’d worked with what the island gave her, learned what it had to teach her. And didn’t ask for more.

“You could go back to it,” her brother Mike had told her after their dad had passed away.

“You ought to,” her brother Paul had encouraged. “Apply for a course somewhere.”

But Fiona had shaken her head. “I’m too old. I have a life right here.”

“You need to do something,” both her brothers had told her. “Dad would want you to. He wouldn’t want to think you’d given up everything for him.”

“I didn’t!” she protested. “I wanted to take care of him.”

“And you did,” Mike said soothingly. “And God knows we all appreciate it. But now you can move on.”

It had been three months since her dad’s death and she hadn’t moved on at all. She’d been grieving, she told herself. She needed time. And a challenge.

The sculpture on the beach had been that challenge. It had brought her to life again. And if it had annoyed Lachlan, well, that had been an added benefit.

“You want to be a sculptor?” Lachlan said doubtfully now.

“Yes.”

His hard blue gaze narrowed on her. “And that’s what your monstrosity is? A learning experience?”

She nodded. “I call him The King of the Beach.”

Lachlan’s mouth twisted. “Well, you’ve been doing him for weeks now. Isn’t the challenge gone?”

“There’s always new material.”

“So use it somewhere else.”

Fiona shook her head. “It’s a challenge to use it there, to make it part of the whole.”

“Find a new challenge.”

“Like what?”

“How the hell should I know? You’re the one who wants to sculpt!”

“Yes, but I need subjects. I need material. I need to do things I haven’t done before. To broaden my horizons!”

God knew it was the truth. She’d never been anywhere or done anything compared to most people. She’d spent her whole life, except for a handful of trips to Nassau and Miami, right here on Pelican Cay. “If I’m going to grow as an artist, I need to tackle new projects, explore different media.”

Lachlan’s fingers flexed and relaxed. He bounced a little on the balls of his feet. He looked the way he always had in goal when a striker was heading his way.

“So,” he said, “if you had something else you wanted to sculpt, something that would challenge you, you’d do that?”

“I—”

“And you’d get rid of that monstrosity on my beach?”

“It’s not—”

“Call it what you want. I want it gone. But if you really mean what you said…if you really want to sculpt and not just play games…if you really want a challenge, I have a deal for you.”

Fiona eyed him suspiciously. “What deal?”

“You want to be a sculptor, fine. You want new challenges, great. Go for it. Whatever you want to sculpt, I’ll provide it. We can add a little ‘culture’ to the island. And in return, you take down the monstros—The King of the Beach.” He looked at her expectantly.

Fiona hesitated. Possibilities reeled through her mind. Hopes. Dreams. Fears.

Lachlan grinned at her, challenging her, like the goalkeeper he was. “Or maybe it’s all bull, Fiona. Maybe you’re just a prankster, and not really a sculptor at all.”

Her spine stiffened. She met his gaze defiantly. “Anything?” she asked. “I can sculpt anything I want?”

He shrugged, still grinning that satisfied grin. “Anything.”

“Then I want to sculpt you. Nude.”

CHAPTER TWO

“OR MAYBE you’re not up to the challenge?” she suggested, the faint smile on her face now turning into an unholy grin.

Lachlan felt as if he’d been blindsided, as if he’d dived to stop the ball—and it had gone zinging past his feet as he’d lunged the other way.

Nude? Had she said she wanted to sculpt him nude?

Yes, she had.

But she didn’t mean it. Couldn’t mean it. She had to be kidding.

But she didn’t look like she was kidding.

She looked like she was daring him. There was a sparkle of mischief in Fiona Dunbar’s wide green eyes, a blatant challenge in the look she gave him.

Lachlan felt his teeth come together with a snap.

She hadn’t wanted him nude once before, damn it. She’d very nearly drowned them both to prevent any such occurrence!

And now—?

“Right. Very funny,” Lachlan said tersely and spun away.

Soft but distinct gobbling chicken sounds followed him.

He jerked back around and glared at her.

Fiona stood in guileless silence and stared back. He looked at her closely. There was determination in her gaze—and defiance. And just a hint of something else.

Vulnerability?

No way. Impossible. Fiona Dunbar was about as vulnerable as an asp.

So what was she playing at?

A charcoal gray cat jumped past him suddenly and walked along the table behind Fiona. It came up to her and nudged her with its head. Without breaking eye contact with him, Fiona reached around and scooped the cat into her arms—like a witch with her familiar.

The cat stared at him with watchful green eyes. So did the woman.

Lachlan felt a muscle in his temple tick.

“So you want me nude?” he said at last with all the casual curiosity he could muster. He was gratified to see the color rise in her cheeks.

“I don’t want you nude,” Fiona denied swiftly. “I want to sculpt—”

“Sure. Of course you do,” he said sarcastically.

She hugged the cat tighter, as if it were a shield. “You’re the one who offered,” she pointed out. “Anything you want to sculpt, you said.”

“I meant—”

“Of course I’ll understand if you’ve changed your mind,” she added archly as she focused on scratching the cat under the chin. “You might not want to bare all. I understand that men who aren’t particularly well, er…” She flicked a glance below his belt.

Enough was enough. “You want to see how well-endowed I am?” he asked softly with more than a hint of menace.

“I want to sculpt—”

“Fine,” he snapped. “When do you want to do it? Now?” He reached for his belt. She wasn’t the only one who could throw down a challenge. She might have scored first with her little “I want to sculpt you nude” line, but the game wasn’t over yet.

“No!” she yelped. “I mean, no,” she said in more moderate tones. “Not…now. I can’t…now. I…I have to get some…some clay first.”

“Some clay?” he mocked her.

“Clay,” she repeated with a quick jerky nod. “I’ve never done terra-cotta. I don’t have it on hand.”

“Right.” He didn’t believe it for a minute. Oh, he believed she didn’t have any on hand. But he didn’t believe she really wanted to sculpt him. She was scoring a point. Making him squirm. Wishing him gone.

But he wasn’t going anywhere and it was time she realized that.

“Get plenty,” he instructed her.

“What?” She blinked and half a dozen expressions flickered across her face.

“If you’re going to sculpt me,” he challenged her. He saw consternation on her face. Was that panic? Resolution? Determination? He couldn’t sort them all out.

Then she squared her shoulders. “I will,” she said after a moment. “Hugh can bring it from Nassau when he goes on Wednesday.”

Now it was his turn to gulp. Then he got a grip and managed a credibly nonchalant shrug. “Whatever you say.” It wasn’t going to happen no matter what she said. “Look, Fiona. What do you really—”

“So how about Thursday morning?”

He hadn’t expected her to set a date. “Fiona, we’re not—”

Soft chicken gobbling noises met his protest.

He ground his teeth. “I have a meeting Thursday morning.”

It was nothing but the truth. Thursdays were meeting day. And if he didn’t have one with someone from an agency or a supplier, he and Suzette spent the time discussing on-going developments at the Moonstone and the other inns he’d bought over the past year. It was right there on his appointment calendar. In ink.

Not that Fiona believed him.

“I have meetings every Thursday morning,” Lachlan told her.

“Of course you do. I should have guessed.” A tiny smile played on her lips. “I’ll bet you have lots of meetings coming up. I’ll bet your life is just full of meetings.” Her singsong tone mocked him.

“Fine. I’ll change the meeting,” he snapped. “You want me nude, you’ll get me nude, sweetheart. Thursday morning.” He looked straight at her. “Six o’clock.”

“Six o’clock!”

“What’s the matter?” he asked smugly. “Too early for you? I thought you looked a little ragged.” Deliberately he let his eyes rove over her mussed hair and unironed shorts. “Too bad. Some of us have jobs. Or maybe you’d like to change your mind?”

Fiona drew herself up sharply. “Six o’clock will be fine. I’ll look forward to it.”

“You do that.” He went out the door and down the steps. “I’ll see you then.”

“I’ll see you first!” Fiona’s voice carried after him on a soft laugh.

“I SAW The King of the Beach this morning,” Carin announced cheerfully when Fiona arrived at her shop that morning with a wheelbarrow full of sculptures. “I love the new arm. It gives him power. You ought to hang something on the end of it.”

I did, Fiona thought as she unpacked the wheelbarrow and carried the sculptures into the shop. But saying so would have meant explaining what she’d hung there, which would have led to explaining why it wasn’t there now, which would have led the conversation even further in a direction she didn’t want to go.

Had she really told Lachlan McGillivray she wanted to sculpt him nude?

Had he really agreed to do it?

“But I guess you have to wait for something to wash up, don’t you?” Carin went on.

“Yes.” Fiona ducked outside to get more sculptures.

“You’re at the mercy of the tide,” Carin told her with a grin when Fiona came back.

Or her own idiocy. She hadn’t been able to focus since Lachlan had stomped down her stairs and stalked away. What had she done?

“Oh, this is great!” Carin held up a metal surfer balanced on his board, riding the break of a wave, the whole thing cut from a single square foot of steel. “Absolutely perfect.”

Fiona smiled. “Glad you like him.”

The surfer was the first new cutout she’d made in well over a year. There wasn’t much surfing on Pelican Cay. The waves were rarely large enough to attract surfing aficionados. But over on Eleuthera there were a few spots that drew surfers from all over the world.

“You ought to be doing new things,” Carin said. “Stretching a bit. Spreading your wings. I worry about you.”

“I’m fine,” Fiona assured her, just as she’d been assuring everyone since her father’s death. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

Carin didn’t look convinced. “Well, the surfer is a step in the right direction. I like him. What else can you do?”

Fiona wondered what Carin would think if she said she was going to sculpt Lachlan McGillivray nude!

She was still in a state of panic every time she thought about it. Not just because of Lachlan. Because she didn’t know the first thing about terra-cotta sculpting!

Not that it would matter, she assured herself, because it wouldn’t happen.

But it had been worth it to see the look on Lachlan’s hard handsome face.

Lachlan McGillivray had always been too high-and-mighty for his own good.

“What have you got against McGillivray?” her brother Paul had asked her when she’d begun the sculpture on the beach.

“Ride out a storm with him, I would,” Paul had said. And Mike had agreed. “He’s a good guy.”

But Fiona couldn’t see it.

As far as she was concerned Lachlan McGillivray was still a weasel.

He’d called her “carrots” from the moment he’d met her, when she’d been almost nine and he a haughty fifteen. No one called Fiona carrots! Ever!

Except Lachlan.

He’d even tugged her braid whenever she’d got close.

Not that he’d let her get anywhere near him. She and his sister Molly had spent a lot of hours trying to. They’d been studying to be secret agents in those days, lurking in the bushes, peering around corners, peeking over the rocks.

“Spying,” Lachlan had accused furiously, “on me!”

Could anyone resist a challenge like that?

Well, Molly probably could have. She had to live with Lachlan, after all.

But Fiona had been inspired. And intrigued.

Despite his bad attitude toward the island—and toward her—there had always been something about Lachlan McGillivray…

Or something perverse about her own hormones, Fiona thought grimly. Because heaven help her, over the years her fascination with him had never waned.

She’d been besotted with him.

Lachlan, of course, had not been besotted with her.

He would be, she assured herself, once he realized she’d grown up. She remembered with total clarity and abject humiliation the day she’d decided it was time to make her move.

It had been the summer after Lachlan’s graduation from high school. He was leaving in a few weeks to go to Virginia to university, and Fiona, nearly thirteen, entering puberty with a vengeance, had known time was running out.

If she wanted to convince Lachlan that there was someone worth coming back to on Pelican Cay, she had to hurry. She couldn’t wait for her shape to get any curvier or her breasts to get any bigger. She wasn’t quite stick-straight anymore, but voluptuous certainly wasn’t her.

Still, the next time her father went to Nassau, she begged to go along, and while he was buying supplies, she’d gone to Bitsy’s Bikinis and bought a suit she would never have dared buy on Pelican Cay. It was bright blue—what there was of it—and the fabric shimmered when it was wet.

“Like the sunlight sparkle on the sea,” the saleslady told her. “You be smashing. Everybody notice you.”

Not everybody.

The day she finally got up the guts to wear it, Fiona had lain on her towel on the sand right in front of where she knew he would come down to the beach even though there was a family of tourists camped right in front of her.

She’d gone early so she wouldn’t miss him. And she’d slathered on sunscreen because she was cursed with her redhead’s complexion. Then she’d arranged herself as enticingly and voluptuously as she could, and opened her book and pretended to read.

She’d waited. And waited.

The tourist family splashed in and out of the water and ran up and down the beach, and stayed cool. There were parents and two boys and a college-age girl. They started an impromptu volleyball game and invited her to join them.

But Fiona had shaken her head. There was no way she was going to jump up and down and jiggle in Bitsy’s blue bikini. “No, thanks,” she said politely and sweated and sweltered and waited.

Hugh came down with several of his friends. They ogled her and made comments. Hugh had whistled admiringly, and that teasing pain-in-the-butt Carson Sawyer had winked and suggested she go with him to the old shed behind the water tower.

Fiona flushed. “As if,” she’d dismissed them. “Scram.”

But she was glad the boys had noticed—even if their comments were completely immature. It gave her confidence.

So when Lachlan finally appeared on the rise overlooking the beach a little while later, she rolled oh-so-casually over on to her side and waited for him to see her.

He scanned the beach briefly, as if he were looking for someone. He shook his head at Hugh who had shouted something to him.

Then, as she’d known it would, his gaze came to rest on her.

“Hey!” he called eagerly.

Fiona smiled her best come-hither smile. She hadn’t had a lot of practice in real life, but she’d worked on it in the mirror for weeks. And it must have worked, because Lachlan grinned broadly, then came sprinting down the trail.

Fiona sat up, a welcoming grin lighting her face.

And Lachlan hurtled right over her! “Stacie! Hey, Stace! I got my dorm assignment at UVA!”

The blonde girl looked over from the volleyball game with her brothers. “Oooh, cool, Lachlan! Which one? Maybe we’ll see each other there.”

And as Fiona watched, he showed her the letter. They looked at it together, their heads bent over it, so close her hair brushed his cheek. He touched her hand. She touched his arm.

Fiona sat there, stunned. He’d never even noticed her.

She should have left. Perversely, she couldn’t seem to. Not yet.

Maybe she was a glutton for punishment. Maybe she just needed her teeth kicked in. But instead of running home, she lay back down on her towel, swallowing against the ache in her throat, and watched as Lachlan and the girl walked hand in hand down to the water. She watched them swim and splash each other.

She blinked back tears when, a while later, they came out of the water together and flopped down on the sand just yards from her, still talking and laughing and touching.

She really would be an excellent secret agent, she thought bitterly. She was absolutely invisible.

He never would have seen her at all if she hadn’t heard him say how glad he was to be going, how much he longed to leave Pelican Cay.

It was the last straw. It didn’t matter so much that he ignored her, but he was so wrong about the island! He was so wrong about everything!

Quite without thinking, Fiona jumped up and blurted, “So leave, then! Just get on a boat and get out of here!” She glared at him furiously.

Lachlan looked up, stunned. Stacie frowned. They both looked as startled as if a seashell had begun to speak!

“Go to hell, Lachlan McGillivray,” she muttered under her breath, grabbing her towel and running away up the beach.

She’d had two more encounters with Lachlan since.

The New Year’s before last he’d come to Pelican Cay to visit his brother. Fiona, who had heard through the island grapevine that he’d arrived with a couple of his teammates, had determinedly stayed out of his way.

It hadn’t been hard. At that time she was spending most of her days and nights at home taking care of her father. She didn’t go to the beach or frequent tourist spots except to do quick caricatures to sell to the tourists. She certainly wouldn’t do one of him—though she’d done more than a few for her own enjoyment over the years.

She might have managed to avoid him altogether that time—if he’d been equally willing to avoid her.

She was surprised he hadn’t been. And more astonished still when he’d come up to her in the Grouper that evening and invited her for a drink. She’d felt an odd, crazy desire to let bygones be bygones, to dare to say yes.

But then she’d seen his mates sitting at the bar, grinning and watching the two of them, and she understood that it was a joke. Why would a hunk like Lachlan bother with a woman like her—except as a joke?

“No,” she’d said. It had hurt—but it had saved her worse pain down the road.

She didn’t see him again for over a year. She didn’t even know he’d come back last winter. But one afternoon she’d come in from taking some sculptures up to Carin’s and her father had said Hugh needed her to go on a double date with him.

“With Hugh? Why?” She and Hugh were friends, but they’d never dated at all.

“Didn’t say,” her father told her. “Just said he wanted you. And I said you’d go.”

“Dad!”

“Why not? You need a night out,” he’d told her gruffly.

Which might have been true.

But not with Lachlan McGillivray!

She’d been expecting Hugh. She’d been slack-jawed with disbelief—and panic—when she’d opened the door to find Lachlan standing there. “What are you doing here?” she began. Then she understood. “Oh, you must have come to see my dad—”

“No, I’m here for you.”

“But—”

“Hugh is waiting at the restaurant with Deanna. You look fantastic,” Lachlan said smoothly, taking her arm and leading her down the steps.

“But—” But she hadn’t had time to get her defenses well in place, and while her brain might have been screaming no, her hormones were letting her be led.

Fool that she was, she’d let herself be led far too long that night—all the way through dinner with Hugh and some supermodel girl he was trying to impress, all the way along the beach where she and Lachlan had gone to walk and talk after, while Hugh had taken the supermodel heaven knew where.

To bed, no doubt.

Which was where Lachlan seemed to be heading with her!

He’d walked her back down the quay toward her place. But instead of taking her home, he’d said, “Come see the boat I bought.”

And Fiona, who had been living in a dream all night, floating along on an evening right out of her childhood fantasies about herself and Lachlan McGillivray, opened her mouth to say no and found herself saying yes instead.

After all, it was still early. Not even close to midnight. She was still Cinderella at the ball. She didn’t want to go back to her cold lonely reality just yet.

She could still feel the press of his hard warm fingers wrapped around hers as they’d walked down to the dock. She could still smell the salt air and the hint of lime in his aftershave as he helped her up and over the rail on to his new boat.

It was a brand-new sailboat, one she’d admired from a distance, wondering who it belonged to. Someday, she’d promised herself, she’d go out for a sail on a boat like that. The only boats she’d been on were the grimy smelly diesel-powered fishing boats her brothers used.

“It’s lovely,” Fiona had whispered, running a hand over the brightwork as they stood in the bow and the boat rocked under her feet.

“Not as lovely as you.” Lachlan’s voice had sounded a little ragged around the edges, its rustiness surprising her as much as the words.

Lovely. Lachlan thought she was lovely. He was touching her cheek, smiling at her. And just like in her dreams, he drew her against him and touched his lips to hers.

It was all there—everything she’d ever dreamed of—the taste, the heat, the passion.

And she couldn’t help it. She gave herself to it. Her lips parted, and when his tongue sought entry, she met him hungrily. She was kissing Lachlan McGillivray.

Even better, he was kissing her!

And when he slid an arm around her and whispered, “Let’s go somewhere more comfortable,” she almost nodded, almost said yes.

She wanted it. She wanted him. But even more, she wanted forever.

And she knew that Lachlan didn’t.

She might not have seen Lachlan McGillivray in person very often over the years. But it would have been hard to miss Lachlan in the tabloids. His hard handsome face was everywhere. He had the reputation of an athlete whose prowess on the pitch was only matched by his prowess between the sheets.

“It’s exaggerated,” Molly said. “The press makes it up.”

But the press hadn’t made up the red panties collection.

And the sudden memory that she was actually wearing a pair of red panties that very evening had jolted her mid-kiss.

Dear God! He wouldn’t!

And as she felt him start to draw her toward the cabin, she had wrapped her arms around him again, held on even more tightly, kissed him deeply one last time—then tipped them both right over the railing and into the harbor!

“Well, I’m delighted with your work,” Carin was saying now. “Now if you’d just find a man.”

“Carin!”

“Well, you’re not getting any younger.”

“And you are getting completely politically incorrect,” Fiona retorted sharply. “I don’t need a man.”

“I didn’t say ‘need,’ Carin soothed. “I just thought you might enjoy—”

“Well, stop thinking. I’ve got a man in my life.”

“Oh?” Carin’s eyes went wide. “Who?”

Fiona grinned. “He’s about ten feet tall with arms made of driftwood and—”

Carin laughed, then shook her head. “Seriously, Fiona, Nathan has a photographer friend coming to stay next week. Nick’s a really nice guy. Maybe he—”

“I’m not having you set me up on a blind date! I hate blind dates!”

Carin blinked at her vehemence. “Voice of experience?” she asked mildly.

“Yes! No.” Fiona changed her tune rapidly. “I just think it’s a bad idea. You can’t rush these things. I’ll find my own man when I’m ready.”

“As long as you don’t wait too long.”

“Says the woman who waited thirteen years.”

Carin gave a rueful laugh. “Some of us are a bit slow.” She turned as the bell jangled and the door opened and a tall dark-haired man with a toddler on his shoulders came in. “But eventually we get it right. Don’t we, Nate?” she smiled at the man.

“We got it right,” Nathan Wolfe agreed and wrapped his wife in a hard one-armed hug while he held on to his son’s feet with his other. Then he gave Carin a smacking kiss for good measure.

Fiona smiled at the sight. In fact Carin and Nathan did give her hope. She might have spent nearly ten years alone while taking care of her father. But Carin and Nathan had spent thirteen years apart before he’d discovered exactly why she’d jilted his brother at the altar—because she loved Nathan and was expecting his baby.

That baby, Lacey Campbell Wolfe, was now a very grown-up fourteen. Their son Joshua, born last year, grinned at her now and thumped on his father’s head.

“Don’t you think Fiona could use a good man?” Carin said to her husband.

“Carin!” Fiona protested.

But Nathan nodded. “Absolutely. Unfortunately I’m all out of brothers.”

“Stop!” Fiona demanded.

“We’re only trying to help.” Carin looked aggrieved.

“I don’t need any help,” Fiona said firmly. “I’m doing just fine.”

“I guess,” Carin said, but she didn’t look convinced. “At least you did a new sculpture,” she said, showing the surfer to Nathan. “It’s a start. You should do something else new this week.”

“I will,” Fiona promised.

“Great. I can hardly wait to see it.”

Fiona smothered a grin. She could just imagine what Carin would say if she trundled in a sculpture of Lachlan McGillivray nude!

Wasn’t going to happen. No way on earth.

He’d never ever do it.

HE WAITED FOR HER to contact him, to tell him what she really wanted in exchange for removing her damned sculpture.

“Were there any messages?” he asked Suzette when he got back to the inn Monday night.

She glanced at her notes. “Dooley called about the roof on the Sandpiper. And the lumberyard called from Nassau.”

“No one else?”

“Lord Grantham. He’ll be arriving Wednesday night.”

Lachlan drummed his fingers on the bookcase. He scowled out the window. There seemed to be new additions to Fiona’s monstrosity. The “king” had an actual six-pack where his abs would be. He had a lasso dangling from his hand. And he seemed to be wearing a baseball cap.

Lachlan could just imagine the cultured Lord Grantham’s reaction to that.

“Did Fiona Dunbar call?”

Suzette blinked and shook her head. “Was she supposed to?”

“No. No. I just thought she might.”

She didn’t call Tuesday afternoon or evening, either. Nor did she call Wednesday morning, though he was in his office the whole time, right there by the phone.

Lachlan felt sweat sliding down his spine and wondered if there was something wrong with the air-conditioning. He also wondered if she actually meant to go through with it.

That thought prompted a vague hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. And feeling it made him furious. It wasn’t as if it bothered him to take his clothes off, damn it!

He’d taken his clothes off lots of times, in front of lots of women. He wasn’t any damn prude.

But he sure as hell had no intention of taking his clothes off in front of Fiona Dunbar so she could stare at him, ogle him, judge him!

He slammed his hand against the doorjamb.

Suzette looked up from her calendar, confused. “Did I get something wrong?”

“No. I’m just…thinking.”

“About…?”

He shook his head. “Never mind.” He raked a hand through his hair, agitated, needing a release, wanting to kick something—someone!

“I’m going for a swim!” he decided abruptly.

“But, Lachlan, we need to—”

“Let me know if anyone calls.”

SHE THOUGHT HE WOULD CALL. She expected he would ring her up and give yet another excuse as to why he couldn’t possibly be there on Thursday morning.

But he didn’t call on Monday, and though she worked at the bakery on Tuesday morning and in Carin’s shop on Tuesday afternoon, she did have an answering machine. And there were no messages on it.

So was he really going to show up?

Strip off his clothes?

Expect her to sculpt him?

Dear God.

She called Hugh and ordered the clay. She called her brother Paul to help her build a modeling stand and armature. She dragged out all her books on sculpture and began to read them feverishly.

He wouldn’t show up, she assured herself.

But what if he did?

Would she dare to try to sculpt him?

LACHLAN LAY AWAKE all night Wednesday night. There was, he figured, always the chance that the world would end by Thursday morning.

If it did, he didn’t want to miss it.

When it hadn’t by five, he dragged himself out of bed with all the enthusiasm of a man told to set the alarm for his own execution. He got dressed, briefly debated on whether he ought to wear shorts or jeans for the occasion, then asked himself savagely what the hell difference it made.

Then he slipped quietly out of the inn, stood glaring into the darkness for one long minute in the direction of The King of the Beach. And then he turned and looked at the Moonstone—his future, the island’s future.

“Life,” his father had warned him when he was a boy, “isn’t all fun and games. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for what you want, for what you believe in.”

And Lachlan had nodded gravely, ready to do his all.

Somehow he’d never imagined his “all” coming down to taking off his clothes for Fiona Dunbar.

At five forty-five he mounted her steps and tapped on her door. His palms were damp. He dried them on his shorts. His stomach was queasy. He ignored it. At the same time, he was aware that this all felt oddly familiar, much like the way he felt before a match.

It was nerves. A good thing, he reminded himself. Nerves got the adrenaline pumping. They moved the blood around.

On second thought, perhaps not a good thing. His blood appeared to be moving in a southward direction. His body wasn’t thinking of this as a sacrifice. His body was doing things he didn’t want it to do at all.

The morning hadn’t dawned yet. Only the faintest sliver of light had begun to line the horizon as he’d left the Moonstone. There had been no one else up in the inn when he’d let himself out, the guests enjoying a long lie-in. He’d heard the sounds of Maddie, the cook, and Tina, her daughter, just coming in as he’d slipped out the front.

It would have been faster to go through the kitchen, but he hadn’t wanted them to wonder where he was going at that hour.

He didn’t see anyone on his walk over the hill and down into the village. There was, naturally, a bit more activity at the harbor.

From Fiona’s front porch overlooking the water, he could see a few small lights moving as fishermen preparing to leave, hauled nets on to the dock and into their boats. Some were already aboard, and the low rumble of the diesel engines began to fill the air.

Lachlan envied them. He’d gone out fishing a few times with the locals when he was a teenager. He’d even gone with Fiona’s father and brothers, working alongside Mike and Paul, doing the grunt work, pulling his weight, but glad he didn’t have to earn his living that way.

Now he stood with his back to Fiona’s front door, watching and wishing he was going with them. Working his tail off hauling nets all day was a damn sight more appealing than what he was going to be doing.

Unless, he thought hopefully, she didn’t answer the door.

If she didn’t—if, he thought with marginally more cheerfulness, she slept right through their appointment—he could turn around and go back home again, obligation fulfilled.

It could happen. Fiona Dunbar was obviously not a morning person.

He knew he’d got her out of bed the day he’d come pounding on her door. He hadn’t pounded today. He’d knocked lightly. No sense in waking the dead, he’d told himself. Or the neighborhood.

Or Fiona.

And then he heard a creak and the door behind him opened. Reluctantly Lachlan turned.

Fiona stood in the doorway, blinking raccoonishly. There were dark circles under her eyes. “You’re here.”

Was that disappointment in her tone? All she had to have done was tell him she’d changed her mind!

Or had she expected he’d wimp out?

Like hell.

“Six o’clock Thursday,” he said gruffly. “Where else would I be?”

She shook her head. Managed a few more sleepy blinks. Damn, but he wished she would stop looking so beddable! That was the last thing he needed to think about bedding Fiona Dunbar right now.

Finally she’d blinked enough, and instead frowned accusingly at him. “You’re early. It’s not six.”

“I could hardly wait,” he said drily.

She looked momentarily nonplussed. Then she gave a jerky nod and pushed open the screen door. “Come in.”

He followed her in. She was barefoot, wearing an oversize T-shirt and a pair of shorts, her long fiery hair hung loosely down her back. His fingers itched to reach out and touch it. He shoved them into the pockets of his trousers.

“So,” he said, determinedly businesslike, “you got the clay?”

He knew she had. His brother Hugh had said so last night.

“What the hell does Fiona Dunbar need with a hundred pounds of clay?” Hugh had demanded when they’d been drinking beers at the Grouper.

Lachlan had nearly spat his own beer across the room. “A hundred pounds?” Good God.

Hugh had nodded, then shaken his head. “Wouldn’t tell me what it was for. Our little Fiona is getting mysterious in her old age.”

Thank God she hadn’t, was all Lachlan had been able to think. “Maybe she’s going to make pots.”

“Maybe.” But Hugh hadn’t looked convinced. “What would you do with a hundred pounds of clay?” he’d asked Lily, the barmaid.

Lily grinned. “Make me a man.”

Then Lachlan had choked on his beer.

“Why not?” Lily had said with a shrug. “Better than the real ones be livin’ ’round here.”

“I’ve got the clay,” Fiona told him now. “It’s upstairs in my studio.” She turned and briskly led the way.

Lachlan had been up these stairs as a teenager when he’d come home with Paul and Mike. They’d shared the bedroom at the back of the house under the eaves. Fiona’s, he remembered, had been the tiny one across from the bathroom. And their parents’ had been the wide room that sat above the living room and overlooked the harbor.

Lachlan imagined that Fiona would have moved in there and that she’d have turned her bedroom or the boys’ into the studio. So he was surprised when she went straight to the large room that had been her parents’.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.