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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?”
