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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.
