Mcgillivray's Mistress

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“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’.