Читать книгу In Mcgillivray's Bed - Anne McAllister, Anne McAllister - Страница 8

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

“She’s not my girlfriend!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lisa looked stricken.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She turned to glare at McGillivray.

“Warned you.” He grinned.

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

“Home sweet home,” he announced.

Syd breathed again. Once. Then Belle leaped out and McGillivray followed.

“Come on,” he said to Syd. “And watch out for snakes.”

“Snakes?” Dear God. Syd huddled deeper into the quilt. But even as she sat there she heard his footsteps disappearing around the side of the building. And in the silence there were rustlings in the shrubbery, the sound of branches cracking, slitherings—

“Wait! I’m coming!” She leaped out of the Jeep, hitched up the quilt and flew after him. Breathless, heart pounding, she rounded the corner of the house just as the porch light went on.

Correction: porch lights. A whole string of glowing pink flamingos interspersed with neon-green palm trees dangled along the edge of his roof.

“Why am I not surprised?” Syd muttered. “All you need now is a string of hula girls.”

“Wrong islands,” he said cheerfully from the doorway. “But I didn’t let that stop me,” he said as he flipped another switch and strings of hula girls lit up each of the porch columns.

Syd sputtered, but she couldn’t help laughing. “What does your girlfriend think of these?”

“She’s not my girlfriend!”

“Right.” But if saying so would get a rise of out him, Syd didn’t mind doing it. She was still smiling as she climbed the four shallow steps to the porch, which was as cluttered as the Jeep had been, scattered with swim fins, snorkles and fishing nets, assorted pots and pans, a dog bed, food and water dishes and myriad unidentifiable mechanical objects.

A net hammock was strung across one end of the porch, and a long slatted-wood porch swing swayed at the other. Behind the latter were tucked a surfboard and a boogie board. Above it a disembodied wet suit swung lazily from a clothes hanger on a plant hook. The plant that it might have displaced was balanced precariously on the porch railing.

He was right. It wasn’t close to the five-star hotel she had left behind on Nassau. On the other hand, no one was announcing her betrothal as if it were on the dinner menu here.

And so far she hadn’t seen any snakes.

“How lovely,” she said brightly, stepping over a pan.

McGillivray gave her a doubtful look. But Syd met it with a cheerful, determined one of her own. And she must have been convincing because he said gruffly, “C’mon. Don’t just stand there. You’ll want a shower. I’ll find you some clothes.”

The chaos extended into the kitchen, where newspapers and magazines were scattered amid pots and pans. There were some engine parts on one chair and a pile of laundry on another. Yet another pile was on the floor. The sink, of course, held dirty dishes.

“I thought hurricane season was in the autumn,” Syd remarked.

“Bothers you, do something about it.” McGillivray was busy rummaging through one of the clothes heaps. The clean one, Syd hoped when he pulled out a navy T-shirt and a pair of shorts, surveyed the pile, hesitated, then turned and thrust them at her. “You want a pair of boxers?”

She blinked. “What?”

“I said, do you want a pair of boxers? You’re, er—” he gestured down below her waist but couldn’t seem to say the word “—wet,” he finally managed, scowling.

Was that a tinge of red creeping up his neck and touching the tips of his ears?

His face was definitely red. Talking about women’s underwear embarrassed Hugh McGillivray?

Who’d have thought it? “That would be nice. Thank you,” Syd said politely, smothering a smile.

He gave her another long, baleful look before reaching back into the pile and snagging a pair of pale-blue boxer shorts to toss in her direction. “You can borrow some clothes from my sister tomorrow if you want. Not that Mol has any girls’ clothes, either,” he added with a grimace. “Or you can go shopping. Shower’s this way.” He turned abruptly and headed toward the back of the house.

Syd clutched the clothes, hiked up her quilt and followed him. To the left she saw what appeared to be a small living room, but McGillivray went straight back through a bedroom toward a door that led to a tiny bathroom. At least he had indoor plumbing. She’d begun to worry.

He also had one clean towel. At least she presumed it was, because he got it out of the cupboard. He turned on the shower taps. “Let the water run. It’ll get hot eventually. Don’t use it all up.”

“I won’t,” she assured him.

But he was already on his way out the door. “Watch out for spiders.”

“Spiders?” She looked around wildly.

McGillivray grinned wickedly over his shoulder. “Gotcha,” he mouthed.

She wanted to kill him.

“A woman who isn’t afraid of sharks shouldn’t let a little spider or two bother her,” he said. “I’ll fix us something to eat.” The door banged shut behind him.

There were no spiders. There were no snakes. She was alone. And suddenly every bit of the adrenaline that had been fueling her since Roland’s astonishing announcement vanished.

Her breath came in quick thready gasps. Her heart beat in a crazy staccato rhythm. Her vision darkened, and the room seemed to spin.

“Oh, help!” She groped for something to hang on to and grabbed the towel rack—right off the wall.

The door burst open.

“For God’s sake!” McGillivray kicked the towel rack aside and crouched beside her on the floor. “What the hell happened?”

“N-nothing. I…n-nothing.” She tried to get up, but found herself shoved down again and held fast.

“Did you faint?”

“Of course not!” But her brain was still spinning and her legs felt like mush. Even so, she squirmed against his hold.

“Stay still,” McGillivray commanded and thrust her head unceremoniously between her knees. “Take deep breaths—and don’t faint again!”

“I didn’t faint!” she said again for all the good it did her.

As if it were a matter of choice, anyway, she thought grimly, sucking in oxygen, doing her best not to make a liar out of herself, while a firm hand pressed against the back of her neck.

“Breathe, damn it.”

“I’m trying—” gulp, gulp “—to.”

“Then stop talking. Breathe deeper. Big breaths.”

God, he was bossy! “I’m all right,” she protested. “I just…tripped.”

“Yeah, right. Breathe.”

She did. And the blood thrummed in her ears and her heart slammed against the wall of her chest. But gradually her heart slowed, her vision returned. McGillivray’s callused hand, though, held her head firmly down.

She shifted. “I’m all right now,” she insisted, and pushed back against his hand.

He eased the pressure a bit. “Take it easy.” He watched her warily as she straightened up, as if expecting her to go headfirst onto the floor again.

Determined not to, she took another deep breath and sat up straight. The quilt fell away from her shoulders.

McGillivray’s breath hissed through his teeth. Reaching over, he jerked the quilt back up and wrapped it tightly around her again.

Surprised, Syd looked up at him.

He glared back at her. “What?”

“Nothing. I just…you seem…” She was babbling, but she couldn’t help it. “I didn’t think—” But it did make sense of things.

“You didn’t think what?” he demanded.

“That you were gay.”

“What?” He jerked as if she’d shot him. “What the hell do you mean, I’m gay?” McGillivray’s voice was a roar.

“Well, you keep covering me up!” Syd shouted back at him. “As if the sight offends you! I know I’m no raving beauty—” God knew Roland had been quite capable of resisting her “—but I’m passably attractive. At least, no one else has ever been at such pains not to have to look at me.”

He snorted and scrambled to his feet, as if putting as much distance between them as he could. “And that makes me gay?”

“I just thought… You said Lisa wasn’t your girlfriend. You were very…adamant about it. And you said your sister thought she was trying to, um, save you from yourself.”

It all made sense as far as Syd could see. “I don’t mind if you are,” she told him.

“Is that supposed to be comforting?”

“Well, I—”

He straightened up, wincing a little as he did so, then glowered down at her. “Do I look like I’m gay, sweetheart?” he drawled.

From her vantage point, at the level of his hairy, tanned knees, Syd looked slowly up—and came to the very obvious evidence that he was not.

“Oh,” she said in a very small voice.

McGillivray looked somewhere between pained and gratified at her realization. “Exactly,” he muttered.

Syd knew her face was burning. “Um…sorry. Is there…anything I can do?”

McGillivray goggled at her. “Are you for real?”

God, she might go up in flames! “I didn’t mean that!” she protested. “I just—never mind!” Obviously, she wasn’t good at this sort of thing.

“I’ll live,” McGillivray said dryly in the face of her confusion. Then he reached out a hand. “Here. Can you stand on your own two feet?”

“Yes, of course.” She would have declined his hand altogether but she was afraid she might fall over if she did. But somehow, touching him, knowing the effect she’d had on him, made her let go the second she was upright. “I’m all right,” she assured him. “Really. I just got a bit light-headed for a moment. I didn’t faint!” she added when she saw the gleam in his eyes.

“Whatever you say,” he replied gravely, but the gleam was still there.

And something else.

Attraction? Certainly it was something electric. Awareness seemed to sizzle between them for just a moment.

Abruptly, McGillivray looked away. His jaw tightened, and he wiped his hands down the sides of his shorts and turned toward the door.

“Hurry up,” he told her, his voice raspy. “I’m burning the bacon.”

The door banged shut behind him, and Syd was left in the same bathroom she’d been in moments before.

But something had changed. Something was different. There was an electricity lingering in the air. Syd was used to electricity. She felt it whenever she was in the midst of closing a business deal, when things were coming together, when an energy seemed to take over of its own accord.

It felt like that now.

And there was no business deal. No business at all.

Just awareness. Man-woman awareness. McGillivray had wanted her. Physically.

Intellectually, of course, Syd knew all about that sort of thing. Men—heterosexual ones—lusted after women. But, generally speaking, men had never really lusted after her.

They had mostly been interested in her as her father’s daughter. Roland certainly hadn’t given her cause for believing that his interest in marrying her had anything to do with her innate attractiveness. He had been going to marry her because it was good for business.

He’d never even pretended otherwise.

How mortifying was that?

Pretty mortifying. But it would have been even more so if McGillivray hadn’t so clearly felt otherwise.

She felt suddenly, exquisitely, aware of her own nakedness.

She’d stripped her dress off in the boat without even thinking, without expecting a reaction at all. She’d never even considered he might react. Roland had been impervious to her charms. Why should she have expected anyone else to succumb?

Not that McGillivray had succumbed, she reminded herself, as she stepped beneath the shower spray. But he had been interested. Physically responsive.

The knowledge made her smile. It made her feel alive. It made her feel desirable in her own right—as a woman—and not just as an asset to the St. John Electronics company.

She tipped some of McGillivray’s shampoo into her hands and began rubbing it into her hair. It smelled of lime and the sea and something else she couldn’t quite put a name to. But it was fresh and sharp, and she liked it more than she liked the flowery English-garden stuff she was accustomed to.

It was a new beginning.

She liked the sound of that. She stuck her head under the showerhead and lathered up vigorously, washing Roland Carruthers right out of her hair. And St. John Electronics, too. Then she ducked her head beneath the shower and watched the lather disappear down the drain. In seconds it was gone.

She was clean, fresh, unencumbered.

And desirable.

An intriguing thought.

Syd turned off the water, toweled herself off and dressed in the clothes McGillivray had given her. Then, for luck, she dabbed a tiny bit of McGillivray’s lime-scented after-shave on her pulse points—and began to plot the future.

THIS might have been a mistake—bringing Sydney St. John home with him.

The woman was a menace, Hugh thought, banging around the kitchen, trying not to think about the naked woman showering just beyond that closed bathroom door. She was ten times more tempting than Lisa Milligan had ever thought of being, and she didn’t even seem to know it.

And because he had done his best to preserve her modesty, she’d thought he was gay!

He’d never felt less gay in his life!

He stood at the kitchen counter now, in theory chopping up onions for an omelette, but in fact he had his eyes shut while in his mind he could still see her as she’d shimmied out of that beaded dress on the boat. Judging from his reactions, his body remembered the view even better than his mind did.

And the glimpse he’d got when that quilt had fallen away just moments ago hadn’t helped cool his ardor. He didn’t need any more views like that one, thank you very much—not unless she was going to follow it up with a little action.

Fat chance.

Wasn’t going to happen.

He wasn’t going to let it happen, because Sydney St. John—for all her clothes shedding and shimmying—was no different than Lisa Milligan. If she had been telling the truth about what had happened on the yacht—and she had to be, simply because her story was so ridiculous she couldn’t possibly have made it up!—then she was obviously an idealist. She’d refused to marry Roland What’s-His-Name for business reasons. Ergo, she must have some romantic notion about marrying for love.

Nothing wrong with that.

Hugh believed in it himself. It was exactly what he had wanted with Carin.

But he couldn’t have Carin, so he had learned to want something else. Fun. Games. A night’s romp with no strings attached.

It didn’t take a genius to see that Sydney St. John had more strings than a tennis racket. There would be no romping with her.

“Not gonna happen,” he told Belle. “No sir. No way.”

So when Sydney St. John waltzed into the kitchen fifteen minutes later, he was prepared.

Or he thought he was—until he caught a glimpse of her breasts bobbing beneath the soft cotton of his navy blue T-shirt and her endless legs below the hem of his boxer shorts. Then his firm commitment and his well-planned words dried right up.

“Well, that was refreshing,” she said, beaming at him. “I feel so-o-o much better.”

She looked better, too, if that were possible. She had her long hair tucked up inside a towel which made her look almost regal in a Queen Nefertiti sort of way—all neck and turban.

And breasts. And legs. No way could he forget the breasts and legs. Hugh swallowed hard.

“Glad to hear it,” he managed, and was relieved that he didn’t sound like a fourteen-year-old. Just to be sure, he cleared his throat before he went on. “Sit down. Dig in.” He dumped an omelette on her plate, then gestured toward a plateful of toast and several bowls of leftovers from Lisa’s earlier seduction efforts. “Then we need to get some things straight.”

“Sure.” Syd gave him a bright smile. Her breasts jiggled beneath his T-shirt as she sat down. Hugh looked away as she took a bite of omelette, then began heaping salad and coleslaw onto her plate.

“This is great! Did you cook all this? I can’t cook a thing,” she admitted cheerfully. She swallowed the omelette, then took a big bite of the coleslaw and closed her eyes blissfully. “God, it’s good. I’m famished.”

She dug in, plowing her way through the eggs, the toast, the bacon, the leftover slaw and salad and chicken wings Lisa had fixed. Hugh tried not to watch. She was just a woman eating, for heaven’s sake. Nothing spectacular about that.

Except that she relished it so much, sighing happily, smacking her lips. Watching her attack a chicken wing was like watching that old movie Tom Jones. Except she was a damned sight sexier than whoever that woman had been playing opposite Albert Finney. And the sexual undercurrents weren’t on the screen, they were in Hugh’s head. He jumped up and paced around the room.

“Something the matter?” she asked, following him with her gaze.

“No!” The word came out more as a snap than as a word. “I’m just…making some coffee. Do you want some coffee?”

“That would be wonderful.”

He made a pot of coffee. And while he was doing it, he got a grip. He remembered again all the things he needed to say to make sure they both got through the next day or so unscathed. And when it had finished dripping, he poured two mugs and carried them over to the table.

He set one in front of her and took one to the other side of the table where he sat down opposite her with slow deliberation, intending to make sure she understood how very serious he was.

She took the coffee gratefully, then started in on the chicken again.

Hugh averted his gaze. “Rule number one,” he said.

She looked up, fork halfway to her mouth, which was shaped like an O. She blinked. “Rule what?”

He set his jaw. “We need some ground rules. So you don’t get any mistaken ideas.”

“So I don’t…” Her voice trailed off. She put the forkful of potato salad in her mouth, closed it again, then began to chew slowly as if she were chewing over his words as well as the food. All the while her very blue eyes never left his. He felt his blood pressure going up.

At last she swallowed. “Right,” she said finally. “Ground rules.” She set down her fork and folded her hands in her lap. “By all means.”

There was something in her voice—sarcasm?—that made him narrow his gaze. She smiled at him.

He scowled at her. “I don’t want you getting any ideas.”

“Ideas?” By God, she looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “About what?”

“About us,” he bit out.

“Us?” Her eyes grew like saucers.

“Yes, us. You and me.” He spelled it out. “On account of what happened before. In there.” He jerked his head toward the bathroom.