McGillivray's Mistress - By Anne McAllister Page 0,10

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