McGillivray's Mistress - By Anne McAllister Page 0,16
the first day of practice. She indicated a small homemade carpeted platform raised about a foot off the ground on the other side of the room. “You need to stand on here.”
Lachlan stared at it. It was one thing to make a dramatic entrance. It was another to have to walk across the whole damn room.
Fiona smiled at him expectantly, just as if he weren’t standing there completely starkers. God, but she had to be enjoying this!
“The platform?” Fiona said helpfully, as if he needed directions.
Lachlan’s jaw tightened. Fine, let her have her moment of glee. He had nothing to be ashamed of!
Still, feeling totally exposed—which was exactly what he was—Lachlan did his best to look nonchalant, as if he paraded around naked all the time.
An early-morning breeze lifted the pale-blue curtains, blowing across his heated flesh, and wafting between his very bare thighs. It should have cooled him, settled him, calmed him.
Not quite.
He’d spent the past five minutes in Fiona’s bathroom telling himself this was no big deal. It wasn’t as if he’d never been naked in front of a woman before.
But they’d always been naked, too. And wanting him.
Fiona wasn’t naked. And she didn’t want him.
He just wished she did.
And thinking that was a really bad idea, because the very notion of Fiona Dunbar naked and desiring him nearly undid all his previous focusing on icebergs and multiplication tables and trying to do the square root of 842 in his head.
“That’s right,” she said and nudged the platform with her calf. “Come on up and get comfortable.”
Get comfortable? He almost laughed as he crossed the room toward her.
But as he approached, Fiona moved across to her worktable where she had some metal gizmo sticking up out of a piece of wood. There was a slab of clay lying beside it. And she turned her attention to studiously laying scrapers and wires out on the table. As she did so, he felt slightly more at ease and stepped on to the platform.
It moved under his feet and he nearly lost his balance. “Cripes!”
“Oh, sorry.” Fiona glanced up. “I should have warned you. Paul made it so it would turn. That way, as I work, neither of us has to move.”
“I see.” He was beginning to. And he wasn’t liking what he saw. “Did you, er, tell Paul…what you were, um, going to do with it?” He could just imagine what Paul would have to say—forever—about that!
“Not specifically.”
“Thank God for that,” Lachlan muttered, steadying himself as the platform did another quarter turn again. Just what he needed—to be turned in a circle so Fiona could ogle him from every angle. Irritably he shifted from one foot to the other. “How am I supposed to stand?”
Fiona looked up. It was the first time she’d actually stared straight at him, scrutinized him—full-on—since he’d come into the room.
He went perfectly still—and wished he had some place to put his hands.
Her eyes roved slowly and consideringly over him. He didn’t move, except to clench his fists, grind his teeth, think of icebergs.
“Take your time,” he muttered, feeling his whole body begin to burn.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just hurry up. I haven’t got all day.”
“Sorry. I’ve never done this before.”
“Neither have I,” he told her impatiently. “It’s not rocket science, though.”
“Fine. Just stand like that,” Fiona said “Or maybe you could shift your weight a little to the right.”
Lachlan shifted, trying to look at her, to see what she wanted, and not to look at her, because she was too damned attractive, at the same time.
“Not so much.” She started to cross the room toward him.
Christ! She wasn’t going to touch him, was she?
“Just tell me,” Lachlan said through his teeth. Icicles. Polar bears. Penguins walking single file and jumping into the Arctic Sea.
Abruptly Fiona stopped. “It’s all right. You’re, um, fine.”
Was she blushing? He hoped so. She deserved to be.
She backed hastily toward her worktable again. “And you’re comfortable that way?”
Oh, yeah. “Just super.”
If she recognized sarcasm when she heard it, she gave no indication. She reached into the drawer in her worktable and pulled out a pad of paper.
Lachlan frowned. “What’s that for?”
“I need to make sketches.”
“The hell you do.” Modeling naked was bad enough. He wasn’t having sketches floating around! “No sketches,” he said flatly.
“But—”
“Sculpting. You said sculpting. Not sketching.” He glared at her. “So sculpt.”
Fiona opened her mouth as if she might argue. Then her gaze slid from his eyes all the way down his taut hard body—and back up again.
Lachlan steeled himself not