McGillivray's Mistress - By Anne McAllister Page 0,24

done anything. She’s an innocent.”

“Not that innocent,” Lachlan muttered under his breath, squatting down to rummage through one of the piles of laundry on the floor.

“What?” Hugh said sharply.

“Never mind.” Did Hugh never put anything away? There were two heaps of clothes on the floor. The only difference seemed to be that one pile was grimier than the other. That must be how he told them apart. “You don’t have to worry about Fiona,” Lachlan said, burrowing to the bottom of each. There was no blazer in either of them. He sighed and stood up again. “As you so aptly pointed out, she can take care of herself.”

“Just make sure she doesn’t have to.”

Their gazes met. Their eyes locked.

“It’s dinner, Hugh,” Lachlan said with a tight smile.

Hugh didn’t smile in return. “As long as that’s all it is.”

Belle, clearly sensing the tension, whined and nudged Hugh’s knee.

“Ah, right,” Hugh said, breaking their locked gaze and rubbing the dog’s ears once more. “Dinnertime.” He slid off the counter.

Lachlan glanced at his watch. Hell. The dog was right. It was nearly seven already.

“And I’m going to be late.” He kicked the rest of the laundry out of the way as he headed for the door. “Don’t you ever put anything away?”

“I keep things where I can find ’em,” Hugh told him, unfazed as he reached for the kibble and the dog bowl. He waited until Lachlan was outside before calling after him, “I think your blazer’s in the dog bed on the porch.”

IT WASN’T A DATE.

Definitely not a date, Fiona told her underwear-clad reflection in the mirror.

And thank God for that. If Lachlan had asked her out—on a date—she’d have said no. No way. Never again!

But this wasn’t a date. It was business.

And that was almost scarier.

That she should be having dinner with Lord David Grantham of the posh upscale Grantham Cultural Tours and an award-winning photographer like Nathan and a stunning painter like Carin (even though they were friends of hers) and who knew who else—besides Lachlan—was enough to make her stomach do what it had done when Hugh had taken her up in his plane and done a loop.

What did she know about the tourism business? Or the art business, for that matter?

Just this morning she’d been afraid she was out of her depth trying to do a terra-cotta sculpture. And while she felt better about her ability to do that now, it hardly gave her the credentials to hobnob with an earl!

She didn’t know how to dress to hobnob with an earl. She wished she could talk to Carin. Carin would know how she should dress, how she should act, what she should say. Carin was sharp and sophisticated. She might have lived on the island for years, but she’d grown up in the city. She knew that sort of thing.

But when Fiona had got off work and run to Carin’s shop, Elaine said cheerfully, “She gone home. Gotta make herself beautiful.”

Which didn’t exactly inspire confidence as Carin was already the most beautiful woman Fiona knew.

“Maybe I shouldn’t go,” she said to Sparks who, having finished his own dinner, was sitting on her dresser washing his paws and watching her rifling through her closet in vain. “I don’t have anything to wear. There is nothing—nothing!—here!”

If she had expected him suddenly to turn into one of those cartoon animals like the ones who had whipped up Cinderella’s ball dress, she was sorely disappointed. He stopped washing long enough to yawn. Then he turned around three times, made himself comfortable on her one good silk blouse, and went to sleep.

She snatched it out from under him. “Fat lot of help you are.”

Well, the silk blouse was out. Covered with cat hair. And she only had two dresses: the one she’d worn to dinner the last time Lachlan had taken her to Beaches—not a memory she wanted to inspire—and the one she’d worn to her father’s funeral. Also not an option.

“What am I going to do?” she demanded.

Sparks didn’t even bother to purr in reply. Clearly he wasn’t best pleased having his cushion snatched away from him.

Downstairs the front door rattled. Dear God, Lachlan couldn’t be here yet, could he? She scrambled for her watch. Oh, whew. It was only just past six.

“Fee? Anybody home?”

Fiona breathed a sigh of relief. “Up here!” she called, relieved to hear her sister-in-law, Julie.

There was a bit of movement below, the sound of the refrigerator opening and closing, which opened Sparks’s eyes briefly. Then there came