McGillivray's Mistress - By Anne McAllister Page 0,34
spleen.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Well, I’m not going to the doctor to find out.”
“You could.”
“Oh, yes. Sure.” Fiona glanced at her watch. “At twenty past one in the morning? He’d appreciate that.”
“It’s his job. My dad would have been glad to see you.”
“Your dad was a saint. Gerry—Doc Rasmussen—is just a doctor. A good one, but still—I’m not going to bother him. I’ll be fine, Lachlan. Go home.”
He shook his head. “No. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“What?”
“Unless—” he suggested “—you want me to sleep with you.”
She gaped at him. “You can’t—I won’t—!”
“Look, Fiona. Be sensible. It’s almost one-thirty, as you just pointed out,” he said. “It will take me until two to get home—”
“Not if you call Maurice.”
“—and I have to be up before five to get back over here. No. Thanks. I need more sleep than that. Not that I would sleep anyway, worrying about you. No. I’m staying. That way I can check on you.” He folded his arms and smiled amiably at her. “Or you could try to throw me out.”
Fiona muttered under her breath. She scowled. She kicked at the rug underfoot. Finally she glared at him. “Fine,” she said at last. “Stay. Go ahead. Try to sleep on it. It’s lumpy. Very lumpy.”
He barely spared it a glance. “It will do.” He had undoubtedly slept on worse.
“But you’re not ‘checking’ on me.”
That’s what you think. But he didn’t say it. “Got a blanket?” he asked.
She made a huffing sound, then stalked back upstairs and came down moments later with a cotton blanket which she flung at him. “Sleep tight.”
Then she turned and stomped back up the stairs.
Lachlan listened to her bang the door to her bedroom. He heard sounds of her moving around, then all was quiet. He started to move to shut off the light when he heard a sudden slapping noise and Fiona’s cat was sitting just inside the cat flap, eyeing him curiously.
“Don’t mind me,” he told the cat. “I’m just watching out for your pain in the neck mistress.”
The cat didn’t seem perturbed. He washed his paws, then yawned and found a comfortable chair to sleep in.
Lachlan stripped off his damp cutoffs and settled on the couch under the blanket. Fiona was right. The couch was lumpy. Very lumpy.
But he had no intention of leaving. He hadn’t been joking about what had happened to Joaquin. It had been a freaky thing, but when you’d been there and seen it happen, you didn’t forget. Please, God, it wouldn’t happen to Fiona. But better safe than sorry.
He stretched and settled in, elbowing the most annoying of the lumps. It wasn’t a bad place to be—in Fiona’s living room. It wasn’t her bedroom, but it was close.
A lot closer to her than Lord David Bloody Grantham was.
Lachlan felt as if he’d made a particularly spectacular save.
“ARGH!” FIONA REACHED OUT and groped for her alarm clock, which was perversely tootling “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
It had been a joke gift from her brother Mike who knew how badly she hated to get up early. It wasn’t so bad to have it doing its zip-a-dee-do-dah best at the crack of noon whenever she needed to make an afternoon appointment.
But it was dire to hear it warbling before first light.
How could anyone tell what kind of a morning it was, Fiona thought, gnashing her teeth and smacking it into silence, when the sun wasn’t even up yet?
Her head was pounding. Her mouth tasted like the bottom of her brothers’ boat. She ached all over. And she couldn’t imagine why in God’s name she had set the damn thing when she never—
Oh God!
Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod.
She didn’t have to imagine. She remembered.
She sat up straight, groaned and fell back against the pillows.
It all came back now—the dinner at Beaches, the promise of work for David Grantham, the walk home with Lachlan.
The Kiss.
Dear God, yes, The Kiss.
And later—after The Kiss—when she’d been taking down The King of the Beach, Lachlan had appeared out of nowhere, shouting at her, startling her, making her lose her balance and fall.
That explained the aches. She’d got the wind knocked out of her. And Lachlan had come to crouch beside her and drip water all over her because he’d obviously been swimming, the idiot, all by himself which everyone knew you weren’t supposed to do. And she’d scrambled to her feet, tried to brush him off, and Lachlan had refused to be brushed.
He’d walked her all the way home. Barefoot. He’d come in with her.
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