McGillivray's Mistress - By Anne McAllister Page 0,36
breathing.
She was breathing, all right.
But one look at her lying nude on top of the sheets and he nearly wasn’t!
He’d stood transfixed in the doorway, heart slamming against the wall of his chest, as he’d stared at her asleep in the moonlit room.
All the rampaging lust he’d attempted to work off during his midnight swim came flooding back. His mouth went dry, his palms got damp, and his whole body grew taut at the sight of her.
She’d been sound asleep. Resting easily. Comfortably. He could see the rise and fall of her moon-washed breasts. He couldn’t look away.
In fact, he’d moved closer. He had slipped right into the room and had gone to stand by the side of the bed. There he’d stood looking down on her, clenching his fists against the longing to lie down next to her and touch her, to stroke her smooth skin, to cup her breasts in his palms, to kiss the line of her jaw and run his hands down her thighs to part—
Oh hell, he couldn’t go there! Not now!
Quick! Penguins! Icebergs!
The sinking of the bloody Titanic!
But it didn’t do a damn bit of good.
He bolted off the modeling stand, spilling his coffee as he headed for the bathroom. “Gotta leave!” he muttered, leaving Fiona to look up from the sculpture and stare after him, openmouthed in his wake.
“But—” Footsteps came pattering after him.
He banged shut the bathroom door.
“Lachlan? Is something wrong?”
Body quivering, he panted. “Nothing’s wrong!”
“Then why—?”
Oh hell, oh hell, oh hell.
“Lachlan?”
“I’ve got an appointment I just remembered!”
“At six-thirty in the morning?”
“Yes.” He dragged on his damp cold shorts and hoped they would do the job that the iceberg and the Titanic hadn’t. It took a while. He waited to hear the footsteps moving away.
As soon as he was presentable, he rubbed a hand over his face, sucked in a deep breath and opened the door.
Fiona was standing in the doorway to her studio, looking at him irritably. “What’s going on?”
“Sorry. Just…remembered something I had to do.”
Her gaze narrowed. “I was just getting started, Lachlan.”
He grimaced wryly as he hurried past her down the stairs. “Yeah. Me, too.”
SHE HAD MISSED SOMETHING. Fiona was sure of it.
Lachlan had been there, standing perfectly still one minute—and gone the next.
She banged around the studio after he left, trying to make sense of his vanishing act, trying to work on the sculpture without him, getting nowhere.
Was it something she had done? Something she had said?
But she had done nothing except begin to work. And she’d said absolutely nothing at all.
If she didn’t know better, she would think he had panicked.
But that was ridiculous.
She was the one who had reason to panic! She was the one who’d awakened and discovered he’d spent the night within touching distance of her naked body!
And been so inspired that he’d fallen asleep! Whatever passion last night’s kiss had stirred in him, the sight of her in the nude had obviously given him definite second thoughts. Unfortunately it still had the power to heat her blood.
And the sight of a nude Lachlan McGillivray was driving her nuts.
She’d managed to sublimate her avid interest yesterday by channeling it into the clay, by trying to capture his planes and angles, muscles and bones. On an artistic level she’d begun to succeed.
But far from encouraging her indifference, it had made her want Lachlan McGillivray more than she ever had before.
“Bah!” She tossed a damp towel over the sculpture of his nakedness and tried to focus on this week’s cutouts for Carin. But she couldn’t get lost in her work the way she usually did.
And when the phone rang, she was grateful for the diversion. “Hello?”
“Is it true?” Julie asked without preamble. “Are you and Lachlan McGillivray having an affair?”
CHAPTER SIX
“WHAT?”
Fiona sat down with a thump. Lucky for Sparks he’d just vacated the chair she landed in.
“Trina said she saw him coming out of your place when she got off work this morning,” Julie reported. “And Miss Saffron said she saw him hightailing up the hill at the crack of dawn.”
Oh God.
At Fiona’s total stunned silence, Julie went on quickly, “Of course it’s really none of anybody’s business, but—”
No, it wasn’t. But this was Pelican Cay and one person’s business was always everyone else’s business. Trina was the weather girl on the local radio station. Miss Saffron was the source of much of what passed for island “news.” Between the two of them—
“No!” Fiona blurted before it went any further. “Lachlan and I are not having