McGillivray's Mistress - By Anne McAllister Page 0,57
what kind of fool do you take me for—but you were obviously right! Are you collecting blue swimsuits now?”
He shook his head, baffled. “What?”
“Just get out. Take your stupid net—the one you found at Eden Cove—and shove it—”
Oh, hell.
He should have known.
Damn Hugh anyway. Because she had to have talked to Hugh. Why the hell hadn’t he told his brother to keep his mouth shut? But then, it wasn’t really Hugh’s fault, either.
It was his own.
He should have straightened that out last night. He should have told her.
Now Lachlan raked a hand through his hair. “Look,” he said with all the reason he could manage. “I know you’re upset—”
“Upset?” Fiona shouted. “I’m not upset! I’m bloody furious! How dare you pretend to have found that net—”
“I did find the net!”
“You snagged the net twenty years ago! Off Lubbock Point! Which is not near Eden Cove!”
“It’s all the same ocean! For heaven’s sake, Fiona, I found it in the ocean! The same ocean all the other trash came out of. I didn’t buy it or steal it or make it. What difference does it make whether I found it now or twenty years ago?”
“It makes all the difference in the world!” she told him flatly. “And you know it does—or you wouldn’t have lied about it.”
Which was unfortunately true.
Her back was ramrod straight as she stalked to the end of the living room, then spun around to confront him. “And then there’s the little matter of where. Why Eden Cove, Lachlan? If it was only to get me to use a net you knew I wouldn’t use unless it washed up on the beach, why not say you saw it on our beach. Why go all the way to Eden Cove?”
Well, they both knew why.
Because ultimately this wasn’t about the net.
It had been about the two of them.
Nothing that had happened yesterday would have been possible if he’d “found” the net on the beach outside the Moonstone. There was no privacy on the beach outside the Moonstone. There was no fantasy there. There would have been no romantic idyll. No chance to make love to her. No chance that she would have fallen in love with him.
“It gave us a chance,” Lachlan tried to tell her.
“It gave you a chance to take advantage of me,” she spat.
“I wasn’t—”
“Go to hell,” she snapped. “You got what you wanted. Get out of here. Get out of my life.”
“Fiona! Listen to me!”
“No! Go! Damn you!” She was blinking furiously, close to tears.
He wanted to reach for her, to pull her close and hold her. But when he moved closer, she kicked him.
“Get out! Now!” And she snatched up a large towel-wrapped object and thrust it into his arms. “And take your naked self with you before I smash it to smithereens!”
HE TOOK IT.
He went. He stalked home across the island, as furious as she was, not caring who’d heard them shouting, not caring who’d seen him leave. He was angry, damn it all.
And he’d been misunderstood!
He’d done what he’d done because it had been the only way to break the impasse. She’d turned down every other invitation he’d given her. She’d ignored every overture.
What was he supposed to do?
Besides, it wasn’t as if she didn’t want to make love with him. She’d been as eager—as desperate—as he had. It hadn’t been all one-sided, that was for sure!
And it wasn’t as if it was all physical, either. He’d thought about her damn sculpture, hadn’t he? He’d given her the net because he took her sculpture seriously.
She’d realize that when she came to her senses.
He’d left the book lying on the porch. She could find it in the morning when, God willing, she was rational again. She could pick it up and recognize that he had always had her best interests at heart.
Then she could come and apologize to him!
SHE DIDN’T APOLOGIZE.
A week went by and he didn’t hear a word from her.
He heard a lot from everyone else on the island. Everywhere he went people wanted to know what happened between them.
“I gave her a net I found,” he said. “She got upset. That’s it.”
“That’s not exactly the way I heard it,” his sister Molly said flatly. “I heard you used it to get what you wanted.”
“That’s not true.”
Once, it might have been.
Back when Fiona had been “the one that got away,” when he’d been attracted by her long legs and fiery hair, getting her into bed had been his goal. But somewhere along the