McGillivray's Mistress - By Anne McAllister Page 0,58
line the legs and hair were only part of what attracted him to Fiona.
He’d made love to her on the beach and in her bedroom. He’d made love to her fiercely and passionately, he’d made love to her slowly and tenderly. But he knew now that he could make love to her a hundred times in a hundred places in a hundred different ways, and it would never be enough.
Because he wanted not simply to make love to Fiona, but to talk to Fiona, to walk with Fiona. He wanted to argue with her and laugh with her. He wanted to make up with her. He wanted not just to go to bed with her, but to wake up in the morning next to Fiona, to come home to her in the evenings. He want to spend the rest of his life with her.
He had never really thought in terms of lifetimes before.
He was a man with a ninety-minute attention span, according to the press. He had certainly never thought in terms of marriage, in terms of forever. Not with any woman—let alone Fiona Dunbar.
But now he was thinking about it, and he had to make her understand. He loved her. And she loved him, damn it!
He knew it. And not only because of the day they’d spent at Eden Cove and the night they’d shared the bed—and their bodies—in her bedroom. He knew it because of the way she sometimes looked at him, because of the way she listened to him, and smiled at him. He knew it because of the sculpture she’d made of him.
It was him in the altogether, no doubt about that—Lachlan McGillivray, exposed.
But he wasn’t the only one exposed.
Fiona had exposed herself, too. She had used her considerable talent to sculpt him with both passion and compassion. In his terra-cotta likeness he could see strength and determination, power and intensity, vision and idealism, hope and promise.
She had taken the best of him and given it form. She had seen him and sculpted him with eyes of love.
He knew it. And he was sure she knew it—which was why she’d thrust the sculpture into his arms to get rid of it. She hadn’t wanted to face that love.
“Well, you’d better tell her fast,” Molly said bluntly. “Because she’s leaving.”
“What the hell do you mean, she’s leaving?”
“Going to art school, remember? I saw her at the post office. She got the letter back today.”
Oh, hell. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t!
But he knew Fiona. She was just that stubborn.
HE BANGED ON HER DOOR for the fourth time, then paced the length of the porch and banged again.
“She be in there,” her next-door neighbor Carlotta had told him cheerfully when he’d come up the street. “You be goin’ to make up with her? Say you sorry?”
He was going to say what needed to be said—if she’d open the damn door.
He banged again. “I know you’re in there, Fiona,” he shouted. “And I’m not leaving, so you might as well open the door.”
Watching avidly from her porch swing. Carlotta gave him a silent round of applause.
He did not want an audience. But clearly Carlotta wasn’t abandoning the best seat in the house. In fact, he could see Miss Saffron making her way down the street as fast as her old legs could shuffle. He groaned and shut his eyes.
The door creaked.
His eyes snapped open again.
Fiona stood in the doorway, hanging on to the door, making it very clear she was not about to let him in. She still looked pale and shattered, and he wanted to take her in his arms, but knew he had to say things first.
“We need to talk.”
“No,” she said. “We don’t.”
“I need to make things clear.”
“Things are clear.” Her voice was only slightly reedy. “You clarified them beautifully.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Regardless of what you meant,” she continued ruthlessly, “you made me realize that there are some dreams worth pursuing and some that were kid stuff and better left behind.”
“Which means what? That you’re leaving? Molly said you got a letter. What are you going to do, just going to turn your back on what’s between us? Just go to England or Italy or wherever and pretend it simply doesn’t exist?”
“I would if I could,” Fiona replied tonelessly, “but I didn’t get accepted. I’ll have to think of something else.”
And she closed the door in his face.
FIONA HAD ALWAYS KNOWN that art school was a long shot.
But she’d had some encouragement, hadn’t she? David Grantham had thought her