McGillivray's Mistress - By Anne McAllister Page 0,60
clay. I’d like to tell them a thing or two,” Molly muttered furiously. “The least they could do is give her a chance.” She smacked the wrench down on the workbench, then turned on Lachlan, blessedly unarmed. “What are you doing here?”
He shook his head. “I…don’t remember.”
“Did you want something?”
“I… Never mind,” he said vaguely and wandered back out into the dusk.
THE PHONE CALL CAME a week later.
Fiona had just dragged herself out of bed in time to go to work at the bakery. She was bleary-eyed and fuzzy-minded from tossing and turning all night, and she didn’t understand the oddly accented English of the person asking to speak to her.
“Oh, ha ha. Very funny, Hugh McGillivray,” she said, wishing his sense of humor were a little less juvenile and that he understood she wasn’t ready to joke about it yet.
“No, zorry. You mizunderstand,” the voice insisted. “I call for Mz. Dunbar. Thiz iz Luigi Bellini, Direttore di Ammissioni di Tremulini, Scuola di Dipingere e la Scultura. I call to zpeak about your enrollment.”
Fiona stopped breathing.
This wasn’t Hugh. She’d heard Hugh try to speak Italian once or twice. There was no way.
“Mr.—er, Signore Bellini. H-how are you?”
“I am fine. I am thinking you will be fine too because I call to tell you we have one place left. For you.”
“For me?” Abruptly Fiona sat down. “In your school? When?”
“Now. I know is late but za Dutch student canzelled. We have an opening, and zo we offer ze place to you. We zee potential in you.”
“You…you do?”
Sparks jumped into her lap and she clutched him desperately, hanging on to the reality of his thick short soft fur, and wondering if she was dreaming.
Signore Bellini went right on giving her the particulars about when classes started, who her master sculptor tutor would be, what she would be expected to bring and where she would live.
“I will zend you all ze information on ze e-mail to reconfirm. Classes start in two weeks. You will be here, yes?”
Fiona looked around the only home she’d ever known, then out the window across the quay to the dock, to the harbor, to everything that was familiar to her, and felt the quickening of panic in her chest.
And then she saw two of the boys, Lorenzo and Marcus, kicking a soccer ball between them as they walked down the quay. Suddenly a man swooped past, kicked the ball lightly, stealing it away from them as easily as he’d stolen her heart.
Lachlan.
Grinning at the boys, he lifted the ball on his toe, kicked it up, then bounced it on his knee to his chest and headed it into the water. The boys jumped on him and they all rolled about laughing together.
Fiona’s throat tightened. Her eyes filled.
“I’m coming,” she told Signore Bellini. “I’ll be there.”
HUGH WAS FLYING Fiona to Nassau where she would catch a plane to Frankfurt and then to Milan. From there she was getting a bus. She would have to transfer twice. But she had the Italian phrase book her brother Mike had bought for her and she was sure she’d be fine.
“Of course she’ll be fine,” Lachlan said gruffly when Molly reported all this again this morning. He was sitting at his desk, staring out at the beach, at the spot where The King had stood only a few weeks ago. He didn’t miss it.
And he wouldn’t miss her.
He’d made up his mind about that.
He could have taught her some Italian if she’d asked. He’d spent three years in a town not far from the one she was going to. He could have told her a lot about the area if she’d expressed any interest. She hadn’t.
He hadn’t heard anything directly from her at all.
He’d heard enough from Molly.
For the past seven days, ever since she’d got the news from Fiona, he had been listening to Molly crowing about her friend’s talent, her accomplishments, and Molly’s own supreme satisfaction that Fiona was finally getting her chance.
“Like we all had ours,” Molly said with enormous satisfaction. She’d come to his office on her way to see Fiona off.
“Yeah,” Lachlan said for the hundredth time and went back to reading the spec sheet for the addition on the Sandpiper that Sylvester had just faxed him.
Molly frowned, then paced his office, then stopped in front of his desk. “She’s leaving in half an hour, Lachlan. Why won’t you come to the dock and see her off?”
Lachlan kept right on reading. “There’s no point.” And he had no