Nathan's Child - By Anne McAllister Page 0,23

only single woman between eighteen and forty she knew he hadn’t dated was her. And not because he hadn’t asked. He had. She hadn’t been interested.

“We’ll be friends, Hugh,” she’d told him. “That will be better.”

“Sez you,” he’d complained.

But they’d been friends for four years. Maybe she’d made a mistake asking him to have dinner tonight. She didn’t want to spoil that by changing things now.

“You’re a gorgeous guy, Hugh,” she began, “but—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t. If you’re asking me out to dinner, don’t start putting qualifications on it.”

“No. I just—”

“Don’t, Carin,” he warned her, a rough edge to his voice. “What time do we have to be there?”

“Seven. But if you’d rather not—I don’t expect—”

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said firmly. “I’ll be interested to meet Lacey’s father.” The speculative look on his face was further cause for concern. But before Carin could say anything, he told her, “Right, seven it is, then. I’ll pick you up at quarter to.”

“Ok.” But as Carin started away from the boat dock, she still worried. She tended to think of Hugh as her pal, a carefree, devil-may-care guy, whom every woman on Pelican Cay lusted after—save her—and who wouldn’t be caught no matter what. Certainly that was the impression he was always at pains to give.

His reputation, well known among the island’s fairer sex, was that he was a terrific playmate—and bedmate. But in his own words, he’d “never met a woman he didn’t like, nor one who made him think in terms of happily ever after.”

But Carin also remembered that two years ago he’d taken her flying one afternoon, determined to show off his new toy—the seaplane that he had added to his fleet of charter vehicles. Carin had never taken off or landed on the water before. She’d loved it, had been eager to have him do it again and again.

And while they were soaring through the wild blue yonder getting ready to make yet another approach, and the plane had banked and Carin had taken half a dozen shots out the window, exclaiming all the while how wonderful it was, Hugh had said, “You could do this all the time if you married me.”

Carin had laughed. She’d rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, yes. Sure. Right.” Because, of course, he wasn’t serious. Hugh was never serious in matters of the heart.

He’d laughed, too. He hadn’t pursued it. He’d never uttered the word marriage again. But every once in a while Carin had caught him looking at her intently, his expression always unreadable.

It had made her wonder more than once if she’d been wrong.

But then immediately she thought, surely not. Hugh McGillivray went through women like she went through tubes of cadmium blue. He was a tease, a charmer and her pal. He could have said no, after all, she told herself. It wasn’t as if she was leading him on. He knew she wasn’t interested in serious stuff. And neither was he!

“Hey, Carin!”

She slowed and glanced back over her shoulder. Was he going to change his mind?

Hugh was standing beside his disemboweled engine now, looking grubby and sweaty and handsome as sin. And she wished, not for the first time, that she could muster for him a hundredth of what she felt every time she looked at Nathan Wolfe.

“What?”

He grinned. “Wear some sexy little black number with no back, why don’t you?”

Lacey had said Carin and Hugh the hunk were “just friends.”

It didn’t look like that to Nathan.

They weren’t exactly holding hands and smooching in public, but when they arrived for dinner they were very definitely a couple. Carin had obviously made an effort to dress up for the occasion. She was wearing a sundress in varying shades of blue. It skimmed her narrow waist and flared at her hips, and it had such thin shoulder straps that it was obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra. While the dress wasn’t backless by any means, it displayed a lot of smooth, tanned skin, which Nathan watched Hugh the hunk touch as he escorted Carin up the steps.

That annoyed him. It annoyed him further that when she introduced them she called Hugh “my very good friend”.

She called Nathan “Lacey’s father”.

Which he was, of course. But prior to that he had to have been “Carin’s lover”, hadn’t he? He’d been tempted to say so. And he might have if Lacey hadn’t been in the room.

Instead he’d got Hugh a beer and Carin a glass of wine