In McGillivray's Bed (15 page)

Yes, she did. Hugh was willing to admit it. She'd charmed him, too. Had brought him under her spell as easily and as thoroughly as she'd captivated the three old men and all the rest of the island folk.

More so, really. He loved her. He wanted her. He couldn't stop thinking about her, not even if he tried. He couldn't stop lifting his gaze to watch her as she and her band of admirers wandered slowly down the beach.

He could have finished the roof in a couple of hours if he hadn't kept stopping and gazing down the beach, watching as she picked up this or admired something that one of the old men had found. But he kept working, moving slowly, enjoying the view.

She looked so happy. Several times he saw her skipping in the foam of the incoming waves, twirling and laughing and, once, she'd grabbed one of the twins by the hands and spun him around with her.

Once, too, she had looked his way and waved.

Hugh had felt caught out, as if she'd spied him doing something he shouldn't. He'd pretended not to notice. But when she kept waving, finally he'd lifted a hand and awkwardly waved back.

She had grinned and hopped on one foot and waved gaily at him. Then she'd grabbed Turk and one of the Cashes and danced in and out of the foam.

Watching her, Hugh wondered if it might be possible. Could she really be happy here? Could she find enough challenges to make living here—with him—a possibility?

If she enjoyed something as simple as a morning on the beach looking for bits of driftwood with three old men, maybe—just maybe—she could.

“Is this McGillivray's?” The voice from below startled him.

Hugh looked down to see a stranger standing there. Middle-aged. Tall and fit, wearing nicely pressed white duck trousers and an open-necked blue shirt. His blond hair was windblown, but barely a strand looked out of place.

A well-heeled client, Hugh decided, who had got stuck on the island because of the storm, whose life had been put on hold for eighteen hours, and who now needed off this instant.

Which didn't sound like a bad idea. He could use a little perspective.

He smiled down at the man. “That's right. I'm Hugh McGillivray. What can I do for you?”

“Tell me where I can find Margaret St. John. My name is Roland Carruthers.”

F
OR
a split second Hugh's world flipped upside down.

He must have looked as dazed as he felt because Roland Carruthers tapped his foot impatiently, then shrugged and said, “Never mind. I was obviously given erroneous information. Good day.” He turned and started toward the road again.

But Hugh called, “Wait!”

Carruthers turned back, shading his eyes now as he looked up. “What is it? Do you know where she is?”

Hugh could see her a mile down the beach but he wasn't telling that to Carruthers. He stood up and wiped his grimy hands on his shorts. His heart was pounding harder than his hammer had. “I might. What do you want with her?”

Carruthers hesitated. Then he said, “I want to speak with her. Privately. On a personal matter. So if you'll tell me where she's living—”

“She's living here.”

“Here?”
If it was possible to look down his nose while looking up in the air, Carruthers would have done so.

“That's right.” Hugh could look down his nose much more effectively. He did, hands on hips, glaring. Their gazes locked. Dueled. “Got a problem with it?”

Carruthers took a step back, then pressed his lips together in a thin line. “No. I'm sure she's very grateful for your hospitality. I'll just get her things, then.”

Hugh dropped the hammer, crouched slightly and, to Carruthers's clear amazement, jumped off the roof to land in the sand directly in front of him.

“Like hell you will,” he said pleasantly.

Carruthers took a sensible step back and cleared his throat. He also eased the collar of his open-necked shirt, though it was hard to see how it could possibly be too tight. “Well, fine,” he said, regarding Hugh with something between nervousness and irritation. “If you don't want me to take her things immediately, I'll just wait until she arrives.”

Hugh hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and regarded Carruthers narrowly. If he'd thought Syd had exaggerated the man's arrogance, he did no longer. It was obvious that Carruthers was a patronizing overbearing jerk.

“Wait all you want,” he said, “but I don't imagine she'll be glad to see you.”

“I'm sure you're mistaken. I expect she'll be extremely glad to see me. I am her fiancé.”

“No,” Hugh said, “you're not.”

“I beg your pardon,” Carruthers replied, mustering all the haughtiness of which he was capable. “I don't know how you could know such a thing, Mr. McGillivray.”

“I know,” Hugh said levelly, “because she's married to me.”

 

“W
E'RE
married?” Syd stared at Hugh, hardly able to believe her ears.

She'd been surprised enough to see him striding down the beach toward her moments ago. And his news that Carruthers was waiting at the house was annoying.

But the last thing she'd expected Hugh McGillivray to say was, “I told him we were married.”

“Did you say we're
married?
”

“I told
him
that,” Hugh replied tersely. “Obviously we're not.”

“Obviously, um, not,” Syd said, still feeling a little dazed. “I don't quite understand,” she began tentatively, giving her head a little shake as she tried to catch up with him. He'd come to get her on the beach, had told Turk and the Cash brothers that she had urgent business at the house.

They'd winked and grinned and said, “Don't do nothin' we wouldn't do.”

And Hugh had said, “Too late for that.” And then he'd grabbed her hand and begun towing her back toward the house telling her he'd said he was married to her.

“But why…?” she began again.

“Because he thought you'd fall all over him with joy. Because he doesn't get it even now. Because he's such a pompous, overbearing, arrogant prig!” Hugh was stalking furiously back up the beach toward the house. Syd practically had to run to keep up with him.

“Pompous, overbearing, arrogant prig? Yes, that's Roland,” she agreed. “But even so—”

“How the hell could you ever work with him?”

She shrugged. “I didn't hire him. My father did. And he is good at what he does.”

Hugh gave her a sharp look. “And that excuses it?”

“Of course not. But it's the truth. Roland gets things done. He's a good businessman.” She paused. “But that doesn't mean I wanted to marry him,” she clarified, in case he got the wrong idea. “Did he believe you?” she asked just out of curiosity.

“No, he didn't.” Hugh looked annoyed at that. “He said he couldn't imagine what a sane, sensible woman like you could possibly see in a bum like me.”

Syd had no trouble guessing that he was delivering an exact quote.

“Sometimes tact isn't his strong point,” she said.

Hugh shrugged. “Doesn't matter. I told him if he didn't believe me, he could ask you. In fact,” he said gruffly, “I told him to stay with us while he was on the island if he didn't believe me.”

Syd gaped. “You did
what?
”

Hugh's eyes flashed angrily. “A picture is worth a thousand words, isn't that what they say? I figured spending a little time with us in our house ought to be worth a few thousand.” He muttered a few words that singed Syd's
ears. Then he lifted his gaze and fixed her with a hard stare. “Unless, of course, you
want
to go with him?”

“Of course I don't!”

He shrugged. “Well, then…he didn't look like the sort of guy you could talk to. I think you already proved that.”

“Yes.” Oh, yes.

“How long is he going to be here?”

“He said he flies back to Miami tomorrow.”

“I see. And in the meantime we pretend we're married?”

Hugh shrugged. “For one day. No big deal.”

One day. No big deal.

Except Syd wanted a lifetime. A proposal. A wedding. A real marriage. She wanted Hugh McGillivray in her heart and in her bed and in her life for the next sixty-odd years.

And what did
he
want?

“Up to you,” Hugh was saying now. “You don't want to do it, fine with me. I just thought I'd return the Lisa favor.”

Was that all it was?

Syd didn't know. McGillivray's motives had never been clear.

Just one day? It was nothing. A few hours. A pretense.

But you had to start somewhere. Syd stopped as they reached the top of the path in clear sight of the house. Roland was on the porch, looking their way. Syd noted that, and didn't care a bit.

She reached up and caught Hugh's head between her hands and drew him down and kissed him. He looked momentarily stunned.

She smiled. “Just in case Roland is watching,” she said.

 

R
OLAND
was watching.

He was suspicious and doubtful and clearly sceptical of Hugh's claim that they were married. But he could hardly call his host a liar.

And as far as finding Syd alive went, of course he was vastly relieved.

“You could have called sooner, though,” he admonished as he followed her around the small kitchen like a herd dog while she tried to sidestep him and prepare dinner. “I was terrified, Margaret. Out of my mind with worry about you.”

“Sorry,” Syd said in a tone that said she wasn't sorry in the least. “I thought I'd make spaghetti. Is that all right? Or I can try to catch Hugh on his cell phone and ask him to bring some grouper from the dock on his way back from bringing your things from the Mirabelle.”

That was where Roland had gone upon his arrival on Pelican Cay. Having traced her phone call to her father as far as the island, he'd requested a taxi to take him to the “best place,” certain that he would find her there.

It had been Lisa Milligan, working at the Mirabelle's desk, who had listened to his description of his missing fiancée and had sent him to check out the woman living with Hugh McGillivray.

“
She
doesn't think you're married!” he informed Syd.

Syd shrugged. “Shows what she knows,” she said dismissively and set about making dinner.

Roland watched her every move, shaking his head and looking somewhere between dazed and confused. “I've never seen you cook, Margaret.”

“That's too bad,” Syd said. “I'm actually a very good cook. I can do a lot of things you never knew.”

“I'm sure you can,” he said vaguely. “I always thought you were very talented. But let's get back to the point. We'll let bygones be bygones, shall we? We won't mention what happened on the yacht again. Now when you come back—”

Syd began adding spices to her tomato sauce, but she stopped long enough to meet his gaze squarely. “I'm not coming back, Roland. I resigned. Surely Dad told you that.”

“He said you didn't know what you were talking about.”

“I know exactly what I'm talking about. And I'm staying here.”

But he wasn't listening to her now any more than he ever had. “You're upset,” he said.

“I'm not upset. I
was
upset. I'm not now. I have a life now, Roland. You and Dad are just going to have to accept it.”

“But you loved the work. You know you did. And St. John's is in your blood. Just because you're infatuated with some grubby bum—”

The look she gave him shut down that avenue of commentary. Syd thumped the pot on the stove and began to stir the sauce.

Roland came around the table and stood beside her. “Look, he's certainly very macho. And I imagine he can be quite charming. When he doesn't look like he wants to rip my head off. But he's what? A beachcomber?”

“He's not a beachcomber. He's a charter pilot. He owns his own business.”

“And a nice little business I'm sure it is, too. But it's not St. John's. I know you were angry with me. You had a right to be,” he admitted. “I was perhaps a bit high-handed in the way I arranged our wedding. But I know you, Margaret. You're far too sensible to throw yourself away like this. You didn't really marry him, did you.”

The way Roland said it, it wasn't even a question. He was smiling, as if it was nothing but a joke.

“I married him. He is the man I love,” Syd said firmly, and knew her words to be the absolute truth. Legally she might not qualify as Hugh McGillivray's wife, but in her heart she was as married to Hugh McGillivray as it was possible to be.

“Dear God.” Roland took all of three seconds to shift gears. “It sounds as if he brainwashed you. If you did marry him, you can always get it annulled. If you married him under duress—”

“You're the one who caused the duress, Roland. He
didn't.” She looked at him squarely. “I'm tired of talking about it. This is enough. Read my lips, Roland. I. Am. Not. Coming. Back. To. St. John's.”

He stared at her, then shook his head. “You poor, deluded woman.”

She ignored him after that.

He rabbited on about the bright and wonderful future of St. John's. He told her she was wasting her education, squandering her talents, would never be happy here. And she fixed a salad and set the table and all the while he talked.

“You'll miss the challenge,” he insisted. “You love it. You need it.”

But not like she needed Hugh. Not like she needed to belong, to be a part of a family where people really took the time to love and understand each other.

“Do you want French bread with your spaghetti, Roland?” she asked.

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” he sputtered, exasperated. “There's no talking to you! I was afraid of this. Fine. Have your revenge. Take a week. Take two. Take a month. But think about what you're throwing away. Then don't do it. I'll cover for you with your father.”

Syd shut her eyes and counted to a hundred. There was no arguing with him. No talking to him. No point at all.

Thank God at that moment Hugh came in. “Got your gear,” he said to Roland, hoisting an artfully distressed leather suitcase. “I'll just put this in the spare room.” But first he deliberately detoured through the kitchen, hauled Syd against him and planted a smacking kiss on her lips.

It was done for calculated effect and she knew it. But it felt so real, so right, so perfect, that Syd fell into it eagerly. He tasted of the sea and the sun and a little bay rum. And she felt bereft when he stepped back. Desperately she searched his eyes, trying to gauge what he really felt.

He winked at her.

 

H
E SHOULD
win a bloody damned Oscar, Hugh thought.

Or if there were prizes for a guy getting himself in the
world's most untenable situation, he would no doubt win that one, hands down.

And it was his own damn fault!

If he'd gone with his first instinct, which had been to jump down off the roof and punch bloody Roland Carruthers's lights right out, everything would be just fine now.

But no, he'd had to be civilized.

For Syd's sake, he'd told himself, he shouldn't grind the bastard into the dirt. She wouldn't think it was polite. She'd find fault, tell him he was a heathen or a barbarian or some other damn thing.

Which just went to show what she knew.

As far as Hugh could see, being a heathen or a barbarian had a lot to recommend it right now. A whole hell of a lot more than smiling and being charming to a first-rate jerk all the while pretending to be married to a woman you knew you wanted and couldn't have.

He needed his head examined.

But instead of going to find Doc Rasmussen, he spent the evening sitting on the sofa next to Syd, his arm around her slim shoulders, toying with her hair and acting like he could hardly wait to get her into bed, while he made conversation with Roland Carruthers, who didn't want to converse any more than Hugh did.

That was bad.

Worse was what happened after Roland went reluctantly off to the spare room. Then he and Syd went off to his room to spend the night together. Again.