In Mcgillivray's Bed

“Whoa,” he murmured as his brain finally engaged and he managed to both avert his gaze and shut his mouth at the same time. Major accomplishment. While his blood was otherwise occupied, the beer seemed to have gone to his head.

Now he tipped his head back and took a couple of deep, desperate breaths.

“Can I use this?” the crazy woman asked.

Her words made him jerk his head up, and he saw her holding up the quilt that Belle normally slept on. Belle was wagging her tail and grinning, apparently quite willing to share.

“Do you have to?”

He wasn’t thinking, of course. He was just saying what came into his head. And what came into his head was how much he was enjoying the sight of all that lovely female flesh. And he was loath to lose sight of it, even when she gave him a seriously disdainful look.

“Then perhaps you could lend me your shirt.” She looked at it pointedly. “Please,” she added with more than a hint of irony.

He could. But leaving it flapping over his baggy shorts, thus hiding the evidence of his unfortunate arousal was probably a better idea.

“Use the quilt,” he said gruffly.

She blinked, taken aback. But when he didn’t change his mind, she shrugged and wrapped it around her shoulders, then clutched it over her middle, giving the impression that she had turned into an overstuffed chair.

Or she would have if Hugh hadn’t had a good imagination and an even better memory. He knew damned well what was under the padding. He could still see it all in his mind’s eye.

He was definitely glad he’d kept his shirt.

“So,” he said, determined to focus on her less appealing characteristics, “tell me about this proactive jump of yours.”

She glanced over her shoulder toward where the running lights of the yacht were still barely visible. “Could we, um, just get moving first?”

“Catch up with them, you mean?” Hugh said doubtfully. It would be a hell of a ride in the dark.

“No!” The word burst out from her, surprising him. Then she gave herself a little shake. “I mean, no, thank you,” she said with extreme politeness.

But even spoken with politeness, the words were still surprising. Hugh cocked his head and lifted a brow. “No, you don’t want to catch up with the boat?”

“No!” Pause. Moderation. “I don’t. In fact, I would very much like to head in the other direction.”

“I’m not going in the other direction.”

“Where are you going, then?” She looked suddenly apprehensive.

He jerked his head toward the lights of Pelican Cay. “There.”

She turned to see where he’d indicated, and her apprehension faded a bit. She nodded her head. “That’ll be fine,” she said, glancing back at the lights of the yacht, then added, “Just let’s go, okay?”

Interesting. And odd how she could swim in shark-infested waters with complete aplomb and then freak out when she was perfectly safe. Unless she wasn’t perfectly safe.

“Did you steal something?” Hugh demanded, gaze narrowing.

“Steal something?” She looked shocked. “Whatever for?”

“How the hell should I know? You jumped off a bloody boat. Why the hell else would you run away?”

“I’m not running away!”

“Oh, right. I forgot. You were just proactively jumping into shark-infested waters miles from shore.” He kept his tone conversational. It was easy enough to call her a liar with his eyes.

For an instant her gaze slid away, but then she brought it back and met his squarely and Captain Ahab was back. “I needed to leave. That’s all.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look, will you just go?” she said. “I’ll tell you. I promise. I haven’t done anything wrong. I just need some space and a little time.” She wasn’t quite begging, but there was a definite urgency in her tone. She met his gaze steadily. “Please.”

There was, even now, a sense of self-possession about her. As edgy as she was, it was a polite please not a frantic please.

Cripes, maybe it had been a proactive jump.

He nodded and moved to start the engine. She stepped out of his way. He got it going but didn’t let out the throttle.

“What are you waiting for?” she demanded.

“You.”

She looked blank.

“Can’t go too fast,” he explained. “I won’t be able to hear you when you tell me why you jumped. And it better be good,” he warned her, “to make up for my record catch that got away.”

“I DON’T believe it,” the scruffy fisherman said flatly when Sydney told him what had prompted her to jump overboard.

She glared at him. Who gave him the right to pass judgment, for heaven’s sake? “Well, believe it or not, it’s true.”

“Let me get this straight. You jumped off a yacht in the middle of nowhere so you wouldn’t have to get married?” He all but rolled his eyes as he repeated the gist of what she’d said.

Her jaw tightened. “More or less.”

He rolled his eyes, then cocked his head and fixed his gaze on her. “Are you too young to remember the phrase Just Say No?”

“That was to say no to drugs.”

“It is possible,” the grubby fisherman pointed out, “to say no to other things.”

“Like baths and clean clothes?” she said sweetly, her gaze raking him.

He had at least a couple of days’ growth of beard on his face and he wore a pair of faded jean cutoffs and an equally faded short-sleeved shirt covered with outrageous cartoon flamingos and palm trees.

His dark brows drew down. “I’m clean,” he protested. “I took a swim this afternoon.”

“A swim?”

“Water’s water. Don’t change the subject. Why didn’t you just say no? No, thank you,” he corrected with a grin.

“Because,” she told him haughtily, “it wouldn’t have been efficacious.” She doubted he even knew what the word meant.

He repeated it. “Efficacious. What’s that when it’s at home?”

“Appropriate. Though I doubt you know what that means, either.”

“Me?” His brows went clear up into the fringe of hair that flopped over his forehead. “I don’t know what’s appropriate? Who jumped into the ocean miles from shore?”

She felt her face grow hot, but she refused to acknowledge the foolishness, even though now her knees were feeling like jelly. “It worked. They didn’t see me. No one saw me.”

“And that makes it appropriate?” He was almost shouting at her. “You’re a flaming idiot, you know that? If I hadn’t fished you out, you’d have drowned. Or been eaten by a shark.”

“I saw your boat.”

He stared at her as if she’d just escaped from Bedlam. “You saw my boat? A quarter of a bloody mile away?” He made it sound like rank idiocy. To him it obviously was. To her, at the time, it had been completely sensible and absolutely necessary.

There had been no other way.

She certainly couldn’t call Roland Carruthers, her father’s CEO, a liar! Not in front of the entire group of management and investors he’d brought together on the yacht to celebrate the acquisition of Butler Instruments by St. John Electronics.

And Roland had known it, damn him. That was why he hadn’t said a word to her beforehand, but had simply stepped up to the microphone and announced their impending marriage.

Tonight, he’d said in his charming, dark whiskey voice, they were in for a delightful surprise. Everyone was going to get a living example of how much of a real family St. John Electronics was because they were all going to be witnesses at his shipboard marriage to Simon St. John’s only daughter, Margaret Sydney St. John.

Her!

He had taken marriage—her marriage—and turned it into a business deal.

And then he’d had the temerity to meet her gaze and smile at her! As if she would approve!

Sydney had gone cold. And white. Stunned and speechless.

Which is probably exactly what he’d been counting on. And when she finally got her voice back, as he came over and put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, she still couldn’t say what she was thinking.

Because she knew better. Simon St. John had taught her well. The company always came first.

So there was no chance that Syd would undermine her father’s firm or his representatives in public. She always did what was “best for the company.” Corporate from her head to her toes, Syd would never gainsay his claim.

And Roland knew that. He’d played upon it, had counted on her agreement and on her going through with it because their marriage would be in the best interests of St. John Electronics.

But even though she might believe that, she couldn’t do it.

Not like this.

His announcement had shocked her to her core. Only years of social conditioning had prevented her from showing it on her face. But whether she was more shocked by his announcement or by her own reaction to it was something she was going to have to think about.

If he’d asked her to marry him, if he’d wooed her, charmed her, pretended to love her, Syd had the sneaking suspicion she might have said yes.

But he hadn’t. He’d presumed and simply expected her to go along with it—for the good of the company. Not because he loved her. Roland had never ever pretended to love her. They were business associates.

And yet he would have married her!

If she had been willing, Syd realized, she’d be Mrs. Roland Carruthers right now. No, she corrected herself, Roland would have been Mr. St. John Electronics.

Because it was all about business. Nothing else.

Yet if he had pretended—Syd shuddered to think about how close she might have come to agreeing, if he’d gone about it in a less manipulative fashion—she might have done it.

Thank God Roland dared to assume! Now she knew there was a line across which she wouldn’t go.

No matter how good it would be for St. John Electronics, no matter how happy their marriage would make her father, she would not marry for the company.

She would only marry for love.

But she couldn’t have said that in front of the guests!

She’d tried talking him out of it as he’d escorted her below to change into the silvery beaded dress. “This is crazy, Roland,” she’d said. “You’ve had too much sun.”

“On the contrary,” he’d assured her, “it’s exactly right. For everyone.” He’d turned a deaf ear to all her objections. “You know it’s for the best, Margaret.” He always called her Margaret because her father did. “Don’t act missish, my dear,” he’d said, steering her toward her stateroom. “It’s not like you.”

No. It wasn’t. But neither was just mindlessly doing what she was bullied into. And so she had shut the stateroom door on him.

“Hurry and change, Margaret,” he’d said. “Everyone is waiting.”

“I am not marrying you, Roland,” she’d said through the door.

“Oh, Margaret, for goodness’ sake,” he’d said with irritating good humor. “Stop fussing and get a move on. I’ll be on deck waiting for my bride.”

He’d had a long wait.

Syd had changed into the party dress so she could give the impression of cooperating if anyone saw her, then she’d gone back out and along the passage to the stern. She’d climbed the ladder to the deck, then stayed out of sight until no one was looking.

And she’d jumped.

“I’m a strong swimmer,” she told her sceptical rescuer firmly now. “I knew I could make it. And it was better than causing a fuss.”

“Getting eaten by a shark wouldn’t have caused a fuss?” He sounded furious. She didn’t understand why. He wasn’t the one who would have been fish food. But he was cracking his knuckles furiously and giving a sharp shake of his head.

“I didn’t think there were any fish around,” she said lamely.

His eyes flashed. “This is the ocean, sweetheart! Why the hell wouldn’t there be any fish?”

“You weren’t catching any,” she pointed out.

He made a strangled sound, yanked off his ugly faded baseball cap and shoved his hand through shaggy dark hair that could have used cutting. “How could I catch any damn fish,” he demanded, “with you kicking and floundering around out there? You were scaring them all away!”

“Even the sharks,” she added.

The glower was mutual this time. And who knew how long it would have lasted if his dog hadn’t nudged her way between them. Obviously a peacemaker. The dog—a border collie, Syd thought—grinned at her, looking much more reputable and a good deal friendlier than the fisherman.

Venturing a hand out to scratch the dog’s ears, Syd asked, “What’s her name?”

For a minute she didn’t think he was going to tell her. He pressed his lips together, then shrugged. “Belle.”

The dog wagged her tail at the sound of her name.

“Hello, Belle,” Syd crooned, rubbing the soft ears and getting rewarded with a lick of her hands. “You’re beautiful. I’m Syd.”

“Sid?” Belle’s owner echoed in disbelief.

“Syd with a Y. Sydney.” She hesitated, too, then told him her full name, “Margaret Sydney St. John,” and waited for the jolt of recognition.

He looked at her with no recognition at all. No awareness that he was talking to the woman whose father had invented one of the most important telecommunications networks in the world, a woman whose name had been all over the Bahamian papers in recent days as she and Roland Carruthers had been negotiating a buyout of a high-profile Bahamian firm. No clue that, according to people in the know, he was talking to one of the most eligible women in America.

He just looked blank, then reluctantly stuck out a fishy-smelling hand and said, “Hugh McGillivray.”

McGillivray. It figured.

He had that raw Scottish warrior look to him. Syd could imagine him with his face painted blue. She wondered how he’d look in a kilt and was surprised at the direction of her thoughts.

Abruptly she jerked them back to the moment and, reluctantly, took his offered hand. It was every bit as unnerving as she’d imagined it would be.

Used to shaking the soft hands of boardroom execs, she felt the difference immediately. Hugh McGillivray’s palm was hard and rough. There was a ragged bloody scratch on the back of his hand.

“Shark bite?” she asked.

His gaze narrowed. A corner of his mouth twitched. But then he shook his head solemnly. “Barracuda.”

She jerked and blinked in surprise, then swallowed hastily. “Really?”

Hugh McGillivray gave her an unholy grin. “Gotcha.”

HE DIDN’T believe a word of it.

Nobody jumped overboard to avoid getting married. It was preposterous. Ridiculous. Out of the question.

But it was her story and she’d stuck to it. Or at least she had so far.

Crazy woman.

Hugh shot her a glance now as he slowed the boat and headed it into Pelican Cay’s small harbor. Once she’d told him her amazing tale, he’d revved the engine and headed for the island, full speed ahead. Still, it had taken close to half an hour to get there, and the sun had gone down completely now.

In the darkness reflections streamed across the water from the row of street lamps along the quay and from the houses that fronted the harbor. The small houses that climbed the low hill of Pelican Town looked almost like dolls’ houses, tidy and laid-back and welcoming all at once.

Home. Hugh smiled as he always did at the sight, though he doubted it would impress Miss Margaret Sydney St. John. Why ever she did or didn’t jump off the boat, she’d clearly been on it. And that—and the way she looked down her lovely nose at him—told him that she was from a higher rung on the social ladder than him and most of the people who lived in Pelican Town or who made their living on the fishing boats bobbing in the harbor tonight.

Folks like them didn’t name their girls Sydney for one thing. Hugh snorted, thinking about it. Hell of a stupid name for a girl. He supposed her old man had been counting on a son.

Probably she was a “junior,” he thought with a wry grin. From what she’d said he gathered that her old man was married to his company and thought his daughter was merely an extension of it.

Not that she’d been complaining. God, no.

She had actually defended the old man and St. John Electronics fervently when he’d asked her why the hell she would care if she embarrassed its CEO by telling him hell no she wasn’t going to marry him.

“I couldn’t do that!” she’d protested. “It would have made the company look bad if Roland and I were at odds. Besides, it would upset my father.”

“You don’t think maybe hearing his daughter had been eaten by a shark would have upset him?” Hugh had demanded.

He was almost sorry he’d been so blunt when she’d gone white in the moonlight. It was, he realized, the first time she really seemed to consider the concrete implications of what she’d done.

But even then she’d given herself a little shake.

“I wasn’t eaten,” she’d reminded him almost defiantly.

But her tone didn’t sound quite as firm as it had. And she’d clutched the quilt around her even more tightly and determinedly looked away.

Hugh had left her to it. He’d kicked up the speed and focused on the island, only glancing her way occasionally and scowling as she looped an arm companionably over Belle and drew his dog inside the quilt with her.

Belle was still there now, snuggled in. Hugh shut his eyes and tried not to think about it.

He was having way too strong a reaction to Margaret Sydney St. John. It disconcerted him. The only woman who’d inspired anything like it had been Carin—for all the good that had done him. He had no interest in having reactions like that ever again—and certainly not about a crazy woman!

It wasn’t really her per se, he assured himself, gorgeous though she was. It was just the lack of any other woman in his life. In his bed.

Plagued as he had been every waking moment this summer by the determined attentions of the sweet marriageable Lisa, he’d found other women tended to give him a wide berth.

“You have a girlfriend,” they always explained when they turned him down for dates.

“She’s not my girlfriend!” Hugh had claimed over and over.

But the protest fell on deaf ears. And on Lisa’s ears. And Lisa ignored them.

“Well, if I’m not your girlfriend, who is?” Lisa had asked confidently.

“I don’t have a girlfriend!” he’d protested.

Too much.

Women! Hugh despaired of them. They were all crazy as loons.

At least this one—Miss Margaret Sydney St. John—would be out of his life damn quick.

As soon as he got her to shore, he’d take her to the Moonstone, his brother Lachlan’s inn, where she could spend the night. From there she could call Daddy. In the morning her old man could come rescue her, and she’d be gone within the day.

Hugh would never see her again and that would be fine with him.

He was still a little nettled that she hadn’t been a big fish.

She’d jerked his line exactly like a big fish, he thought irritably. Lachlan was going to laugh his head off when he heard that Hugh had caught a woman.

Behind him the woman he’d caught drew in a sharp breath. He looked around. “What’s the matter now?” he asked gruffly.

“Nothing’s the matter. It’s—” she waved her hand toward the harbor and the town “—so beautiful. That’s all. It’s like paradise.” She beamed at him.

Hugh knew what she meant. He felt exactly the same way. But he scowled because he didn’t like the way her approval and her smile had slipped under his defenses. He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck.

“I like it,” he admitted. He spent a moment savoring it again before he continued, “But it’s not exactly ritzy. There are a few inns and resorts on the windward side of the island. One pretty posh one on the north end. The Mirabelle. My brother owns it. I’ll take you there for the night.”

“No!” Her rejection was a yelp.

Hugh frowned. “What do you mean, no?”

“Sorry. I just mean, I don’t want to go there.”

“You’ve never even seen it! It’s beautiful. A class place. Maybe not five-star like I’m sure you’re accustomed to…” he drawled, irritated now.

“I don’t care how many stars it does or doesn’t have. I don’t want to go to an inn or a resort. I want to be…incognito.”

His mouth quirked. “Incognito, huh?” He doubted if Sydney St. John had ever said the word incognito before, much less applied it to herself. Even in her current padded-blanket guise with salt-encrusted hair clumped and straggly, she was a shockingly beautiful—and memorable—woman.

“Yeah,” he said, looking her slowly up and down. “I can see you being incognito. Sure. Right.”

She tossed her head. “I can be. I need to be!” she said fiercely. “I have to think about what to do, how to handle things.”

“You could already have handled things,” Hugh felt obliged to point out, “if you’d just said no in the first place.”

She gave him an impatient look. “I already told you, I couldn’t. It would have messed up everything.”

He couldn’t see that, but obviously he wasn’t as crazy as she was. Nor was he a woman. He figured you’d have to be one or the other to have it make sense to you. “Well, fine. Whatever. Then there’s the Moonstone. It’s pretty cool. An old Victorian place.”

“No inns.”

He rolled his eyes. “Then stay at a B&B. We’ve got at least half a dozen of those.”

“Too public. He’d check.”

“So what are you planning to do? Sleep on the beach?” he asked sarcastically.

She missed the sarcasm. “I’d be far too noticeable if I did that.” She cast about and spied the sleeping bag beneath the bow. “I’ll sleep here,” she said brightly.

“The hell you will!”

He could just see that—the fishermen of Pelican Cay grumbling and bumbling their way down to their boats in the morning and getting an eyeful of Sydney St. John crawling out of his sleeping bag.

She’d shock the socks off the entire fleet! And then what would she do? Amble down the dock to use the facilities at the Customs house dressed in nothing but Belle’s quilt? Or worse, without Belle’s quilt!

Hugh shook his head vehemently, cutting the engine off as they drifted toward the dock. “Not on your life. Uh-uh. No way. Don’t even think it.”

But obviously she was. “I wouldn’t hurt anything. I’d clean up after myself.” She looked around the boat. “After you,” she amended, wrinkling her nose. “This boat could use a good scrubbing.”

“It’s a boat, for God’s sake, not a floor,” he protested. They bumped against the rubber-tire-edged dock.

“Even so, a little soap and water wouldn’t hurt it,” she informed him primly.

“No.” He grabbed the stern line and wrapped it around the cleat on the dock, then jumped out to do the same with the bow.

The crazy woman followed him, letting Belle out of the quilt and giving Hugh tantalizing glimpses of bare flesh. “Don’t be so negative, McGillivray,” she bargained. “Just one night. Or two. I’ll scrub the decks for you. Slap on some paint. I like being useful.”

“No. You’d give the fishermen heart attacks.” He jumped back into the boat and brushed past her, reaching for the cooler.

“I could stay hidden until they left.”

“No.”

“Then how about if I stay with you?”

“Me?” Hugh blanched and jerked around to glare at her. “You don’t want to stay with me.”

“I certainly don’t,” she agreed readily. “But I need somewhere that Roland won’t find me.”

“Not my place. I live in a shack.”

Which wasn’t quite true. His place was small, granted, but it wasn’t falling down. It overlooked the beach on the windward side of the island. It was old and comfortable. Perfect for him—and far too small for entertaining the likes of Sydney St. John.

“A shack, huh? Why am I not surprised?” she murmured.

He rose to the bait. “By your standards,” he clarified, “it would be a shack. By mine it’s just right.”

“I’m sure it is. And for me it will be, too—for a short time. Just until I get my head together, McGillivray. Just until I figure out a plan of action. And give Roland pause for thought. I won’t be any trouble,” she promised.