Every time she had lifted her gaze to look at his face, his eyes were open. He had been staring into the distance—at the ceiling, out the window, anywhere but at her.
And when she called him back to her, when she whispered his name or touched his cheek with her fingers or pressed a kiss into his shoulder or along his jaw, he looked at her then, but only briefly. He smiled, but it seemed a sad smile, a distant smile.
She told herself he loved her. He had to.
He couldn’t possibly have made love like that and not cared. Could he?
They had slept together all night long. He held her in his arms.
But all the words she wanted to hear, he never spoke.
And now, this morning, when she awoke, he wasn’t there.
His side of the bed was cold and empty, and Syd felt a moment’s panic, as if the memory had been a dream and the reality was that he hadn’t come back at all.
But then she heard his voice outside, talking to someone, sounding easy and normal, and she knew it hadn’t been a dream. And for a few minutes she lay back and dared to hope.
The sun was shining. The air was fresh. There was only the slightest breeze coming in off the sea. She dressed and went out onto the porch to find that he had put everything back on it—the hammock, the porch swing, the shelves with the snorkeling gear, even the stack of magazines.
Exactly the way she’d had it.
What about getting his life back? Doing things the way he wanted them done? What about that?
She smiled. Her hopes rose a notch.
He hadn’t seen her yet. He was shoveling hard and furious, his back already slick with sweat as he cleared the sand off the walk.
“Good morning,” she said.
He jerked, then swung around, but his eyes were hooded, his expression unreadable. “Morning.”
She almost said something about the way he’d put things back on the porch, then decided she’d better not. So she contented herself with “I can’t believe how beautiful it is. Cool. Quiet. You’d never think that last night we nearly got blown away. What a difference a day makes.”
Their gazes met—and though she was sure this time what he was thinking—that today things were indeed different between them than yesterday—she still didn’t have a clue what he thought about that.
And he wasn’t going to tell her. He simply nodded. “Yeah.”
Then he turned and gazed out toward the beach and the sea, which now lapped calmly on the sand. “Turk Sawyer just came by. Wanted to know if you’d like to go scavenging with him and the Cashes.”
“Scavenging?”
“Looking for stuff after the storm. He said he told you that they got a lot of good stuff that way. They’re going out this morning. Thought you might like to come along. You can see ’em down the beach there.” He jerked his head toward the point and, through the bushes, Syd could just make out three small figures moving slowly down the beach. One was pushing a wheelbarrow.
“Turk said if you wanted, you were welcome to catch up with them. They’d be glad to have you along.” He looked as if he was surprised to be reporting such an invitation.
Syd was gratified to have received it. It meant she had connected with Turk and the Cash brothers. It meant she hadn’t lost her touch.
Not with most people, anyway. She wasn’t sure about Hugh.
She wished he would smile at her, wished he would lean his shovel against the wall and come to her and take her in his arms.
But she’d pushed him as far as she dared. The rest was up to him.
Maybe if she went with Turk and the Cashes, he would have time to think about what had happened between them. Or maybe he would ask her to stay and spend the morning with him.
“I believe I will go,” she decided. “Unless,” she added, “you’d rather I stuck around?” She made it a question, but she didn’t want to hint too broadly.
Hugh shrugged and went back to shoveling. “Have a good time.”
HARD work was good for what ailed you.
His father had always said that. So had Aunt Esme. The U.S. Navy certainly believed it.
Hugh believed it, too.
But hard work wasn’t helping this time. Not helping at all. He spent the morning shoveling and sweeping and cleaning and reopening the shutters and doing whatever repairs needed to be done. The house looked great—better than it ever had.
Then he started on the roof. He’d bought the shingles last year, but he hadn’t bothered to put them on because the rains hadn’t been bad. Now it seemed like a good time to get to work. And from up there he could keep an eye on Syd and the oldsters as they ambled down the beach.
He’d been amazed when Turk had appeared this morning, voluntarily coming to seek her out. Turk and the Cashes might not be bona fide recluses, but they were very close. And yet Syd had charmed them. She’d talked to them about their work, encouraged them to talk to her. It was clear that all three old men were pretty impressed by her.
“She’s got a way about her, that ’un,” Turk said.
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.”
CHAPTER TEN
FOR 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 mig
ht. 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.”
“WE’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.
ROLAND 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 l
ong 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.”
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