or two bother her,” he said. “I’ll fix us something to eat.” The door banged shut behind him.
There were no spiders. There were no snakes. She was alone. And suddenly every bit of the adrenaline that had been fueling her since Roland’s astonishing announcement vanished.
Her breath came in quick thready gasps. Her heart beat in a crazy staccato rhythm. Her vision darkened, and the room seemed to spin.
“Oh, help!” She groped for something to hang on to and grabbed the towel rack—right off the wall.
The door burst open.
“For God’s sake!” McGillivray kicked the towel rack aside and crouched beside her on the floor. “What the hell happened?”
“N-nothing. I…n-nothing.” She tried to get up, but found herself shoved down again and held fast.
“Did you faint?”
“Of course not!” But her brain was still spinning and her legs felt like mush. Even so, she squirmed against his hold.
“Stay still,” McGillivray commanded and thrust her head unceremoniously between her knees. “Take deep breaths—and don’t faint again!”
“I didn’t faint!” she said again for all the good it did her.
As if it were a matter of choice, anyway, she thought grimly, sucking in oxygen, doing her best not to make a liar out of herself, while a firm hand pressed against the back of her neck.
“Breathe, damn it.”
“I’m trying—” gulp, gulp “—to.”
“Then stop talking. Breathe deeper. Big breaths.”
God, he was bossy! “I’m all right,” she protested. “I just…tripped.”
“Yeah, right. Breathe.”
She did. And the blood thrummed in her ears and her heart slammed against the wall of her chest. But gradually her heart slowed, her vision returned. McGillivray’s callused hand, though, held her head firmly down.
She shifted. “I’m all right now,” she insisted, and pushed back against his hand.
He eased the pressure a bit. “Take it easy.” He watched her warily as she straightened up, as if expecting her to go headfirst onto the floor again.
Determined not to, she took another deep breath and sat up straight. The quilt fell away from her shoulders.
McGillivray’s breath hissed through his teeth. Reaching over, he jerked the quilt back up and wrapped it tightly around her again.
Surprised, Syd looked up at him.
He glared back at her. “What?”
“Nothing. I just…you seem…” She was babbling, but she couldn’t help it. “I didn’t think—” But it did make sense of things.
“You didn’t think what?” he demanded.
“That you were gay.”
“What?” He jerked as if she’d shot him. “What the hell do you mean, I’m gay?” McGillivray’s voice was a roar.
“Well, you keep covering me up!” Syd shouted back at him. “As if the sight offends you! I know I’m no raving beauty—” God knew Roland had been quite capable of resisting her “—but I’m passably attractive. At least, no one else has ever been at such pains not to have to look at me.”
He snorted and scrambled to his feet, as if putting as much distance between them as he could. “And that makes me gay?”
“I just thought… You said Lisa wasn’t your girlfriend. You were very…adamant about it. And you said your sister thought she was trying to, um, save you from yourself.”
It all made sense as far as Syd could see. “I don’t mind if you are,” she told him.
“Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“Well, I—”
He straightened up, wincing a little as he did so, then glowered down at her. “Do I look like I’m gay, sweetheart?” he drawled.
From her vantage point, at the level of his hairy, tanned knees, Syd looked slowly up—and came to the very obvious evidence that he was not.
“Oh,” she said in a very small voice.
McGillivray looked somewhere between pained and gratified at her realization. “Exactly,” he muttered.
Syd knew her face was burning. “Um…sorry. Is there…anything I can do?”
McGillivray goggled at her. “Are you for real?”
God, she might go up in flames! “I didn’t mean that!” she protested. “I just—never mind!” Obviously, she wasn’t good at this sort of thing.
“I’ll live,” McGillivray said dryly in the face of her confusion. Then he reached out a hand. “Here. Can you stand on your own two feet?”
“Yes, of course.” She would have declined his hand altogether but she was afraid she might fall over if she did. But somehow, touching him, knowing the effect she’d had on him, made her let go the second she was upright. “I’m all right,” she assured him. “Really. I just got a bit light-headed for a moment. I didn’t faint!” she added when she saw the gleam in his eyes.
“Whatever you say,” he replied gravely, but the gleam was still there.
And something else.
Attraction? Certainly it was something electric. Awareness seemed to sizzle between them for just a moment.
Abruptly, McGillivray looked away. His jaw tightened, and he wiped his hands down the sides of his shorts and turned toward the door.
“Hurry up,” he told her, his voice raspy. “I’m burning the bacon.”
The door banged shut behind him, and Syd was left in the same bathroom she’d been in moments before.
But something had changed. Something was different. There was an electricity lingering in the air. Syd was used to electricity. She felt it whenever she was in the midst of closing a business deal, when things were coming together, when an energy seemed to take over of its own accord.
It felt like that now.
And there was no business deal. No business at all.
Just awareness. Man-woman awareness. McGillivray had wanted her. Physically.
Intellectually, of course, Syd knew all about that sort of thing. Men—heterosexual ones—lusted after women. But, generally speaking, men had never really lusted after her.
They had mostly been interested in her as her father’s daughter. Roland certainly hadn’t given her cause for believing that his interest in marrying her had anything to do with her innate attractiveness. He had been going to marry her because it was good for business.
He’d never even pretended otherwise.
How mortifying was that?
Pretty mortifying. But it would have been even more so if McGillivray hadn’t so clearly felt otherwise.
She felt suddenly, exquisitely, aware of her own nakedness.
She’d stripped her dress off in the boat without even thinking, without expecting a reaction at all. She’d never even considered he might react. Roland had been impervious to her charms. Why should she have expected anyone else to succumb?
Not that McGillivray had succumbed, she reminded herself, as she stepped beneath the shower spray. But he had been interested. Physically responsive.
The knowledge made her smile. It made her feel alive. It made her feel desirable in her own right—as a woman—and not just