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.
And if he believed that, next thing you knew she’d be selling him a bridge from Nassau to Miami.
“There is no room,” Hugh said firmly. “It’s just a little beach house. Not your style.”
“How do you know my style?”
“I know women.”
“Oh, really?”
The doubt that dripped from her words infuriated him. He did know women. They’d been coming on to him since he was fourteen years old. And generally speaking they liked what they saw. It was only Sydney St. John who looked at him as if she’d found him on the sole of her shoe.
“Like I said,” he told her gruffly, “I’m not your style.”
“I can stand anything for a few days,” she informed him.
“Well, I can’t. And there is nothing you can say that will—” He broke off at the sound of a shrill, happy voice calling his name from the end of the quay. He gritted his teeth and shut his eyes. “Damn it to hell.”
Sydney St. John looked at him, startled. “What?”
“Nothing.” He finished tossing the last of the gear onto the dock, grabbed his bag with one hand and took Syd’s arm none too gently with the other. Then he turned toward the woman approaching them and managed a casual and determinedly indifferent, “Hey, there, Lisa. How you doing?”
Lisa flashed him her beautiful, dimpled smile even as she looked curiously at the woman he held firmly at his side. “I’m all right,” she said, her voice a little hesitant for once. “But I was a little lonely. I thought you’d get back sooner than this.”
“I told you I had, um…business,” Hugh said vaguely.
“Business?” The smile wavered as Lisa looked at Syd. “Of course,” she said, slotting Syd into that role. “I didn’t realize you were bringing a client back with you.” She gave Syd a polite smile, then turned back to Hugh. “I made conch chowder this evening. I figured I’d bring it over when you got back.”
He shook his head. “Thanks, Lisa. I appreciate the thought. But we’re fine.”
Lisa’s smile faltered as he had hoped it would. “We?” Perplexed, she looked from Hugh to the woman standing beside him, the woman whose wrist he had a death grip on.
“We,” Hugh confirmed. He let go of her wrist long enough to loop an arm over her shoulders. “This is Syd—” he began, but Sydney cut him off before he got to her last name.
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” she said smoothly and offered Lisa a hand.
Lisa looked at it warily, but finally shook it, giving the quilt—and the bits of bare Sydney she could see—an assessing look. “You, too, um, Syd,” she said doubtfully even as she managed to paste the smile back on. “I’m Lisa. Are you staying at the Mirabelle? Or