The water was steel grey, fathoms deep, and it was a mass of...
Puffins. Puffins!
Alasdair cut the motor to just enough power to keep clear of the cliffs. The motor was muted to almost nothing.
The puffins were everywhere, dotted over the sea as if someone had sprinkled confetti—only this confetti was made up of birds, duck-sized but fatter, black and white with extraordinary bright orange bills; puffins that looked exactly like the ones Jeanie had seen in so many magazines, on so many posters, but only ever once in real life and that so long ago it seemed like a dream.
Comical, cute—beautiful.
‘They have fish,’ she breathed. ‘That one has... It must be at least three fish. More. Oh, my...I’d forgotten. There’s another. And another. Why don’t they just swallow them all at once?’
‘Savouring the pleasure?’ Alasdair said, smiling just as Aladdin’s genie might have done in the ancient fairy tale. Granting what he knew was a wish...
‘You look like a benevolent Santa,’ Jeanie told him and he raised his brows.
‘Is that an accusation?’
‘I... No.’ Because it wasn’t. It was just a statement.
Though he didn’t actually look like Santa, Jeanie conceded. This was no fat, jolly old man.
Though she didn’t need to be told that. His skill at the wheel was self-evident.
Sex on legs...
The description hit her with a jolt, and with it came a shaft of pure fear. Because that had been how she’d once thought of Alan.
Life with Rory had been...safe. He’d lived and dreamed fishing and would never have left the island. He was content to do things as his father and grandfather had done before him. His mother cooked and cleaned and was seemingly content, so he didn’t see that Jeanie could possibly want more.
He was a good man, solid and dependable, and his death had left Jeanie devastated. But two years later Alan had blasted himself into her life. She’d met him and she’d thought...
Yep, sex on legs.
More. She’d thought he was everything Rory hadn’t been. He was exciting, adventurous, willing and wanting to try everything life had to offer. He’d taken her off the island and exposed her to a life that...
That she never wanted to go back to. A life that was shallow, mercenary, dangerous—even cruel.
Alan was a McBride, just as this man was.
Sex on legs? Get a grip, she told herself. Have you learned nothing? The only one who’ll keep yourself safe is yourself.
But she didn’t want to be safe, a little voice whispered, and she looked at Alasdair and she could see the little voice’s reasoning but she wasn’t going there. She wasn’t.
‘If you want to know the truth, I read about them last night,’ Alasdair told her. He was watching the puffins—thankfully. How much emotion could he read in her face? ‘They can carry up to ten small fish in their beaks at a time. It’s a huge genetic advantage—they don’t waste energy swallowing and regurgitating, and they can carry up to ten fish back to their burrows. Did you know their burrows can be up to two feet deep? And those beaks are only bright orange in the breeding season. They’ll shed the colour soon and go back to being drab and ordinary.’
‘They could never be ordinary,’ she managed, turning to watch a puffin floating by the boat with...how many fish in its beak? Five. She got five.
She was concentrating fiercely on counting. Alasdair was still talking...and he usually didn’t talk. He’d swotted up for today, she thought. Was finding out how many fish a puffin could hold a seduction technique?
The thought made her smile. No, she decided, and it settled her. He was taking her out today simply to be nice. He wasn’t interested in her, or, if he was, it’d be a mere momentary fancy, as Alan’s had been.
So get yourself back to basics, she told herself. Eileen had offered Alan money to marry her. She knew that now. The knowledge had made her feel sick, and here was another man who’d been paid to marry her.
Sex on legs? Not so much. He was a husband who was hers because of money.
Hold that thought.
‘Will we eat lunch here?’ she asked, suddenly brisk, unwinding herself from the back seat on the boat and heading for the picnic basket. ‘Can you throw down anchor or should we eat on the way back?’
‘We have time to eat here.’ He was watching her, his brows a question. ‘Jeanie, how badly did Alan hurt you?’
‘I have sandwiches and quiche and salad and boiled eggs. I also have brownies and apples. There’s beer, wine or soda. Take your pick.’
‘You mean you’re not going to tell me?’
‘Past history. Moving on...’
‘I won’t hurt you.’
‘I know you won’t,’ she said briskly. ‘Because I won’t let you. This is a business arrangement, Alasdair, nothing more.’
‘And today?’
‘Is my payment for past services.’ She was finding it hard to keep her voice even but she was trying. ‘You’ve offered and I’ve accepted. It’s wonderful—no, it’s magic—to be eating lunch among the puffins. It’s a gift. I’m very, very grateful but I’m grateful as an employee’s grateful to her boss for a day off. Nothing more.’
‘It’s not a day off. It’s a week almost completely off and then I’m halving your duties for double the wages.’
Whoa? Double wages?
She should refuse, she thought, but then...why not just be a grateful employee? That was what she was, after all.
‘Excellent,’ she said and passed the sandwiches. ‘Take a sandwich—sir.’
* * *
Employer/employee. That was a relationship that’d work, he thought, and it was fine with him—wasn’t it?
He was grateful to Jeanie. She’d agreed to marry him, and in doing so she’d saved the estate. More, she’d made Eileen’s last years happy. He was doing what he could to show he was grateful and she was accepting with pleasure.
It should be enough.
Their puffin expedition was magic. For Alasdair, who’d seen them so often in the past, they should feel almost commonplace, but in watching Jeanie watch them he was seeing them afresh. They were amazing creatures—and Jeanie’s reaction was magic.
She tried hard to be prosaic, he thought. Her reactions to him were down-to-earth and practical, and she tried to tone down her reactions to the birds, but he watched her face, he watched the awe as she saw the birds dive and come up with beaks stuffed with rows of silver fish, he watched her turn her face to the sun
