demons, more like. And regardless of his mother’s strictures, Lachlan had done his best to chase them away. He’d snarled at them, growled at them, roared at them. He’d threatened them and slammed his bedroom door on them. But they’d persisted.
“They admire you,” his mother had said.
“They’re trying to drive me crazy,” Lachlan replied.
But nothing had got rid of them until the day Fiona had heard him telling a college girl he’d met on the beach how awful it was living on Pelican Cay and how glad he’d be to leave.
“It’s the end of the earth,” he’d said. “There’s nothing worth having here.”
“So leave,” Fiona had blurted, her fury turning her complexion as red as her hair.
As he hadn’t been talking to her—hadn’t even realized she was nearby—he and the girl he’d been talking to had both stared at her in surprise.
“Just get on a boat and get out of here,” Fiona had gone on angrily. “Or better yet, swim. Maybe you’ll drown! Go to hell, Lachlan McGillivray!” And she’d spun away and run down the beach.
“Who’s that?” the blonde had asked him. “And what’s her problem?”
Lachlan, embarrassed, had shrugged. “Who knows? That’s Fiona. She’s just a nutty kid.”
And he would be extremely glad when she grew up!
Or at least he’d thought he would be.
Somehow, though, Fiona Dunbar, all grown-up, turned out to be worse.
Her stick-straight body had developed curves somewhere along the way. Her carroty red hair, which back then had been ruthlessly tamed into a long ponytail, had, in the past couple of years, become a free loose fiery curtain of auburn silk that begged to be touched. As did her skin which was creamy except where it was golden with freckles. And that was the most perverse thing of all—even her freckles enticed him!
It wasn’t fair.
He hadn’t come back to Pelican Cay to notice Fiona Dunbar! Perversely, though, he couldn’t seem to help it. She was here. She was unattached. And she was, by far, the most beautiful woman on the island.
But unlike every other woman between the ages of seven and seventy—virtually all of whom had fallen all over themselves trying to impress Lachlan McGillivray during his soccer-playing career—Fiona Dunbar wanted nothing to do with him.
So he wasn’t God’s gift to all women. Lachlan still had had more than his share of groupies over the years. And while he didn’t think he was drop-dead handsome, women seemed to like his deep blue eyes, his crooked grin and his hard dark looks.
Wherever he’d gone, certainly plenty of women had followed—chatting him up in bars, tucking their phone numbers in the pockets of his shirts and trousers, ringing him at all hours of the day and night, clamoring to be the one in his bed on any given night—even offering him their underwear!
Four years ago, at the height of Lachlan’s popularity, a magazine interviewer witnessing a woman doing just that, had asked him if that sort of thing happened often.
“Well, sometimes,” Lachlan had admitted honestly because it was only the truth. And then because that sounded arrogant, he’d joked, “But I only keep the red ones.”
And just like that, dear God, an urban legend had been born!
Two days after the magazine hit the stands the first pair of red panties arrived in his mail. Dozens more followed. He’d been deluged—at his home, at the club, at the hotels on the road. More stories followed. And so did more pairs of panties. Before long every scandal sheet across Europe was filled with women claiming their panties were the centerpiece of Lachlan McGillivray’s collection.
It didn’t matter that none of it was true, it was a great story.
Next thing he knew he had a worldwide fan club whose membership was three-quarters women. The club sent out thousands of autographed pictures of him leaping, legs and arms outstretched, to make a spectacular save.
“They admire my ability,” Lachlan said modestly whenever he had been asked about the extent of his popularity.
“They admire your legs,” his sister Molly had said flatly, shaking her head at the extent of female idiocy. “Men in shorts! Some women just can’t get enough of them.”
Most women, in Lachlan’s experience.
Not Fiona Dunbar.
She hated him. Eighteen months ago she’d proved it. He and a couple of his teammates had come to Pelican Cay to visit his brother, Hugh, over Christmas. Molly had gone to see their parents in Virginia, but because he had work to do in the islands, Hugh couldn’t go. So, feeling a bit homesick, he had invited his brother to visit him for the holidays.
“Not that I expect you to come,” he’d said cavalierly. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of other more fascinating places to go.”
Lachlan had. Between the demands of goalkeeping and his frenetic social life—even without the red panties collection it was pretty hectic—there was rarely a dull moment. That Christmas he’d gone to Monaco to live it up day and night with a girl called Lisette. Or was it Claudine? Suzanne?
Or all of the above. The fact was, there had been plenty—more than plenty—of willing women.
Two days before New Year’s, though, exhausted from a season of hard work and a holiday of hard play, he thought that spending a week or so of solitary celibate days on a deserted pink sand beach sounded like heaven.
He’d said as much to Joaquin Santiago and Lars Erik Lindquist, two of his equally hard-driving, hard-living teammates. And twenty-four hours later, the three of them had arrived on Pelican Cay.
Still hung over when Hugh met them in Nassau, Lachlan had sworn, “No booze. No babes. Just sand and sun and sleep.” And at his brother’s disbelieving look, he’d yawned and nodded as firmly as his aching head would permit. “My New Year’s resolutions.”
Bad news, then, that the first person he saw later that day was a Titian-haired beauty in a bikini sashaying past Hugh’s tiny house, heading toward the beach.
“Who the hell is that?”
“Fiona,” Hugh said offhandedly. “Dunbar,” he’d added at Lachlan’s blank look. “You remember—Molly’s friend.”
“Fiona?” Lachlan’s voice had cracked with disbelief. “That’s Fiona Dunbar?” That total knockout?
Hugh grinned. “Doesn’t much look like Fiona the ferret these days, does she?” That was what they had dubbed her at age ten, when she and Molly the mole had been sneaking around after them every day.
Lachlan sucked air. No, she didn’t look much like Fiona the ferret. She looked drop-dead gorgeous. Delectable. Beddable.
His “no babes” resolution began to crack. He kept an eye out for her after that. But while he saw her frequently over the next
