laughed openly. ‘I’ll come.’
‘Are you sure?’ She eyed him anxiously.
‘I’m sure.’
Sienna pulled herself out of the pool, entirely unaware, as she had her back to him, how he studied her sleek slender figure as water streamed off her. Then she turned round and planted her hands on her hips.
‘But…’ she began—and couldn’t go on as she realized she seemed to be under a rather particular scrutiny from her patient.
And indeed, high, perfect little breasts with delicious peaks, Finn McLeod found himself thinking as he gazed up at her, not to mention those tantalizing hips. What kind of a mix would his no-nonsense physiotherapist with that desirable figure be in bed?
‘But…’ Sienna said again—and again couldn’t seem to go on.
Finn grimaced and swam out into the middle of the pool. ‘I am coming to your sister’s wedding, Ms Torrance, that’s final.’
Sienna decided not to call her mother that night. She still couldn’t quite believe Finn McLeod would accompany her to Dakota’s wedding, or that she should let him. So she thought she’d wait a day or two before breaking the news. She was still curiously perturbed by those moments beside the pool when she’d completely lost the thread of what she’d been going to say!
Her mother had other ideas, however. She rang Sienna from a private line so the number wasn’t displayed on the mobile screen.
Sienna answered a bit distractedly as she cooked a pasta dish for her dinner. ‘Hello, Sienna Torrance here.’
‘I know, darling,’ her mother’s voice said down the line. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been a bit sneaky. This is not my phone. I didn’t want you to know it was me in case you didn’t want to talk to me.’
‘Mum—’ Sienna felt a shaft of guilt as she put the phone on its stand and turned on the loudspeaker ‘—of course not.’ She drizzled the pasta with garlic butter and freshly chopped herbs. ‘I—’
‘But I just wanted to tell you again that I know it would be difficult for you to come to the wedding. Please don’t think I—we’re being thoughtless and only thinking of Dakota, although she is miserable and—’
‘Mum,’ Sienna broke in as she scooped some pine nuts into her pasta, ‘it’s OK. I’ve been able to get a weekend off for the wedding, but could I bring someone with me?’
‘Who?’
‘Well, a friend—’
‘A man?’
‘Yes, he is.’ Sienna deployed a pasta spoon on the mixture.
‘Oh, my darling,’ her mother breathed, ‘of course you can! Who is he? Tell me about him. You haven’t ever mentioned him, but you must know him pretty well if you want to bring him to Dakota’s wedding! Is he nice? Of course he would be! Is he good-looking?’
Sienna abandoned the spoon and closed her eyes. ‘Mum, we’re just…friends.’
‘What’s his name?’
Sienna hesitated, then said reluctantly, ‘Finn McLeod.’
‘Not—not those McLeods?’
‘Yes, but—now listen to me, Mum, I don’t want you to tell a soul otherwise I won’t come. It’s—we’re just friends.’
‘Your secret is perfectly safe with me,’ her mother said with a tinge of reproach, but added immediately, ‘That’s wonderful news. I’m so happy for you! Oh, darling, I have to go, I borrowed this mobile phone and it’s blinking red lights at me now. I think the battery may be going but we’ll talk soon…’
Her mother’s voice faded away.
Sienna switched off her phone, then banged her head against the corkboard on the kitchen wall, twice.
How could her pleasant if uneventful life have turned into such a minefield in the space of twenty-four hours?
I’ll tell you, she told herself grimly. Pride. And little white lies.
Then she sniffed and realized her pasta was burning. She turned the plate off, pushed the pan away, suddenly not hungry in the slightest. She poured herself a glass of white wine, which she took outside onto the balcony.
Dusk was drawing in and it was cooler but still humid. A family of squeakers, raucous, bright-eyed, inquisitive little birds, was settling down in a grevillea tree that clung to the slope below the building. The creamy cone-shaped grevillea flower heads with their delicate tendrils glowed almost candlelike in the gathering gloom.
But what occupied her mind was the distinct possibility that Finn McLeod could shortly find his name linked to one Sienna Torrance, whether he liked it or not.
So what do I do about that? she wondered.
Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? I have to nip this in the bud. No more pride, no more little white lies, and the sooner the better.
It was Walt who admitted her to Eastwood an hour later and showed her into the den.
Finn was sitting on a settee watching cricket on a large-screen television. There was a coffee-pot and two cups on a table in front of him. He wore a white cotton shirt and cargo pants. His cane was leaning against the settee beside him.
‘Sienna,’ he murmured in a way that she couldn’t identify as welcoming or unwelcoming—actually quite noncommittal, she decided, and flinched inwardly.
He also took his time about looking her over.
She’d changed after making the phone call to ask if she could come and see him, into a silky lemon blouse tucked into indigo jeans. Her hair, straight and shoulder-length and usually tied back in a pony-tail, was loose and naturally streaked light and darker honey-gold, and held back by a silver slide on one side.
For some reason, his appraisal of her caused her to look down at herself, but she couldn’t see anything wrong with her outfit and she looked up and into his eyes with a faint frown.
He shrugged. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you out of track suits, swimmers and pony-tails. You scrub up well.’
She blinked and a ghost of humour lit his eyes.
‘Believe me,’ he murmured.
‘I—thank you. So do you, for that matter.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Finn, I’m really sorry about coming to see you like this, but it is Friday, so I wouldn’t have seen you until Monday in the normal course of events and it wouldn’t be easy to do over the phone.’
‘That’s OK. Sit down and pour the coffee,’ he invited. ‘Something’s come up?’ he hazarded.
‘Yes, my mother,’ Sienna said exasperatedly and poured the coffee before she went on, sitting adjacent to him in an armchair. ‘Please believe me when I say I love my mother dearly, but this is what happened.’
