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 few days, she never came near.
She was taking care of her father, Hugh told him. A former fisherman, Tom Dunbar had had a stroke some years back, not long after Fiona had graduated from high school. She’d spent the next ten years taking care of him.
“And working,” Hugh said. “She works at Carin Campbell’s gift shop. And she sculpts.”
“Sculpts?” Lachlan had looked doubtful.
“Oh yeah. Sand sculptures. Shells. Even metal. Cuts them and bends them into shape—like paper dolls.”
Lachlan couldn’t imagine. But he wandered down to Carin’s shop later that day to buy some postcards, and he found quite a few of Fiona’s pieces. He had to admit they were pretty impressive—pelicans and other shore birds, palm trees and hammocks and fishermen. She was selling sketches there, too. And caricatures.
Then he realized that the witty sculpture Hugh had hanging in his house—one of him looping the loop in his seaplane—was a Fiona Dunbar piece, as was the caricature of Maurice at the custom’s house taxi stand, and the one of Miss Saffron the straw lady which he spotted hanging on her porch.
She drew caricatures of tourists and sold them the sketches on the beach. She even drew Lars Erik and Joaquin as they’d ogled the bikini-clad women on the beach. He knew that because Lars Erik had bought it from her.
She drew everybody and their dog. But she never drew him.
It rankled. Lachlan didn’t like being ignored—particularly when he hadn’t managed to ignore her.
Finally, when a week had gone by and she hadn’t even said hello to him, he’d had enough, especially since he’d just told Joaquin and Lars Erik that he’d known her for years.
“I don’t believe it,” Lars Erik said.
They were sitting in the Grouper, drinking beer, and Fiona had just come in, carrying a folder with some sketches in it, which she’d hugged against her breasts as she scanned the room. She’d spared Lars Erik a brief smile, but had skipped right over Lachlan as if he were invisible.
“She’s just miffed because a long time ago I didn’t like her precious island,” he explained.
“Oh, right,” Lars Erik said, nodding his head.
“Probably doesn’t even know her,” Joaquin speculated with a sly grin.
“Of course I know her. She’s a friend of my sister’s. Her name is Fiona Dunbar. Isn’t it?” he said to the bartender.
The bartender, Maurice’s son Michael, grinned broadly. “That be Fiona, all right.”
“So you know her name,” Lars Erik said. “So what? Invite her over to have a drink with us.”
“He doesn’t know her,” Joaquin said.
So he had to prove it. With Joaquin and Lars Erik egging him on, he’d strode over to where Fiona had just handed a pair of sketches to a tourist couple. He smiled his best charm-the-ladies smile and invited her to have a drink with him.
She blinked, then shook her head. “With you? I don’t think so.”
He stared at her, astonished at her refusal. “What do you mean, you don’t think so?” He was annoyed that she’d said no, more annoyed that she didn’t seem to recognize him, and most annoyed by the fact that the closer he got to her the more gorgeous she became.
He wanted to see flaws. There weren’t any.
“Maybe you don’t remember me.” It was possible, he supposed. He didn’t think he’d changed that much, but she sure as hell didn’t look the way she used to!
“Oh, I remember you,” she said, and gave him a blinding smile as she slipped between him and the barstool. “That’s why I don’t want to.”
And leaving him standing there staring after her, Fiona sashayed out the door, letting it swing shut after her.
Behind him, over the sounds of the steel drum band playing “Yellow Bird,” Lachlan heard Joaquin and Lars Erik hooting.
“Well, helloooo, darlin’,” a sultry voice sounded in his ear, and Lachlan turned to see a busty blonde sitting on the barstool behind him.
“Hello, yourself,” he said, teeth still clenched, but managing a smile to meet her own.
She put a hand on his arm and slid off the stool to stand next to him, almost pressed against him. “You’re Lachlan, aren’t you? The one they call ‘the gorgeous goalie’?”
“Some people have said that.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Some people are very perceptive,” the blonde purred. She smiled. “I was just heading out for a little walk on the beach. Want to go for a swim?”
“Why not?” It sounded a hell of a lot more appealing than listening to Joaquin and Lars Erik snickering into their beers. He looped an arm around the blonde’s shoulders and steered her out the door.
Fiona, after her grand exit, hadn’t gone far. He spotted her standing on the porch of the gift shop talking to Carin. She didn’t look his way.
Lachlan looked hers—and gave her a long slow smug smile as he and the blonde walked past.
“I knew I’d get lucky,” the blonde was giggling. “I’ve got my red panties on tonight.”
Deliberately Lachlan nibbled the blonde’s ear. “Not for long,” he promised her.
He didn’t remember whether she’d been wearing red panties or not. He didn’t remember anything about her. He’d gone back to England two days later—and the only thing he remembered from the holiday was blasted annoying Fiona!
“The fish that got away,” Joaquin called her.
“Like letting in a goal,” Lars Erik said, “when you’ve kept a clean sheet.”
“We’ll see about that,” Lachlan muttered.
He hadn’t had time then. But when he came back this past winter, sailing over on the boat he’d bought in Nassau, making plans to move to the island permanently that spring, he’d taken another shot.
Hugh had been going out with a model he’d met who was doing a honeymoon photo shoot, so Lachlan
