The Earl's Convenient Wife (Harlequin Romance) Read online

  ‘Dougal will lend you his boat?’

  ‘It’s not his fishing boat. It’s just a runabout.’

  ‘I know that, but still...he won’t even trust Maggie with his boat.’

  ‘Maybe I come with better insurance than Maggie.’

  ‘Do you even know how to handle a boat?’

  ‘I know how to handle a boat.’

  She stared at him, incredulous, and then shook her head. ‘It’s a crazy idea. As I said, I have beds—’

  ‘Beds to make. And dusting and dog-walking and grass to mow.’ He raised his fingers and started ticking things off. ‘First, beds and general housework. Maggie’s mam is already on her way here, bringing a friend for company. They’ll clean and cook a storm. They’re bringing Maggie’s dog, too, who Maggie assures me keeps Abbot and Costello from fretting. They’ll walk all the dogs. Maggie’s uncle is bringing up the rear. He’ll do the mowing, help Mac check the cattle, do anything on the list you leave him. He’ll be here in an hour but we should be gone by then. Our boat’s waiting. Now, can I help you pack lunch?’

  ‘No! This is crazy.’

  ‘It’s the day after your wedding. It’s not crazy at all.’

  ‘The wedding was a formality. I told you, I don’t do honeymoons.’

  ‘Or six-star hotels, or casinos. I suspected not. I also thought that if I whisked you off the island you might never come back. But, Jeanie, you do need a holiday. Three years without a break. I don’t know what Eileen was thinking.’

  ‘She knew I wouldn’t take one.’

  ‘Because you’re afraid?’ he said gently. He didn’t move to touch her. In truth, he badly wanted to but she was so close to running... ‘Because you’ve ventured forth twice and been burned both times? I know you agreed to marry so I could inherit, but there’s also a part of you that wants another year of safe. Jeanie, don’t you want to see the puffins?’

  ‘I...’

  ‘Come with me, Jeanie,’ he said and he couldn’t help himself then, he did reach out to her. He touched her cheek, a feather-light touch, a trace of finger against skin, and why it had the power to make him feel...make him feel...

  As if the next two minutes were important. Really important. Would she pull away and tell him to get lost, or would she finally cut herself some slack? Come play with him...

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ she whispered, but she didn’t pull back.

  ‘When did you last see puffins?’

  She didn’t reply. He let his hand fall, though it took effort. He wanted to keep touching. He wanted to take that look of fear from her face.

  What had they done to her? he wondered. Nice, safe Rory, and low-life Alan...

  There was spirit in this woman and somehow it had been crushed.

  And then he thought of the slap and he thought, No, it hadn’t quite been crushed. Jeanie was still under there.

  ‘Not since I was a little girl,’ she admitted. ‘With my mam. Rory’s uncle took us out to see them.’

  ‘Just the once?’

  ‘I... Yes. He took tourists, you see. There were never places—or time—to take us.’

  What about your own dad? he wanted to ask. Jeanie’s father was a fisherman. He’d had his own boat. Yes, it was almost two hours out to the isolated isles, the massive crags where the puffins nested, but people came from all over the world to see them. To live here and not see...

  His own grandparents had taken him out every summer. When he’d turned sixteen they’d given him a boat, made sure he had the best instruction, and then they’d trusted him. When his grandfather had died he’d taken Eileen out there to scatter his ashes.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said now, gently, and she looked up at him and he could see sense and desire warring behind her eyes.

  ‘It’s not a honeymoon.’

  ‘It’s a day trip. You need a holiday so I’m organising a series of day trips.’

  ‘More than one!’

  ‘You deserve a month off. More. I know you won’t take that. You don’t trust me and we’re forced to stay together and you don’t want that, but for now...you’ve given me an amazing gift, Jeanie Lochlan. Allow me to give you something in return.’

  She compressed her lips and stared up at him, trying to read his face.

  ‘Are you safe to operate a boat out there?’ she demanded at last.

  ‘You know Dougal. Do you think he’d lend me the Mary-Jane if I wasn’t safe?’

  Dougal’s uncle had taught him how to handle himself at sea. Once upon a time this island had been his second home, his refuge when life with his parents got too bad, and sailing had become his passion.

  ‘He wouldn’t,’ Jeanie conceded. ‘So we’re going alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ He would have asked Dougal to take them if it would have made Jeanie feel safer but this weather was so good every fisherman worth his salt was putting to sea today. ‘You can trust me, Jeanie. We’re interested in puffins, that’s all.’

  ‘But when you touch me, I feel...’

  And there it was, out in the open. This thing between them.

  ‘If we’re to survive these twelve months, we need to avoid personal attraction,’ he told her.

  Her face stilled. ‘You feel it, too.’

  Of course I do. He wanted to shout it, but the wariness in her eyes was enough to give a man pause. That and reason. Hell, all they needed was a hot affair, a passionate few weeks, a massive split, and this whole arrangement would be blown out of the water. Even he had the sense to see hormones needed to take a back seat.

  ‘Jeanie, this whole year is about being sensible. You’re an attractive woman...’

  She snorted.

  ‘With a great smile and a big heart,’ he continued. ‘And if you put a single woman and a single man together for a year, then it’s inevitable that sparks will fly. But we’re both old enough and sensible enough to know how to douse those sparks.’

  ‘So that’s what we’re doing for the next twelve months. Dousing sparks?’ She ventured a smile. ‘So do I pack the fire extinguisher today?’

  ‘If we feel the smallest spark, we hit the water. The water temperature around here is barely above freezing. That should do it. Will you come?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation and then: ‘Foolish or not, I never could resist a puffin,’ she told him. ‘My only stipulation is that you don’t wear a kilt. Because sparks are all very well, Alasdair McBride, but you put a kilt on that body and sparks could well turn into a wildfire.’

  He was free to make of that as he willed. She turned away, grabbed a picnic basket and started to pack.

  * * *

  He couldn’t just manage a boat; he was one with the thing.

  Jeanie had been in enough boats with enough men—she’d even worked as crew on Rory’s fishing trawler—to recognise a seaman when she saw one.

  Who could have guessed this smooth, suave businessman from Edinburgh, this kilted lord of all he surveyed at Duncairn, was a man who seemed almost as at home at sea as the fishermen who worked the island’s waters.

  The Mary-Jane was tied at the harbour wharf when they arrived, with a note from Dougal to Alasdair taped to the bollard.

  Keep in radio contact and keep her safe. And I don’t mean the boat.

  Alasdair had grinned, leaped lightly onto the deck and turned to help Jeanie down. She’d ignored his hand and climbed down herself—a woman had some pride. And she was being very wary of sparks.

  The Mary-Jane was a sturdy cabin cruiser, built to take emergency supplies out to a broken-down fishing trawler, or as a general harbour runabout. She was tough and serviceable—but so was the man at the helm. He was wearing faded trousers, heavy boots and an ancient sweater. He hadn’t shaved this morning. He was looking...

  Don’t think
about how he looks, she told herself fiercely, so instead she concentrated on watching him handle the boat. The Duncairn bar was tricky. You had to know your way, but Alasdair did, steering towards the right channel, then pausing, waiting, watching the sea on the far side, judging the perfect time to cross and then nailing it so they cruised across the bar as if they’d been crossing a lake.

  And as they entered open water Jeanie found herself relaxing. How long since she’d done this? Taken a day just for her? Had someone think about her?

  He wanted to see the puffins himself, she told herself, but a voice inside her head corrected her.

  He didn’t have to do this. He didn’t have to bring me. He’s doing it because I need a break.

  It was a seductive thought all by itself.

  And the day was seductive. The sun was warm on her face. Alasdair adjusted his course so they were facing into the waves, so she hardly felt the swell—but she did feel the power of the sea beneath them, and she watched Alasdair and she thought, There’s power there, too.

  He didn’t talk. Maybe he thought she needed silence. She did and she was grateful. She sat and let the day, the sea, the sun soak into her.

  This was as if something momentous had happened. This was as if she’d walked through a long, long tunnel and emerged to the other side.

  Was it just because she’d taken the day off? Or was it that she’d set her future for the next twelve months, and for the next year she was safe?

  It should be both, but she knew it wasn’t. It was strange but sitting here in the sun, watching Alasdair, she had an almost overwhelming sense that she could let down her guard, lose the rigid control she’d held herself under since the appalling tragedy of Alan, let herself be just...Jeanie.

  She’d lost who she was. Somewhere along the way she’d been subsumed. Jeffrey’s daughter, Rory’s girlfriend and wife, then Alan’s woman. Then bankrupt, with half the world seeming to be after her for money owed.

  Then Eileen’s housekeeper.

  She loved being the housekeeper at Duncairn but the role had enveloped her. It was all she was.

  But today she wasn’t a housekeeper. She wasn’t any of her former selves. Today she was out on the open sea, with a man at the helm who was...

  Her husband?

  There was nothing prescribed for her today except that she enjoy herself, and suddenly who could resist? She found herself smiling. Smiling and smiling.

  ‘A joke?’ Alasdair asked softly, and she turned her full beam onto him.

  ‘No joke. I’ve just remembered why I love this place. I haven’t been to sea for so long. And the puffins... I can’t remember. How far out?’

  ‘You mean, are we there yet?’ He grinned back and it was a grin to make a girl open her eyes a little wider. It was a killer grin. ‘Isn’t that what every kid in the back seat asks?’

  ‘That’s what I feel like—a kid in the back seat.’ And then she looked ahead to the granite rock needles that seemed to burst from the ocean floor, isolated in their grandeur. ‘No, I don’t,’ she corrected herself. ‘I feel like I’m a front-seat passenger. It’s one of these rocks, isn’t it, where the puffins are found?’

  ‘The biggest one at the back. The smaller ones are simply rock but the back one has a landmass where they can burrow for nests. They won’t nest anywhere humans can reach. It means we can’t land.’

  ‘We’d need a pretty long rope ladder,’ Jeanie breathed, looking at the sheer rock face in awe. And then she forgot to breathe... ‘Oh-h-h.’

  It was a long note of discovery. It was a note of awe.

  For Alasdair had manoeuvred the boat through a gap in the island rock face and emerged to a bay of calm water. 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.