LITMIR.BIZ

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She was anointed with sunscreen, and she’d broken off her instructions suddenly to ask her question.

      Finn lay suspended in the fluorescent blue water on his back, then he flipped over and paddled to the side. He pushed his wet hair out of his eyes and studied her for a long moment. ‘You may not want to know why.’

      ‘Yes, I do,’ she insisted.

      He shrugged. His shoulders were broad and tanned and powerful and the only blemishes on his body were several scars from the accident and the operations he had had to have on his leg—in that respect he’d been amazingly lucky, no facial scars at all. ‘It all sounded rather like a cry for help.’

      Sienna flinched.

      ‘It also sounded as if you had no one else to call on. Being dumped in favour of your little sister would no doubt account for that, although isn’t two years a fair while to be carrying a torch?’

      ‘In two years’ time, you may find you have to ask yourself that same question, Finn,’ she said quietly.

      ‘Touché.’ He rubbed his jaw. ‘Well, something like that. Incidentally, I had been advised you had no ties and seemed determined to stay that way, so I wasn’t quite as high-handed as you imagined.’

      Sienna sank down to her sunglasses and came up spluttering. ‘Peter, I suppose!’ she said indignantly.

      He nodded.

      Sienna said something highly uncomplimentary as she called the wrath of God down on Peter Bannister, all men for that matter, and possibly even Melissa Bannister with her kind but gossipy ways.

      ‘If you’re imagining I’m all droopy and sad, I’m not.’

      ‘No.’ He shook his head and his lips quirked. ‘The opposite if anything. A bundle of energy and intelligence, actually. But I can’t help wondering if you see yourself as turned off men for the duration?’ There was something curiously intent in the way he watched her.

      ‘Yes and no,’ she said slowly. ‘I guess, as much as anything, it’s my own judgement that’s a bit of a worry.’ She smiled humourlessly and rippled the surface of the water with her fingers. ‘Then again, while you obviously can’t condemn all men because of one man’s erratic emotions, to be honest—’ this time her smile was genuine although wry ‘—it’s hard not to sometimes.’

      ‘So have you thought about the rest of your life in this context? Marriage? Children?’

      Sienna bit her lip. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I love kids, I think I’ve done some of my best work with children, but I can’t see myself falling madly in love again so—’ she looked away and her voice was a little clogged as she went on ‘—I don’t know.’

      ‘Where is this wedding and when?’

      She told him. ‘You should, at the rate you’re going, be pretty mobile.’

      ‘Glory be,’ he said dryly.

      ‘Look,’ Sienna said carefully, ‘I feel really bad now, Finn. I mean, a wedding, after—after what happened to you, might be the last thing you want to go to.’ She stopped and sighed. ‘I just didn’t think. So I’ll come to Waterford but you don’t have to come to the wedding—I’d quite understand.’

      ‘Sienna—’ his eyes were laughing at her although he spoke gravely ‘—you surprise me. I would never have taken you for such a mass of indecision.’

      ‘I’m not, usually.’ She took her hat off, splashed some water on her head and repositioned the hat. ‘My mother rang me yesterday—that’s really wheeling in the heavy guns—and I don’t seem to have known if I was on my head or my heels ever since!’

      He 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.

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