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Her lips suddenly twisted. ‘Let me guess. I don’t look any different, right?’
The words drawled out of her, their husky notes caressing his skin. She raised one of those perfectly shaped eyebrows and his body reacted with heat, his tongue reacted with anger. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
For some inconceivable reason she seemed to brighten at that.
It disappeared a moment later when he leant towards her and snapped, ‘Stay away from my daughter.’
CHAPTER TWO
THE woman had eyes so blue they could steal a man’s soul, and as Nick stared into them they made him ache for something he couldn’t name. She pursed those delectable lips and it suddenly hit him how loud, coarse, and utterly unreasonable he must seem to her.
That would be because he was acting loud, coarse, and utterly unreasonable. Get a grip! He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, backed up a step so that he was no longer crowding her. Once upon a time he’d have approached a situation like this with charm and humour, doing his best to deflect and defuse any bad feelings.
Once upon a time …
When had the world turned upside down?
When Stevie had started spending all her pocket money on make-up and fashion magazines, spending too much of her time window-shopping for clothes, that was when. She was talking about getting her ears pierced. Pierced! She wanted to maim her body in the interests of fashion? As far as he was concerned that made no sense whatsoever.
And it reminded him too much of Sonya.
Blair drew herself up to her full height. He was six feet two. She must be five feet eleven. Sonya had been the same height.
Stop it. This woman wasn’t Sonya. She hadn’t abandoned and then almost bankrupted her family. She hadn’t succumbed to designer drugs. Even if she did represent the world of fashion that he loathed—the same world that had destroyed Sonya—that didn’t mean she deserved his rudeness or to bear the brunt of his frustration.
He opened his mouth to form some sort of apology, to try and explain why he was yelling at her like a lunatic. But not only had she straightened, she’d folded her arms—and it thrust her breasts out, pressed them tight against her T-shirt. The heat and the hunger hit him again. The words dried in his mouth.
He forced his gaze back to hers to find her surveying him. Sympathy gleamed from those mesmerising eyes. ‘You’re the faithless father?’ She gave a tiny shake of her head.
It took a moment for her words to hit him. The what?
‘Mr Conway, I know this is none of my business, but … But I think you’ll find that your daughter has misinterpreted your lack of support for the Miss Showgirl as a belief that she’s not good enough to enter.’
He stiffened.
‘Sixteen-year-old girls can be terribly vulnerable and their confidence shaky. While I don’t doubt for a moment that it hasn’t been your intention to sabotage her self-confidence, that’s the effect it has had.’
Sabotaging Stevie? Garbage! He was protecting her. Any sense of proportion he’d gained shot off into the ether with the speed of a V8 super car. ‘Don’t you tell me how to raise my daughter!’
She blinked. ‘I’m not. I’m just saying—’
‘Well, don’t bother!’ His hand slashed the space between them. ‘What the hell do you know about teenage girls?’
She tilted her chin. ‘I was one.’
‘Do you have children?’
He watched her swallow. His knee twitched again. ‘No.’
‘Then don’t presume to tell me how to deal with my own. If I don’t think it’s appropriate for her to enter a beauty contest—’
‘It’s not just a beauty contest!’ Colour flared in her cheeks. ‘It’s for charity, and it’s a chance for the girls—’
‘Save the spiel! I don’t want Stevie involved in some sad, jumped-up little beauty pageant and I want you to stay away from her. You hear me?’
‘Me and the neighbours, I should think.’
He grimaced. He was going to have to apologise. The thought did not improve his temper. He started to compose a suitable apology. He opened his mouth to deliver it—
‘You do know that Stevie believes you don’t think she’s pretty, don’t you?’
Air left his lungs. Stevie was beautiful, unique. She was the light of his life. She had to know that. Not pretty? Stevie could win the Miss Showgirl quest hands down. She was the prettiest, smartest—
He cut the thought off, annoyed with himself for even going there. He needed to talk to Stevie as soon as he could. He straightened. ‘I don’t believe we have anything else to discuss.’
Her eyes widened. She even had the gall to roll them.
‘Darn city slicker,’ he muttered under his breath, needing to vent.
‘Country hick,’ she shot back, and he almost choked. She’d heard him?
With a lift of one elegant shoulder she turned and sauntered off. He stared after her until she’d disappeared around the corner.
He dragged a hand down his face and bit back a curse. He’d been darn rude. He’d let his temper and frustration get the better of him, and that hadn’t happened in a long, long time. What had got into him?
He swung away and kicked at a stone before striding back to the car. He didn’t know what he was going to do about Stevie and this Miss Showgirl nonsense, but one thing he did know—he was going to have to apologise to Blair Macintyre.
‘You did what?’
Nick swallowed at Stevie’s screech. He’d never heard her take that tone before. Her voice literally bounced off the kitchen walls. He forced his shoulders back. ‘I told you I didn’t want you involved in anything as shallow and superficial as a beauty contest. You should be focussing on your studies. If you want to be lawyer then you’ll need good grades.’
Stevie dragged her hands back through her hair. ‘This is about Mum, isn’t it?’
He ran a finger around the collar of his T-shirt. ‘This is about you.’
‘Because I want to look nice, you think that makes me like Mum. You think I’m going to use drugs!’
‘That’s absurd.’ He’d done his best to shield Stevie from the truth about her mother’s death, but Sonya’s overdose had made all the national newspapers.
She stepped back, her face going pale. ‘You don’t trust me.’
Tears shimmered in her eyes. Her pain cut him to the quick. ‘I want you to focus on important things, not shallow nonsense.’ He would not lose another girl he loved to the ruthless, heartless world of fashion. He would not let Stevie starve herself, turn to surgery, and turn herself inside out all in the name of presenting some impossible ideal vision for the camera.
‘The Miss Showgirl quest isn’t just a beauty contest.’ Her voice wobbled. She paced around the kitchen table. An image of Blair flashed in his mind. ‘It was my one chance, and you’ve wrecked it! ’
He stiffened. ‘Your one chance at what?’
‘To learn how to dress well! To learn how to do my hair and make-up, and—’
‘There’s nothing wrong with how you look!’
‘Yes, there is!’ The words burst from her in frustration, her face red and her hands shaking. ‘You’re a guy—what do you know? You want all the other lawyers laughing at me the way the girls at school do?’
Country hick. Blair’s taunt ran through his mind.
‘The other girls have their mothers. I …’
He stared at her. He’d never felt more at a loss.
‘Even if Miss Showgirl is as superficial as you say, what’s wrong with wanting to play around with make-up and hair and wearing pretty things? I’m tired of pretending not to like those things because you don’t approve.’ Her voice rose again. ‘I don’t care what you say. That doesn’t make me like Mum!’
‘I wasn’t saying—’ He broke off because that was exactly what he’d been saying. All those things—pretty clothes, make-up, fussing with hair—they reminded him of what Sonya had chosen over her family. Over him. And, worst of all, what she had chosen over Stevie.
His eyes started to burn and his temples throbbed. Stevie had forgone all those things—things girls delighted in—to spare his feelings?
She leant across the table towards him, her face distorted with frustration and disappointment. ‘It was my one chance to get over being afraid.’
‘What are you afraid of?’ He’d slay any dragon for her.
‘Public speaking!’ she all but hollered at him. ‘It’s part of Miss Showgirl to make a speech. We get lessons, pointers. But now … How will I ever be a lawyer if I can’t speak in public?’
The breath shot out of him. He should have talked to her, found out why the quest meant so much to her. Instead he’d jumped to conclusions, and then he’d jumped in to play the heavy.
She was right. He hadn’t trusted her.
‘Baby, I—’
But she wouldn’t let him speak. ‘You don’t think I can win.’
Her voice was hard, but there was a wobble beneath it that snagged at his heart.
‘You think I’ll make a fool of myself like everyone else does.’
His hands clenched. Everyone who?
‘But Blair thought I had a chance. Blair believed in me.’
With that, she raced out of the room. Her bedroom door slammed and then he heard muffled sobs. He closed his eyes, pressed a fist to his brow. Stevie rarely cried.
It took all his strength to remain in his seat and not go to her. She wouldn’t welcome his attempts at comfort at the moment. He’d made such a hash of this.
He had to fix it.
He rose. He picked up his hat and dusted if off against his thigh. He knew Blair was Glory Middleton’s niece. If she was staying in Dungog, that was where she’d be. He settled the hat on his head and made for the front door.
A tap on the back door had Blair glancing up from her magazine. She’d not long got home and her pulse had barely slowed from her encounter with Nicholas Conway.
What a Neanderthal!
A sexy Neanderthal, though.
The thought slithered in beneath her guard. She shook it off and pushed to her feet to answer the door, almost welcoming the promised distraction on the other side. She was off men for good. And a Neanderthal was still a Neanderthal—sexy or otherwise.
She opened the door, and then pulled up short when she saw who stood on the other side of the screen.
And just like that her pulse sped up again.
An adrenaline surge as her body readied itself for another confrontation, she rationalised. She opened the screen door, folded her arms, and leant a shoulder against the doorframe. She didn’t invite him in. She knew how to do cool and haughty. And at the moment, cool and haughty pleased her nicely. ‘Well, well, if it isn’t the country … boy.’
She couldn’t call him a hick again because a) she wasn’t angry any more, and b) he quite obviously wasn’t a hick.
Her mouth went dry. He was hot!
He wore faded denim jeans and a black T-shirt that hugged his shoulders, emphasising their breadth. Her gaze drifted over those shoulders and slowly made their way down his body. The thin black cotton emphasised the muscles in his chest before plastering itself to an abdomen that even through the material she could see was sculpted and lean. Her pulse sped up even more. Lean hips. Long legs. Feet encased in dusty brown workboots. This country boy had country chic down pat, but he was sexier than any male model she’d come across.
She suspected he wasn’t trying to sport any look at all. She had a feeling that what you saw with Nicholas Conway was exactly what you got.
It was beyond sexy.
She tossed her hair—her wig. Not that she was interested in sexy or sex. She couldn’t imagine being intimate with a man ever again. The thought of a man seeing her naked body …
She suppressed a shudder. She could imagine with a vividness that made her stomach rebel a man recoiling in horror when he saw the real her—scars and all. Could imagine being rejected. Again.
So she lifted her chin and kept her demeanour cold and haughty. ‘Something you forgot to holler?’ she drawled.
He scratched a hand through his hair. He shuffled his feet. He held his hat in his hands and restless fingers twirled it round and round. Her stomach softened.
Neanderthal—don’t forget that.
‘I wanted to apologise.’
She could tell by the way he held himself that he was waiting for her to slam the door in his face. She’d never been one for grand, melodramatic gestures. Still, the idea was tempting. His eyes flashed and glittered as he waited for her response. With a sigh, she relented. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’
She could feel his bulk behind her as he followed her into the kitchen, his vital heat. There was something purely masculine about it. She put the kitchen table between them. ‘Coffee? Tea? Something stronger?’ He didn’t look like the kind of man who needed Dutch courage, although with her last boyfriend she’d proved that where men were concerned she had seriously bad judgement. Who knew what Nick was really like?
‘Are you having anything?’
He’d donned his best manners. She had to give him that. ‘I was about to make tea.’
‘Tea would be great. If you’re sure it isn’t any trouble.’
Yep, his very best manners. And just like that she didn’t want him to apologise any more. She wanted him and his disturbing presence and her even more disturbing reaction to him to walk out through that door and leave her in peace.
For a brief moment today she’d experienced something she hadn’t felt in quite some time—optimism. She’d felt she had something of value to offer to someone. Namely Stevie. And then this man had come along and deflated it with his harsh words and dismissive attitude.
Still, it had been refreshing to be abused rather than mollycoddled.
She snapped herself back into the present and put the jug on to boil, spooned tea into the pot. Nicholas and his unnerving masculinity weren’t going to walk out through that door just yet, because she’d offered him tea as hospitality demanded. The sooner the tea was done, the sooner he’d leave.
