скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Everyone in town is going to know about your turnaround in relation to the Miss Showgirl quest now. It’s going to be beautiful to watch.’
Her relish had his mouth kicking upwards. ‘Not going to work.’
She widened her eyes, mock innocent. ‘Work?’
‘You’re not going to get a rise out of me that easily, princess.’
‘Peasant.’
Energy fired through him. He found it suddenly easy to laugh. Then he frowned. When had it become hard to laugh?
‘So tell me …’
He shook the sombre reflection aside and readied himself for her next thrust.
‘What approach are you going to take with the fundraising?’
As far as thrusts went it wasn’t bad. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Oodles—and for every three you come up with I’ll give you one.’
He tried to look injured. ‘That hardly seems fair.’
‘It’s called penance.’
He threw his head back and let loose with another laugh. ‘Why don’t you really stick the knife in? I’m sure there’s a spot here somewhere …’ he pointed to his chest ‘… that you’ve missed.’
She grinned back, and it occurred to him that she was enjoying their exchange as much as he was.
He ushered her though the back entrance of the repair shop, opening the tall gate for her. He watched her take in the large galvanised-iron shed to the left and the neat weatherboard house opposite. The space between was hard-packed earth. There was an outdoor table setting against the far wall. No garden. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
It unsettled him to find he cared what she thought. Light—he had to keep it light. ‘Slave-driver,’ he muttered.
She tossed that long blonde hair of hers. ‘Grease monkey.’
Her good-natured insult released his tension and another laugh.
‘You’re a mechanic, huh?’
‘Yep.’
‘My car needs a service.’
He wasn’t a run-of-the-mill mechanic. He restored classic cars. He had a national reputation for it. These days he could pick and choose what projects he wanted to work on.
None of that stopped him from saying, ‘Bring it in on Thursday or Friday.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No.’ He touched her arm before she could set off towards the house. ‘Thank you for coming here to see Stevie, and for showing me how to make it up to her. I still don’t approve of this preoccupation with looks and fashion, but I do appreciate you coming here.’
She took a step away from him, out of his reach so his hand dropped back to his side. She hitched her chin in just that way. ‘Stevie and I will prove to you how wrong you are.’
‘It doesn’t matter if I’m wrong or right. I need to show Stevie that I trust her enough to support the decisions she makes even if I don’t like them. I ranted at you like an angry bull and you’ve had the grace to overlook it, as well as the generosity to agree to help Stevie. I’m in your debt, city girl.’
Her eyes suddenly narrowed. ‘I’ll be paying for my car service, Nicholas. I wasn’t after a freebie.’
And, because his gratitude had obviously embarrassed her, he made himself laugh and say, ‘I’ll be charging you top dollar.’
Blair didn’t smile back. ‘Just because I used to be a model, you’ve written me off as shallow, frivolous, and incapable of depth, gravity or any kind of finer feeling, haven’t you?’
‘I …’ He rolled his shoulders. It struck him that that was exactly what he’d done. He’d tarred Blair with the same brush as Sonya. On what grounds? After all, what did he really know about Blair Macintyre?
Zilch.
Except that she’d forgiven his bad behaviour. And that she was kind enough to want to help Stevie.
And neither of those things indicated shallowness or a lack of finer feeling. ‘Blair, I—’
She stabbed a finger at him. ‘What would your reaction be, I wonder, if I told you I’d spent a considerable time in front of the mirror this morning putting on my make-up?’
‘What’s a considerable amount of time?’ he ground out. ‘More than half an hour?’ Were these the things that she was going to teach his daughter were important?
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Why the hell is that necessary?’
‘And what would you say if I told you I was wearing false eyelashes?’
No!
‘And what would you think if I told you I was wearing a wig?’
He took a step back. ‘The hell you are.’ He found himself shaking as he moved forward again to push his face in close to hers. ‘Are you wearing a wig, Blair?’
‘I am,’ she shot back at him, her eyes blazing as she tossed her head. All that glorious fake hair swished round her shoulders and down her back, taunting him with the lie it represented. ‘What I want to know is, why does it matter?’
He unclenched his jaw to say, ‘You can even ask me that? You represent everything I hate about the world of fashion.’ Couldn’t she see the damage she and people like her did to mere mortals—to teenage girls? ‘You want to fill my daughter’s head with a load of unrealistic expectations. She’s going to feel compelled to live up to those expectations and—’
‘You should have more faith in your daughter.’ She shot right back again. ‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a woman wanting to look the best she can.’
‘Except when it takes over her life.’ A wig? ‘Like it’s obviously taken over yours! Take the damn wig off, Blair. Let my daughter see you as you really are rather than filling her head with a load of fantastic lies.’
Just for a moment he could have sworn that hurt flashed through her eyes. ‘So you think it’s all about vanity, huh?’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Are you giving me an ultimatum—take off my wig or you won’t let me see Stevie?’
He steeled himself against that hurt. ‘That’s right.’
‘When I’m doing you a favour by coming here?’
‘Filling Stevie’s head with nonsense isn’t doing me or her a favour.’
‘If I don’t take my wig off are you still going to forbid her to enter Miss Showgirl?’
He shuffled his feet. No, he couldn’t do that. It meant too much to Stevie. But he didn’t have to admit as much to Blair. Not yet.
Her eyes suddenly flashed their scorn, blasting the skin on his face and arms. She had no right to direct that at him. All he was trying to do was protect his daughter from being beguiled by false images.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Nicholas,’ she snapped. ‘Put two and two together.’
He opened his mouth. He closed it again. The soft vulnerability of her mouth belied the hard jut of her chin. Her nostrils flared and her shoulders had gone rigid. And her voice … It didn’t sound like her voice.
A chill edged up his spine.
She stuck out a hip, her assumed nonchalance at odds with the expression in her eyes. ‘Let me guess. I look exactly the same, right?’ She mimicked her own earlier words.
He swallowed.
She rolled her eyes, but the darkness in them contradicted her implied impatience. ‘I’ve been ill.’
She cocked an eyebrow, as if daring him to join the dots, to put the pieces of the puzzle together, to make the connection between her wig and having been sick.
And he did.
He gripped a fencepost to keep himself upright as the breath rushed out of his body. Her gaze shied away from his then, as if she couldn’t bear to see what was reflected in his eyes. ‘Why did you automatically assume the make-up and the wig were for the purposes of vanity, huh? Do you always jump to such appalling conclusions?’
He hated himself in that moment for the prejudice that had blinded him.
‘I’m not wearing a wig to hide a bad haircut or a disastrous dye-job. I wish!’ She gave a laugh—only it wasn’t a laugh. It was a sound masquerading as a laugh and it sliced through him like a physical pain. ‘I don’t have enough hair to either cut or dye!’
He closed his eyes, hating himself even more for the reprehensible judgements he’d made, for the accusations he’d flung at her.
‘Chemotherapy,’ she said, as if now that she’d started she couldn’t stop.
‘Cancer?’ he croaked.
‘Cancer,’ she affirmed.
He pushed away from the fence. He wanted to offer her comfort, to say he was sorry, to wrap her in his arms and assure himself she was all right. He didn’t. She’d probably sock him one. And he’d deserve it.
‘It’s hell on hair.’ She pointed to her lashes and eyebrows. ‘The good news is that I won’t have to wax my legs for a while.’
The shadows in her eyes would haunt him for ever. ‘Blair, I’m—’
‘Do you know what I look like without all this hair and make-up?’
‘I—’
‘With round cheeks and a big, bald, round head?’
Her eyes flashed their fury. She planted her hands on her hips, evidently awaiting an answer. She’d still look beautiful. As soon as the thought filtered into his consciousness he realised he meant it. It struck him then with equal force that she wouldn’t believe him.
‘I look like a great big helpless baby, that’s what. And you know how people treat a baby, don’t you?’
Her fury, her frustration, had started to run out of steam. She all but limped over to a low brick wall and sat. She dragged in a breath that made her whole frame shudder.
‘Like they can’t do even the simplest things for themselves,’ she finished on a whisper.
It was the way her shoulders slumped that cut him to the quick. He collapsed down on the wall beside her. He rested his elbows on his knees, dropped his head to his hands. How did he apologise after what he’d just done, said, the accusations he’d hurled at her?
‘You can mock and scorn my wig and my false eyelashes and my false eyebrows all you want, Mr Conway. You can tell me I’m a liar, that I’m vain, that the image I present is a sham. You can tell me I have my priorities all wrong. But know this …’
Another breath made her entire body shudder. He wanted to hand her a big stick and ask her to beat him with it. That might make him feel better, but he suspected it would only make her feel worse. He’d misjudged her in every conceivable way. Why? Because once upon a time she’d been a model. On that evidence he’d decided she was shallow.
Nausea threatened to choke him.
She met his gaze and her blue-eyed anguish flayed him more effectively than any big stick ever could.
‘The way I present myself is my defence against the world. It is my attempt to regain a portion of control over my life.’ Her eyes told him she’d been to hell and back. ‘It is my way of trying to get my life back to normal. That means people treating me the way they did before I got sick. The only way I can make that happen is to look as normal as I can—to look the way I used to before …’
She hiccupped. His heart slumped to his knees, but he forced himself to straighten. ‘Are you sure you’re well enough to be getting back to normal?’
‘Oh!’ Her lip curled. ‘Not that you’ve just proved my point or anything! Did that thought occur to you when you were abusing me earlier?’
‘No, but …’ A person could pull off a hell of a show with hair and make-up.
‘You didn’t think I was weak and feeble then. And I bet all the tea in China that you wouldn’t have yelled at me if hadn’t been wearing my wig!’
The Chinese tea was all hers. But … ‘You want to be yelled at?’
‘I want to be treated like normal. The way I really look makes people treat me like I’m an invalid and that makes me feel like a freak.’
He’d made her feel like a freak.
‘And I’m tired of pity.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘I want my life back.’
He admired her quiet dignity. He admired her courage.
He hated himself.
‘Blair, I shouldn’t have made the assumptions I did. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry. I wish—’
He wished he could take back all those things he’d said. He wished he could turn the clock back. He wished he could wave a magic wand so that she’d never been sick.
She straightened. ‘I want to be judged for myself, not by my illness. And not because I used to be a model once upon a time.’
