He was thirty-four. She had to be at least thirty-six. But she didn’t look a day over twenty-five. More lies.
And yet, to his horror, his body responded to all that perfection. White-hot tendrils of desire licked along his veins, sparking nerve-endings with heat and hunger. Warmth flushed his skin. One knee twitched. His fingers literally ached to reach out and touch her cheek to see if her skin was as soft as it looked. What would she taste like? What would she feel like if he held her close? What would—?
He snapped off the images that bombarded him; thrust them out of his head. He was an experienced adult. If she could manipulate him like this, what kind of impact would she have on an impressionable sixteen-year-old?
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