‘There’s always more than one way to bring a person in line, honey. It doesn’t always need to be...unpleasant to be effective.’
His eyes dropped deliberately to her mouth, lingering for a heartbeat in a look that she could feel, then abruptly he set her from him and took a slow step back. ‘Now if you’ve got that out of your system, shall we go? It’s late, way past time that Jessica should have been in bed.’
He stepped aside for Stephanie to precede him, opening the rear door of the car with a mocking courtesy. She slid inside, then ran a hand over her face to wipe away the tears, forcing a smile as Jessica twisted round in her seat to stare at her in concern.
‘You aren’t crying, are you, Stephie?’ She glanced at her father, who had slid behind the wheel, her mouth drooping. ‘Daddy didn’t shout at you, did he?’
Stephanie’s eyes caught Logan’s in the mirror for a long second before she looked away with a tiny sigh. How she ached to pay him back for what he’d just done, but it would be unfair to use his daughter this way. ‘No... no, of course not. It wasn’t his fault. I was a bit upset anyway because I’d lost my bag.’
‘Your bag?’ The girl’s eyes rounded, then she gasped. ‘I remember, you put it down on the floor when you stopped to help me. You gave me a tissue to wipe my face. Is that how you lost it?’
There was no doubting the child’s concern or the faint shadow of guilt that showed on her young face. It bothered Stephanie in ways she couldn’t explain. Jessica was far too young to feel guilty about something that hadn’t really been her fault. ‘Probably, but it was my fault. I shouldn’t have been so careless. Don’t you go worrying about it, love.’
‘Which hotel are you staying at?’ The deep voice cut into the conversation, and Stephanie forced herself to glance at the man behind the wheel, feeling the betraying colour stealing into her cheeks. That was the trouble with having such pale, fine skin: whenever she was embarrassed it showed, and she felt embarrassed now as she remembered that strange rush of weakness she’d felt when he’d held her. She must have been even more upset by everything that had gone on than she’d realised.
Hurriedly she told him the name of her hotel, then sat quietly as he drove the powerful car the short distance to pull up in the driveway. She ran a hand over her hair, smoothing the long, silky strands back into the knot on top of her head, then smiled at a point just above his right shoulder. ‘Well, thank you, Mr Ford. It was ... was kind of you to stop like that.’
She stumbled over the words and saw him smile with faint derision as he turned to look back at her, but there was no trace of anything in his voice apart from polite dismissal as he said levelly, ‘Don’t mention it.’
Obviously he was just as anxious as her to get this over and done with now that he had laid his daughter’s fears to rest. Stephanie fumbled with the lock on the car door in her haste to get out, not realising that Logan Ford had got out first until the door swung smoothly open and a large, tanned hand fitted itself beneath her elbow with a murmured, ‘Allow me.’
It should have been nothing more than a small courtesy to help her out, but as Stephanie slid out of the seat she made the mistake of glancing up into his face, and went cold at what she saw there. Did he view all women this way—as commodities rather than as human beings? Or was she being specially selected to bear the brunt of that assessing look that seemed to take stock of every slender line of her body with a disturbing thoroughness?
She straightened abruptly, smoothing the thin cotton shorts down her long, slim legs, wondering why she should care one way or the other what Logan Ford’s views on women were. She searched his face, but it was impossible to read much from his expression as he half turned away from the dim light spilling from the hotel foyer. It was too dark to see what lay in his eyes, too dark even to bring the vibrancy of that deep red hair to life. It just showed her the outline of the man, not the substance, and with a sudden flash of insight she realised that was how he preferred it. Logan Ford was a man who would guard his thoughts and feelings, a man who would stand alone in a crowd.
‘If there’s nothing else I can do, then it’s time we said goodnight again.’
The deep voice stopped her musings and she started self-consciously, hoping that he hadn’t realised where her thoughts had been wandering. Quickly she turned and bent down to the car window, running a gentle finger down Jessica’s soft little cheek as she smiled into the child’s tired eyes. ‘It was nice of you to stop for me. Thank you. I hope you’ll have a lovely time for the rest of your stay here.’
‘But what about you, Stephie? What are you going to do without your bag and things?’
Stephanie forced another smile, although that very thought was gnawing at the back of her mind. ‘Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be fine. Now goodnight.’
She stood up and held her hand out to the tall man, forcing a cool little smile to her mouth that didn’t quite match the wariness in her blue eyes. ‘Thank you, Mr Ford. It was kind of you to bring me back.’
‘But you would have much preferred it if I hadn’t bothered?’ He took her hand and held it, his fingers hard against hers.
‘I never said that.’
‘You didn’t have to.’ He studied her face for a long moment, then let her hand go. ‘Don’t ever be tempted to play poker, will you, Stephanie? Your face is far too expressive.’
He strode round the car and slid behind the wheel, starting the engine and driving off almost before she’d had chance to wonder what he’d meant by that cryptic comment. She sighed roughly and turned towards the beckoning lights of the hotel. What did it matter anyway? That was the last she would see of Logan Ford, and she couldn’t say that she was sorry. There was something about the man that spelled out trouble, and she had quite enough of that to contend with right now. And that was what she had to concentrate on.
It made good sense, yet strangely, when she finally got to bed and fell into a restless sleep, it wasn’t the precariousness of her situation that haunted her dreams, but the memory of a tall man with red hair and eyes the colour of the richest chocolate. Logan Ford, a true enigma; a man with a child who seemed more alone than anyone she’d ever met before.
Six dollars, twenty cents.
Stephanie stared at the neat pile of money, then picked up the bills to re-count them, praying that she’d made a mistake and mixed a twenty in with the rest. American money was extremely confusing, the different denominations of notes looking remarkably similar. However, not even a second nor a third count made a scrap of difference to the total, and her heart sank.
This was all that stood between her and destitution, this meagre sum of money which would barely pay for breakfast, let alone the cost of her stay in the hotel and a ticket home to England. What on earth was she going to do?
A knock on the door roused her from her brooding and she stood up with a sigh, smoothing a hand down over the fuchsia and white patterned shorts which she was wearing with a sleeveless white vest top. She hurried across the room to answer it, then stood frozen in shock as she recognised the man waiting outside the door. He smiled slowly, his eyes running deliberately over her figure in the revealing outfit before returning to her face with a hint of challenge in their depths.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in, Stephanie?’
The husky roughness of his voice made a sudden unwanted shiver race down her spine, and she drew herself upright. ‘What do you want?’
He smiled again, one brow arching with mockery. ‘My, my, what a welcome, honey. Anyone would think you aren’t pleased to see me.’
‘I’m not,’ she replied baldly, tightening her grip on the edge of the door. ‘Now would you mind telling me what you want by coming here?’ She glanced past him along the empty hallway. ‘Where’s Jessica? Haven’t you brought her with you?’
‘No.’