He was so lost in stewing over the past, he almost didn’t notice Gaby enter the room a few minutes later. He looked up and knew from her reaction that he wasn’t wearing his happy face. Too bad. It was the best he could do now the dark memories had started circling round him.
‘Presenting Miss Heather Armstrong,’ Gaby announced, with a flourish of her hand.
Luke was definitely not ready for what he saw next. It could have been someone else’s daughter standing in the doorway, a hopeful expression in her large eyes. Gone was his little girl, and in her place was a stranger, her hair cut in some kind of layered style that ended around her shoulders. A stranger who no longer wore a familiar scowl, but sparkled and shone.
There was no sign of the baby pink dress he’d expected. Instead he could see hot pink jeans and a glittery silver top. True, it had sleeves, not straps, and it didn’t reveal any flesh, but it was far too grown up for his little Heather.
He stood up. ‘My God, what on earth are you wearing?’
Heather’s face fell. ‘Don’t you like it? Gaby helped me pick it out.’
He shot an accusing look at her partner in crime, but Gaby didn’t look one bit repentant. Instead, she looked as if she were about to rip his head off.
‘She looks lovely. Doesn’t she, Luke?’
He opened his mouth to reply, but a flash of something sparkly in Heather’s ear caught his eye. He marched towards his daughter and lifted her hair away from the side of her head.
‘Pierced ears! At your age? Take them out right now!’
Heather’s hands flew over her ears. Now she wore a more familiar expression. The one with seven kinds of hatred for him in her eyes. So why didn’t that make things better?
‘You always spoil everything!’ she screamed, then she spun around and raced out of the room and up the stairs.
He turned his attention to Gaby, whose face was a shade of pink he’d never seen before.
‘How dare you? How dare you do that to my little girl?’
Gaby’s jaw clenched.
‘I’m waiting. What on earth were you thinking?’
She looked at the floor. He had a feeling she was about to unleash the torrent she’d been holding back since he’d first opened his mouth. But when she looked up at him again, she merely said, ‘You’re right to be angry. I was wrong to let Heather get her ears pierced without your permission. I’m really sorry. We just got carried away…’
That was it? How about telling him to get a grip, that it wasn’t as if she were wearing a three-inch mini-skirt and a crop top? Or that ninety per cent of the girls in Heather’s class had their ears pierced. She was just going to suck up all that righteous anger and buckle under?
It was then that he realised he wanted her to fight with him. He was sick of seeing her sweep all her negative emotions under the carpet and pretend they didn’t exist. The childish urge to push the issue was so strong it was practically irresistible. He wanted to see the ever-calm Gaby lose her cool. And, underneath the layers of bluff, he thought maybe she wanted it too.
‘You’re such a coward, Gaby!’
‘I’m what?’
Her chin trembled, but not with the threat of tears. It was the effort of holding back her anger. The knowledge only spurred him on further.
‘You heard. You think I’m being unreasonable and you’re too gutless to say it.’
She’d be right, of course, if she did tell him he was being unfair. Maybe that was why he wanted to hear it from her. Perhaps it would help stop the rollercoaster his emotions were riding on at the moment. Heaven knew he was powerless to do it himself.
But that wasn’t it, and he knew it. He wanted to see her skin flush and her eyes flash, just as they were doing now.
‘Too gutless?’
‘That’s right. You’re too scared to tell people what you really think, in case they don’t like you any more. Well, get over it!’ He knew he was pushing her too far, but he couldn’t stop himself.
‘You want to know what I really think?’
‘Yes, I do.’
She faltered when he said that, as if she hadn’t actually expected anyone to be interested in what she had to say. But he could see she was revving up to it, and the adrenaline surge that hit him made him feel triumphant at the prospect.
‘Okay, okay. Just give me a second.’ She was all jittery, hardly able to keep still. She plunged her hands into her jeans pockets, pulled them out again and smoothed down her hair. He almost laughed at the gesture. Even when she was about to yell, she couldn’t help making some part of herself more presentable.
‘I think…I think you’re too hard on Heather!’ The words fell out in a jumble. He wasn’t sure whether he thought she looked surprised or relieved she’d got the sentence out.
‘Too hard?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
She shoved her hands back in her pockets.
‘Come on, Gaby, don’t lose it now! Don’t water it down and make it nice. Just let the words come out the way they want to.’
He saw fire glint in her eyes and his stomach rolled. He’d better be ready for what he was prodding her into unleashing.
‘You are a control freak, Luke Armstrong! If you can’t get your own way, you have a tantrum. And you wonder where Heather gets it from!’ She wasn’t shouting, or at least not speaking at shouting volume, but her words carried the same vehemence as if she were shrieking at the top of her lungs.
‘I think you bully her. I think you push and push to make her match the idea of the perfect daughter you have in your head. But it’s stifling her, Luke! Suffocating her. One day you’ll open your eyes and realise you’ve snuffed out the wonderful spark inside her, and she’ll never forgive you for it. You’ll never forgive yourself, either. So if you want that for her, just keep going the way you are, but don’t expect me to hang around and watch you do it!’
All the time she’d been speaking her eyes hadn’t left him. She’d fixed him with an intense, burning stare and he was unable to look away. She broke eye contact and looked at the ceiling.
‘You need to give her space to be herself, Luke. To love her, you need to let her be free.’
Her eyes returned to him as she spoke the last phrase. She wasn’t quite so heated now and her breathing was fast and shallow. Somewhere along the line they’d stopped talking about just Heather.
Adrenaline from the row was still crashing through his system. In the silence, he could hear it inside his head, throbbing in his ears. And all he could see were those chestnut eyes, waiting for him to respond. But, instead of being shuttered, they glowed with a defiant light.
She looked incredible. Lit up from the inside. In fact, she looked so alive that the only possible response was to close the distance between them, cup her face in his hands and kiss her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HIS lips met hers and she reeled with shock. One moment she’d been ready to punch his lights out, now her hands were moving from where they’d been dangling at her sides to smooth over the muscles of his shoulders. She shouldn’t be hanging on to him like this! She ought to be slapping his face.