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No mother? And a father who didn’t think she was pretty? Blair’s heart started to throb for this lovely girl. ‘Scarves,’ she suddenly pronounced.
‘Wha—? I beg your pardon?’
‘I don’t think frills and lots of jewellery are your kind of thing, Stevie. You’d probably find them too fussy. But you can add the most gorgeous feminine touch by using a scarf. And if you wake up in the morning and don’t feel like doing feminine you can change the scarf to something funky or something classic instead. With your lovely cheekbones and long throat you’d look great in a scarf. I’ll do a class on them.’
Stevie stared. ‘Really?’ she breathed.
Something inside Blair’s chest flickered. ‘Sure, why not?’
Stevie continued to stare as if Blair had just given her the secret to the universe. Blair cleared her throat, suddenly self-conscious. ‘Stevie, you want to know my secret?’
The younger girl leant forward, suddenly eager. ‘You mean your secret to winning Miss Showgirl?’ she breathed.
Blair nodded. ‘Bluff.’
Stevie’s face fell. ‘Bluff?’
‘Pretending, play-acting, fooling everyone into believing what you want them to believe—that you’re smart and pretty and confident. If you act like you think you’re pretty and smart and have something to offer the world, if you walk and talk and meet people’s stares head-on with that kind of confidence and belief in yourself, they’ll start to see that you really are something special. And they’ll treat you with respect. It’s not easy to begin with,’ she warned. ‘It’s really, really hard. But it works. And eventually you’ll realise that you’re not pretending any more. You’ll discover that you really are pretty and smart and confident.’
And then, sometimes, something happens that takes it all from you again.
She tried not to flinch at that thought. She tried to banish it to a place where it couldn’t batter her shattered self-esteem further.
‘Bluff?’ Stevie said as if testing the word out.
Blair lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. ‘Bluff.’ And if she said it a little too strongly then so be it. ‘So, will I see you on Thursday?’
Nick slammed his brakes on the moment he saw Stevie. He pulled the car over to the side of the road. What on earth …? She’d told him she was spending the day baking with her best friend Poppy and Poppy’s mother.
So what was his daughter doing here at the exit to the showground, talking to some woman he’d never seen before?
The showground …?
The Miss Showgirl quest?
Nick bit back a groan and rested his head against the steering wheel for a moment before pushing himself out of the car. He dragged a breath into a chest that hurt. ‘Stevie?’
Stevie spun around and her face fell. Almost comically, he noted, only he didn’t feel the least like laughing. Her chin shot up as he drew near. ‘Hey, Dad.’
She said it as if nothing were amiss, but he sensed her defensiveness and it made his hands clench. She said it as if she hadn’t been lying to him. His chest ached harder. ‘What are you doing here?’ He tried to keep his voice even, but he knew his suspicions were about to be confirmed and that made evenness impossible. ‘You told me you were spending the day at Poppy’s.’
She gave a bored shrug and his hands clenched tighter. Where on earth had his madcap, full of laughter, full of fun daughter gone? When had she morphed into all this … attitude?
He didn’t address the unknown woman who’d been talking to Stevie. He didn’t even look at her. This was between him and his daughter. ‘Well?’ He tapped his foot—not that it helped to release much of the tension that had him coiled up tight. ‘Well?’ he demanded again.
Stevie tossed her head. Just for a moment something flickered behind her eyes—something he almost recognised—before her face became an ache of resentment. ‘I’ve just signed on for the Miss Showgirl quest.’
Suspicion confirmed! He hauled in a breath. ‘I told you I would not countenance you taking part in that contest.’
Countenance? When in his life had he ever used that word?
Stevie’s eyes flashed. ‘I decided not to take your advice.’
His control finally slipped. ‘It wasn’t advice. It was an order!’ Stevie enter some stupid beauty pageant? Over his dead body!
He was in charge of his daughter’s moral wellbeing. Letting her get involved in some shallow sham of a contest that objectified women and led young girls to believe their looks were more important than anything else? He snorted. He’d seen what that kind of obsession had done to Sonya. Those weren’t the kind of values he wanted to instil in Stevie. Family, commitment, the long haul—those were things worth pursuing.
‘You can haul your butt back in there and unregister yourself. Now! You are not taking part in that contest!’
‘No.’
The single word chilled him. And it made him blink. Stevie had never openly defied him before.
‘I’m sixteen.’ She planted her hands on her hips. ‘In another two years I’ll be allowed to vote. I have a right to make some decisions about my life and I’m making this one. I’m entering Miss Showgirl whether you like it or not. Whether you support me or not.’
For a moment he could barely think. A part of him even acknowledged that she might have a point.
‘And, regardless of what you think,’ she suddenly yelled at him, ‘Blair Macintyre thinks I have a chance!’
With that she turned and fled in the direction of home.
Blair Macintyre? The name flooded his mind, freezing him. Blair Macintyre? He wished to God that woman had never been born. Or at least that she’d been born and had grown up somewhere other than Dungog. For the life of him he couldn’t remember her, but the constant refrain he’d heard during the course of his marriage to Sonya had been, Blair Macintyre this and Blair Macintyre that. Here she was on the cover of some glossy magazine. There she was on the catwalk in Paris … London … New York. Wherever!
If Blair Macintyre can do it then so can I!
And Sonya had. But that world had destroyed her. He would not let that happen to Stevie. He would do anything to protect his little girl.
The sound of a throat being cleared snapped him to. Damn it, he’d forgotten all about that unknown woman. He turned towards her. ‘I’m Nicholas Conway, and I’m sorry you—’
Everything inside him clenched up tight when he finally came face to face with the woman. He swore once, hard. Then he laughed—only the laughter wasn’t real laughter, it was bitterness. ‘Blair Macintyre, right?’
He might not remember her, but Sonya had shoved enough pictures of Blair beneath his nose for him to recognise her. She was beautiful … gorgeous. Perfect. Magazine-cover perfect. And he knew it was a lie, because no real woman could look this good. She was the kind of woman who would fill a teenage girl’s head with all sorts of unrealistic expectations about herself and her body. With her perfect pout and thick, lush lashes, her perfectly arched brows and her long blonde locks.
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 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.
She chose her aunt’s tiniest teacups instead of her usual generous mugs.
He didn’t speak until they were seated at the kitchen table and Blair had poured the tea.
He didn’t speak even then. She bit back a sigh. ‘You said you wanted to apologise?’
He nodded, surveying her over the rim of his cup, his eyes not wavering from hers. ‘That’s right.’
She bit back another sigh. It came from deep down inside her, wistful and full of yearning for something she didn’t want to look at too closely. ‘Apology accepted. Forget about it.’ Life was too short to hold grudges.
‘Hey, I haven’t made it yet. Besides, it’s not that simple, city girl.’ He smiled, but there were shadows in his eyes. ‘Earlier, you said something about looking exactly the same. What did you mean?’
‘Nothing. Forget about it.’ Their gazes clashed and locked, and she cursed her rotten defensive self-consciousness. Earlier he’d looked at her as if he’d liked what he saw—really liked it—and for a moment something inside her had responded.
And then she’d remembered the scars, no right breast, no hair—and had imagined his reaction if he could see the real her. Those tart words had come spilling out of her mouth before she could stop them.
His eyes refused to release her. ‘I’ve been ill.’ She was the first to break eye contact. ‘But I’m all better again.’
Better? Yes.
Would a man ever find her attractive again? Unlikely.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. She risked a glance at him. He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been ill, Blair. You’re home to recuperate?’
‘I’m recuperated.’ She wanted to be clear about that. ‘I’m home for some R&R. A holiday.’
His eyes narrowed. She refused to let hers drop this time. Finally he shook his head. ‘None of that changes the fact that I shouldn’t have lost my temper and said the things I did without a thought for anything but my …’
‘Your?’ She preferred to follow his train of thought than her own.
He set his teacup down. ‘Fear.’
It shouldn’t be sexy when a man admitted to being afraid. Only, where Nicholas Conway was concerned, it was. Maybe it was the way he held her gaze as he made the admission. She moistened suddenly dry lips. He watched the action and his eyes darkened. It was hellishly sexy.