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
