tightened. ‘Tell Jessica thank you, will you? But I don’t need a lift. I’ll be fine.’
His hand shot out, stopping her from moving away, his fingers almost bruising as he held her just in front of him and stared coldly down into her face. ‘I’m sure you will, but Jessica won’t be convinced by such a reassurance. And I don’t intend to spend the night sitting up with her while she has more nightmares, worrying about you! Now we can either do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, but the outcome will be the same: like it or not, Stephanie, we are giving you a lift!’
He put an insulting emphasis on her given name that stung, but suddenly Stephanie didn’t feel up to arguing any more. The night had taken its toll; the loss of her bag coming on top of their previous confrontation was just too much. Tears slithered down her cheeks and she turned away, hating him to see her this way.
‘What the...?’ The exclamation was bitten off, his surprise evident in the way his fingers bit into her flesh. Stephanie yelped, then cried all the harder, broken sobs which echoed through the night.
‘Look, if this is some sort of trick, lady, then cut it out. It won’t cut any ice with me!’
There wasn’t an ounce of compassion in the harsh tones, not an inch of give now that he had recovered from his surprise, and Stephanie glared up at him with tear-soaked eyes.
‘It isn’t a trick, but I don’t expect you to believe me! For your information, Mr Ford, I’ve had it up to here tonight, what with you being so horrible before and then losing my bag and everything! And if I feel like crying then I shall do so, and I won’t have any arrogant jerk like you telling me not to!’
‘I should watch my tongue if I were you. I won’t have any woman speaking to me like that!’
His anger was rising, but Stephanie was too upset to care. ‘Won’t you indeed? Then what are you going to do about it, Mr High and-Mighty Ford—wash my mouth out with soap and water? That seems to me just about——Ohhh!’
The breath whooshed out of her as he jerked her to him so fast that she hit his chest. Instinctively her hands clutched at his shoulders to steady herself, her fingers fastening on to the iron-hard muscles that rippled under her touch. Startled, she stared up into his face, watching the faint sardonic smile that curved his chiselled lips with a feeling of alarm and something else, some other sensation that made her knees feel like rubber and her heart skip.
‘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
