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
