take a virtual stranger into his confidence would be interpreted as positively indulgent.
But he couldn’t just carry on ignoring a situation which was threatening to spiral out of control, could he? And Megan had no axe to grind. She didn’t know Katrina. She stood to gain nothing by giving him her opinion. Surely it would not be disloyal to confide in his assistant?
‘Maybe I should tell you,’ he said slowly.
But, even so, Megan was amazed when Dan sat back in his chair and studied her intently from between narrowed eyes, the way he sometimes studied a spreadsheet.
‘Okay.’ He nodded, and gave a smile which managed to be angry and thoughtful all at the same time. ‘I will. I’ll tell you the whole story about Katrina and then we’ll see where your sympathies lie, won’t we, Megan?’
‘PICTURE the scene,’ said Dan, and picked up the smooth round paperweight which lay on his desk. At its centre sat a small pink shell and usually he found it restful to look at. Not today, though. ‘Of a little girl growing up without any men around.’
Megan watched him run his long fingers over the cool, curved glass. What he was describing was the exact reverse of her own upbringing. There had been men galore around—or boys, to be exact—when she had slipped into the role of caring for her four younger brothers.
But she knew that having your mother die in childhood wasn’t typical. Thank God. She pushed away the poignant memories and looked into his cool grey eyes. ‘This is Katrina we’re talking about, I presume?’
‘That’s right.’ He nodded. ‘She and her mother used to live close to us. My mother is her godmother, and I’ve known Katrina for most of her life.’
‘Right,’ nodded Megan cautiously.
‘She is the daughter of an actress who happens to be very, very beautiful—’
Megan found herself wondering whether Katrina was as beautiful as her mother. But she didn’t ask.
‘And very self-obsessed,’ he continued, only now the edges of his voice were roughened with disapproval. ‘And, like many beautiful women, she regarded the arrival of a daughter as something of a catastrophe—’
‘Oh.’ Megan’s eyes widened. ‘Why?’
He seemed faintly taken aback by the genuine surprise in her question. Didn’t she realise how competitive women could be? He looked at her. No. Maybe she didn’t.
‘Because daughters have a habit of growing up!’ he answered. ‘They provide the physical evidence of how quickly the years are passing, don’t they? And there’s nothing an actress hates more than growing old. You can’t carry on pretending to be in your mid-thirties if you have daughter who is in her twenties!’
‘No, I suppose you can’t,’ said Megan slowly. ‘I never thought of it like that.’ She looked at him, fascinated by what he was telling her. Dan McKnight, of all people, pouring his heart out—why, she hadn’t thought he had one! ‘So where do you fit into the picture?’
Dan had recently been asking himself the same question, searching back in his memory for something he might have said or done which could have been misinterpreted by a naive young girl.
He frowned. ‘Ever since Katrina was a little girl, she latched herself onto me and followed me around the place, whenever I was around. Which wasn’t often enough for her to see for herself that idols often have feet of clay,’ he added, with brutal honesty.
‘You mean you were her idol?’
He thought it might sound unacceptably arrogant if he corrected her sentence from past to present tense. ‘I guess I was.’ He also thought that Megan could have taken that note of astonishment out of her voice. ‘She used to trot round beside me, gazing up at me as though I could do no wrong.’ And he would be lying to himself if he denied that he had liked the young girl. And enjoyed her unconditional adoration. It had worked both ways—because Katrina had been like the little sister he’d never had.
And that was part of the problem. You could tell a sister to go away and she would probably listen to you.
‘So what did you do about it?’ she asked.
Dan sighed, accepting now that he might have adopted entirely the wrong strategy. He had thought that, by ignoring the young girl’s obsession with him, she would grow out of it, the way she’d grown out of having puppy fat. ‘Nothing,’ he admitted. ‘I just acted exactly the same as I always had towards her.’
‘And how was that?’
‘Big-brotherly, I suppose.’
‘So there was no attraction between you at all?’
Dan shook his dark head. ‘Not on my part, certainly! The age difference between us is too great for us to have anything in common—apart from geographical proximity, of course.’
Megan nodded, looking closely at the cool, clever face. ‘And what is the age difference, exactly?’
‘Thirteen years.’
She expelled a long breath. ‘It is a big gap, but it’s not unheard of,’ offered Megan, thinking of Hollywood stars and minor royals.
‘Neither is slave labour, but that doesn’t make it all right!’ Dan threw her an impatient look. ‘Think about it! When she was a chubby five-year-old, I was just setting off for university. So do you really think that we bonded? Maybe you imagine that every time I came home we sat down and discussed which brand of chocolate bar we liked best!’
Megan opened her mouth to say that she didn’t know why he seemed to be taking it out on her. But she shut it again. Dan McKnight was usually so elusive about his personal life. Getting information was often like prising a clam out of its shell. So if he was now choosing to open up to her, then she should be flattered as well as intrigued. ‘Of course I don’t think that,’ she said calmly.
Her composure seemed to take the heat out of some of his anger, and he put the paperweight down on top of a sheaf of papers. ‘Anyway,’ he shrugged. ‘By the time she’d reached fifteen, I was twenty-eight—’
‘And I suppose the age difference became far less significant as you both got older,’ suggested Megan reflectively.
Dan gave her another thoughtful look. ‘That’s certainly what Katrina thought.’
‘So did…?’ Megan chose her words carefully. ‘Did she just suddenly decide that she was in love with you—or did something happen?’
His eyelashes brushed together, obscuring and shadowing his eyes. ‘Like what?’
‘Well—’
‘You think I made a pass at her?’
‘No, of course I don’t.’ She tried to be diplomatic. ‘Well, not intentionally, maybe…’
Dan
