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He tipped up her chin with his crooked forefinger and pressed his thumb warningly over her full lips. ‘You don’t know me very well yet, do you, Harriet? When I make a commitment I stand by it. When I make a promise I keep it. And when I make up my mind about something it takes more fire-power than you pack in that sweet little body of yours to change it.
‘I’ll stand outside until I’ve heard you bolt your door. I won’t leave until I know you’re safe. Sleep tight, blondie.’
He removed his thumb from her tingling lips and replaced it with a single, brief salute of his mouth. Then he did precisely as he had promised.
CHAPTER SIX
‘SO, NICOLA—what do you think of these?’
Harriet held up the chunky earrings to her ears, jangling them so that they brushed against the shoulderstraps of her emerald-green, sleeveless linen shift.
Nicola Fox looked at her, the gravity of expression in her green eyes very reminiscent of her father’s at his most restrained.
‘They’re very nice,’ she said politely.
‘Oh, come off it, Nicola—what do you really think?’ Harriet demanded impatiently.
After two and a half days in the girl’s company she had learned that the only way to break through that polite wall of reserve was to bulldoze brutally over it. Far from being the bored, restless, sulky little rich girl that Harriet had been prepared to suffer, Marcus Fox’s daughter had proved to be a quiet, respectful, well-brought-up young lady with a penchant for taking life too seriously. In short, she reminded Harriet uncomfortably of herself at the same age!
‘Well, they are a little garish,’ Nicola conceded, studying the fake-gold and green glass earrings.
‘They are, aren’t they?’ Harriet grinned. ‘They match this dress perfectly. I’ll take them,’ she told the salesgirl.
She heard the small sigh at her side. ‘They look quite heavy. You won’t be able to wear them until your ears heal properly.’
She certainly was her father’s daughter, seeing problems before they existed. It was Harriet’s turn to sigh. Then she brightened determinedly. She had vowed not to let anything or anyone clip her wings. Besides, who better to show Nicola what she was missing by being such a goody-two-shoes? ‘Hey, why don’t you get your ears pierced too, while we’re here?’
‘Uh, no, I don’t think so, thank you.’
Harriet pounced on the faint trace of wistfulness she detected. ‘Why not? Lots of girls much younger than you have their ears pierced. It’s very in.’
‘I don’t think Granny would like it. And my school doesn’t allow you to wear jewellery—’
‘Mrs Jerome’s two generations removed from you; naturally you’re going to have different tastes. As for school, you have two weeks before you go back—by then you’ll be able to take the sleepers out during the day,’ she pointed out. ‘And if you decide you don’t like the look or it creates too much of a fuss, you can always let them grow over…’
‘My mother had pierced ears,’ said Nicola suddenly, looking at the classier selection under the glass case of the shop counter. ‘She had tons of earrings. Daddy keeps all her jewellery for me in his safe.’
‘Well, there you are, then—it’s destiny!’
‘Maybe I should ask Daddy first…’
‘I think you’re quite old enough to make decisions like this for yourself,’ said Harriet traitorously. ‘They’re your ears, after all, not his.’
Nicola giggled, sounding like a careless teenager for the first time in Harriet’s presence. ‘He’d look pretty silly in earrings.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Harriet pretended to consider the matter seriously. ‘It depends what kind. A gold ring in one ear and a stud through his nose might liven the old man up…or do I mean a stud in his ear and a ring through his nose?’ she said drily.
Nicola’s quick mind picked up the reference. ‘Nobody tells Daddy what to do.’
The mixture of awe and pride was telling. She had a bad case of parent-worship, Harriet decided sourly. ‘Don’t you believe it, honey. He just likes you to think he’s omnipotent. It’s women who really run the world. Miss Broadbent, for example. She tells him what to do all the time!’
‘Only because she organises his diary.’
‘Ah, that’s what he thinks…he doesn’t even realise he’s just a puppet chairman—the poor, helpless pawn of a cunning woman!’
They both laughed in unison at this far-fetched notion of Marcus Fox at anyone’s mercy, then Nicola stopped and said uncertainly, ‘You don’t really think Daddy’s an old man, do you?’
‘Well, he’s not exactly young any more,’ said Harriet flippantly. Then she saw the sober, unblinking green gaze, magnified by the owlish glasses, and worried that her determination to reject any reminder of Marcus Fox as a virile, desirable male might be stoking Nicola’s hidden fears about her father’s mortality. ‘But he’s certainly not old,’ she said, relenting. ‘And he’s obviously very fit and energetic—’
