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Harriet winced, but Nicola didn’t seem to mind his rampant sexism. Perhaps she thought he wasn’t serious, but Harriet detected the inherent cynicism in the teasing remark. ‘I hardly bought anything. It was Harriet who was doing all the shopping. She bought tons of new clothes…she even offered to buy some for me but they weren’t really things that I would wear.’
‘Poor Harriet. Is my daughter proving difficult to corrupt?’ Marcus transferred his teasing to her.
She smiled thinly at him as Nicola laughed. ‘Come on, Daddy, there’s something different about me from this morning.’ She turned her head from side to side suggestively.
Through her lowered lashes Harriet watched in malicious enjoyment as Marcus’s shoulders tensed and his teasing expression stilled. ‘You’ve had your ears pierced.’
Nicola ignored the slight reverberation of shock in his voice. ‘Yes; do you like it?’ she said eagerly.
There was an anxious moment and then Harriet saw his shoulders relax. ‘Very chic, darling. I’m glad you prefer the elegant look to the punk appeal of a stud through the nose!’
Nicola looked at Harriet and giggled at the memory of their earlier exchange.
Marcus noticed the glances. ‘Was this pre or après Porsche?’ he asked drily.
‘Oh, before,’ said Nicola, looking suddenly uneasy as she sensed the dichotomy in his attitude. She fiddled with her napkin. ‘You really don’t mind, then, Daddy?’
He covered her hand with his, squeezing it gently. ‘I do, actually, but only because it’s made me realise that my little girl is even more grown-up than I realised…you don’t come rushing to me with every bump and scrape any more and you have rights to privacy and independence that exclude me. I’m just being selfish, I suppose…but I’m glad that you still respect my judgement enough to ask for my opinion—even if it’s after the fact!’
‘I did think I ought to ask you first,’ Nicola allowed generously, ‘but Harriet said I was old enough to make my own decision.’
‘Did she indeed?’ he murmured, removing his hand and contemplating Harriet’s guilty face.
‘Well, she is,’ Harriet defended herself.
‘Oh, I agree. Didn’t I just say that?’ he asked with a mildness that sent nervous shivers down her spine. Surely he would now want to reassess her position of influence over his daughter?
‘I thought it might hurt, but Harriet hadn’t flinched at all,’ continued Nicola blithely, ‘so I knew it must be OK, because she said she’s a coward about pain…’
Something flared in the blue eyes as Marcus suddenly reached across the table and thrust his fingers into the wavy blonde mass brushing Harriet’s cheek, combing it back to expose her ear with its small, shining stud.
‘Well, well, well; so you’ve had your ears pierced too,’ he said huskily, tucking the curls behind the curve of her ear so that he could study the full effect, the tips of his fingers brushing against the little strip of sensitive skin there, causing a small, electric buzz in her hearing. ‘What a tempting example of your daring to set before an impressionable teenager.’
It struck her that he was using his curiosity as an excuse to touch her, to deliberately cross some hidden boundary of acceptable public behaviour, but before she could move out of his reach his thumb slid forward and stroked the soft pink lobe, and she jumped. ‘Sore?’
He was mocking her. He knew that wasn’t the reason for her sensitivity. ‘Just a little bit tender,’ she said, tilting her head so that his
only polite choice was to let his hand fall back to the table.
‘Like your conscience?’ he murmured, hitting the nail on the head with his usual annoying precision as their first course arrived. ‘I suppose I should consider myself lucky you didn’t come back with matching Porsches as well!’
‘I haven’t learnt to drive yet,’ Nicola reminded him, digging into her salad. ‘Some of my friends got their licences as soon as they were fifteen—’
Marcus shuddered and sternly cut in, ‘Harriet is not, I repeat not going to teach you to drive in her Porsche. And you are not to even think of asking her.’
‘But you will, won’t you, Daddy?’ Nicola said confidently. ‘Then I wouldn’t have to ask Granny to take me everywhere when you’re away.’
‘You needn’t think that a driving licence automatically comes with your own car,’ Marcus warned over a spoonful of fragrant soup, ‘because you’ll have to have at least a year’s experience on the road before I’ll even consider buying you one. I’m willing to start you off but I think a driving school is the best place to learn to cope with today’s traffic—and then a defensive driving course.’
‘Who taught you to drive, Harriet?’ asked Nicola, obviously seeking an ally.
Harriet, who had never tasted caviare before, was discovering that she hated it. As soon as she got home she was going to toss out the unopened jars from her fridge, since there was no longer any Frank to dine on her scraps.
‘My father was too impatient and my mother too terrified, so my elder brother, Tim, ended up teaching me,’ she said, putting off the evil moment when she would have to pass another fishy, squelchy mouthful across her shrinking taste buds.
‘I didn’t know you had a brother,’ said Marcus, his eyes bright blue with curiosity, and Harriet knew that she couldn’t stomach another mouthful.
‘That was delicious,’ she lied, pushing the rest of the caviare out of her olfactory range.
