Stacy Connelly - The Maverick's Summer Sweetheart

“I know all the songs,” Janie boasted.

“Which one do you like best?”

This time Hank didn’t bother holding back the groan. One Gemma clearly heard as she shot him a look. Her dewy lips pressed together, trying to hide a smile, as his beautiful, smart, talented and completely tone-deaf daughter started belting out the Oscar-winning song.

A few people in nearby lounge chairs glanced over, but Janie didn’t care. Obviously Gemma didn’t either, as she too started to sing. Thanks to Janie, Hank had heard the song and seen the DVD numerous times, and the words—like the melody—had been little more than background noise.

But Gemma didn’t sing the lyrics so much as she seemed to embrace them. No keeping it in, no holding back...just letting it go. And as she lifted her head, her long dark hair trailing down her slender back, something inside Hank sparked to life. Something that had been, well, frozen for far too long.

Get a grip, Harlow! You’re way too old to be taking life lessons from Disney.

By the big finale, the people around them gave a round of applause that had Gemma laughing breathlessly. Even though a bloom of color brightened her cheeks, she brazened out the sudden attention and gave a graceful curtsy, one that Janie immediately copied.

“This afternoon’s entertainment has been brought to you by Janie and Gemma,” Gemma added with all the flourish of an MC hosting an awards ceremony.

“That was awesome!” Janie practically bounced on her bare toes in her excitement.

“Janie’s right. That was...awesome,” Hank echoed. The blush in Gemma’s cheeks deepened as their gazes met and held, but just like she had with the unexpected applause, she didn’t back down. Awareness rippled between them, and Hank wasn’t sure when he had moved, but he suddenly noticed a puddle of water from his navy trunks had formed at his feet and was inching toward Gemma’s purple-painted toes and sequined flip-flops.

Who wore sequins at a pool?

He took a stumbling step back to keep from dripping on her fancy shoes, nearly tripping over the lounger behind him. He’d barely caught his balance when Janie added, “I totally wanted to go to New York to see the musical, but we’d already booked the hotel here. I’m hoping I can go later this summer with my other dad.”

“Other dad?” At that, Gemma’s dark brows winged upward as she gave him a somewhat-surprised look.

His face already burning, Hank quickly said, “My ex-wife remarried a year and a half ago.”

“Ah, I see.”

Did she? Somehow Hank doubted it. Not that he was about to explain that Dan Stockton was more than simply Janie’s stepdad. The man was in fact Janie’s biological father. And the daughter Hank had raised from birth—the baby girl he’d held in his arms when she was only minutes old, the one he’d rocked into the wee hours of the morning when she was sick or teething, the one who’d taken her first stumbling steps while holding on to his thumbs—was not actually his.

And neither was the woman he’d been married to.

In reality Hank had been little more than a placeholder in Anne’s life. A second-best substitute who had stepped in at a time when she had been alone and afraid. From the start Anne had been completely honest. She’d told him all about Daniel Stockton, the young man she had been in love with since high school. How she had thought they would be together forever, how he had disappeared after his parents were killed in a car accident and how she was pregnant with his child.

Hank had asked Anne to marry him anyway, believing in time she would forget about Dan. He’d been so sure that if he took care of her and treated her right, eventually she would grow to love him. And Anne had said yes, certain Dan Stockton was never coming back to Rust Creek Falls.

In the end, though, they’d both been wrong.

Chapter Two

“What else do you like to do, Janie?” Gemma asked. “Other than sing?”

Sitting across a table loaded with chips, popcorn and soft drinks, Hank gave a wry half smile. She had a feeling their impromptu duet had embarrassed him, but he hadn’t let it show, praising his daughter’s efforts...if not her actual talent.

A completely different reaction to how Gemma’s own mother and stepfather would have responded. In Diane and Gregory Chapman’s socially structured mind, everything had a time and a place. Performing on stage at a carefully orchestrated and choreographed pageant or school performance was one thing. Singing a cappella poolside was something else.

Her mother would have been mortified, and Gemma didn’t even have to try hard to picture how the disappointment and disapproval would have pulled at the features so similar to her own. When Gemma wasn’t struggling to rub the image of Chad and Melanie from the inside of her eyelids, she was trying to forget her mother’s reaction when she called off the wedding.

Think of the embarrassment, Gemma!

Because, yes, the real scandal was Gemma calling off the wedding weeks before her walk down the aisle. Not her fiancé’s sleeping with her best friend.

But to her mother and stepfather, her engagement to Chad had been about more than two people pledging to forsake all others. The wedding would also have united the Chapman and Matthews families. Gemma had no doubt her business-minded stepfather had viewed it in terms of a merger rather than as a marriage. A check mark in the asset column of some mental balance sheet Gregory Chapman kept. To him, the boarding schools and etiquette lessons were finally paying off since Gemma caught the eye of one of NYC’s most eligible bachelors.

Determined not to think of the embarrassment, of her broken engagement or her mother, Gemma focused her attention on Janie...and on Hank.

Janie had already asked dozens of rapid-fire questions about Gemma’s life—where she worked, where she lived, where she shopped, if she knew anyone famous. It didn’t seem to matter much what answer Gemma gave; Janie still thought everything about New York was the most exciting thing ever.

Her father certainly seemed harder to impress. Money, clothes, fame... None of that had the somewhat-silent man seated across from her raising so much as an eyebrow. Not that Gemma was trying to impress him... Was she?

Certainly it would be much easier to regain a bit of equilibrium if Hank wasn’t so impressive without even trying. He’d pulled a faded T-shirt on, but the soft blue cotton only molded to those broad shoulders, the sleeves hugging a pair of well-defined biceps. His thick brown hair had dried with a bit of a wave, the too-long locks falling across his wide forehead and curling at the strong column of his neck.

On another man, the tousled hair might have looked boyish or at least done something to soften his masculine features. On Hank, it only drew attention to his rugged features and the solid set of his jaw.

There was nothing boyish or soft about Hank Harlow.

Gemma didn’t think he was trying for any kind of fashion statement. More likely he was a month or two beyond needing a haircut. But instead of being turned off by the overgrown style, she longed to run her hands through a man’s hair without worrying about encountering more product than she put in her own.

So distracted by the tempting fantasy, Gemma almost forgot the question she asked by the time Janie stated, “I love to go horseback riding.”

Horseback riding... Gemma had never been on a horse.

At least not that she remembered.

Many years ago, when she had been around Janie’s age, Gemma had found an old picture of herself as a toddler. In the photo, she’d been stumbling toward the camera in a red bandanna-print shirt and denim overalls, with a pink cowboy hat on her head and a pair of fawn-colored boots on her feet.