Lilian Darcy - The Father Factor

“Hyattville is a great little town,” she told him. “I don’t have any regrets about leaving L.A.”

Which was true as far as it went, but it didn’t go anywhere near all the way.

“Well, you have a great day, and I’ll tell your dad I ran into you. You know, if that Miss America had only turned out to be a prison escapee, or something…”

“I know,” Shallis drawled, smiling. “How unfair can you get, huh? How dare the woman have led such a blameless life!”

“Smart, beautiful and funny, too.” Duke Delahunty said to the April sky. His expression began to resemble the expression of the drugstore counter clerk a few minutes ago.

“It was good to see you, Mr. Delahunty,” Shallis said quickly.

Then she smiled at him again because, like almost every other citizen of Hyattville, he was genuinely proud of her and genuinely sorry that she’d so narrowly missed winning the Miss America crown. It would be ungracious to get angry about the level of support she’d always had here, when the cleavage gazers were well in the minority.

But the pageant was more than five years ago.

She wondered if Hyattville would ever let her move on.

An old-fashioned brass bell tinkled when Shallis open the front door of Abraham Starke’s law office, and his middle-aged receptionist looked up from her computer screen.

“Oh, Miss Duncan!” She beamed. “I’ll let Mr. Starke know you’ve arrived. He’s waiting for you.”

Instinctively, Shallis looked at her watch.

“Oh, no, you’re not late,” the receptionist said, fast and breathless. “I’m sorry, I just meant he’s expecting you.”

She pushed her swivel chair back too fast, stood up and stumbled over one of its wheels. A sharp curse word escaped her lips, and she threw a panicky look back at Shallis, as if a one-time first runner-up in the Miss America pageant had the right of citizen’s arrest over any woman who swore in public.

What next? Would Abraham Starke have an attack of hospital-strength heartburn at the sight of her, or something?

He’d been the Duncan family’s lawyer since before Shallis was born. Surely he might be one person who wouldn’t think of her in a ball gown with a pageant princess’s tiara on her head, but would have memories of some less exalted outfit from her past. A diaper and a sunhat, for example. Or a Girl Scout uniform. She’d seriously prefer either of those.

The receptionist rapped at the door of his private office, opened it and poked her head inside. “Miss Duncan is here to see you, Mr. Starke.”

“Yes, please show her in,” said a voice that didn’t sound like it belonged to someone in his eighties.

Two seconds later, Shallis came face-to-face with the man who six years ago had gotten dangerously close to ruining not just her sister Linnie’s wedding day but Linnie and Ryan’s whole marriage.

Jared Starke.

Not Abraham.

Oh, yeah, this Mr. Starke would have memories from her past, all right.

Her whole body went hot, and then cold. Reaction rushed through her, changed direction, rushed back again. She felt as if she’d been ambushed by ancient feelings she hadn’t enjoyed at the time and liked even less now. Surely it all should have gone away, after so long?

She’d felt so fiercely protective of her sister since getting back to Hyattville three months ago, when she’d learned the full story behind the fact that Linnie and Ryan weren’t parents yet, after six years as man and wife. She didn’t want anything to come along that might impinge on Linnie’s happiness any further.

If Jared still had the power to do that…

He was probably the one person in the world who could have made Shallis nostalgic for the princess treatment she regularly received from everybody else in Hyattville—everybody except her dad. She couldn’t stand the princess treatment, but at least she knew how to handle it.

She’d never known how to handle Jared. At best—as on Linnie’s wedding day—she’d only pretended.

He was Abraham Starke’s grandson, and she’d had no idea that he was back in town, let alone that he’d apparently taken over his grandfather’s law firm. He was sinfully good looking, impossible to trust, and she didn’t like him one bit.

No, really.

She didn’t.

She wouldn’t betray Linnie like that, and she wouldn’t be such a fool. She’d developed some pretty powerful instincts toward self-protection in recent years.

“Shallis,” he said, standing at once, and fast, so that he was on his feet almost before she’d fully entered the room. The Southern courtesy bred into him since childhood hadn’t been abraded by Chicago’s brasher style.

The noon sunshine reflecting into the office through its east-facing window caught the natural blond highlights in his hair and made them stand out against the thicker and darker strands beneath. His tan was no doubt the artificial result of frequent sessions on a big city tanning bed but it suited him all the same, even around the outer corners of his eyes, where a couple of fine, tiny wrinkles had begun to form.

His dark tailored pants and plain white shirt covered a strong male body that seemed at ease in its own skin, full of latent power but with nothing left to prove. He must already have proved himself plenty of times, with plenty of women. The electric aura of sensual success hovered around him, yet he acted as if he had no idea it was there.

Yeah, right. Like I’m buying that! Shallis thought. A man like him would always know it was there.

He must be around thirty-three years old by now, or maybe just turned thirty-four, against her own age of going on twenty-eight. He’d been her sister’s first serious boyfriend, starting from when Linnie was in senior year of high school and Shallis herself had hit thirteen. Thirteen was an impressionable age, and Shallis had been…

Yup, impressed.

Round-eyed.

Envious of what Linnie had.

In fact she’d had a wild hormonal crush on Jared that had lasted until she was sixteen. For most of those three years he’d hardly seemed aware of her existence, but, ohhh, had she ever been aware of his! The kind of aware that resulted in clammy hands and hot cheeks, clumsy outbursts and ill-timed episodes of tongue-tied silence, an obsession with certain hit tracks featured on MTV and the scribbling of secret, tortured and very, very bad poems. The way she’d behaved on the night he’d finally deigned to notice her was not exactly one of her proudest memories.

As if Jared sincerely had no notion that she might have any reason to feel hostile or negative toward him, let alone that her feelings might be a whole lot more complex and jumpy than that, he came around the side of his grandfather’s huge oak desk to shake her hand. His smile was as steady as his grip, and contained just the right amount of professional warmth. There was a respect in his golden-brown eyes that you sensed might eventually turn to friendship given the right encouragement and points of connection.

And there was nothing in his attitude or his body language that said, “Another blond bimbo, big yawn…or maybe a one-night stand,” which was the way she’d been treated in Los Angeles, and nothing that said, “Oh, wow, I’m in the same room as Hyattville’s beautiful prodigal princess,” which was the way she got treated here.

Not fair!

He was too good at all of this.

It was exactly the kind of behavior that Shallis wanted from every other citizen in town, but she didn’t want it from Jared Starke, not when she knew from Linnie’s experience and her own that it had to be part of some game plan of his that could lead to only one outcome—a win for Jared himself.

“Jared,” she answered him coolly, because sometimes an ex first runner-up in the Miss America pageant could be good at this, too. And she dropped his grip a little too soon. Deliberately. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”