Looking After Dad

Looking After Dad
Elizabeth Oldfield

FROM HERE TO PATERNITYSingle dad requires protection! When Lorcan Hunter is threatened by someone opposed to his latest business project, and leggy blonde Jess Pallister presents herself as the person to protect him, Lorcan is more than a little skeptical! But when his little girl is also threatened, Lorcan is forced to trust Jess.Bright and beautiful Jess soon becomes part of the family, and before he knows it, Lorcan is ready to offer her a permanent assignment so she can watch over both of them for life!FROM HERE TO PATERNITY - men who find their way to fatherhood by fair means, by foul, or even by default!

His blue eyes glittered. “You’re guarding Harriet and only Harriet.” (#u2bb9317d-92d6-54bd-a338-69bfaea2a267)About the Author (#u20229b92-9124-5871-a418-293dec8538de)Title Page (#u0236b1cb-5892-5f9f-9649-d9aa8df80983)CHAPTER ONE (#u48afca10-d815-59e7-8904-17e37cd40760)CHAPTER TWO (#ub4cf5c6a-88cf-5f84-860d-e6f3182bccd5)CHAPTER THREE (#u70b065f2-4f22-5277-9dcd-ab694f1cfdda)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

His blue eyes glittered. “You’re guarding Harriet and only Harriet.”

“All right, but the note referred to both of you, so surely it—”

“Must you always argue?” Lorcan demanded.

“I am not arguing,” she said. “I’m suggesting that if I have a quick reconnoiter—”

“And I’m suggesting that you shut up!”

Jess felt the hot smack of anger. She did not know how it had happened, but a flash fire seemed to have erupted between them and they were fighting like fiends.

Lorcan lowered his tone to a husky snarl. “Did anyone ever tell you that you can be an infuriating woman?”

She straightened her shoulders, which thrust out her breasts. “All the time.”

“How about a sexy one?” he growled and, hooking a hand around her neck, he yanked her close and kissed her.

FROM HERE TO PATERNITY—romances that feature fantastic men who eventually make fabulous fathers. Some seek paternity, some have it thrust upon them. All will make it—whether they like it or not!

ELIZABETH OLDFIELD’s writing career started as a teenage hobby, when she had articles published. However, on her marriage, the creative instinct was diverted into the production of a daughter and a son. A decade later, when her husband’s job took them to Singapore, she resumed writing and had her first romance accepted in 1982. Now hooked on the genre, she produces an average of three books a year. They live in London, England, and Elizabeth travels widely to authenticate the background of her books.

Looking After Dad

Elizabeth Oldfield

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS one of those days when it would have been smarter to ignore the bossy beep-beep of the alarm, pull the covers up high over her head and stay in bed.

Clutching a half-eaten prawn and mayonnaise sandwich in one hand and with a magnum of champagne in the other, Jess Pallister sped along the busy city street. First she had forgotten to buy fresh muesli so had had to miss breakfast, then the showers at the pool were out of order, next she had received a worrying gift, and finally, when she was looking forward to a calm afternoon at her easel, an unexpected interview had been sprung on her.

She was a darn sight too pliable, Jess thought as she swerved to avoid a youth dispensing a confetti of ‘cheap pizza’ vouchers. Instead of saying an outright, blunt and forestalling no, she had listened—and allowed herself to be sweet-talked into going along.

‘Sounds like a dream assignment,’ her brother had declared, when relaying the brief details, but she had been on what he had claimed were ‘dream’ assignments before and they had turned out to be nightmares. Her fingers tightened around the throat of the champagne bottle. Like the one with Roscoe Dunbar.

Reaching a glistening white tower block, Jess pushed around revolving doors and into a vast marble-floored lobby. A look was snatched at her watch. She hated to be late and there was five minutes to spare. Five minutes in which to finish her lunch on the hoof and present herself—cool, calm and collected—at the twentieth and top-floor offices of Sir Peter Warwick, business tycoon and international hotelier.

She scanned the bank of lifts and on seeing one with doors smoothly closing leapt forward. Using her bulging sports bag as an impromptu battering ram, she hurtled in through the gap, which forced the half-dozen or so occupants into a collective backwards shuffle.

‘Made it,’ she mumbled, shining a general smile of apology, and turned to inspect the wall indicator panel. Someone had already pressed the ‘20’ lozenge.

As the lift began to rise, Jess took another bite of her sandwich. She might have been persuaded to attend the interview, but that did not mean she would be pliable again and meekly accept the job. No chance. As Kevin had acknowledged it was her decision, and it only required one snag and she intended to refuse. Mutiny simmered in her hazel brown eyes. The days of being Miss Amenable were over. From now on, she did what she wanted to do and ran her life her way.

The lift stopped to allow a couple of middle-aged men with briefcases to get out and, in the pause, Jess ate the remainder of her sandwich. As the ascent restarted, she licked crumbs from the corners of her mouth and wiped her fingers on a tissue. Before she faced the business tycoon lipstick needed to be applied and her hair brushed through, but she would do that when the surprisingly lethargic lift reached the top floor.

Jess hitched the sports bag higher onto her shoulder. Her fellow passengers were all prime examples of city-smart sartorial elegance, whereas in a paint-dotted pastel pink tunic and black leggings which looked as if they might date from the Battle of Trafalgar she was casual. Casual, flustered and disgruntled. Lowering her head, she gave a discreet sniff. Yuck. She also smelled faintly of chlorine.

For a second time the lift halted, disgorged people and resumed its leisurely journey. Now the only other occupant was a man who stood beside the opposite wall. She cast him a glance. With his arms folded across his chest and his head bent, he was lost in thought. He looked sombre and tense. As if this September day had not turned out to be exactly a bundle of laughs for him, either.

He was in his late thirties, tall—she estimated around six feet four—and had a lean, rangy frame. Thick dark hair fell over his forehead in engaging windswept disarray and his skin bore the golden remains of a tan. Clad in an immaculate navy pin-striped suit, he looked like a business executive; yet the hair, which was worn long enough to brush his collar, and a jazzy pink, blue and white patterned silk tie suggested he was not the conventional city type, but had a touch of the maverick about him.

She could not see his eyes, but he had a broad brow, straight nose and granite jaw. His features were too tight-drawn for him to be classified as handsome, yet even standing still he possessed an inherent masculine vibrancy which made him magnetic. The darkness, almost blue-black, of his hair hinted at a Latin lineage...or could it be Irish? She settled on Irish. His mood seemed tinged with the melancholy of the Celt.

He would be someone who was accustomed to command, she assessed, and who did not suffer fools—

Abruptly realising that the man had noticed her examination and was looking coolly and somewhat aggressively back, Jess switched her gaze to the indicator panel. Did he think she had been sizing him up? As other women had doubtless sized him up on numerous occasions before. If so, he was wrong. Her job meant she was trained to be observant and to take note, and he had intrigued her as a case study, that was all. She chewed at her lip. Should she make a comment—perhaps about his tie—which would show she had absolutely no personal interest and defuse the situation?

As the light illuminated for the eighth floor, she turned towards him. ‘I do like—’

Bang! The champagne exploded. The cork shot out from the bottle like the obligatory speeding bullet, whistled past the man’s ear and thudded with a thwack against the wall behind him. Ribbons of white foam followed, spurting crazily. All of a sudden, it was New Year’s Eve.

Startled, Jess jumped. She blinked. Her mouth fell open and she gaped. The man was being sprayed. He had brought his right arm up to shield his eyes, but froth was spewing over his dark hair, across the width of his broad shoulders, splattering like fast-melting snow on the pinstriped jacket.

‘Oh, dear!’ she bleated, holding helplessly onto the magnum with two hands as the foam turned into a high-pressure liquid jet.

Now champagne rained onto his face, swamped his sleeve, was flowing in fast bubbly rivulets down his suit.

‘Away,’ the man rasped.

Jess looked blankly at him through the downpour. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Hold the’bloody bottle away!’ he bellowed.

‘Oh...yes.’

She straightened up the magnum, which meant the champagne hit the roof of the lift like a geyser and showered down onto the two of them. Though only for a moment for, with a violent oath, the man leapt forward, grabbed hold of the neck and directed the torrent down and into a corner. There it gushed for a couple more seconds before diminishing into a harmless dribble.

‘For God’s sake!’ he rasped, glaring at her.

His eyes proved to be an astonishing pale blue, fringed with thick black lashes. They were beautiful eyes, the kind of eyes about which poets waxed lyrical and whose soft gaze would reduce maidenly hearts to marshmallow—though right now they blazed with the hard flame of anger.

‘I’m very sorry,’ Jess said. ‘Everything happened so fast, I was taken by surprise.’

‘But why did it happen?’ her victim demanded, swiping hanks of dripping jet-black hair back from his brow.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she replied, and stopped.

A giggle had bubbled up in her throat. He looked so furious and bedraggled that, all of a sudden, his plight took on a comical air and she was stricken by an acute urge to laugh. Or was it nerves? Whatever, if the last couple of minutes had been videoed and shown on prime-time ‘Candid Camera’ TV, audiences worldwide would be in tucks.

‘Don’t risk it,’ he warned, showing himself to be disconcertingly alert.