The Man Who Saw Her Beauty

He steeled himself against that hurt. ‘That’s right.’

‘When I’m doing you a favour by coming here?’

‘Filling Stevie’s head with nonsense isn’t doing me or her a favour.’

‘If I don’t take my wig off are you still going to forbid her to enter Miss Showgirl?’

He shuffled his feet. No, he couldn’t do that. It meant too much to Stevie. But he didn’t have to admit as much to Blair. Not yet.

Her eyes suddenly flashed their scorn, blasting the skin on his face and arms. She had no right to direct that at him. All he was trying to do was protect his daughter from being beguiled by false images.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Nicholas,’ she snapped. ‘Put two and two together.’

He opened his mouth. He closed it again. The soft vulnerability of her mouth belied the hard jut of her chin. Her nostrils flared and her shoulders had gone rigid. And her voice … It didn’t sound like her voice.

A chill edged up his spine.

She stuck out a hip, her assumed nonchalance at odds with the expression in her eyes. ‘Let me guess. I look exactly the same, right?’ She mimicked her own earlier words.

He swallowed.

She rolled her eyes, but the darkness in them contradicted her implied impatience. ‘I’ve been ill.’

She cocked an eyebrow, as if daring him to join the dots, to put the pieces of the puzzle together, to make the connection between her wig and having been sick.

And he did.

He gripped a fencepost to keep himself upright as the breath rushed out of his body. Her gaze shied away from his then, as if she couldn’t bear to see what was reflected in his eyes. ‘Why did you automatically assume the make-up and the wig were for the purposes of vanity, huh? Do you always jump to such appalling conclusions?’

He hated himself in that moment for the prejudice that had blinded him.

‘I’m not wearing a wig to hide a bad haircut or a disastrous dye-job. I wish!’ She gave a laugh—only it wasn’t a laugh. It was a sound masquerading as a laugh and it sliced through him like a physical pain. ‘I don’t have enough hair to either cut or dye!’

He closed his eyes, hating himself even more for the reprehensible judgements he’d made, for the accusations he’d flung at her.

‘Chemotherapy,’ she said, as if now that she’d started she couldn’t stop.

‘Cancer?’ he croaked.

‘Cancer,’ she affirmed.

He pushed away from the fence. He wanted to offer her comfort, to say he was sorry, to wrap her in his arms and assure himself she was all right. He didn’t. She’d probably sock him one. And he’d deserve it.

‘It’s hell on hair.’ She pointed to her lashes and eyebrows. ‘The good news is that I won’t have to wax my legs for a while.’

The shadows in her eyes would haunt him for ever. ‘Blair, I’m—’

‘Do you know what I look like without all this hair and make-up?’

‘I—’

‘With round cheeks and a big, bald, round head?’

Her eyes flashed their fury. She planted her hands on her hips, evidently awaiting an answer. She’d still look beautiful. As soon as the thought filtered into his consciousness he realised he meant it. It struck him then with equal force that she wouldn’t believe him.

‘I look like a great big helpless baby, that’s what. And you know how people treat a baby, don’t you?’

Her fury, her frustration, had started to run out of steam. She all but limped over to a low brick wall and sat. She dragged in a breath that made her whole frame shudder.

‘Like they can’t do even the simplest things for themselves,’ she finished on a whisper.

It was the way her shoulders slumped that cut him to the quick. He collapsed down on the wall beside her. He rested his elbows on his knees, dropped his head to his hands. How did he apologise after what he’d just done, said, the accusations he’d hurled at her?

‘You can mock and scorn my wig and my false eyelashes and my false eyebrows all you want, Mr Conway. You can tell me I’m a liar, that I’m vain, that the image I present is a sham. You can tell me I have my priorities all wrong. But know this …’

Another breath made her entire body shudder. He wanted to hand her a big stick and ask her to beat him with it. That might make him feel better, but he suspected it would only make her feel worse. He’d misjudged her in every conceivable way. Why? Because once upon a time she’d been a model. On that evidence he’d decided she was shallow.

Nausea threatened to choke him.

She met his gaze and her blue-eyed anguish flayed him more effectively than any big stick ever could.

‘The way I present myself is my defence against the world. It is my attempt to regain a portion of control over my life.’ Her eyes told him she’d been to hell and back. ‘It is my way of trying to get my life back to normal. That means people treating me the way they did before I got sick. The only way I can make that happen is to look as normal as I can—to look the way I used to before …’

She hiccupped. His heart slumped to his knees, but he forced himself to straighten. ‘Are you sure you’re well enough to be getting back to normal?’

‘Oh!’ Her lip curled. ‘Not that you’ve just proved my point or anything! Did that thought occur to you when you were abusing me earlier?’

‘No, but …’ A person could pull off a hell of a show with hair and make-up.

‘You didn’t think I was weak and feeble then. And I bet all the tea in China that you wouldn’t have yelled at me if hadn’t been wearing my wig!’

The Chinese tea was all hers. But … ‘You want to be yelled at?’

‘I want to be treated like normal. The way I really look makes people treat me like I’m an invalid and that makes me feel like a freak.’

He’d made her feel like a freak.

‘And I’m tired of pity.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘I want my life back.’

He admired her quiet dignity. He admired her courage.

He hated himself.

‘Blair, I shouldn’t have made the assumptions I did. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry. I wish—’

He wished he could take back all those things he’d said. He wished he could turn the clock back. He wished he could wave a magic wand so that she’d never been sick.

She straightened. ‘I want to be judged for myself, not by my illness. And not because I used to be a model once upon a time.’