Читать книгу Loving - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 7

BOTH GIRLS HAD had their supper and were bathed and pyjamaed when Jay Fraser came back. They were sharing Lucy’s room, but Claire took her own daughter downstairs so that Jay and Heather could be alone.

She had barely been downstairs with Lucy for more than ten minutes when Jay Fraser’s dark head suddenly appeared round her sitting-room door. He looked unexpectedly vulnerable for such a very hard-edged man, his mouth set in a grimly despondent line.

‘Can you come?’ he asked quietly. ‘Heather seems to have cast me in the role of angry parent; I can’t get it through to her that she isn’t going to be punished.’

Claire had always been acutely sensitive to the feelings of others and it was for that reason that she kept her attention fixed on a point to the left of his shoulder rather than on his face. She didn’t need a crystal ball to know that he was finding it very hard to ask for her help.

When she got upstairs Heather was curled up in a small ball, crying. The moment she saw Claire she flung herself into her arms, cuddling up against her. Over her dark head Claire looked at the grimly set face of her father. Strange to think that less than a month ago she had viewed a second meeting with this man with both apprehension and dread. Now she was seeing him stripped of his masculine arrogance, a human being with fears and doubts, and ridiculously she wanted to reassure him that everything would be all right, and that Heather would eventually come round.

Instead, she stroked her soft dark hair, and said quietly, ‘It’s all right, Heather, your daddy isn’t cross with you. He was very worried about you, we all were.’