Make Me Lose Control. Christie Ridgway

       CHAPTER FOUR

      FOR A MOMENT, Jace thought he’d fallen, as he had weeks before in Qatar, and taken another blow to the head. The last time he’d been knocked out, but though he was surely still conscious, his world was rocked all the same. That...that inky-haired, more than half-grown human being was his daughter?

      The last time he’d seen her she’d been a chubby-cheeked, irrepressible child, who wore pigtails and shirts with cartoon characters on them. In the intervening years he’d pictured the same, ribbons and Roadrunner, only taller. Never had he expected to find a teen wearing...wearing whatever you’d call that dark garb.

      And just as unbelievable...

      Birthday Girl.

      Birthday Girl! She was standing behind the teenager, looking stunned. She reached out a hand and placed it on the girl’s shoulder. To steady which one of them?

      “You’re...” the woman began.

      “Jason Jennings. Jace.” He cut his gaze to the teen. “Her father.”

      There must have been some question in his voice, because Birthday Girl nodded. “Yes. Right. And this is Om—”

      “London,” the youngster interrupted. The black around her eyes and the heavy coating of the same color on her lashes was startling.

      “I know your name,” he said. His ex-wife’s selection, of course, chosen after the city she’d run to upon leaving him when she was four months pregnant. Jace, tied financially and morally to the sick old man who’d given him a leg up and his very first job, had remained in the States, frustrated and confused and just beginning to realize that the woman he’d married might have never expected them to grow old together.

      He looked at the auburn-haired female behind his daughter and felt his head spin again. It really was the woman from last night. Shit. From the first, he’d known regret would be the outcome of their encounter. Still, he had to carry on. “May I come in?” he asked, wincing at the sharp edge to his voice.

      The two females stepped back.

      “Of course,” Birthday Girl said—no, he recalled her real name now. Shay Walker. Or S. Walker, as she’d signed the succession of emails he’d finally managed to read last week when his head issues had cleared up at last.

      At first he’d thought her talk of tango lessons and celebrity magazines was something his mind was misinterpreting. A few emails later, he’d realized she was either putting him on or was a terrible mentor for his kid.

      It had been only one more reason to seethe at the delays—caused by injury, crappy means of communication and his isolated location—that had postponed his return. But he was here now, he told himself, and it was time to implement the simple plan he’d conceived when he’d learned of his daughter’s situation: a summer of getting to know her before school started in September.

      He crossed over the threshold, then glanced around the massive foyer, with its thirty-foot ceiling. “Good God,” he said, staring up at the walls of unrelieved concrete. The staircase was more gray cement, with a tubular metal banister painted a janitorial blue. “Is this place butt ugly, or what?”

      Both London and Birthday Girl stared at him like he’d sprouted another head. He lifted an eyebrow. “Problem?”

      Birth— Shay met the eyes of his daughter then looked back at him. “Um, this is your house.”

      “Yeah, but I never saw it before in my life. I needed something in So-Cal, somewhere quiet, I thought, and my man Leonard Case found it. I got it for a song.”

      “Which must have been ‘Anchors Aweigh,’” Shay muttered, and his daughter snickered behind her hand.

      The sound sliced at Jace’s conscience. She didn’t look like she laughed often. When he’d been told the fifteen-year-old had lost her mother, he’d felt sorrow for her loss and a deep uncertainty about what it would mean for him. Of course he was going to step up and do his duty, but he’d expected to find... He didn’t know.

      Not this dark-clad teenager whose expression was near deadpan.

      Quashing a rising sense of suffocating panic, he reminded himself he had a plan.

      “Why don’t you show me around?” he asked London. “After I see my room, I’ll collect my luggage from the car.”

      She glanced over at Shay, who nodded. “We’ll both show you,” the woman said. “Come this way.”

      Foiled already, he thought, as he followed their lead. He’d hoped to get his daughter alone and determine exactly how things were with the tutor. Though, hell, didn’t he already know Shay—

      No, he did not know Shay. The woman with whom he’d spent the night at the inn was someone else altogether. He’d left that person behind in the room, including his memories of her lithe body, her delicate fragrance and the softness of her skin beneath his lips. If he were going to follow through with his idea of taking this time with London, becoming acquainted with her even as she continued her studies, then he had to forget all about last night and see the tutor in a completely businesslike light.

      He could do that. He’d always been a businessman first, after all.

      They showed him around the downstairs area, which had an open floor plan containing some midcentury modern furniture that looked to be all angles and uncomfortable cushions. The kitchen was large enough to feed the navy and the best thing you could say about it beyond that was it was clean.

      The view of the lake was stupendous, but even the sun streaming in the windows didn’t warm the atmosphere of the place.

      Without much optimism, he mounted the stairs. The top landing opened into a large gallery that contained a long center table. Textbooks sat in neat stacks on it, as well as a desktop and a laptop computer. “This is where London studies,” Shay said.

      The girl was already at a computer, drawn to it like a magnet, and as the screen powered on, its pale light washed onto her face, making the darkness surrounding her eyes even more stark. Jace shoved a hand through his hair, keenly aware of being out of his element. Panic tried digging its claws in him again.

      Feeling a gaze on him, he glanced over at Shay. She was staring, and when she noticed he noticed, her face colored and she looked away. “What do you know about website building?” she asked, then hurried toward the table without waiting for his answer. “London, why don’t you show your dad what you’re working on?”

      The girl’s frozen expression didn’t animate, but she obligingly moved her fingers on the keyboard. Color splashed onto the screen, brilliant-colored flowers and the words Build a Bouquet.

      “It’s a multidisciplinary project,” Shay explained. “She’s developing a website for a pretend florist business. Visitors to the site are able to select flowers and greenery to custom-design a floral arrangement. She’s setting it up for three disparate locations throughout the country, so she’s had to research local flora and seasonal availability along with the computer programming aspect.”

      Shay reached around the teen to hit a key. The screen switched from bright photography to rows of incomprehensible—to Jace anyway—letters, numbers and symbols. “This is the language for creating web pages,” she explained, glancing over her shoulder at him.

      “Impressive,” he murmured. “But a lot to accomplish between tango lessons, isn’t it?”