“This looks great!” Kane exclaimed a little too heartily as he helped Erin to her chair. His fingers brushed against her arm, and startled by the intimate gesture, Erin turned her eyes away from the meal to look more closely at him. He seemed more than tired—he seemed weary. She could tell his jovial words were just a cloak for the tension coiling rigidly within him. Although his voice was cheerful, the lines on his forehead, the muscle cords strung tightly at his neck, and the darkness of his gaze betrayed his calm exterior.

“Doesn’t this look delicious, honey?” he asked his daughter as he took his seat. Krista remained silent. Kane cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together. “I’m famished!” He looked at Krista with concern. Her large, liquid eyes met his, but still she didn’t speak.

Finally she broke her gaze from that of her father, and stared instead at the napkin in her lap. Kane’s forced smile disappeared into a frown. He was obviously distressed by Krista’s coolness and lack of manners, but he wisely said nothing, preferring to wait until he was alone with his daughter before having the argument that he knew was brewing between them.

The meal began in silence, and Erin thought that she would scream if some of the icy tension in the air didn’t melt. Fortunately the telephone rang, and Kane excused himself to answer it. The conversation was extremely one-sided and uncomfortable.

“Not tonight,” Kane argued but was apparently interrupted. “No—it’s absolutely impossible! I just got in from California with my daughter. You’ll have to handle it yourself!” A pause, and the muscle in Kane’s rigid face tightened again. “Can’t Jones handle it? No—how about Martin?” Another long pause. “For God’s sake, Jim, doesn’t anyone down there know what they’re doing?” Kane was shaking his head, raking his fingers through the burnished copper of his hair and pacing the length of the telephone cord. “All right, all right! I get the picture. I’ll be there in—” he checked his watch “—about twenty minutes!” He slammed the receiver down viciously and uttered a curse under his breath.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized sincerely, once he had subdued his temper. His gray eyes pleaded with Erin to understand. “It seems that there are major problems in the computer center tonight. I have to go to the bank for a little while….”

“No…” Krista began to wail, looking frantically from her father to Erin and back again. “Don’t go….”

“I’m sorry, honey,” Kane responded with a fond pat on her silky blond curls. “But, really, I have to go—just for a little while…”

“No…no…” Krista pleaded, clinging to her father’s shirtsleeve.

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You can stay here with Erin.”

“Daddy! No!”

Kane’s expression became confused, and for a moment Erin thought that he might reconsider. She fervently hoped so, but when his dark brows straightened again, she knew that the decision had been made. He was leaving Erin with the adolescent girl who obviously hated her.