She smiled. “Hannah has quite an imagination.”

“I’ll say. She’s a special kid.”

Even the toughest moguls were pushovers when it came to their children, and the ice cracked a little more. “We worry about her more than the others. She’s so sensitive.”

“Considering who her parents are, I’m guessing she’s a lot tougher than you think.” He should have been ashamed of himself for laying it on so thick, but Hannah really was a great kid, and he didn’t feel too bad about it.

“I don’t know. She feels things pretty deeply.”

“What you call sensitive, I call having people smarts. Once she graduates from ninth grade, send her to me and I’ll give her a job. I need somebody to put me in touch with my feminine side.”

Phoebe laughed, a sound of genuine amusement. “I’ll think about it. Might be useful to have a spy in the enemy camp.”

“Come on, Phoebe. I was a cocky kid trying to show everybody how tough I was. I blew it, and we both know it. But I haven’t screwed you over once since then.”

A shadow fell over her face. “Now, you’ve moved on to Annabelle.”

Just like that, their fragile camaraderie evaporated. He spoke carefully. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“You’re using her to get to me, and I don’t like it.”

“It’s hard to use Annabelle. She’s pretty sharp.”

Phoebe shot him her no-nonsense look. “She’s special, Heath, and she’s my friend. Perfect for You means everything to her. You’re making things messy.”

A fairly accurate assessment, but a knot of anger still formed under his breastbone. “You don’t give her enough credit.”

“She doesn’t give herself enough credit. That’s what makes her vulnerable. Her family’s convinced her she’s a failure because she’s not earning six figures. She needs to be concentrating on making her business work, and I’m getting the feeling you deliberately turned yourself into a bad distraction.”

He forgot that he never let himself get defensive. “Exactly what do you mean by that?”

“I saw how you were looking at her last night.”

The insinuation that he might deliberately hurt Annabelle stuck in his craw. He wasn’t his father. He didn’t use women, and he especially didn’t use a woman he liked. But he was dealing with Phoebe Calebow, and he couldn’t afford to lose his temper, so he dug into his always reliable supply of self-control …and came up empty. “Annabelle’s my friend, and I don’t make it a habit of hurting my friends.” He pushed to his feet. “But then you don’t know me well enough to figure that out, do you?”

As he stalked away, he called himself every name in the book. He never lost it. He absolutely never fucking lost it. Yet he’d basically just told Phoebe Calebow to go to hell. And for what? Because enough truth lurked in what she’d said to hurt. The fact was, he’d committed a foul, and Phoebe had dropped a penalty flag on him.