Seduction by Design by Sandra Brown Page A

before. Once the floodgate had been let down, Faith’s innermost anxieties spilled out.
    The only fly in the ointment, for Hailey at least, was Faith’s constant references to her father. To her, Tyler was a paragon of the male sex—physically, intellectually, morally. Hailey pretended for the girl’s sake that she found him equally wonderful.
    She had heard the word “Daddy” so often that when Faith shrieked it from across the indoor pool at Glenstone Lodge late one evening, Hailey didn’t at first realize that he was actually there, standing before her, looking down at her as she lounged on one of the pool-side chaises.
    From the page of her novel, her eyes flew up to his with the same suicidal determination of a moth flying into a flame. For breathless seconds they stared at each other before he broke the eye contact to turn around and call to Faith. “Who is that graceful mermaid I see swimming out there?”
    “Oh, Daddy,” Faith said, blushing. Then she called, “Watch me. Watch now.” With that she plunged beneath the surface and her two spindly legs pushed out of the water. They swayed like a pair of unsteady flagpoles as she did her handstand on the bottom of the pool.
    When she was once again standing in the waist-deep water, beaming over her accomplishment, Tyler grinned broadly and applauded. “You’ve been practicing.” While Faith was swimming to the side of the pool, he turned back to Hailey. “How long have you been lying here, in that indecent swimsuit, providing the ogling yokels the kind of visions that dreams are made of?”
    She didn’t want him to tease her with clever words, she didn’t want him to look thoroughly masculine, and sexy enough to turn the head of every woman who chanced to pass by. When he looked at her the way he did now and spoke with that soft, low, seductive purr, she couldn’t think. Her memory blurred and she had a hard time remembering why she despised him so.
    Before she once again made a monumental fool of herself, she sat up, swung her legs over the edge of the chair and asked, “Did you have a nice trip?”
    “Boring business meetings,” he said, tugging on Faith’s pigtails as she ran up to him. Playfully, he shook the water he squeezed out of them off his hands.
    Hailey dumped her book into her large shoulder bag and stood up, pulling on her terry-cloth wrapper.
    “Where are you going, Hailey?” Faith asked. Her chin was dripping water onto her bony chest. Her skin and lips were turning slightly blue as she shivered. Her eyes looked myopic without her glasses.
    “I’d better go on home.”
    “But we were—”
    “What were your plans?” Tyler addressed the question to Faith rather than to Hailey.
    “Hailey brought her clothes over and after we swam, we were going out to dinner.”
    “Sounds good to me,” Tyler said heartily. “Can you wait for me to take a quick dip, too?”
    “Sure!” Faith said. Then she looked hesitantly at Hailey. “Can’t we, Hailey?”
    If Hailey refused either to wait for him or go to dinner, she would have to make explanations to Faith. At that moment she didn’t feel up to doing more than nodding her head in agreement “Sure, that’s fine.”
    Tyler’s eyes were probing hers, but he looked away to chuck Faith under the chin before he said, “I’ll be right back.”
    In minutes he had returned, entering the atrium by a side door and walking toward the pool with all the confidence and nonchalance of a pagan god. And almost as nakedly.
    His swimming trunks were black with white piping around his trim legs. They hugged his hips with a fit that made Hailey want to stare when she knew propriety dictated she should glance away quickly. The muscles of his thighs were lean but hinted at tremendous strength beneath his hair-roughened skin.
    Hailey tried to avert her eyes from his torso, but was powerless to do so. He had the physique of a man half his age; his maturity only heightened his virility. His shoulders and