The words had tumbled out before she could think them through, but she knew they had to be said. Things couldn’t go on this way.

“Why do you disapprove of me?” she demanded when he didn’t respond to her outburst.

“Disapprove?” he repeated so softly, she could barely hear him over the laughter of the children.

“I don’t know. Disapprove, or whatever.” Maggie shook her head. “Look, you’re the one who told Mrs. Fletcher you wanted me to work with Brandy.”

“Brandy chose you, not I,” he corrected. “I want what’s best for Brandy. She doesn’t always know what’s best for herself. Sometimes I let her make her own decisions, but I don’t want to see her get hurt. I want to make sure that allowing her to make this decision was right.”

“You have to give me a chance if you’re ever going to find that out,” Maggie retorted hotly. “You don’t need to tag along with us or drive us around in your car.”

He cocked his head and, for the first time, Maggie thought she detected the glimmer of a grin on his face.

“I don’t find this amusing,” she said, surprising herself at the rising anger she felt. “I’m not playing games here.”

“Oh, no?” he questioned, all evidence of the grin gone. “You want to play at having a part-time daughter who you can put away and take out whenever you want to.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Maggie answered quickly.

“Really?” he asked. “Why aren’t you married, with a family of your own?”

Maggie was speechless for a moment. Who did Ryan Conner think he was, questioning her about her marital status? Her stomach tightened as she stifled the indignant question.

For Brandy’s sake, she’d stop before the conversation degenerated into a shouting match.

“You know, I think I’ll just wait in one of those chairs by the wall,” she said coldly, abruptly leaving Ryan.

Maggie was still fuming when Brandy rushed over, flushed with laughter, dragging her father behind her.

It’s going to be a long ride home, Maggie thought.

To Maggie’s relief, it was weeks later before she shared the same air space with Ryan in an automobile again. This time it was in her own car.

And she gained a perverse pleasure from the entire episode.

Ryan had not joined Maggie and Brandy on an outing since that first time until Brandy had requested that her two favorite “big people” go to the movies together with her.

Maggie firmly suggested they go in her car and restrained her laughter when Ryan acquiesced to Brandy’s request that she be allowed to sit up front with Maggie. He couldn’t have realized how small her back seat was when he’d agreed to his daughter’s plan, and Maggie felt no compunction to warn him. He hadn’t complained about the inconvenience, however, as he sat, knees hunched, in the back seat of Maggie’s sports car.

Throughout the afternoon he remained his usual quiet self. The nearly two months since he had met Maggie had made him no less distant than he’d been that day in Mrs. Fletcher’s office. With that confrontation in the exhibit hall still replaying itself in Maggie’s mind, she hadn’t been eager to instigate conversation herself. Fortunately, moviegoing naturally necessitated little talk. And Brandy took care of filling what otherwise might have been silence in the car.

“Can we stop and look at the alligators, Daddy? Please!” Brandy begged on their way home from the movie theater, turning to her father with pleading eyes.

Maggie glanced back and witnessed the harsh planes of Ryan’s face softening as he smiled at his daughter. She knew now that it hadn’t been her imagination that Ryan Conner had a soft side.

She just couldn’t figure out why his daughter was the only one who got the benefit of it.

Ryan nodded his agreement to Brandy’s plan, and Maggie pulled her car over onto the dirt just past the narrow two-lane bridge that spanned a swamp. Brandy had shown her the spot and talked her into stopping to look for ’gators several times already since they’d first met.

As the car rolled to a halt, Brandy jumped out, ran to the guardrail at the side of the low bridge and peered over. Maggie held back a smile as Ryan uncurled his muscular length from the back seat. He rose to his full height, then bent to rub the back of one knee. He straightened and looked up, meeting Maggie’s amused gaze.

Serves you right, she thought.

“I hope you weren’t too uncomfortable back there,” she said aloud in a sweetly solicitous voice.

“Not at all,” Ryan replied evenly. Eyeing his daughter, he called out, “Be careful, Brandy. Don’t lean over too far.”

Ryan had spied the twinkle in Maggie’s green eyes that told him she found it highly entertaining that he’d endured a ride in the back seat of her sports car. He knew he should by all rights be irritated with her. But he wasn’t.

Instead, he’d spent the afternoon absorbing how wonderful she was with his daughter, what a genuine rapport they’d clearly developed. In the weeks since she’d been matched with Brandy, Maggie had kept to her word about meeting with Brandy every two weeks, and had determinedly sought out activities that the little girl enjoyed.

The bottom line was that Brandy had never seemed happier. Ryan was forced to give the credit for that to Maggie.

Waiting by the car, Ryan watched Brandy. Not immediately spying any alligators, the little girl grabbed Maggie’s arm and pulled her across the empty road to try the other side. Ryan followed and stood quietly beside Maggie as Brandy ran up and down the guardrail searching for signs of reptilian life below.

Maggie smiled as she glanced at Ryan standing beside her. The warm early March breeze, carrying a hint of the ocean’s salty scent across the inland swamp, softly ruffled his dark hair. He is handsome, Maggie thought as she watched him, remembering her first conversation with Emma about Ryan. She noted how relaxed Ryan’s face appeared, not stern and tense the way she usually saw him.

She found herself noticing little things, such as how long his eyelashes were for a man. Then she observed the tiny laugh crinkles around his eyes that suggested a man of better humor than he had so far displayed to her. He was not as cold as he seemed, Maggie thought. She almost felt guilty for laughing to herself about his being scrunched up in the back seat.

Ryan turned and looked at her. She realized that she was staring—and that she had been caught.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said with a shaky laugh. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Ryan asked, his eyes strangely gentle as he looked into hers.

Maggie retreated from his uncharacteristic friendliness by transferring her gaze to the murky green water below.

“I love the way the swamp looks different every time I drive by it on the way out to your house,” she said, dissembling. She looked back at Ryan. “It’s always changing, with each breeze. See, it’s moving even now.” Maggie pointed to a huge lily pad bordered by tall fur-topped cattails that shifted with the spring wind.

“Yes,” Ryan agreed. “That’s what I like about it, too.” Then, so softly Maggie had to lean toward him slightly to hear it, he added, “It’s very peaceful and uncomplicated.”

For just a few seconds, she saw the familiar expression that he seemed to normally reserve only for his daughter.

You’d almost think he wanted to be friends, she pondered. Or at least to start over as something other than enemies.

“How’s school?” Maggie asked suddenly, afraid to let the moment of fragile rapport slip away. She had never heard him talk about his work, but she often chanced upon him grading papers or buried in books when she dropped by on the weekends to pick up Brandy.

“Good,” he replied in a noncommittal tone, then, surprisingly, he smiled. A smile that lit his face and sparked an odd tingle in the pit of Maggie’s stomach. “It’s always a challenge trying to make kids like reading the classics,” he continued. “And it allows me to have school holidays and summers to spend with Brandy.”