Heartbreaker Read Free Page B

welcome.” Jess gave Rory a heartbreaker’s practiced smile, then turned his attention to the other girls as they vied for his notice. He held up a hand for silence. “I’ll catch you ladies later. Right now, let’s go eat.”
    Identical bedazzled expressions crossed three young faces as the girls watched him lay aside his fishing pole and reach for a flannel shirt draped over a nearby rock.
    As he pulled it on with deliberate slowness, muscles rippling, they practically drooled.
    It was all Lynn could do not to let loose with a sarcastic wolf whistle.
    Not that she didn’t know where the girls were coming from. On the contrary, she understood only too well. At fourteen she might have been dazzled by Jess Feldman herself. He was sexy, she had to admit, but too deliberately so, though the girls were a little young to make a fine distinction like that. He sported a shoulder-length tangle of gold-shot brown hair (she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that his blond streaks were as artificially enhanced as hers were), broad shoulders, a leanly muscled torso, and enough tanned hide to reupholster a couch. Add the appeal of narrow hips and long legs in tight, wet-to-the-thigh jeans, the same to-die-for baby blues he shared with his brother, and a crooked, roguish smile, and he was the physical embodiment of a young girl’s fantasy man. It took an adult woman to discern the phoniness behind the package. Everything from his shoulder-length locks to his tight jeans seemed calculated to give females a thrill.
    Lynn wondered if the brothers’ last-cowboy shtick helped bring in the tourists. She guessed that it probably did.
    The women tourists, anyway.
    Though Jess appeared oblivious to the teenagers’ rapt attention as he buttoned his shirt, there was no way he could be unaware of the havoc he was wreaking on their vulnerable libidos: Their hearts (or whatever) were in their eyes. Lynn didn’t doubt that he was tantalizing them deliberately.
    He probably got off on giving them a thrill. He was that kind of megalomaniac, Lynn was sure. She’d met the type before, too often. He probably considered himself a stud and proved it as often as possible. The thought made her eyes narrow.
    Not with her little girl, he wouldn’t!
    “Where’s your jacket?” she asked Rory, tight-lipped. The blue T-shirt with its snarling-bulldog emblem clung too closely to Rory’s budding breasts. Some combination of the cooling air and her wet jeans had chilled Rory to the point where her nipples had hardened and were nudging at the thin knit, plainly visible.
    At least, Lynn hoped the reaction was caused by the cold.
    The child wasn’t wearing a bra.
    “I left my jacket back at the camp. It’s warm. I don’t need one, anyway,” Lynn eyed her child. Rory returned the look with interest.
    “Along with your bra?” Lynn asked the question pseudo-sweetly, in a voice too soft for the others to overhear.
    “Get a life , Mother.” Both Rory’s voice and demeanor bristled with dislike. “And get off my back.”
    “Listen here, young lady—” Lynn heard her own voice rising and bit her lip, cutting herself off. Engaging in a shouting match with Rory would result only in her own embarrassment, she knew from experience. The debacle would end with Rory bursting into noisy tears and Lynn feeling as if someone had punched her in the stomach.
    There had to be another way to deal with her daughter. But Lynn was at a loss as to what it could be.
    There was another clang of metal. Rory’s gaze shifted from her mother to Jess and instantly grew adoring. Lynn gritted her teeth.
    “If we don’t get back we’re going to miss out,” Owen said to his brother. Jess grinned.
    “Bob’ll save enough for us. We’re the bosses, after all. Now, these ladies … sad to say, they’re a different story.”
    They were moving toward camp now, with Owen ushering them along. The girls chorused a protest at the prospect of missing a meal, while Owen