Reluctant Father Read online

  She was at the front door before he reached it, excited as the door opened and a little blond girl about her age shyly greeted her.

  "This is Danielle, Sarah. She's looked forward to meeting you," Elissa said with a smile. "Hi, Blake. Come on in."

  He took off his gray Stetson and stood in the hall while Sarah went into the living room with Danielle, who'd brought a box of toys with her.

  Sarah's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree, and she exclaimed over every single one of Danielle's things, as if she'd never seen toys before. She sat down on the carpet and handled each one gingerly, turning it over and examining it and telling Danielle how beautiful the dolls were.

  "She doesn't have any toys," Blake told Elissa with a worried frown. "She seems so mature sometimes. I didn't realize…"

  "Parenthood takes time," Elissa assured him. "Don't expect to learn everything at once."

  "I don't think I've learned anything yet," he confessed. He frowned as he watched his daughter. "I expected her to push Danielle around and try to take her toys away. She isn't the easiest child to get along with."

  "She's a frightened child," Elissa replied. "Underneath there are some sweet qualities. You see, she's playing very nicely, and she isn't causing trouble."

  "Yet," Blake murmured, waiting for the explosion to come.

  His head turned as Meredith came down the hall. She hesitated momentarily, then joined them.

  "Bess is getting coffee," she said quietly. She was wearing a pale green sundress that slashed squarely over her high breasts, and her hair was loose, waving around her shoulders. She looked younger this way, and Blake almost sighed with memories.

  "Will you stay and have a cup with us?" Elissa asked him.

  "I guess so," he agreed. His eyes hadn't left Meredith.

  She averted her gaze and started into the living room, too vulnerable to risk letting him see how easily he could get to her with that level, unblinking stare.

  "Mer'dith!" Sarah jumped up, all eyes and laughing smile, and ran with her arms open to be picked up and hugged warmly. "Oh, Mer'dith, Daddy brought me to see Dani and he's going to get me another Mr. Friend and he says I can have a doll! Oh, he's just the nicest daddy…!"

  Blake looked as if someone had poured ice into his shirt. He stared at the child blankly. She'd just called him 'Daddy' for the first time, and something stirred in the region of his heart, making him feel warm and needed. It was a new feeling, as if he weren't totally alone anymore.

  "That's nice, darling," Meredith was telling the child. She let her down and knelt beside her, smiling as she pushed back Sarah's unruly hair. "You look very pretty this morning. I like your new dress."

  "It's very pretty," Danielle agreed. She was dressed in slacks and a shirt for playing, but she didn't make fun of Sarah's dress. She was a quiet child and sweet natured.

  "I put it on backward, but Daddy fixed it for me." She smiled at Meredith. "Can you stay and play with us? We can play with dolls."

  "I wish I could," Meredith said, nervous because Blake was watching her so closely. She was frantic for a way out of the house, away from him. "But I have to go into town to the library and do some research."

  "I thought this was supposed to be a holiday," Bess said as she came in with a tray of coffee and cake. "You're here to rest, not to work."

  Meredith smiled at her lovely blond friend. "I know. But I'm not comfortable if I don't have something to do. I won't be long."

  "I could drive you," Blake volunteered.

  She blanched and started to refuse, but Elissa and Bess jumped in and teased and cajoled until they made it impossible for her to turn down his offer.

  She wanted to scream. Alone with Blake in his car? What would they say to each other? What could they say to each other that wouldn't involve them in another terrible argument? The past was very much in Meredith's thoughts, and she wasn't about to risk a repeat of it. But she'd allowed herself to be manipulated by him, and it looked as though she wasn't going to be able to get out of going to town with him. Now, she thought, what are you going to do?

  Four

  Blake could sense the nervousness in Meredith as she sat stiffly in the seat beside him while he started the car. In the old days, he might have made some cutting remark about it, but the days were gone when he'd deliberately try to hurt her.

  "Fasten your seat belt," he said, noticing that she hadn't.

  "Oh." She did it absently. "I usually remember in my own car," she said with faint defensiveness.

  "Don't you ever ride with other people?"

  "Not if I can help it," she murmured, glancing at his hard profile as he backed the car out of the driveway and pulled onto the highway.

  "Are your friends bad drivers," he asked, "or is it that you just don't like being out of control?"

  "Who drives you, if we're going to throw stones?" she asked with a pleasantly cool smile.

  His mouth twitched. "Nobody."

  She toyed with her white leather purse, twisting the thin strap around her fingers while she stared out the window at the green crops and grazing cattle on the way to Jack's Corner. The flat horizon seemed to stretch forever, just as it did back in Texas.

  "Sarah engineered this get-together," he remarked. "She damned near drove me crazy until I phoned Elissa to arrange it." His green eyes touched her stiff profile and went back to the road. "She likes you."

  "I like her, too," she said quietly. "She's a sweet child."

  " 'Sweet' isn't exactly the word I'd choose."

  "Can't you see what's under the belligerence?" she asked solemnly, and turned in the seat slightly so that she could look at him without having to move her head. "She's frightened."

  "Elissa said that, too. What is she frightened of? Me?" he asked.

  "I don't know what," she said. "I don't know anything about the situation, and I'm not prying." She stared at the clasp on her purse and unsnapped it. "She doesn't look like a happy child. And the way she enthused over Danielle's things, I'd almost bet she's hardly had a toy in her life."

  "I'm a bachelor," he muttered angrily. "I don't know about children and toys and dresses. My God, until a few days ago I didn't even know I was a father."

  Meredith wanted to ask why Nina had kept Sarah's existence a secret, but she didn't feel comfortable talking about such personal things with him. She had to remember that he was the enemy, in a very real sense. She couldn't afford to show any interest in his life.

  He was already figuring that out by himself. She either didn't care about how he'd found out, or she wasn't going to risk asking him. He wished he smoked. She made him nervous and he didn't have anything to do with his hands except grip the steering wheel as he drove.

  "Mrs. Jackson is one of your biggest fans," he said, moving the conversation away from Sarah.

  "Is she? I'm glad."

  "I guess you make a fair living from what you do, if that Porsche is any indication."

  She lifted her eyes to his face, letting them run over his craggy features. The broken nose was prominent, as was that angry scar down his cheek. She felt a surge of warmth remembering how he'd come by that scar. Her eyes fell.

  "I make a good living," she replied. "I'm rather well-to-do, in fact. So if you think I came home looking for a rich husband, you're well off the mark. You're perfectly safe, Blake," she added coldly. "I'm the last woman on earth you'll have to ward off these days."

  He had to clamp down hard on his teeth to keep from saying what came naturally. The past was dead, but she had every reason for digging it up and throwing it at him. He had to remember that. If she'd done to him what he'd done to her, he'd have wanted a much worse revenge than a few pithy remarks.

  "I don't flatter myself that you'd come looking for me without a loaded gun, Meredith," he returned. He glanced at her, noting the surprise on her face.

  She looked out the window again, puzzled and confused.

  He pulled the Mercedes into the parking lot behind the library and shut off
the engine.

  "Don't do that. Not yet," he said when she started to open the door. "Let's talk for a minute."

  "What do we have to say to each other?" she asked distantly. "We're different people now. Let the past take care of itself. I don't want to remember—" she stopped short when she realized what she'd blurted out.

  "I know." He leaned back against his door, his pale green eyes under thick black lashes searching her face. "I guess you think I was rough with you in the stable deliberately. And I said some cruel things, didn't I?"

  She flushed and averted her eyes, focusing on his chest. "Yes," she said, taut with embarrassment and vivid memories.

  "It wasn't planned," he replied. "And what I said wasn't what I felt." He sighed heavily. "I wanted you, Meredith. Wanted you with a passion that drove me right over the edge. But I'm sorry I hurt you."

  "Nothing happened," she said icily. In her nervousness her hands gripped her purse like talons.

  "Only because my uncle came driving up at the right moment," he said bitterly. He studied her set features. "You'll never know how it's haunted me all these long years. I was deliberately rough with you the day the will was read because guilt was eating me up. I'd promised to marry Nina, my cousins were talking lawsuits… and on top of all that, I'd just discovered that I wanted you to the point of madness."

  "I don't want to talk about it," she said under her breath. Her eyes closed in pain. "I can't…talk about it."

  His eyes narrowed. "I thought Nina loved me," he said gently. "She said she did, and all her actions seemed to prove it. I thought you only wanted the inheritance, that I was a stepping stone for you, a way to escape the poverty you'd lived in all your young life." He ran his fingers lightly over the steering wheel. "It wasn't until after… that day, that the lawyer told me why my uncle had wanted me to marry you." His eyes slid to catch hers and hold them. "I didn't know you were in love with me."

  Her face lost every vestige of color. She sat and stared at him, her pride in rags, her deepest secret naked to his scrutiny.

  "It wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference," she choked out. "Nothing would have changed. Except that you'd have used the information to humiliate me even more. You and Nina would have laughed yourselves sick over that irony."

  The cynicism in her tone made him feel even guiltier. She'd grown a shell, just like the one he'd lived inside most of his life. It kept people from getting too close, from wounding too deeply. Nina hadn't managed to penetrate it, but Meredith very nearly had. He'd pushed her out of his life at exactly the right moment, because it wouldn't have taken much to give her a stranglehold on his heart. He'd known that five years ago, and did everything he could to prevent it.

  Now he was seeing the consequences of his reticence. His life had altered, and so had Meredith's. Her fame must have been poor recompense for the home and children she'd always wanted, for a husband to love and take care of and be loved by.

  He couldn't answer her accusation without giving himself away, so he ignored it and let her think what she liked.

  "You never used to be sarcastic," he said quietly. "You were quiet and shy—"

  "And dull and plain," she added for him with a cold smile. "I still am all those things. But I write books that sell like hotcakes and I've got my own small following of loyal readers. I'm famous and I'm rich. So now it doesn't matter if I'm not a blond bombshell. I've learned to live with what I am."

  "Have you?" He searched her eyes for a long moment. "You've learned to hide yourself away from the world so that you won't get hurt. You draw back from emotion, from involvement. Even today you were thinking of ways to keep Sarah from having any time with you. That's the whole point of this trip to the library. Your damned research could have been anytime, but you preferred not to be around while Sarah and I were at Bess's house."

  "All right, maybe I did!" she said, goaded into telling the truth. "Sarah is a sweet child, and I could love her, but I don't want to have to look at you, much less be dragged up to that house when you're there. Mars wouldn't be far enough away from you to suit me!"

  He was grateful that he'd learned to keep a poker face. She couldn't have known how those words hurt him. She had every reason to want to avoid him, to hate him. But he didn't want to avoid her, and hatred was the last emotion he felt for her now.

  "So Sarah's going to have to pay because you don't want to be around me," he replied.

  She glared at him. "Oh, no, you don't," she said. "You aren't laying any guilt trips on me. Sarah has you and Mrs. Jackson—"

  "Sarah doesn't like me and Mrs. Jackson," he interrupted. "She likes you. She's done nothing but talk about you."

  She turned away. "I can't," she said huskily.

  "She could have been our child," he said unexpectedly. "Yours and mine. And that's what's eating you alive, isn't it?"

  She couldn't believe he'd said that. She looked back at him with tears welling in her gray eyes, blinding her. "Damn you!"

  "I saw it in your face this morning when you looked at her," he went on relentlessly, driven to make her admit it. "It isn't fear of me that's stopping you—it's fear of admitting that Sarah reminds you too painfully of what you wanted and couldn't have."

  She cried out as if he'd slapped her. She pushed the door open and ran toward the library, almost stumbling in her haste to get away from him. She made it to the lobby and stood there shaking, grateful that the librarian was away from the desk as she tried to get her composure back. She fumbled a handkerchief out of her purse and wiped her eyes. Blake was right. She was avoiding Sarah Jane because of the pain the child caused her. But knowing the truth didn't help. It only made things worse that he should be perceptive enough to sense what she was thinking.

  She put the handkerchief away and went back to the reading room to pore over volumes on southwestern history. She didn't know how she was going to get back home. Blake would have gone and she'd just have to call Elissa or Bess.

  An hour later, calmer and less flustered, she put the notebook she'd been scribbling in back in her purse, returned the reference books to the shelf and walked outside to find a public telephone.

  Blake was there, leaning comfortably against the wall, waiting.

  "Are you ready to go?" he asked pleasantly as if nothing at all had happened.

  She stared at him. "I thought you'd gone."

  His broad shoulders rose and fell. "It's Saturday," he said. "I don't usually work on Saturday unless I have to." His eyes narrowed as he searched her face. "Are you all right?" he added quietly.

  She nodded, her eyes avoiding him.

  "I won't do that again, Meredith," he said deeply. "I didn't mean to upset you. Let's go."

  She sat rigidly beside him on the ride home, afraid that he might start on her again despite what he'd said. But he didn't. He turned on the radio and kept it playing until he pulled into Bess's driveway again.

  "You don't have to worry," he said before she got out of the car, and there was a resigned expression on his face. "I won't try to force you into a relationship with Sarah. She's my responsibility, not yours."

  And that was that. Meredith went back into the house, and after he'd explained to Elissa and Bess that they could call him when Sarah was ready to come home, he drove off.

  He didn't know what he was going to do as he drove away. He hadn't expected Meredith to react like that to his words. What he'd said had only been a shot in the dark, but he'd scored a hit. Sarah disturbed her. The child reminded her of Blake's cruelty, and Meredith was going to keep Sarah at a distance no matter what it took.

  That was going to be sad for both of them. Meredith had grown cold and self-contained. She could use a child's magic to bring her back into the sunlight. Sarah likewise would profit from Meredith's tenderness. But it wasn't going to happen and he had to face it. He'd hoped that he might reach Meredith again through Sarah, but she wanted no part of him. She hated him.

  He went back to the house and locked himself in hi
s study with his paperwork, forcing his mind not to dwell on Meredith's anger. He had no one to blame but himself. And only time would tell if she could ever forgive him.

  Later that afternoon, Meredith sat with Bess and Elissa and watched the little girls play.

  "Isn't she the image of Blake?" Elissa smiled as she watched Sarah. "I guess it's hard for him, trying to raise a child on his own."

  "He needs to marry again," Bess agreed.

  "Well, he's rich enough to attract a wife," Meredith replied with cool disinterest.

  "Another Nina would be the end of him," Elissa said. "And think of Sarah. She needs to be loved, not pushed aside. She looks as if she's never really been loved."

  "She won't be with Blake," Meredith said. "He isn't a loving man."

  Elissa looked at her curiously. "Considering his life so far, is that surprising? He's never been loved, has he? Even his uncle manipulated him, used him for the good of the real estate corporation. Blake has been an outsider looking in. He hasn't known how to love. Maybe Sarah will teach him. She's not the little terror she makes out to be. There's an odd softness about her, especially when she talks to Blake. And have you noticed how unselfish she is?" she added. "She hasn't fought with Dani or tried to take her toys away or break them. She's not what she seems."

  "I noticed that, too," Meredith said reluctantly. She looked at the child who was so much like Blake and so little like her beautiful blond mother. Her heart ached at the sight of the little girl who could have been her own. If only Blake could have loved her. She smiled sadly. Oh, if only.

  Sarah seemed to feel that scrutiny, because she got up and went to Meredith, her curious eyes searching the woman's. "Can you write a book about a little girl and she can have a daddy and mommy to love her?" she asked. "And it could have a pony in it, and lots of dolls like Dani has."