New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer brings readers back to the range with a reader-favorite tale of love, family and cattlemen!

Blake Donavan has one nemesis—love. He’s spent so many years building a wall between himself and the outside world that he doubts anyone could ever thaw the ice around his heart. But he gets the surprise of a lifetime when a little girl with his green eyes shows up on his doorstep. He’s a daddy! What’s a rancher to do?

Little Sarah is accompanied home by Meredith Calhoun, who isn’t so eager to see Blake. Although she was once a thorn in Blake’s side, Meredith is now a stunningly beautiful woman. She’s spent time away from home and matured, becoming a successful author. But can she melt Blake’s hardened heart to create a forever family with the man of her dreams and his newfound daughter?

No one can resist a book by Diana Palmer!

“Nobody does it better.”

—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard

“Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly…

heartwarming.”

—Publishers Weekly on Renegade

“A compelling tale…[that packs]

an emotional wallop.”

—Booklist on Renegade

“Sensual and suspenseful.”

—Booklist on Lawless

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerizing storyteller who

captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Nobody tops Diana Palmer

when it comes to delivering pure,

undiluted romance. I love her stories.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

“The dialogue is charming,

the characters likable and the sex sizzling.”

—Publishers Weekly on Once in Paris

DIANA PALMER

has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. With more than 40 million copies of her books in print, Diana Palmer is one of North America’s most beloved authors and considered one of the top ten romance authors in the United States.

Diana’s hobbies include gardening, archaeology, anthropology, art, astronomy and music. She has been married to James Kyle for over thirty-five years. They have one son, Blayne, who is married to the former Christina Clayton, and a granddaughter, Selena Marie.

The Reluctant Father

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Title Page

Dear Reader

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Dear Reader,

Will of Steel started out to be a different sort of book altogether, a comedy about a young girl and a police chief who came together because of their respective uncles’ wills. But that isn’t how it turned out, as you will discover.

Authors know that characters tend to take on lives of their own once they are created. You can have a pattern for a book, but the hero and heroine can revise it to their own liking. No, I’m not certifiable: this is actually how the creative process works. So I plot the book, and the characters write it their own way.

Rourke was in Tough to Tame and Dangerous, and he popped up again in this book, with a bit more background. I didn’t invite him, he just came along for the ride. He’s one of those men I can’t get rid of. Cash Grier was another. He’ll get a book of his own down the line, I guess.

Thanks for your support and your kindness, and all the prayers and hugs. I am doing well, although I’m a little less mobile than I used to be. Chronic illness forces changes, not many of them welcome. I am grateful to have loyal fans and laptop computers and a thoughtful husband and understanding family. Those are blessings worth rubies in this world. The most beautiful ruby is my granddaughter, Selena, but I won’t go on about that, although I could!

Much love to all of you, and thanks again for staying around and reading my books. You’re the reason I can’t stop writing them.

Love,

Diana Palmer

For Margaret, with love.

Chapter 1

Blake Donavan didn’t know which was the bigger shock—the dark-haired, unsmiling little girl at his front door or the news that the child was his daughter by his ex-wife.

Blake’s pale green eyes darkened dangerously. It had been a hell of a day altogether, and now this. The lawyer who’d just imparted the information stepped closer to the child.

Blake raked his fingers through his unruly black hair and glared down at the child through thick black lashes. His daughter? The scowl grew and his expression hardened, emphasizing the harsh scar down one lean, tanned cheek. He looked even taller and more formidable than he really was.

“I don’t like him,” the little girl murmured, glaring at Blake as she spoke for the first time. She thrust her lower lip out and moved closer to the lawyer, clinging to his trouser leg. She had green eyes. That fact registered almost immediately—that and her high cheekbones. Blake had high cheekbones, too.

“Now, now.” The tall, bespectacled man cleared his throat. “We mustn’t be naughty, Sarah.”

“My wife,” Blake said coldly, “left me five years ago to take up residence with an oilman from Louisiana. I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”

“If I might come in, Mr. Donavan…?”

He ignored the attorney’s plea. “We only cohabited for a month—just long enough for her to find out that I was up to my neck in legal battles. She cut her losses and got out quick with her new lover.” He smiled crookedly. “She didn’t expect me to win. But I did.”

The lawyer glanced around at the elegant, columned front porch, the well-kept gardens, the Mercedes in the driveway. He’d heard about the Donavan fortune and the fight Blake Donavan had when his uncle died and left him fending off numerous greedy cousins.

“The problem, you see,” the attorney continued, glancing worriedly at the clinging child, “is that your ex-wife died earlier this month in an airplane crash. Understandably her second husband, from whom she was estranged, didn’t want to assume responsibility for the child. Sarah has no one else,” he added on a weary sigh. “Your wife’s parents were middle-aged when she was born, and she had no brothers or sisters. The entire family is dead. And Sarah is your child.”

Blake stared down at the little girl half-angrily. He hadn’t even kept a photograph of Nina to remind him of the fool he’d been. And now here was her child, and they expected him to want her.

“I don’t have room in my life for a child,” he said curtly, furious at the curve fate had thrown him. “She can be put in a home somewhere, I suppose….”

And that was when it happened. The child began to cry. There wasn’t a sound from her. She went from belligerence to heartrending sorrow in seconds, with great tears rolling from her green eyes down her flushed round cheeks. The effect was all the more poignant because of her silence and the stoic look on her face, as if she hated giving way to tears in front of the enemy.

Blake felt a stirring inside that surprised him. His mother had died soon after he was born. She hadn’t been a particularly moral woman, according to his uncle, and all he knew about her was what little he’d been told. His uncle had taken him in and had adopted him. He, like Sarah, had been an extra person in the world, unwanted by just about everyone. He had no idea who his father was. If it hadn’t been for his very wealthy uncle, he wouldn’t even have a name. That lack of love and security in his young life had turned him hard. It would turn Sarah hard, too, if she had nobody to protect her.

He looked down at the little girl with a headful of angry questions, hating those tears. But the child had grit. She glared at him and abruptly wiped the tears away with a chubby little hand.

Blake lifted his chin pugnaciously. Already the kid was getting to him. But he wasn’t going to be taken in by some scam. He trusted no one. “How do I know she’s mine?” he demanded to the lawyer.

“She has your blood type,” the man replied. “Your ex-wife’s second husband has a totally different blood group. As you know, a blood test can only tell who the father wasn’t. It wasn’t her second husband.”

Blake was about to remark that it could have been any one of a dozen other men, but then he remembered that Nina had married him for what she thought was his soon-to-be-realized wealth. He reasoned that Nina was too shrewd to have risked losing him by indulging in a fling. And after she knew what a struggle it was going to be to get that wealth, she hadn’t wanted her newest catch to know she was already pregnant.

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Blake asked coldly.

“She allowed her second husband to think the child was his,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t until she died and Sarah’s birth certificate was found that he discovered she was yours. Nina had apparently decided that Sarah had a right to her own father’s name. By then her second marriage was already on the rocks, from what I was told.” He touched the child’s dark hair absently. “You have the resources to double-check all this, of course.”

“Of course.” He stared down his broken nose at the little girl’s face. “What’s her name again? Sarah?”

“That’s right. Sarah Jane.”

Blake turned. “Bring her inside. Mrs. Jackson can feed her and I’ll engage a nurse for her.”

Just that quickly, he made the decision to keep the child. But, then, he’d been making quick decisions for a long time. When his uncle had attempted to link him with Meredith Calhoun, Blake had quickly decided to marry Nina. And as a last effort to force Blake into marrying Meredith, his uncle had left Meredith twenty percent of the stock in the real-estate conglomerate Blake was to inherit.

That had backfired. Blake had laughed at Meredith, in front of the whole family gathered for the reading of the will. And he’d told them all, his arm protectively around a smiling Nina, that he’d rather lose his inheritance and a leg than marry a skinny, plain, repulsive woman like Meredith. He was marrying Nina and Meredith could take her stock and burn it, for all he cared.

His heart lay like lead in his chest as he remembered the harsh words he’d used that day to cut Meredith down. She hadn’t even flinched, but he’d watched something die in her soft gray eyes. With a kind of ravished dignity, she’d walked out of the room with every eye on her straight back. That had been bad enough. But later she’d come to offer him the stock and he’d been irritated by the faint hunger in her soft eyes. Because she disturbed him, he’d kissed her roughly, bruising her mouth, and he’d said some things that sent her running from him. He regretted that most of all. He planned to marry Nina, but despite his feeling for her, Meredith had been a tiny thorn in his side for years. He hadn’t really meant to hurt her. He’d only wanted to make her go away. Well, he had. And he hadn’t seen her since. She’d become internationally famous with her women’s novels, one of which had been adapted for television. He saw her books everywhere these days. Like Meredith, they haunted him.

It hadn’t been until after Nina had left him that he’d found out the reason for Meredith’s haste in getting away. She’d been in love with him, his uncle’s attorney had told him ruefully as he handed Blake the documents to sign that would give him full control of the Donavan empire. His uncle had known it and had hoped to make Blake see what a good catch she was.

Blake remembered vividly the day he’d discovered his hunger for Meredith. It had shocked them both. His uncle had come into the stable just in time to break up what might have been a disastrous confrontation between them. Blake had lost control and frightened Meredith, although she’d been so sweetly responsive at first that he hadn’t seen her fear until the sound of a car driving up had brought him to his senses. Even a blind man couldn’t have missed the faint swell of Meredith’s mouth, the color in her cheeks and the way she was trembling. That was probably when the old man got the idea about the stock.

What irony, Blake thought, that what he’d wanted most in life was just a little love. He’d never had his mother’s. He’d never known his father. And his uncle, though fond of him, was a manipulative man interested in the survival of his empire through Blake. Blake had actually married Nina because she’d flattered him and played up to him and sworn that she loved him. Now, looking back, he could see that she’d loved his money, not him. Once there was any possibility of the fortune being lost, she’d walked out on him. But Meredith had genuinely loved Blake, and he’d been cruel to her. That had haunted him all these years—that he’d hurt the one human being on earth who’d ever wanted to love him.

Meredith’s father had worked for Blake’s uncle, but the two men were good friends, as well. Uncle Dan had been at Meredith’s christening as her godfather, and when she’d grown into her teens and expressed an interest in writing local history for the school newspaper, Uncle Dan had opened his library to her and spent hours telling her stories he’d heard from his grandfather about the old days. Meredith would sit and listen, her big eyes wide, her mouth faintly smiling. And Blake would brood, because his uncle had never given him that kind of time and affection. Blake was useful, but his uncle loved Meredith. He felt as if she’d usurped the only place in the world he had, and he’d resented her bitterly. And it was more than just that. He’d already learned that he couldn’t trust people. He knew that Meredith and her parents were dirt poor, and he often wondered if she might not have some mercenary reason for hanging around the Donavan house. Too late, he discovered that she hung around because of him. Knowing the truth put salt in an old wound.

Plain Meredith, with her stringy dark hair and her pale gray eyes and her heart-shaped face. His uncle had loved her. Blake had almost despised her, especially after what had happened in the stable when he lost control with her. But under the resentment was an obsessive desire for Meredith that angered him, until it reached flash point the day his uncle’s will was read. He’d given his word to Nina that he’d marry her and he couldn’t honorably go back on it, but he’d wanted Meredith. God, how he’d wanted her, for years!

She’d loved him, he thought wearily as he led the lawyer and child into the study. Nobody else ever had felt that way about him. His uncle had enjoyed their battles; they’d been friends. His death had been a terrible, unexpected blow, made worse by the fact that he’d always felt that his uncle might have cared for him if Meredith hadn’t always been underfoot. Not that it was love that had caused his uncle to adopt him. That had been business.

Maybe his mother would have loved him if she’d lived, although his uncle had described her as a pretty, self-centered woman who simply liked men too much.

So it had come as a shock to find out what shy young Meredith had felt for him. It didn’t help to remember how he’d cut her to pieces in public and private. Over the years since she’d left for Texas in the middle of the night on a bus, without a goodbye to anyone, he’d agonized over what he’d done to her. Twice, he’d almost gone to see her when her name started cropping up on book covers. But the past was best left in the past, he’d decided finally. And he had nothing to give her, anyway. Nina had destroyed that part of him that was capable of trust. He had no more to give—to anyone.

He dragged his thoughts away from the past and looked at the child, who was staring plaintively and a little apprehensively at the door, because the lawyer had just smiled and was now making his way out, patent relief written all over his thin features. Sarah sat very still on the edge of a blue wing chair, biting her lower lip, her eyes wide and frightened, although she tried to hide her fear from the cold, mean-looking man they said was her father.

Blake sat down across from her in his own big red leather armchair, aware that he looked more like a desperado in his jeans and worn chambray shirt than a man of means. He’d been out in the pasture helping brand cattle, just for the hell of it. At least when he was working with his hands on the small ranch where he ran purebred Hereford cattle, he could let his mind go. It beat the hell out of the trying board meeting he’d had to endure at his company headquarters in Oklahoma City that morning.

“So you’re Sarah,” he said. Children made him uncomfortable, and he didn’t know how he was going to cope with this one. But she had his eyes and he couldn’t let her go to strangers. Not if there was one chance in a million that she really was his daughter.

Sarah lifted her eyes to his, then glanced away, shifting restlessly. The lawyer had said she was almost four, but she seemed amazingly mature. She behaved as if she’d never known the company of other children. It was possible that she hadn’t. He couldn’t picture Nina entertaining children. It was totally out of character, but he hadn’t realized that when he’d lost his head and married her. Funny how easy it was to imagine Meredith Calhoun with a lapful of little girls, laughing and playing with them, picking daisies in the meadow….

He had to stop thinking about Meredith, he told himself firmly. He didn’t want her, even if there was a chance in hell that she’d ever come back to Jack’s Corner, Oklahoma. And he knew without a doubt that she certainly didn’t want him.

“I don’t like you,” Sarah said after a minute. She shifted in the chair and glanced around her. “I don’t want to live here.” She glared at Blake.

He glared back. “Well, I’m not crazy about the idea, either, but it looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

Her lower lip jutted, and for an instant she looked just like him. “I’ll bet you don’t even have a cat.”

“God forbid,” he grumbled. “I hate cats.”

She sighed and looked at her scuffed shoes with something like resignation and a patience far beyond her years. She appeared tired and worn. “My mommy isn’t coming back.” She pulled at her dress. “She didn’t like me. You don’t like me, either,” she said, lifting her chin. “I don’t care. You’re not really my daddy.”

“I must be.” He sighed heavily. “God knows, you look enough like me.”

“You’re ugly.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You’re no petunia yourself, sprout,” he returned.

“The ugly duckling turns into a swan,” she told him with a faraway look in her eyes.

She twirled her hands in her dress. He noticed then, for the first time, that it was old. The lace was stained and the dress was rumpled. He frowned.

“Where have you been staying?” he asked her.

“Mommy left me with Daddy Brad, but he had to go out a lot, so Mrs. Smathers took care of me.” She looked up, and the expression in her green eyes was old for a little girl’s. “Mrs. Smathers says that children are horrible,” she said dramatically, “and that they belong in cages. I cried when Mommy left, and she locked me up and said she’d leave me there if I didn’t hush.” Her lower lip trembled, but she didn’t cry. “I got out, too, and ran away.” She shrugged. “But nobody came to find me, so I went home. Mrs. Smathers was real mad, but Daddy Brad didn’t care. He said I wasn’t his real child and it didn’t matter if I ran away.”

Blake could imagine that “Daddy Brad” was upset to find that the child he’d accepted as his own was somebody else’s, but taking it out on the child seemed pretty callous.

He leaned back in his chair, wondering what in hell he was going to do with his short houseguest. He didn’t know anything about kids. He wasn’t sure he even liked them. And this one already looked like a handful. She was outspoken and belligerent and not much to look at. He could see trouble ahead.

Mrs. Jackson came into the room to see if Blake wanted anything, and stopped dead. She was fifty-five, a spinster, graying and thin and faintly intimidating to people who didn’t know her. She was used to a bachelor household, and the sight of a child sitting across from her boss was vaguely unnerving.

“Who’s that?” she asked, without dressing up the question.

Sarah looked at her and sighed, as if saying, oh, no, here’s another sour one. Blake almost laughed out loud at the expression on the child’s face.

“This is Amie Jackson, Sarah,” Blake said, introducing them. “Mrs. Jackson, Sarah Jane is my daughter.”

Mrs. Jackson didn’t faint, but she did go a shade redder. “Yes, sir, that’s hard to miss,” she said, comparing the small, composed child’s face with its older male counterpart. “Her mother isn’t here?” she added, staring around as if she expected Nina to materialize.

“Nina is dead,” Blake said without any particular feeling. Nina had knocked the finer feelings out of him years ago. His own foolish blindness to her real nature had helped her in the task.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Mrs. Jackson rubbed her apron between her thin hands for something to do. “Would she like some milk and cookies?” she asked hesitantly.

“That might be nice. Sarah?” Blake asked more curtly than he’d meant.

Sarah shifted and stared at the carpet. “I’d get crumbs on the floor.” She shook her head. “Mrs. Smathers says kids should eat off the kitchen floor ’cause they’re messy.”

Mrs. Jackson looked uncomfortable, and Blake sighed heavily. “You can get crumbs on the floor. Nobody’s going to yell at you.”

Sarah glanced up hesitantly.

“I don’t mind cleaning up crumbs,” Mrs. Jackson said testily. “Do you want cookies?”

“Yes, please.”

The older woman nodded curtly and went to get some.

“Nobody smiles here,” Sarah murmured. “It’s just like home.”

Blake felt a twinge of regret for the child, who seemed to have been stuck away in the housekeeper’s corner with no thought for her well-being. And not just since her stepfather had found out that she was Blake’s child, apparently.

His eyes narrowed and he asked the question that was consuming him. “Didn’t your mother stay with you?”

“Mommy was busy,” Sarah said. “She said I had to stay with Mrs. Smathers and do what she said.”

“Wasn’t she home from time to time?”

“She and my daddy—” she faltered and grimaced “—my other daddy yelled at each other mostly. Then she went away and he went away, too.”

This was getting them nowhere. He stood and began to pace, his hands in his pockets, his face stormy and hard.

Sarah watched him covertly. “You sure are big,” she murmured.

He stopped, glancing down at her curiously. “You sure are little,” he returned.

“I’ll grow,” Sarah promised. “Do you have a horse?”

“Several.”

She brightened. “I can ride a horse!”

“Not on my ranch, you can’t.”

Her green eyes flashed fire. “I can so if I want to. I can ride any horse!”

He knelt in front of her very slowly, and his green eyes met hers levelly and without blinking. “No,” he said firmly. “You’ll do what you’re told, and you won’t talk back. This is my place, and I make the rules. Got it?”

She hesitated, but only for a minute. “Okay,” she said sulkily.

He touched the tip of her pert nose. “And no sulking. I don’t know how this is going to work out,” he added curtly. “Hell, I don’t know anything about kids!”

“Hell is where you go when you’re bad,” Sarah replied matter-of-factly. “My mommy’s friend used to talk about it all the time, and about damns and sons of—”

“Sarah!” Blake burst out, shocked that a child her age should be so familiar with bad words.

“Do you have any cows?” she added, easily diverted.

“A few,” he muttered. “Which one of your mummy’s friends used language like that around you?”

“Just Trudy,” she said, wide-eyed.

Blake whistled through his teeth and turned just as Mrs. Jackson came in with a tray of milk and cookies for Sarah and coffee for Blake.

“I like coffee,” Sarah said. “My mommy let me drink it when she had hers in bed and she wasn’t awake good.”

“I’ll bet,” Blake said, “but you aren’t drinking it here. Coffee isn’t good for kids.”

“I can have coffee if I want to,” Sarah returned belligerently.

Blake looked at Mrs. Jackson, who was more or less frozen in place, staring at the little girl as she grabbed four cookies and proceeded to stuff them into her mouth as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

“You quit, or even try to quit,” Blake told the housekeeper, who’d looked after his uncle before him, “and so help me God, I’ll track you all the way to Alaska and drag you back here by one foot.”

“Me, quit? Just when things are getting interesting?” Mrs. Jackson lifted her chin. “God forbid.”

“Sarah, when was the last time you ate?” Blake inquired, watching her grab another handful of cookies.

“I had supper,” she said, “and then we came here.”

“You haven’t had breakfast?” he burst out. “Or lunch?”

She shook her head. “These cookies are good!”

“If you haven’t eaten for almost a day, I imagine so.” He sighed. “You’d better make us an early dinner tonight,” Blake told Mrs. Jackson. “She’ll eat herself sick on cookies if we’re not careful.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll go and make up the guest room for her,” she said. “But what about clothes? Does she have a suitcase?”

“No, that lawyer didn’t bring anything. Let her sleep in her slip tonight. Tomorrow,” he added, “you can take her into town to do some shopping.”

“Me?” Mrs. Jackson looked horrified.

“Somebody has to be sacrificed,” he told her pithily. “And I’m the boss.”

Mrs. Jackson’s lips formed a thin line. “I don’t know beans about little girls’ clothes!”

“Well, take her to Mrs. Donaldson’s shop,” he muttered. “That’s where King Roper and Elissa take their little girl to be outfitted. I heard King groan about the prices, but that won’t bother us any more than it bothers them.”

“Yes, sir.” She turned to leave.

“By the way, where’s the weekly paper?” he asked, because it always came on Thursday morning. “I wanted to see if our legal ad got in.”

Mrs. Jackson shifted uncomfortably and grimaced. “Well, I didn’t want to upset you…”

His eyebrows arched. “How could the weekly paper possibly upset me? Get it!”

“All right. If you’re sure that’s what you want.” She reached into the drawer of one of the end tables and pulled it out. “There you go, boss. And I’ll leave before the explosion, if you don’t mind.”

She exited, and Sarah took two more cookies while Blake stared down at the paper’s front page at a face that had haunted him.

“Author Meredith Calhoun to autograph at Baker’s Book Nook,” read the headline, and underneath it was a recent picture of Meredith.

His eyes searched over it in shock. The plain, skinny woman he’d hurt bore no resemblance to this peacock. Her brown hair was pulled back from her face into an elegant chignon. Her gray eyes were serene in a high-cheekboned face that could have graced the cover of a magazine, and her makeup enhanced the raw material that had always been there. She was wearing a pale suit coat with a pastel blouse, and she looked lovely. More than lovely. She looked soft and warm and totally untouched at the age of twenty-five, which she had to be now.

Blake put the paper down after scanning what he already knew about her skyrocketing career and her latest book, Choices, about a man and a woman trying to manage careers, marriage and parenthood all at once. He’d read it, as he secretly read all Meredith’s books, looking for traces of the past. Maybe even for a cessation of hostilities. But her feelings for him were buried and there was never a single trait he could recognize in her people that reminded him of himself. It was as if she sensed that he might look at them and had hidden anything that would give her inner feelings away.

Sarah Jane was standing beside him without his knowing it. She looked at the picture in the paper. “That’s a pretty lady,” Sarah said. She leaned forward and picked out a word in the column below the photograph. “B…o… o…k. Book,” she said proudly.

“So it is.” He pointed to the name. “How about that?”

“M…e…r…Merry Christmas,” she said.

He smiled faintly. “Meredith,” he corrected. “That’s her name. She’s a writer.”

“I had a book about the three bears,” Sarah told him. “Did she write that?”

“No. She writes books for big girls. Finish your cookies and you can watch television.”

“I like to watch Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street,” she said.

He frowned. “What?”

“They come on television.”

“Oh. Well, help yourself.”

He moved out of the room, ignoring the coffee. Which was sad, because Sarah Jane discovered it in the big silver pot and proceeded to help herself to the now cool liquid while he was on the telephone in the hall. Her cry caused him to drop the receiver in mid-sentence.

She was drenched in coffee and screaming her head off. She wasn’t the only wet thing, either. The carpet and part of the sofa were saturated and the tray was an inch deep with black liquid.

“I told you to stay out of the coffee, didn’t I?” Blake said as he knelt to see if she had been burned. Which, thank God, she hadn’t; she was more frightened than hurt.

“I wanted some,” she murmured tearfully. “I ruined my pretty dress.”

“That isn’t all that’s going to get ruined, either,” he said ominously, and abruptly tugged her over his knee and gave her bottom a slap. “When I say no, I mean no. Do you understand me, Sarah Jane Donavan?” he asked firmly.

She was too surprised to cry anymore. She stared at him warily. “Is that my name now?”

“It’s always been your name,” he replied. “You’re a Donavan. This is your home.”

“I like coffee,” she said hesitantly.

“And I said you weren’t to drink it,” he reminded her.

She took a deep breath. “Okay.” She picked up the coffeepot, only to have it taken from her and put on the table. “I can clean it up,” she said. “Mommy always made me clean up my mess.”

“This is more than you can cope with, sprout. And God only knows what we’re going to put on you while those things are washed.”

Mrs. Jackson came in and put both hands to her mouth. “Saints alive!”

“Towels, quick,” Blake said.

She went to get them, muttering all the way.

Minutes later the mess was gone, Sarah Jane was bundled up in a makeshift towel dress and her clothes were being washed and dried. Blake went into his study and locked the door, shamelessly leaving Mrs. Jackson to cope with Sarah while he had a few minutes’ peace. He had a feeling that it was going to be more and more difficult to find any quiet place in his life from now on.

He wasn’t sure he was going to like being a father. It was a whole new kind of responsibility, and his daughter seemed to have inherited his strength of will and stubbornness. She was going to be a handful. Mrs. Jackson knew no more about kids than he did, and that wasn’t going to help, either. But he didn’t feel right about sending Sarah off to a boarding school. He knew what it was like to be alone and unwanted and not too physically appealing. He felt a kind of kinship with this child, and he was reluctant to push her out of his life. On the other hand, how in hell was he going to live with her?

But over and above that problem was the newest one. Meredith Calhoun was coming to Jack’s Corner for a whole month, according to that newspaper. In that length of time he was sure to see her, and he had mixed feelings about opening up the old wounds. He wondered if she felt the same way, or if, in her fame and wealth, she’d left the memories of him in the past. He wanted to see her all the same. Even if she still hated him.

Chapter 2

Blake and Mrs. Jackson usually ate their evening meal with a minimum of conversation. But that was another old custom that was going to change.

Sarah Jane was a walking encyclopedia of questions. One answer led to another why and another, until Blake was ready to get under the table. And just the mention of bedtime brought on a tantrum. Mrs. Jackson tried to cajole the child into obeying, but Sarah Jane only got louder. Blake settled the matter by picking her up and carrying her to her new room.

Mrs. Jackson helped her undress and get into bed and Blake paused at her bedside reluctantly to say goodnight.

“You don’t like me,” Sarah accused.

He almost bristled at her mutinous expression, but she was a proud child, and he didn’t want to break her spirit. She’d need it as she grew older.

“I don’t know you,” he replied reasonably. “Any more than you know me. People don’t become friends on the spur of the moment. It takes time, sprout.”

She considered that as she lay there, swallowed whole by the size of the bed under her and the thick white coverlet over her. She watched him curiously. “You don’t hate little children, do you?” she asked finally.

“I don’t hate kids,” he said. “I’m just not used to them. I’ve been by myself for a long time.”

“Did you love my mommy?”

That question was harder to answer. His broad shoulders rose and fell. “I thought she was beautiful. I wanted to marry her.”

“She didn’t like me,” Sarah confided. “Can I really stay here? And I don’t have to go back to Daddy Brad?”

“No, you don’t have to go back. We’ll have to do some adjusting, Sarah, but we’ll get used to each other.”

“I’m scared with the light off,” she confessed.

“We’ll leave a night-light on.”

“What if a monster comes?” she asked.

“I’ll kill it, of course,” he reassured her with a smile.

She shifted under the covers. “Aren’t you scared of monsters?”

“Nope.”

She smiled for the first time. “Okay.” She stared at him for a minute. “You have a scar on your face,” she said, pointing to his right cheek.

His fingers touched it absently. “So I do.” He’d long ago given up being sensitive about it, but he didn’t like going into the way he’d gotten it. “Good night, sprout.”

He didn’t offer to read her a story or tell her one. In fact, he didn’t know any he could tell a child. And he didn’t tuck her in or kiss her. That would have been awkward. But Sarah didn’t ask for those things or seem to need them. Perhaps she hadn’t had much affection. She acted very much like a child who’d been turned loose and not bothered with overmuch.

He went back downstairs and into his study, to finish the day’s business that had been put on hold while he’d coped with Sarah’s arrival. Tomorrow Mrs. Jackson would have to handle things. He couldn’t steal time from a board meeting for one small child.

* * *

Jack’s Corner was a medium-sized Oklahoma city, and Blake’s office was in a new mall complex that was both modern and spacious. The next day, he and his board were just finalizing the financing for an upcoming project, when his secretary came in, flustered and apprehensive.

“Mr. Donavan, it’s your housekeeper on the phone. Could you speak with her, please?”

“I told you not to interrupt me unless it was urgent, Daisy,” he told the young blond woman curtly.

She hesitated nervously. “Please, sir?”

He got up and excused himself, striding angrily out into the waiting room to pick up the phone with a hard glare at Daisy.

“Okay, Amie, what’s wrong?” he asked shortly.

“I quit.”

“Oh, my God, not yet,” he shot back. “Not until she starts dating, at least!”

“I can’t wait that long, and I want my check today,” Mrs. Jackson snorted.

“Why?”

She held out the receiver. “Do you hear that?”

He did. Sarah Jane was screaming her head off.

“Where are you?” he asked with cold patience.

“Meg Donaldson’s dress shop downtown,” she replied. “This has been going on for five minutes. I wouldn’t let her buy the dress she wanted and I can’t make her stop.”

“Smack her on the bottom,” Blake said.

“Hit her in public?” She sounded as if he’d asked her to tie the child to a moving vehicle by her hair. “I won’t!”

He said something under his breath. “All right, I’m on my way.”

He hung up. “Tell the board to go ahead without me,” he told Daisy shortly, grabbing his hat off the hat rack. “I have to go administrate a small problem.”

“When will you be back, sir?” Daisy asked.

“God knows.”

He closed the door behind him with a jerk, mentally consigning fatherhood and sissy housekeepers to the netherworld.

It took him ten minutes to get to the small children’s boutique in town, and as luck would have it, there was one empty space in front that he could slide the Mercedes into. Next to his car was a sporty red Porsche with the top down. He paused for a moment to admire it and wonder about the owner.

“Oh, thank God.” Mrs. Jackson almost fell on him when he walked into the shop. “Make her stop.”

Sarah was lying on the floor, her face red and tear stained, her hair damp with sweat, her old dress rumpled from her exertions. She looked up at Blake and the tantrum died abruptly. “She won’t buy me the frilly one,” she moaned, pouting with a demure femininity.

My God, Blake thought absently, they learn how to do it almost before they can walk.

“Why won’t you buy her the frilly one?” he asked an astonished Mrs. Jackson, the words slipping out before he could stop them, while Meg Donaldson smothered a smile behind her cupped hands at the counter.

Mrs. Jackson looked taken aback. She cleared her throat. “Well, it’s expensive.”

“I’m rich,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but it’s not suitable for playing in the backyard. She needs some jeans and tops and underthings.”

“I need a dress to wear to parties,” Sarah sobbed. “I never got to go to a party, but you can have one for me, and I can make friends.”

He reached down and lifted her to her feet, then knelt in front of her. “I don’t like tantrums,” he said. “Next time Mrs. Jackson will spank you. In public,” he added, glaring at the stoic housekeeper.

She turned beet red, and Mrs. Donaldson bent down beside the counter as if she were going to look for something and burst out laughing.

While Mrs. Jackson was searching for words, the shop door opened and two women came in. Elissa Roper was immediately recognizable. She was married to King Roper, a friend of Blake’s.

“Blake!” Elissa smiled. “We haven’t seen you lately. What are you and Mrs. Jackson doing in here? And who’s this?”

“This is my daughter, Sarah Jane,” Blake said, introducing the child. “We’ve just been having a tantrum.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mrs. Jackson sniffed. “I don’t have tantrums. I just resign from jobs that have gotten too big for me.”

“You’re resigning, Mrs. Jackson? That would be one for the books, wouldn’t it?” a soft, amused voice asked, and Blake’s heart jumped.

He got slowly to his feet, oblivious to Sarah’s curious stare, to come face to face with a memory.

Meredith Calhoun looked back at him with gray eyes that gave away nothing except faint humor. She was wearing a blue dress with a white jacket, and she looked expensive and sophisticated and lovely. Her figure had filled out over the years, and she was tall and exquisite, with full, high breasts and a narrow waist flaring to hips that were in exact proportion for her body. She had long legs encased in silk hose, and elegant feet in white sandals. And the sight of her made Blake ache in the most inconvenient way.

“Merry!” Mrs. Jackson enthused, and hugged her. “It’s been so long!”

And it had been since Mrs. Jackson had made cake and cookies for her while she visited Blake’s uncle, who was also her godfather.

She and the housekeeper had grown close. “Long enough, I guess, Amie,” Meredith said as they stepped apart. “You haven’t aged a day.”

“You have,” Mrs. Jackson said with a smile. “You’re grown up.”

“And famous,” Elissa put in. “Bess—you remember my sister-in-law—and Meredith were in the same class at school and are still great friends. She’s staying with Bess and Bobby.”

“They’ve just bought the house next door to me,” Blake replied, for something to say. He couldn’t find the words to express what he felt when he looked at Meredith. So many years, so much pain. But whatever she’d felt for him was gone. That fact registered immediately.

“Has Nina come back with your daughter?” Elissa asked, trying not to appear poleaxed, which she was.

“Nina died earlier this year. Sarah Jane is living with me now.” He dragged his eyes away from Meredith to turn his attention to his child. “You look terrible. Go to the rest room and wash your face.”

“You come, too,” Sarah said mutinously.

“No.”

“I won’t go!”

“I’ll take her,” Mrs. Jackson said in her best martyred tone.

“No! You won’t let me buy the frilly dress!” Sarah turned her attention to the two curious onlookers. “She’s in the paper,” she said, her eyes on Meredith. “She writes books. My daddy said so.”

Meredith managed not to look at Blake. The unexpected sight of him after so much time was enough to knock her speechless. Thank God she’d learned to mask her emotions and hadn’t given herself away. The last thing she wanted to do was let Blake Donavan see that she had any vulnerability left.

Sarah walked over to Meredith, staring up at her with rapt fascination. “Can you tell stories?”

“Oh, I guess I can,” she said, smiling at the child who was so much like Blake. “You’ve got red eyes, Sarah. You shouldn’t cry.”

“I want the frilly dress and a party and other little children to play with. It’s very lonely, and they don’t like me.” She indicated Blake and Mrs. Jackson.

“One day, and she’s advertising to the world that we’re Jekyll and Hyde.” Mrs. Jackson threw up her hands.

“Which one are you?” Blake returned, glaring at her.

“Jekyll, of course. I’m prettier than you are,” Mrs. Jackson shot back.

“Just like old times,” Elissa said with a sigh, “isn’t it, Merry?”

Meredith wasn’t listening. Sarah Jane had reached up and taken her hand.

“You can come with me,” the little girl told Meredith. “I like her,” she said to her father belligerently. “She smiles. I’ll let her wash my face.”

“Do you mind?” Blake asked Meredith, speaking to her for the first time since she’d entered the shop.

“I don’t mind.” She didn’t look at him fully, then turned and let Sarah lead her into the small bathroom in the back of the shop.

“She’s changed,” Mrs. Jackson said to Mrs. Donaldson. “I hardly knew her.”

“It’s been a long time, you know. And she’s a famous woman now, not the child who left us.”

Blake walked away uncomfortably, staring at the dresses. Elissa moved closer to him while the other two women talked. She’d been a little afraid of Blake when she’d first met him years ago, but she’d gotten to know him better. He and King were friends and visited regularly.

“How long has Sarah been with you?” she asked him.

“Since yesterday afternoon,” he replied dryly. “It seems like years. I guess I’ll get used to her, but it’s hard going right now. She’s a handful.”

“She’s just frightened and alone,” Elissa replied. “She’ll improve when she has time to settle down and adjust.”

“I may be bankrupt by then,” he mused. “I had to walk out of a board meeting. And all because Sarah Jane wanted a frilly dress.”

“Why don’t you buy it for her and she can come to my Danielle’s birthday party next week? It will be nice for her to meet children her own age.”

“She’ll sit on the cake and wreck the house,” he groaned.

“No, she won’t. She’s just a little girl.”

“She wrecked my living room in just under ten minutes,” he assured her.

“It takes mine five minutes to do that.” Elissa grinned. “It’s normal.”

He stared toward the bathroom. Meredith and Sarah Jane were just coming out. “There are people in the world who have more than one,” he murmured. “Do you suppose they’re sane?”

Elissa laughed. “Yes. You’ll understand it all one day.”

“Look what Merry gave me!” Sarah enthused, showing Blake a snowy white handkerchief. “And it’s all mine! It has lace!”

Blake shook his head as she turned abruptly and grabbed the dress she’d been screaming about. “It’s mine. I want it. Oh, please.” She changed tactics, staring up pie eyed at her daddy. “It will go so nicely with my new handkerchief.”

Blake laughed and then caught himself. He looked at Mrs. Jackson. “What do you think?”

“I think that if you buy Sarah Jane that dress I’m going to put it on you,” the older woman replied in a hunted tone.

“You really shouldn’t give in because children have tantrums, Blake,” Mrs. Donaldson volunteered. “I know. I raised four.”

He stared at Mrs. Jackson. “You started this. Why would you tell her she couldn’t have the damned thing in the first place?”

“I told you, it was too expensive for her to play in.”

“She’ll need a dress to come to Danielle’s party,” Elissa broke in.

“Now see what you’ve done,” Blake growled at Mrs. Jackson.

“I won’t take her shopping ever again. You can just let somebody else run your company and do it yourself,” Mrs. Jackson grumbled.

“I don’t know what to think of a woman who can’t manage to buy a dress for one small child.”

“That isn’t just one small child, that’s one small Donavan, and nobody could say she isn’t your daughter!” Mrs. Jackson said.

Blake felt an unexpected surge of pleasure at the words. He looked down at the child who looked so much like him and had to agree that she did have some of his better qualities. Stubborn determination. Not to mention good taste.

“You can have the dress, Sarah,” he told her, and was rewarded by a smile so delightful he’d have sold his Mercedes to buy the damned thing for her no matter what it cost.

“Oh, thank you!” Sarah gushed.

“You’ll be sorry,” Mrs. Jackson said.

“You can shut up,” he told her. “It’s your fault.”

“You said to take her shopping, you didn’t say what to buy,” she reminded him huffily. “And I’m going home.”

“Then go on. And don’t burn lunch,” he called after her.

“I couldn’t burn a bologna sandwich if I tried, and that’s all you’ll get from me today!”

“I’ll fire you!”

“Thank God!”

Blake glared at Mrs. Donaldson and Elissa, who were trying not to smile. This byplay between Blake and Mrs. Jackson was old hat to them, and they found it amusing. Meredith’s expression was less revealing. She was looking at Sarah and Blake wished he could see her eyes.

But she turned away. “We’d better get on,” she told Elissa. “Bess will be waiting for us to pick her up at the beauty parlor.”

“Okay,” Elissa grinned. “Just let me get those socks for Danielle and I’ll be ready.”

She did, which left Meredith stranded with Blake and his daughter.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Sarah sighed, pirouetting with the dress held in front of her. “I look like a fairy princess.”

“Not quite,” Blake said. “You’ll need shoes, and some clothes to play in, too.”

“Okay.” She ran to the other racks and started looking through them.

“Is it normal for them to be so clothes conscious at this age?” Blake asked, turning his attention to Meredith.

“I don’t know,” she said uncomfortably. His unblinking green-eyed gaze was making her remember too much pain. “I haven’t been around children very much. I must go….”

He touched her arm, and was astonished to find that she jerked away from his touch and stared fully at him with eyes that burned with resentment and pain and anger.

“So, you haven’t forgotten,” he said under his breath.

“Did you really think I ever would?” she asked on a shaky laugh. “You were the reason I never came back here. I almost didn’t come this time, either, but I was tired of hiding.”

He didn’t know what to say. Her reaction was unexpected. He’d imagined that she might have some bitterness, but not this much. He searched what he could see of her face, looking for something he knew he wasn’t going to find anymore.

“You’ve changed,” he said quietly.

Her eyes looked up into his, and there was a flash of cold anger there. “Oh, yes, I’ve changed. I’ve grown up. That should reassure you. I won’t be chasing after you like a lovesick puppy this time.”

The reference stung, and she’d meant it to. He’d accused her of chasing him and more, after the reading of the will.

But being reminded of the past only made him bitter, and he hit back. “Thank God,” he said with a mocking smile. “Could I have that in writing?”

“Go to hell,” she said under her breath.

That, coming from shy little Meredith, floored him. He didn’t even have a comeback.

Sarah came running up with an armload of things. “Look, aren’t they pretty! Can I have them all?” she asked the scowling man beside Meredith.

“Sure,” he said absently.

Meredith turned away from him, smiling. It was the first time in memory that she’d ever fought back—or for that matter, said anything to him that wasn’t respectful and worshipful. What a delightful surprise to find he no longer intimidated her.

“Ready to go?” Meredith asked Elissa.

“Sure am. See you, Blake!”

“But you can’t go.” Sarah ran to Meredith and caught her skirt. “You’re my friend.”

The child couldn’t know how that hurt—to have Blake’s child, the child she might have borne him, cling to her. She knelt in front of Sarah, disengaging the small hand. “I have to go now. But I’ll see you again, Sarah. Okay?”

Sarah looked lost. “You’re nice. Nobody else smiles at me.”

“Mrs. Jackson will smile at you tonight, I promise,” Blake told the child. “Or she’ll never smile again,” he added under his breath.

“You don’t smile,” Sarah accused him.

“My face would break,” he assured her. “Now get your things and we’ll go home.”

She sighed. “Okay.” She looked up at Meredith. “Will you come to see me?”

Meredith went white. Go into that house again, where Blake had humiliated and hurt her? God forbid!

“You can come to see Danielle, Sarah,” Elissa interrupted, and Meredith knew then that Elissa had heard the whole story from King. She was running interference, bless her.

“Who’s Dan—Danielle?” Sarah asked.

“My daughter. She’s four.”

“I’m almost four,” Sarah said. “Can she say nursery rhymes? I know all of them. ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty—’”

“I’ll give your Daddy a call and he can bring you down to Bess’s house, where Meredith is staying. Bess is my sister-in-law, and Danielle and I go to see her sometimes.”

“I’d like to have a friend,” Sarah agreed. “Could we do that?” she asked her father.

Blake was watching Meredith shift uncomfortably. “Sure we can,” he said, just to irritate her.

Meredith turned away, her heart going like an overwound watch, her eyes restless and frightened. The very last thing she wanted was to have to cope with Blake.

“Bye, Merry!” Sarah called.

“Goodbye, Sarah Jane,” she murmured, and forced a smile, but she wouldn’t look at Blake.

He said the appropriate things as Elissa followed Meredith out the door, but the fact that Meredith wouldn’t look at him cut like a knife.

He watched Meredith climb in under the wheel of the red Porsche. It didn’t seem like the kind of car she’d drive, but she wasn’t the girl she’d been. His eyes narrowed. He wondered if she was still as innocent as before, or if some man had taught her all the sweet ways to make love. His face hardened at the thought. No one had touched her until he had. But he’d been rough and he’d frightened her. He hadn’t really meant to. The feel and taste of her had knocked him off balance, and at the time he hadn’t been experienced himself. Nina had been his first woman, but his first real intimacy, even if it had been relatively chaste, had been with Meredith. Even after all the years in between, he could feel her mouth, taste its sweetness. He could see the soft alabaster of her breasts when he’d unbuttoned the top of her dress. He groaned silently. That was when he’d lost his senses—seeing her like that. He wondered if she knew how green he’d been in those days, and decided that she was too inexperienced herself to realize it. He’d wanted Meredith to the point of madness, and things had just gotten out of hand. But to a shy young virgin, his ardor must have seemed frightening.

He turned back to his daughter with memories of the past darkening his eyes. It seemed so long ago that the rain had found him in the stable and Meredith had come in looking for his uncle….

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