Reluctant Father

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.