Reluctant Father

“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….

Chapter 3

It had been late spring that day five years ago, and Blake had been helping one of the men doctor a sick horse in the stable. Meredith had come along just in time to see the second man leave. Blake was still there. She’d come to ask where his uncle was, but it was a rainy day, and she and Blake had been caught in the barn while it stormed outside.

Blake had hungrily watched Meredith as she stood on her tiptoes to look toward the house. She was wearing a white sundress that buttoned up the front, and as she stretched, every line of her body had been emphasized and her dress had ridden up, displaying most of her long legs.

The sight of those slim, elegant legs and the sensuous curve of her body had caught him in the stomach like a body blow, and he’d stood there staring. It shouldn’t have affected him. He had Nina, who was blond and beautiful and who loved him. Meredith was plain and shy and not at all the kind of woman who could attract him. But as he’d looked at her, his body had quickened and the shock of it had moved him helplessly toward where she stood in the wide doorway, just out of the path of the rain.

Meredith had heard him, or perhaps sensed him, because she turned, her eyes faintly covetous before she lowered them. “It’s really coming down, isn’t it?” she asked hesitantly. “I was just about to go home, but I needed to ask your Uncle Dan some more questions.”

“You’re always around these days,” he’d remarked, half-angry because his body was playing cruel tricks on him.

She’d blushed. “He’s helping me with some articles for the school paper, and I’m going to do a book with the same information,” she’d begun.

“Book!” He scoffed at that. “You’re barely twenty. What makes you think you’ve learned enough to write books? You haven’t even started to live.”

Her head came up and there had been a flash of anger in her pale gray eyes, which was instantly disguised. “You make me sound like a toddler.”

“You look like one occasionally,” he remarked with faint humor, noting the braid of her hair, which she’d tied with a ribbon. “And I’m almost twelve years older than you are.” He pushed away from the barn door, noticing the faint hunger in her face as he went toward her.

The hunger was what touched him. It hadn’t occurred to him that women besides Nina might find him physically attractive. He had that damned scar down one cheek, thanks to Meredith, and it made him look like a renegade. His arrogance didn’t soften the impression.

He looked down his nose at Meredith when he was less than a foot from her, watching the expressions play across her face. It was a pretty good bet that she was innocent, and if she’d been kissed, probably it hadn’t been often or seriously. That, at least, made him feel confident. She didn’t have anyone to compare him with.

His eyes went to her soft bow of a mouth, and with an impulse he didn’t even understand at the time, he tilted her chin up with a lean hand and bent to brush his lips over hers.

“Blake…!” she gasped.

He hadn’t known if it was fear or shock…hadn’t cared. The first contact with her mouth had caused a frightening surge of desire in his lean body. “Don’t back away now,” he bit off against her soft lips. “Come here.”

He’d pulled her against him and his mouth had grown rough and hungry. Even now, five years later, he could feel the soft yielding of her body in his arms, smell the scent of her as she strained upward and gave him her mouth with such warm eagerness. He could hear the rain beating on the stable roof, and the soft sounds of a cow settling down in the darkness beyond where they stood silhouetted against the driving rain.

Blake had been amazed by the tentative response he got from her lips. That shy nibbling drove him over the edge. He eased her back against the wall of the barn, out of sight, with his mouth still covering hers. Then he let his body slide down against her so that his hips were pressing feverishly against hers, his chest crushing her soft young breasts.

He felt her quickened breathing, heard the soft “no!” as he felt for and found one firm breast and touched it through her clothing. The feel of her made him wild. He remembered the white-hot flames that had consumed him with the intimate touch. He’d wanted her with a shuddering passion and his mouth had grown more and more demanding. She gave in to him all at once, her body relaxing, shivering, her mouth shyly responding. His tongue pushed gently inside her lips and she stiffened, but she didn’t try to pull away.

Confident now, his fingers worked at buttons and he lifted his head just fractionally to look down at what they uncovered. Her breasts were bare under the dress and he groaned as he bent to brush his mouth against them. He felt her gasp and her hands gripped his arms hard. The silky taste of her body stripped him of control entirely, the feel of her skin against his face made him wild. His hands grew roughly intimate in passion and his mouth closed hungrily over one firm breast.

What might have happened then was anyone’s guess. He hardly heard Meredith’s frantic voice. It wasn’t until he caught the sound of a car driving up that his sanity returned.

He lifted his head, breathing fiercely, in time to see Meredith’s eyes full of fear. He realized belatedly what he’d done. He took a sharp breath and levered himself back up, away from her, his body in torment with unsatisfied desire, his eyes smoldering as they met hers.

She blushed furiously as she fumbled buttons into buttonholes, making herself decent again. And only then did he realize how intimate the embrace had gotten. He didn’t know what had possessed him. He’d frightened her and himself, because it was the first time he’d ever lost control like that. But, then, he hadn’t been experienced, he realized now. Not until he and Nina were married. His first taste of sensual pleasure had been with Meredith that day in the stable.

He didn’t speak—he was too shocked. The sudden arrival of his uncle had been a godsend at the time, but later it dawned on him that his uncle had guessed what had happened between Blake and Meredith and had altered his will to capitalize on it. His favorite godchild and his nephew—he would have considered them a perfect match. But Blake hadn’t thought of it at the time. He’d been so drunk on Meredith’s soft mouth that he’d almost gone after her when she mumbled some excuse and ran out into the rain as he and his uncle watched her.

Then, within days, his uncle was dead of a heart attack. Blake had been crushed. The sense of loneliness he felt when it happened was almost too great for words. Meredith had been around, with her parents, but he’d hardly noticed with Nina clinging to him, pretending sympathy. And then, suddenly they were reading the will. Blake was engaged to Nina, but still trying to cope with the turbulent emotions Meredith had aroused in him. The will was read, and he learned that Uncle Dan had left twenty percent of the stock in his real estate companies to Meredith. The only way Blake could have it would be by marrying her.

He had forty-nine percent of the stock, but his cousins had thirty-one shares between them. And although one of the cousins down in Texas would have sided with him in a proxy fight if Meredith sided against him, he could lose everything. Nina had laughed. He still remembered the look on her face as she scrutinized Meredith in a manner too contemptuous for words.