Reluctant Father

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.”