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
