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
