“Occasionally, and no, I wasn’t a frog. Meredith played dolls with you?” he asked, feeling a tiny glow deep inside himself.

“She really did.” Sarah sighed. “I like Mer’dith. I wish she was my mommy. Can’t she come to live with us?”

He couldn’t explain that very easily. “No,” he said simply. “You’d better get ready for bed.”

“But, Daddy…” she moaned.

“Go on. No arguments.”

“All right,” she grumbled. But she went.

He looked after her, smiling faintly. She was a handful, but she was slowly growing on him.

He stayed home on Sunday and took Sarah Jane out to see the horses grazing in the pasture. One of the men, a grizzled old wrangler named Manolo, was working a gelding in the corral, breaking him slowly and gently to the saddle. Blake had complained that Manolo took too long to break horses, especially when he was doing it for the remuda in spring before roundup. The cowhands had to have a string of horses when they started working cattle. But Manolo used his own methods, despite the boss’s arguments. No way, he informed Blake, was he going to mistreat a horse just to break it to saddle, and if Blake didn’t like that, he could fire him.

Blake hadn’t said another word about it. The horses Manolo broke were always gentle and easily managed.

But this horse was giving the old man a lot of trouble. It pranced and reared, and Blake was watching it instead of Sarah Jane when the lacy handkerchief Meredith had given her blew into the corral.

Like a shot, she climbed through the fence to go after it, just as the horse broke away from Manalo and came snorting and bucking in her direction.

Blake saw her and blinked, not believing what his eyes were telling him. All at once he was over the fence, just as Manolo yelled.

Sarah was holding her handkerchief, staring dumbly at the approaching horse.

Blake grabbed her and sent her through the fence, following her with an economy of motion. He thanked God for his own strength as it prevented what would have been a total disaster.

Sarah Jane clung to his neck tightly, crying with great sobs.

He hugged her to him, his eyes closed, a shudder running through his lean, fit body. Another few seconds and it would have been all over. Sarah would have become a tragic memory. It didn’t bear thinking about. Worse than that, it brought back an older memory, of another incident with a bronc. He touched his lean cheek where the scar cut across his tan. How many years ago had it been that he’d saved Meredith just as he’d saved Sarah? A long time ago—long before the sight of her began to make him ache.

The fear he’d experienced, added to the unwanted memories, made him furious. He let go of Sarah and held her in front of him, his green eyes glittering with rage.

“Don’t you know better than to go into the corral with a wild animal?” he snapped. “Where’s your mind, Sarah?”

She stared at him as if he’d slapped her. Her lower lip trembled. “I had to get my…my hankie, Daddy.” She held it up. “See? My pretty hankie that Mer’dith gave me….”

He shook her. “The next time you go near any enclosure with horses or cattle in it, you stay out! Do you understand me?” he asked in a tone that made her small body jerk with a sob. “You could have been killed!”

“I’m so—sorry,” she faltered.

“You should be!” he jerked out. “Now get in the house.”

She started crying, frightened by the way he looked. “You hate me,” she whimpered. “I know you do. You yelled at me. You’re mean and ugly…and…I don’t like you!”

“I don’t like you, either, at the moment,” he bit off, glaring down at her, his legs still shaking from the exertion and fear. “Now get going.”

“You mean old daddy!” she cried. She turned and ran wildly for the house as Blake stared after her in a blind rage.

“Is she all right, boss?” Manolo asked from the fence. “My God, that was quick! I didn’t even see her!”

“Neither did I,” Blake confessed. “Not until it was damned near too late.” He let out a rough sigh. “I didn’t mean to be so hard on her, but she’s got to learn that horses and cattle are dangerous. I wanted to make sure she remembered this.”

“She’ll remember,” Manolo said ruefully, and turned away before the boss could see the look on his face. Poor little kid. She needed hugging, not yelling.

Blake went in the house a few minutes later and looked for Sarah, but she was nowhere in sight. Mrs. Jackson had heard her come in, but she hadn’t seen her because she was working in the front of the house.

He checked Sarah’s bedroom, but she wasn’t there, either. Then he remembered what she’d said about being locked in the closet when she was bad….

He jerked open the closet door and there she sat, her face red and tear stained, sobbing and looking as if she hadn’t a friend in the world.

“Go away,” she sniffed.

He got down awkwardly on one knee. “You’ll suffocate in here.”

“I hate you.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he said. “The horse could have hurt you very badly.”

She touched the dusty lace handkerchief to her red eyes. “You yelled at me.”

He grimaced. “You scared me,” he muttered, averting his gaze. “I never thought I’d get to you in time.”

She sniffed and got up on her knees under the hanging dresses and blouses and slacks. “You didn’t want me to get hurt?”

“Of course I didn’t want you to get hurt,” he snapped, green eyes flashing.

“You’re yelling at me again,” she said, pouting.

He sighed angrily. “Well, I’ve been doing it for a lot of years, and I won’t change. You’ll just have to get used to my temper.” He stared at her half-angrily. “I thought I was getting the hang of it, and you had to go crawl in with a bucking bronco and set me back.”

“Everybody used to yell at me,” she told him solemnly. “But they didn’t do it just if I got hurt. They didn’t like me.”

“I like you. That’s why I yelled,” he muttered.

She smiled through her tears. “Really and truly?” He grimaced. “Really and truly.” He got up. “Come out of there.”

“Are you going to spank me?” she asked.

“No.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“You’d better not.” He took her hand and led her downstairs. When Mrs. Jackson found out what had happened, she took a fresh coconut cake out of the pantry, sliced it up and poured Sarah a soft drink. She even smiled. Sarah dried her eyes and smiled back.

On Monday Blake took two hours off at lunch and went to a toy store. He bought an armful of dolls and assorted girlish toys and took them to the house without fully understanding his motives. Maybe it was relief that Sarah was all right or guilt because he’d hurt her.

But she sat down in the living room with her new friends—which included a huge stuffed teddy bear—and the way she handled her toys was enough to bring a tear to the eye. She hugged the teddy bear, then she hugged Blake, who was half delighted and half embarrassed by her exuberance.

“You’re just the nicest daddy in the whole world,” Sarah Jane said, and she was crying again. She wiped her eyes with her hands. “I have a new Mr. Friend now, and he can help you fight monsters.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Behave yourself.” He went out the door quickly, more moved than he wanted to admit by his daughter’s reception to the impromptu toy surprise.

On the way back to work, he remembered what Sarah had said about Meredith playing dolls with her. Meredith had been trying to keep Sarah at arms’ length, so he wondered at her actions. Had he been wrong about Meredith’s motives? Had he misjudged what he thought was her reason for avoiding Sarah?

He remembered all too well the feel of Meredith’s soft, innocent mouth under his that day in the stable, the wonder in her eyes when he’d lifted his head just briefly to look down at her. And then he’d lost control and frightened her, turning the wonder to panic.