“Don’t run yourself down,” she said softly. Her eyes searched over his face warmly. “I think you turned out pretty well.”

He touched her hair with a big, lean hand. “I never meant to be as cruel to you as I was.” He sighed wearily. “And I guess if it hadn’t been for Sarah, you wouldn’t have come near me again, would you?” he asked.

She lowered her eyes to his chest. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I was still bitter, and a little afraid of you when I came back. But when I saw you with Sarah…” Her eyes lifted. “You might not realize it, but you’re different when she’s around. She takes some of the rough edges off you.”

“She’s pretty special. No thanks to Nina,” he added curtly. “God knows why she kept the child when she so obviously didn’t want her.”

“Maybe her husband did.”

“If he did, he sure changed his tune when he found out she was mine. He turned his back on her completely. I’m damned if I could have done that to a child,” he said coldly. “Whether or not we shared the same blood, there are bonds equally strong.”

“Not everyone has a sense of honor,” Meredith reminded him. “Your sense of honor was always one of your strongest traits.”

“It still is.” He sat down on the bench again, tugging her down beside him and drawing her closer while Sarah stopped the swing and ran to the sandbox. “She’ll carry half that sand home with us,” he murmured ruefully.

“Sand brushes off,” Meredith reminded him.

He smiled. “So it does.” He leaned back and his hand contracted on her shoulder. “She’s crazy about you.”

“I like her, too. She’s a wonderful little girl.”

“I hope you’ll still think so after she’s treated you to one of her tantrums.”

“Most children have those,” she reminded him. She leaned back against his arm and looked up at him. Impulsively she reached up and touched the white line of scar tissue on his face, noticing the way he flinched and grabbed her hand. “It’s not unsightly,” she said softly, and she smiled. “I told Sarah it was a mark of courage, and it is. You got it because of me. It was my fault.”

His fingers curled around hers and pressed before he led them back to the scar and let her touch it. “Saving you from a wild bronc,” he recalled, smiling because it was a lot like what had happened to Sarah in the corral. “You weren’t after a lacy white handkerchief. Instead it was a kitten that had run into the corral. I got to you in the nick of time, but I ran face first into a piece of tin on the way out.”

“You used words I’d never heard before or since,” she murmured sheepishly. “And I deserved every one of them. But you let me patch you up, anyway. That was sweet,” she said unthinkingly, and then lowered her eyes.

“‘Sweet.’” His hard lips pursed as he studied her face. “You’ll never know what I felt. The atmosphere was electric that day. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to glare at you. It kept me from doing what I really wanted to do.”

“Which was?” she asked, curious, because she remembered too well the cold fury in his face and voice as she’d doctored him.

“I wanted to pull you into my lap and kiss the breath out of you,” he said huskily. “You were wearing a cotton blouse with nothing, not a damned thing, under it. I could see the outline of your breasts under the blouse and I wanted to touch them so badly that I shook with longing. It wasn’t more than a day later that I did just that, in the stable. You didn’t know,” he guessed, watching the expressions play across her face.

“No,” she admitted breathlessly. “I had no idea. Of course, I was shaking a little myself, and trying so hard to hide my reaction from you that I didn’t notice what you might be feeling.”

“I lay awake all night, remembering the way you looked and sounded and smelled.” He glanced at Sarah, watching her make a pointed castle in the sand and stack twigs around it for doors and windows. “I woke up aching. And then, days later, they read the will, and I went wild. Nina was clinging to me, I was confused about what I felt for you and for her.” He shrugged. “I went crazy. That’s why I said such cruel things to you. I wanted you so badly. When I saw you later, I couldn’t resist one last chance to hold you, to taste you. So I kissed you. It took every last ounce of willpower I had to pull back.”

“I really hated you for that,” she said, remembering. “I knew you were getting even for the will, for what your uncle tried to do. I never realized that you really wanted me.” She smiled self-consciously.

His lips twisted. “Do you think a man can fake desire?” he asked with a level stare.

She flushed and avoided his gaze. “No.”

“At least I know now that I’m still capable of feeling it,” he said heavily, his eyes going again to Sarah. “It’s been a long dry spell. I couldn’t bear the thought of having some other woman cut up my pride the way Nina did. And no one knows better than I do that I’m not much good in bed.”

“I think that depends on who you’re in bed with,” she said, staring at his shirt. “When two people care about each other, it’s supposed to be magic, even if neither of them has any experience.”

“It wasn’t magic for us, and we both fit into that category the day the will was read,” he murmured softly.

“That’s true. But I fought you. I didn’t understand what was happening,” she confessed.

He studied her down-bent head. “Do you think it might be different now that we’ve both had five years to mature?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

His lean hand touched her hair hesitantly and trailed down her cheek to her soft mouth. “I haven’t learned a lot,” he said, his voice quiet and deep. He drew in a slow breath. “And you knock me off balance pretty bad. I might frighten you if things got out of hand.”

He sounded as if the thought tormented him. She lifted her eyes and looked up at him. “Oh, no,” she said softly. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”

His heart stampeded in his chest when she looked at him that way. “Would you go that far with me?” he whispered.

She couldn’t sustain that piercing green-eyed gaze. Her eyes fell to his hard mouth. “Don’t ask me, Blake,” she pleaded. “I would, but I’d hate both of us. All those years of strict upbringing don’t just go away because we want them to. I’m not made for a permissive life. Not even with you.”

She made it sound as if he were the exception to the rule, and he felt a sting of pure unadulterated masculine pride at her words. She wanted to. He smiled slowly. That made things a little easier. Of course, the walls were all still up. The smile faded when he realized that those scruples of hers were going to stop him, because his own conscience and sense of honor wouldn’t let him seduce her. Not even if she wanted him to.

“I guess I’m not either, if you want the truth.” He sighed. “You and I are a dying breed, honey.”

She heard the endearment with a sense of awe. It was the first time he’d used one with her, the very first time. She was aware of a new warmth deep inside her as she savored it in her mind.

“Daddy, look at my sand castle!” Sarah Jane called. “Isn’t it pretty? But I’m hungry. And I want to go to the bathroom.”

Blake smiled involuntarily. “Okay, sprout. Come on.” He moved slightly away from Meredith. “She doesn’t settle for long. Her mind is like a grasshopper.”

“I think it’s the age.” Meredith smiled. She knelt and held out her arms for Sarah to run into, and she lifted the child, hugging her close. “You smell nice,” she said. “What do you have on?”

“It’s Daddy’s,” Sarah said, and Blake’s eyebrows shot up. “It was on his table and I got me some. Isn’t it nice? Daddy always smells good.”

“Yes, he does.” Meredith was fighting a losing battle with the giggles. She looked at Blake’s astounded face and burst out laughing.

“So that’s where it went,” he murmured, sniffing Sarah and wrinkling his nose. “Sprout, that stuff’s for me. It’s not for little girls.”