“I like her, too,” she said quietly. “She’s a sweet child.”

“‘Sweet’ isn’t exactly the word I’d choose.”

“Can’t you see what’s under the belligerence?” she asked solemnly, and turned in the seat slightly so that she could look at him without having to move her head. “She’s frightened.”

“Elissa said that, too. What is she frightened of? Me?” he asked.

“I don’t know what,” she said. “I don’t know anything about the situation, and I’m not prying.” She stared at the clasp on her purse and unsnapped it. “She doesn’t look like a happy child. And the way she enthused over Danielle’s things, I’d almost bet she’s hardly had a toy in her life.”

“I’m a bachelor,” he muttered angrily. “I don’t know about children and toys and dresses. My God, until a few days ago I didn’t even know I was a father.”

Meredith wanted to ask why Nina had kept Sarah’s existence a secret, but she didn’t feel comfortable talking about such personal things with him. She had to remember that he was the enemy, in a very real sense. She couldn’t afford to show any interest in his life.

He was already figuring that out by himself. She either didn’t care about how he’d found out, or she wasn’t going to risk asking him. He wished he smoked. She made him nervous and he didn’t have anything to do with his hands except grip the steering wheel as he drove.

“Mrs. Jackson is one of your biggest fans,” he said, moving the conversation away from Sarah.

“Is she? I’m glad.”

“I guess you make a fair living from what you do, if that Porsche is any indication.”

She lifted her eyes to his face, letting them run over his craggy features. The broken nose was prominent, as was that angry scar down his cheek. She felt a surge of warmth remembering how he’d come by that scar. Her eyes fell.

“I make a good living,” she replied. “I’m rather well-to-do, in fact. So if you think I came home looking for a rich husband, you’re well off the mark. You’re perfectly safe, Blake,” she added coldly. “I’m the last woman on earth you’ll have to ward off these days.”

He had to clamp down hard on his teeth to keep from saying what came naturally. The past was dead, but she had every reason for digging it up and throwing it at him. He had to remember that. If she’d done to him what he’d done to her, he’d have wanted a much worse revenge than a few pithy remarks.

“I don’t flatter myself that you’d come looking for me without a loaded gun, Meredith,” he returned. He glanced at her, noting the surprise on her face.

She looked out the window again, puzzled and confused.

He pulled the Mercedes into the parking lot behind the library and shut off the engine.

“Don’t do that. Not yet,” he said when she started to open the door. “Let’s talk for a minute.”

“What do we have to say to each other?” she asked distantly. “We’re different people now. Let the past take care of itself. I don’t want to remember—” she stopped short when she realized what she’d blurted out.

“I know.” He leaned back against his door, his pale green eyes under thick black lashes searching her face. “I guess you think I was rough with you in the stable deliberately. And I said some cruel things, didn’t I?”

She flushed and averted her eyes, focusing on his chest. “Yes,” she said, taut with embarrassment and vivid memories.

“It wasn’t planned,” he replied. “And what I said wasn’t what I felt.” He sighed heavily. “I wanted you, Meredith. Wanted you with a passion that drove me right over the edge. But I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Nothing happened,” she said icily. In her nervousness her hands gripped her purse like talons.

“Only because my uncle came driving up at the right moment,” he said bitterly. He studied her set features. “You’ll never know how it’s haunted me all these long years. I was deliberately rough with you the day the will was read because guilt was eating me up. I’d promised to marry Nina, my cousins were talking lawsuits…and on top of all that, I’d just discovered that I wanted you to the point of madness.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said under her breath. Her eyes closed in pain. “I can’t…talk about it.”

His eyes narrowed. “I thought Nina loved me,” he said gently. “She said she did, and all her actions seemed to prove it. I thought you only wanted the inheritance, that I was a stepping stone for you, a way to escape the poverty you’d lived in all your young life.” He ran his fingers lightly over the steering wheel. “It wasn’t until after…that day, that the lawyer told me why my uncle had wanted me to marry you.” His eyes slid to catch hers and hold them. “I didn’t know you were in love with me.”

Her face lost every vestige of color. She sat and stared at him, her pride in rags, her deepest secret naked to his scrutiny.

“It wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference,” she choked out. “Nothing would have changed. Except that you’d have used the information to humiliate me even more. You and Nina would have laughed yourselves sick over that irony.”

The cynicism in her tone made him feel even guiltier. She’d grown a shell, just like the one he’d lived inside most of his life. It kept people from getting too close, from wounding too deeply. Nina hadn’t managed to penetrate it, but Meredith very nearly had. He’d pushed her out of his life at exactly the right moment, because it wouldn’t have taken much to give her a stranglehold on his heart. He’d known that five years ago, and did everything he could to prevent it.

Now he was seeing the consequences of his reticence. His life had altered, and so had Meredith’s. Her fame must have been poor recompense for the home and children she’d always wanted, for a husband to love and take care of and be loved by.

He couldn’t answer her accusation without giving himself away, so he ignored it and let her think what she liked.

“You never used to be sarcastic,” he said quietly. “You were quiet and shy—”

“And dull and plain,” she added for him with a cold smile. “I still am all those things. But I write books that sell like hotcakes and I’ve got my own small following of loyal readers. I’m famous and I’m rich. So now it doesn’t matter if I’m not a blond bombshell. I’ve learned to live with what I am.”

“Have you?” He searched her eyes for a long moment. “You’ve learned to hide yourself away from the world so that you won’t get hurt. You draw back from emotion, from involvement. Even today you were thinking of ways to keep Sarah from having any time with you. That’s the whole point of this trip to the library. Your damned research could have been anytime, but you preferred not to be around while Sarah and I were at Bess’s house.”

“All right, maybe I did!” she said, goaded into telling the truth. “Sarah is a sweet child, and I could love her, but I don’t want to have to look at you, much less be dragged up to that house when you’re there. Mars wouldn’t be far enough away from you to suit me!”

He was grateful that he’d learned to keep a poker face. She couldn’t have known how those words hurt him. She had every reason to want to avoid him, to hate him. But he didn’t want to avoid her, and hatred was the last emotion he felt for her now.

“So Sarah’s going to have to pay because you don’t want to be around me,” he replied.

She glared at him. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “You aren’t laying any guilt trips on me. Sarah has you and Mrs. Jackson—”

“Sarah doesn’t like me and Mrs. Jackson,” he interrupted. “She likes you. She’s done nothing but talk about you.”

She turned away. “I can’t,” she said huskily.

“She could have been our child,” he said unexpectedly. “Yours and mine. And that’s what’s eating you alive, isn’t it?”

She couldn’t believe he’d said that. She looked back at him with tears welling in her gray eyes, blinding her. “Damn you!”

“I saw it in your face this morning when you looked at her,” he went on relentlessly, driven to make her admit it. “It isn’t fear of me that’s stopping you—it’s fear of admitting that Sarah reminds you too painfully of what you wanted and couldn’t have.”