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“. . . our baby, Shane—don’t you understand? I was pregnant withyourchild!”

“Oh, God,” he groaned, and shook his head. “No . . . it’s too farfetched . . .” he began, but the anger in his eyes died as he came to terms with the truth. A quiet uncertainty lingered in his gaze, and his tanned face drained of color. “What are you trying to say, Mara?” he demanded, his lips barely moving and a look of incredulous disbelief crossing his face. His fingers gripped the edge of the counter as if for support.

“For God’s sake, Shane,” Mara cried, her breath torn from her lungs. “I’m trying to explain to you that Angie’s your daughter, that I only married Peter because it was the best thing that I could do forourchild!”

“You can’t expect me to believe . . . all of this,” he retorted, but his midnight gaze wavered.

“It’s true,” Mara breathed. “Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Then why can’t you believe me?”

Shane pushed a wayward lock of hair angrily aside, and Mara noticed that his hands trembled. “You can’t really expect me to believe that you were pregnant with my child, and yet the minute you thought I was dead, you were able to find a replacement father. It’s all too incredible.”

“Incredible or not—that’s the way it happened, all because I thought that you were dead!” Her blue eyes, clouded with disappointment at his reaction, pierced his. “Angie is your daughter!”

“Why . . . why didn’t you tell all of this to me last night?”

A grim smile captured her lips. “Yesterday was confusing and shocking—I hadn’t expected to ever see you again. And when I did, I wanted to be sure that the timing was right, I guess.” Her honeyed brows drew together thoughtfully. “I needed time to work things out . . .”

“You mean, that it occurred to you not to tell me,” he accused.

“Never!”

“Oh, God,” Shane moaned in painful prayer as the realization of the worth of her words caught hold of him. Mara wasn’t lying. As incredible as it seemed, Angie was his daughter. Knowing what he did now, the resemblance in the portrait he had fingered just last night startled him. Peter Wilcox had raised his child in the four years that he had been away. “And how,” he asked raggedly, stunned by the weight of her announcement, “did you think that marrying someone else would be good for her?” His question slashed through the air like a gilded saber.

“What else could I do?” she implored, her eyes filling with tears of despair as she witnessed an impenetrable mask closing over his angled features.

“You could have been honest and strong enough to have kept the baby yourself and not be pressured by Asheville society’s morals. You could have givenmychildmyname, if indeed she is mine!”

“You saw the picture on the mantle—she’s your daughter, Shane, whether you want to believe it or not! And I won’t stand for your giving me the advantage of your hindsight and telling me what I should have done with my life!” She stood up and faced him with an arctic gaze. “I thought you were dead, Shane—DEAD! Not missing. Not even hiding from me, but dead! Ineverexpected to see you again. You could have prevented that, you know, by coming home to me. I don’t think I owe you any apologies, none whatsoever. Peter wanted to marry me, and I agreed. I wanted our child to grow up in a normal lifestyle, with loving parents. Everything that I did was with Angie’s welfare uppermost in my mind! Can’t you see that?”

“What I see is that you schemed for Wilcox to marry you, and I call that tantamount to prostitution—passing off another man’s child as his!”

Mara slapped the table in frustration with her small, curled fist. “Don’t even suggest anything so absolutely preposterous!” she warned him. “I didn’t pass Angie off as anything but your child—to Peter. And he had the kindness and the decency to marry me and accept Angie, nonetheless. He knew that she was your child, but for the sake of practicality we let everyone else think that she was his.”

For a moment there was a long silence. Shane looked out the window, seemingly mesmerized by the view of the gracious lawn, the gleaming white fence, the empty paddock. He rubbed the back of his neck furiously with his hand as if trying to wipe away some of the anger that was raging within him, before turning once again to face Mara.

“Shane,” she said evenly, “if I had had even the slightest idea that you were alive—”

“What about my letters?” he demanded.

“I never got any letters from you and the mail from my old apartment was forwarded here . . .”

“Well, someone got them, you can be sure of that. They were never returned to me!” He paused for a moment, his black gaze clouded as he thought. “And what would you have done, Mara, if you had known that I was alive? Would you have waited for me? Is that what you were beginning to say?”

“Of course.”

He waved his hand angrily in the air and cut her off in mid-sentence. Closing his eyes and shaking his head, he walked past her and out the kitchen door. As the screen door banged shut Mara sighed deeply. Her own anger and indignation burned within her, and she knew it was best to let him be, give him time alone to accept the fact that he had a child. What had she expected anyway? That he would be thrilled with the fact . . . that he would love the child instantly, that he would fall in love with her all over again?

As she reached down and began to pick up the pieces of the shattered coffee cup, she wondered to herself, what was it that they always said—you can never go back? Well, they were right.

Mara took the time to wipe up the floor and straighten the kitchen before following Shane outside. Once again in control of her ragged emotions, she knew that she had to finish the discussion about Angie. Whether Shane liked the fact or not, he had a daughter to consider.

Her resolve wobbled a little as she saw him sitting, his head in his hands, on the top step of the long, shaded back porch. The morning sun was high in the sky, and only a few wisps of white clouds lingered near the mountain peaks. The air was flavored with the scent of pine and honeysuckle, and aside from the deep anger that kept Shane and Mara apart, the day promised to be perfect.

If Shane had noticed her entrance into his privacy, he didn’t acknowledge her presence. He continued to hold his head in his hands and stare, almost unseeing, at the glorious Carolina day.