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Mara bit her lip and looked deeply into Angie’s dark eyes. “And what doyouthink about that?” she asked. Shane’s approaching footsteps forced Mara’s gaze upward past his slightly worn jeans and casual T-shirt, past the rigid lines of his chest and neck to the powerful, determined set of his jaw. When her eyes touched his, she felt a shiver of ice slide down her back, for nowhere in his commanding gaze did she see even the slightest hint of compassion. His eyes were those of a stranger, and the slightest hope that she held for them, that they could learn to love again, flickered and died.

From Mara’s position, kneeling on the cool bricks of the front porch, Shane appeared larger than his natural six feet. And his stony gaze watched the intimate reunion of mother and daughter as if from a distance.

“Whatdoyou think about calling me Daddy?” Shane asked Angie, a trace of kindness lighting his eyes as his daughter turned to rain a smile upon him.

Angie lifted her small shoulders indifferently. Her eyes, large, round, innocent black orbs scrutinized her father, and her small face drew into a studious frown. “I not like my daddy,” she admitted.

Shane stiffened, and the child continued with a curt nod of her head. “He not nice at all. I’m glad he’s gone!”

“Angie!” Mara whispered reproachfully.

“No, no!” Shane interrupted, waving off Mara’s soft rebuke. “I’d like to hear this. Why are you glad?” he asked Angie.

“He don’t like me,” Angie pointed out without any trace of emotion.

“How did you know?” Shane questioned, and Mara felt her stomach tighten in anticipation.

“He yelled at me. All the time.” Angie squirmed out of her mother’s arms, as if struck by a sudden thought. She began to race down the hall, giggling. “Come on, Mommy. Look what we got here!” The small child, sliding on the patina of the warm oak floor in her footed pajamas, slipped out of view as she rounded a corner down the long hallway.

Mara stood up slowly and reached for her suitcase, but Shane’s hand intervened. Long fingers coiled around the soft fabric of her rose-colored jersey sleeve.

“Is that right . . . what Angie said. Did yourhusbandmistreatmychild?” The fingers tightened their grip.

Mara found her breath constricted in her lungs. Shane gave her arm an impatient shake and his nostrils flared in the half-light of the porch. “Did he hurt her?” His voice was low, almost a growl. “Was he cruel?”

“Of course not,” she shot back, trying to retrieve her arm from his manacling grip and failing. Her blue eyes sparked with the quiet rage she had tried to dispel for the last few hours. “You should know that I would never allow anyone to hurt her. Not Peter. Not evenyou!”

“But what Angie said . . .”

“He was cross with her, nothing more.” She pulled her hand away in a desperate tug.

“Often?”

“Enough.”

“How could you . . . let a situation like that endure?” he charged, reaching for the suitcase and pulling the bag upward in a jerking motion that flexed the muscles in his arms and showed, emphatically, the extent of his long-repressed anger.

“Idid whatIhad to do. What I thought was right!”

“By allowing a man who obviously hated her to be her father?” he ridiculed, as his lips curled in disdain. “What kind of mother are you?”

“A damned sight better mother than you were a father!” she spat back at him. “Remember, you were the one who disappeared for four years, letting me think that you were dead. And now I know the real reason, don’t I?”

“What’s that . . . therealreason?” he asked sarcastically.

“It’s obvious,” she began, her gaze taking in all of the interior of the house at once—the expensive period pieces that lined the walls, the plush carpeting that covered warm hardwood, the crystal chandelier, the entire estate. “You were too busy finding your fortune to have time for your family!”

“My family was married to someone else!”

“Because you left me!”

“I called, damn it . . . and I wrote to you, but you chose to ignore my letters!”

“Inever got your letters, if you really did write them!”

“Oh, I wrote them, all right. And you can bet that someone, maybe your dear husband, got them . . . or just maybe you got them but decided to gamble with Wilcox. Because at the time he was a damned sight wealthier than I.”

“That’s ludicrous!”