A movement to the left caught her attention, and she frowned. Someone was out there. Blair walked to the truck, trying to identify the lone figure perched atop a mound of dirt, studying the southern portion of her valley through a surveyor’s transom.
“Not another one! Why won’t these guys take no for an answer? We’re not going to sell. This is part of Daniel’s heritage.” The land wasn’t as good as a daddy, of course, but next to love, it was all she had to give her son.
She scrambled around the edge of the field, hiding herself in the bushes and trees that surrounded the area so she’d be able to sneak up behind the intruder. She needn’t have bothered. He didn’t seem to notice her or anything else around him, lost as he was in his scribbling on the small notebook he’d pulled out of his pants pocket after checking his sighting once more. He was so totally immersed in his own world that the snap of a twig beneath her feet didn’t break his concentration.
When she was about fifty feet away, Blair left her cover and moved into the open.
“You’re trespassing,” she called loudly, hoping to startle the interloper.
He jerked upright, his body tall and lean and still. Then, ever so slowly, he turned around. Blair gasped.
“You!” She clenched her fists against her thighs as all the hurt of the past welled up inside. “What are you doing here, Gabriel?”
Gabe Sloan stood there in his sand-washed silk shirt, designer jeans and Italian leather boots, a twisted smile rolling across his handsome face. His hair, jet-black and poker straight, lay in its familiar style, cut close to the head. Eyes, those piercing mossy green eyes, took in every detail of her appearance.
“Blair,” he murmured, his lips barely moving. “The trusting, always truthful, disappearing Blair Delaney.” His mouth slashed a chilly grin. “To what do I owe the honor of your sudden return to my life?” He stared at her like a hawk sighting a mouse. But his voice exhibited total disinterest in her answer.
“I’m not in your life, Gabe,” she whispered, unable to believe what she was seeing, though the sinking in the pit of her stomach assured her he was there. “In fact, I never was. Not the way I wanted to be. You never needed me, remember? You don’t need anybody.”
His face tightened, and his eyes hardened. His wide mouth pinched in a stiff little smile. He avoided her glare.
“Part of that is true. Though why you had to take off, run away like a scared young rabbit is beyond me.” Gabe sighed, his whole body shifting. “It doesn’t matter anymore, does it? You were too young—for a lot of things. I should have known that.” He shook his head, eyes hard but with an underlying rueful glint that flashed to meet hers.
“I had a duty to protect my company, Blair. Whether you liked it or not.”
She tossed her head, angry that he was still using his company as an excuse to push her away. “Uh-uh. You wanted me to sign that prenuptial agreement to protect yourself. It was obvious you had no intention of putting everything into our marriage. You’d already provided a way out!”
He laughed, a short harsh bark that told her he hadn’t changed his view of her, or people in general. Gabe always believed someone was out to cheat him. She watched as he turned that suspicion her way.
“You don’t understand because you never had a head for business, Blair. You were too deep into your chemistry formulas and theories. So go ahead. Pile all the guilt you want on my head. I’ve been through it before. You won’t say anything somebody hasn’t already left at my door. Fortunately, you got away in time, before regrets got the better of you.”
A lot he knew! She regretted so many things. Blair shook her head. She wasn’t going back to that misery of self-doubt. She wasn’t ever going back. He wouldn’t do that to her again.
“The only thing I’m interested in chewing you out for is your presence on my land. I’d like you to leave, Gabe.”
“Your land?” The great Gabriel Sloan frowned, obviously confused by her protest. “This is my land. And I have the papers to prove it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Blair snapped, furious that now, at this stage of the game, he was still looking for an ulterior motive. “We hold the deed to all of this property.”
“We?” His body stiffened, eyes alert as he digested this bit of information. “Are you married?”
“It’s none of your business.” She returned his stare with a glare that usually made people look away. But Gabriel wasn’t like other people. “No,” she finally admitted.
“But you always said, uh—” he thought a moment “—that your parents were dead.” He peered at the ground, frowning, obviously sifting through what little he could remember as he kicked at a clump of dirt.
Blair could almost hear that computerlike brain of his clicking through the file of information he had about her, deleting this byte, updating that one. Finally he spoke.
“The only people you ever talked about were your grandfather and some aunt. I don’t remember anything about Colorado.”
“That’s hardly surprising.”
Blair swallowed the rest of her snappy comeback at the impaling glint of those now-emerald eyes. She remembered how those eyes changed color to suit his mood. That intense scrutiny, that ability to look right through her, they all combined to send twitching jitters skipping over her nerves.
“Should I have asked, Blair?”
Blair fumed at the spin he put on her words. She’d forgotten how good he was at twisting what she said. He made it sound as if she’d woven a web of deceit instead of opening her heart up to him, only to have it thrown back in her face!
“I never lied to you, Gabe.” At least, only by admission.
“Does that mean you and your family live around here now?” He studied her curiously, his eyes roving slowly over the top of her head to the tumble of lopsided curls she’d raked her hair into this morning on her way to the truck.
Slowly his gaze flowed past the big bulky sweater, ragged jeans and muddy cowboy boots. Then he glanced across the fields that would soon blossom with flowers.
“I never took you for the down-home, country type, Blair.”
“You never really knew me.” She let the sharp words pour out, angry that Gabe even imagined he’d known the person inside of her. “That much was obvious from the way you used me.”
“I didn’t use you!” His face washed in a red tide of anger. “It wasn’t my fault you expected too much.”
“I did, didn’t I?” she agreed quietly, turning to stare at the gorgeous blue sky that sparkled over the snowcapped mountains in the distance. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing down the lump in her throat. “Way too much, as it turns out.”
Please help me, she prayed desperately. I never thought I’d see him again. I thought You would lead me to someone else. I don’t want this!
“Blair? What are you doing? Open your eyes!” His hand on her arm helped wake her to the fact that her reality had changed. The peace she’d always found in this valley was shattered, shifted into something ominous that could turn on her if she wasn’t careful.
Blair jerked her arm out of his grasp and whirled away, anxious to put as much distance between them as possible.
“I’m fine. There’s nothing for you here, Gabriel Sloan. Nothing! This is my family’s land. I’d like you to leave.”
He stayed where he was, saying nothing. And when Blair couldn’t take his silence for one moment longer, she headed for her truck.
“Blair?”
His softly voiced request made her stop in her tracks.
“It’s