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“No!” he shouted. “I’m in love with you, dammit! I have been for years. I had to do something to keep you here. I don’t want to wait another three years for you to come to your senses.”

His words were followed by silence. Steffie stared down into her coffee, and to her chagrin felt tears well up in her eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t believe you.”

Charles stood abruptly and walked to the window again. Hands clasped behind his back, he gazed outside. “It’s true.”

“It couldn’t be.” She wiped the tears from her face. “You were so…so…”

“Cruel,” he supplied. “You’ll never understand how hard it was not to make love to you that first time in the stable. I’ve never been more tempted by any woman.”

“I…tempted you?” Her voice was low and incredulous.

He turned around and smiled, but it was a sad smile, one full of doubts and regrets. “I remember when you started hanging around the newspaper office. I was flattered by the attention. Soon I found myself looking forward to the times you came by. You were witty and generous and you always had an intelligent comment about something in the paper. I quickly discovered you were much more than a pretty face.”

“I never worked harder in my life to impress anyone,” she murmured with self-deprecating humor.

But it didn’t take Steffie long to get back to the point. “If that was how you felt, then why did you ask me not to come around anymore?”

“I had to say something before I gave in and threw caution to the wind. You’d recently lost your mother and you were young, naive and terribly vulnerable. I struggled with my conscience for weeks, trying to decide what I should do about you. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m six years older than you. That made a big difference.”

“The gap in our ages hasn’t narrowed.”

“True enough, but you’re not a girl anymore.”

“I was twenty-two,” she argued. “At least by the time I left.”

“Perhaps, but you’d been pretty sheltered. And you were still dealing with your grief. Your entire life had been jolted, and I couldn’t be sure if what you felt for me was love or adolescent infatuation.”

Steffie closed her eyes and let the warmth of his words revive her. “It was love,” she told him. A love that had matured, grown more intense, in the years that separated them.

“It probably doesn’t mean much to you now, but I want you to know how hard it was for me the night I came home and found you in my bathtub.”

“But you were so angry.”

“It was either that or take you into my room and make love to you.”

Steffie still felt confused. “You laughed at me when I told you how I felt that day in the stable….”

“I know,” he said simply. Steffie heard the pain and remorse in his voice. “I’ve never had to do anything that’s cost me more. But I never dreamed you’d leave Orchard Valley.”

“What did you expect me to do? I couldn’t stay—that would’ve been impossible. So I did the only thing I could. I left.”

Charles’s hand reached for hers, twining their fingers together. “I’ll never forget the day I learned you’d gone to Europe. I felt as if I’d been hit by a bulldozer.”

“I had to go,” she repeated unnecessarily. “It was too painful to stay.”

His fingers tightened around hers. “I know.” Slowly he raised her hand to his lips. “I’ve waited three long years to tell you how sorry I was to hurt you. Three years to tell you I was in love with you, too.”

Steffie attempted with little success to blink back the tears.

“If it had been at any other time in your life, if I could’ve been sure you weren’t just trying to replace your mother’s love with mine—then everything would’ve been different. But you were so young, so innocent. I couldn’t trust myself around you, feeling the way I did.”

“And you couldn’t trust me.”

He nodded his agreement. “I’m sorry, Stephanie, for rejecting you. But it was as painful for me as it was for you. Perhaps more so, because I knew the whole truth.”

“You never wrote—not once in all that time. Not so much as a postcard. Not even an e-mail.”

“I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I didn’t dare give in to the impulse.”