Mitch Prescott was standing on the worn doormat, looking both exasperated and contrite. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, his hands wedged into his hip pockets.

Shay’s heart slid over one beat and then steadied. She was painfully conscious of her rumpled hair and solvent-scented clothes. “Yes?” she said with remarkable calm.

“Dammit, Shay,” he grumbled. “Let me in.”

Shay stepped back and Mitch opened the screen door and came inside the now-cluttered living room. His dark eyes touched on the carousel horse, now stripped nearly to bare wood, but he made no comment.

Remembering his coolness on the telephone, Shay was determined to keep a hold on her composure, such as it was. She wasn’t about to let Mitch know how his disinterest had hurt her. “May I help you?” she asked stiffly.

He looked patently annoyed. “I came here to apologize,” he snapped. “Though I’m not exactly sure what it was that I did wrong.”

Coolness be damned. Shay simmered, and her voice came out in a furious hiss. “You made love to me, Mitch Prescott. You laughed with me and you held me and you listened to my deepest secrets! Then, when you’d found out all you wanted to know about my mother, when you’d paid me for my trouble—”

Mitch’s strong, beard-stubbled jawline tensed, and his coffee-colored eyes snapped. “That’s not fair, Shay,” he broke in. “The deal we made has nothing to do with what’s going on between us.”

“Doesn’t it? Strange, but I noticed a definite decrease in your interest level once I’d told you about my mother and shared your bed a couple of times!”

“You think that’s why I slept with you? To get the inside skinny on your mother?” He paused, made an angry sound low in his throat, and then ran one hand through his hair in frustration. “Good God, Shay, don’t you see how neurotic that is?”

“Neurotic? You’re calling me neurotic?”

His expression, in fact his whole demeanor, softened. “No. No, sweetheart. I’m not. You’re probably the sanest person I know. But when it comes to intimate relationships, you’ve got some problems.” Mitch sighed and spread his hands. “Little wonder, considering your mother’s exploits and that bastard you married.”

Shay wavered, not sure whether to be angry or comforted. There was something inside her that needed to believe Mitch, no matter what he said, and down that path lay risks that she couldn’t take. She’d believed Eliott, after all, and she’d believed Rosamond’s promises that each marriage would be the one that would last. “Don’t you dare slander my mother,” she whispered.

“Rosamond hurt you, Shay. You’re angry. Why can’t you admit that?”

“She’s a poor, sick woman!” Shay cried. “How could I be angry at her? How?”

“You couldn’t—not at the Rosamond of today, anyway. But that other Rosamond, the young, vital one who didn’t have time for her own daughter—”

Shay whirled away, furious and afraid. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you pushing me, pestering me? Why?”