She looked up at Lucas and was startled to see the uncompromising expression on his face. "You wouldn't really try to take him away from me, would you?" she asked, willing herself not to beg.
She didn't think a father could ever win custody over a mother who was loving, caring and affluent, no matter what legal machinations he tried. But in the meantime, Tony would be a subject of litigation. He might even become a ward of the state and be placed in a foster home until the matter could be settled. That might take years. "Think of Tony."
"I am." He took her by the shoulders. "Do you think your society will accept him?" Not giving her time to answer, he said, "Never, Aislinn." His hands were hard on her shoulders. Hard and warm. She recalled other times he had touched her and dearly wished she didn't. "Believe me, I know. In an Anglo's opinion, being part Indian is tantamount to being all Indian. And he has so much white blood, he'll be an outcast in Indian society, too. He won't be accepted in either world."
"I'll see to it that he is."
The corner of his mouth tilted into a smile that was both scoffing and pitying. "You're naive and deluding yourself if you think that. I know what it's like to straddle the cultures, for christsake! I've had to live with the ambiguity every day of my life. I will protect my son from that."
"By doing what? What's your solution? Taking him to some remote part of the reservation where he'll never come into contact with other people?"
"If that's what it takes," he answered grimly.
She looked at him incredulously. "And you think that would be fair?"
"The circumstances of his birth weren't fair. Life isn't fair. I gave up on it ever being fair a long time ago."
"Yes, and you wear your bitterness where all the world can see it," she accused, angrily shrugging off his hands. "I won't let Tony grow up so steeped in hatred that he's made a prisoner of it as you are, Lucas Greywolf. And in the long run, who do you think he'd hate the most? You! He wouldn't thank you for separating him from the world."
Apparently he realized there was some merit to that because he gnawed the inside of his cheek in indecision. But he wasn't about to let her win the argument. "What did you plan to do, tell him that his Indian features were a fluke? Did you intend to keep my identity a complete secret from him?"
"I … I hadn't planned that far ahead."
"Well, you'd better be giving it some thought, lady. Because one of these days he'll ask about his father. I did."
For the beat of several seconds Aislinn let a tense silence reign, then she asked in a low voice. "And what were you told?"
He stared down at her for so long she thought he was going to refuse to tell her. But then he took up his stance at the window again, his broad shoulders almost spanning it. Unseeingly, he stared at the mountains on the horizon as he began to speak.
"The man who fathered me was an Anglo soldier stationed at Fort Huachuca. My mother was sixteen. She had graduated early from the reservation school and moved to Tucson where Joseph had friends who gave her room and board. She took a job waiting tables in a diner."
"Is that where she met your father?"
He nodded. "He flirted with her and asked her to go out with him after she got off work. She refused. But he kept coming back to the diner. She told me that he was very handsome, dashing, charming."
Turning his hands palms out, he slid them into the rear pockets of his snug jeans. If the father had looked anything like the son, if he had had that same long, lean physique, Aislinn could understand how easily Alice Greywolf's head might have been turned.
"Finally she consented to go out with him. To put it bluntly, Miss Andrews, he seduced her. I'm not sure how many dates it took. Mother was understandably not specific. Only weeks after she met him, he was shipped out to parts unknown. He didn't say goodbye. He just stopped coming by to see her. When she worked up her nerve to call the base to tell him that she was pregnant, she was informed that he was gone."
He turned around. His features were closed tighter than she had ever seen them. Intuitively she knew that meant he was hurting. It was an unbearable hurt that he kept tightly bottled up inside him.
"She never saw or heard from him again, nor did she try to contact him. She returned to the reservation in disgrace, pregnant with a white man's baby. She delivered me a month before her seventeenth birthday. She got a job making souvenir kachina dolls because she could work at home while taking care of me. Grandfather earned enough money selling horses to feed and house us in an old trailer. Mother and I lived with him until she met Gene Dexter. He offered her a job in town that vastly improved her standard of living. Thank God," he added softly.
He turned back to Aislinn. "So you see, I grew up knowing what a burden I was to my mother."
"She didn't think so, Lucas." Her throat was tight with emotion. "She loves you very much."
"I know that. She never became bitter because of what happened to her."
"You more than compensate."
"You can't know bitterness until you grow up a half-breed bastard," he said with an angry hiss. "So don't give me any lectures about it. And I'll see you in hell before I'll let my son be subjected to that kind of stigma. Do you think I'd do to him what my father did to me?"
"But your father didn't know. Maybe if he—"
"Don't even suggest anything so ridiculous," he interrupted sharply. "To him, Alice Greywolf, the beautiful Indian girl, was an easy roll in the hay. A novelty, no doubt. Even if he had known about the pregnancy, he probably would have deserted her. At best he would have driven her across the border for a cheap, speedy abortion." He shook his head. "No, the Anglo soldier would have wanted no part of his little Indian baby. But by God I want my son. He is going to know his father."
Reading his face, Aislinn knew that trying to deter him would be futile. He meant what he said. He would know his son and vice versa. And in so doing Lucas could make her life unbearable.
She had thought she would never see Lucas Greywolf again. She had imagined that he would view their morning on the mountaintop the way he supposed his father viewed his encounter with Alice. A roll in the hay. An easy roll in the hay.
Well, surprising as it was, he hadn't. Or if he had before, he had changed his mind about it when he saw Tony. Simply put, she had been found out. She had wanted to keep Tony's existence a secret from him forever. Such was not to be. The only choice she had now was to make the best of a bad situation.
"What do you suggest, Lucas? That we divide Tony's life between us? Don't you think that will only compound the confusion? It will be years before he's old enough to understand. Life here six months, life with you six months." It pained her to even verbalize the possibility that an arrangement like that might have to be made. "What kind of life would that be for a little boy?"
"I have no such arrangement in mind."
"Then what?"
"We'll get married. You'll both live with me."
It wasn't a suggestion. It wasn't even an alternative offered up for discussion. It was an edict.
When the words finally sank in, she splayed her hand over her chest and said on a soft laugh, "You can't be serious." But his unmoving features and unblinking eyes told her he was deadly serious. "Are you crazy? That's impossible!"
"It's essential. My child will not grow up branded a bastard."
"Don't say that word."
"It's ugly, isn't it? I want to guarantee that Tony will never hear it."
"But we can't get married."
"I didn't count on that either," he said, somewhat chagrined. "But we are, as soon as arrangements can be made. I'll be back tomorrow."
He leaned down and patted Tony on the behind, smiling down at him fondly and speaking something in his native tongue. Then, as though everything had been settled, he turned and left the nursery.
Aislinn ran after him, catching him by the sleeve as he reached for the knob on the front door. "I can't marry you."
"Are you already married?"
He fired the question at her and it stunned her for a moment. "No. Of course not."
"Then there's no reason why we can't marry."
"Except that I don't want to."
"Well, neither do I," he grated, bending down and putting his face close to hers for emphasis. "But we'll just have to put aside our own feelings for the sake of our son. If I can tolerate having an Anglo wife, you can damn sure tolerate having an Indian husband."
"Oh, for Pete's sake," she cried angrily. "This has nothing to do with my being Anglo and your being Indian. Don't you ever think of anything else?"
"Rarely."
"Well, make an exception this time. Considering the way we met, don't you think the idea of marriage is just a little ridiculous?"
"Meaning that a kidnapping is hardly a courtship."
"Exactly."
"What to you want from me? To go down on bended knees?"
She gave him a withering look. "I only meant to point out that we don't even know each other. We made a baby, but—" She broke off, alarmed by her own words. She didn't want to be reminded of that morning. She certainly didn't want to remind him of it.
She had been facing him squarely, her fists planted on her hips. Now, she quickly lowered her arms, suddenly aware of how her militant posture was stretching her blouse across her breasts. Nervously, she wet her lips with her tongue and looked someplace else besides Lucas's face.
"Yes, we made a baby," he said quietly. "That's really the point, isn't it? Tony had nothing to do with what happened between us, so he damn sure isn't going to go through his life paying for it. We," he said, waving his hand between his chest and hers, "we shared that lust. There's not a damn thing we can do about it now but share the responsibility for the life we created."
He placed a finger beneath her chin and yanked her head up, forcing her to look at him. "As surely as I planted my seed in you, Tony will know me." He released her and stepped back. "I'll be back tomorrow. Whether you consent to marry me or not, I'm taking my son with me when I leave."
"Under the threat of a knife?" she asked snidely.
"If necessary."
His eyes drove the words home. She believed him and was frightened into speechlessness. Nothing more was said before he left by the front door.
* * *
She was nervous. Chastising herself for acting like a ninny, she still jumped at every sound. She nearly came out of her skin when the doorbell rang. It turned out to be the postman hand-delivering a catalog that was too large for her mailbox. She felt foolish, but she couldn't curb her jitters.
She tried reassuring herself that her nervousness might all be for naught. Lucas Greywolf might never return. Seeing Tony might have made him think he wanted to take on the responsibilities of child-rearing. But upon thinking about it last night, he might very well have changed his mind.
She didn't think so, however. Lucas—strange how her mind formed his name so easily—wasn't a man given to outbursts of emotion that were quickly spent. Nor was he likely to make promises he didn't intend to keep. Sometime today he would show up on her doorstep. When that happened, what would she do?
Exercise all the powers of persuasion at her disposal.
Throughout the long night, the problem had clattered around and around in her head like the ball in a roulette wheel. Lucas Greywolf was a fact of her life now, and she would have to cope with him.
She outlined what she thought would be a fair arrangement for Lucas to see Tony. Surely he would recognize the sound reasoning behind that. A baby needed his mother, especially for the first few years. Unless Lucas was totally unreasonable, he would admit that. And she knew that he didn't really want to get married, any more than she did.
She was enjoying the stability of her life now. In her fifth month of pregnancy, she had hired another photographer to take over her duties at the portrait studio. Then, since she had been busy converting the spare bedroom in her condo into a nursery, she hired a receptionist/bookkeeper. Both young women were doing well in their jobs, and the studio was prospering as it never had before.
She made periodic visits to check on things. Beyond that, her primary responsibility was to care for and love Tony. That was no chore at all. He was only a month old, yet he was such a vital part of her life that she couldn't imagine not having him.
Only one thing could have made her happier—that her parents would leave her alone. Resigned to the fact that their daughter had an illegitimate baby, they had turned their energies toward finding her a husband who would accept her and the child. Marriage to a respectable man would remove the blight on the family name.
Aislinn wasn't fooled by the tolerance of these prospective husbands, who were introduced to her under the most embarrassingly contrived circumstances. They overlooked Tony's illegitimacy and her indiscretion with amazing benevolence. However, she knew that each was keeping in mind her father's bank account and depending on his generosity. They expected recompense for their charitable attitude toward a wayward girl.
But stubborn as they were in wanting to dictate her future, her parents would be easier to dissuade than Lucas Greywolf Of that Aislinn was certain.
When the doorbell rang for a second time shortly before noon, she knew who it was. For a moment, she clasped her hands together, squeezed her eyes closed, and drew a deep breath. The bell rang again and she didn't imagine the impatience behind that imperious ring. She moved toward the door with leaden footsteps.
Suddenly she wished she hadn't surrendered to vanity and dressed in "civilian" clothes. She had been wearing maternity clothes, giving her body time to slim down. Today, she had tried on last summer's skirt and found to her delight that it would go around her waist.
The full, calf-length skirt had always been one of her favorites. The soft blue fabric brushed against her legs when she walked. With it she had put on a white blouse with a white-on-white embroidered yoke. It buttoned down the front to facilitate nursing Tony. She had washed her hair in the shower and left it to dry in its natural waves. Now the sides were looped behind her ears, into which she had secured small gold rings.
Maybe applying makeup had been going too far. And fragrance. Why had she put on perfume today when she hadn't worn any for months? But it was too late to do anything about it now, because the doorbell was ringing for a third time.
She pulled open the door. She and Greywolf stared across the threshold at each other. Both wanted to feel antagonism. Instead each was experiencing a pleasurable jolt at the other's appearance.
Aislinn was never quite prepared for those light-gray eyes set in that dark, lean face. His shirt was different. Otherwise he was dressed the same as the day before, in jeans, which rode low on his narrow hips, and boots, which had seen better days. The silver cross lay against his chest in the open V of his shirt. The earring in his ear seemed to punctuate the pronounced intersection of his cheekbone and jaw.
Moving aside, she let him come in and closed the door behind him. Lucas looked down upon the crown of her head, then let his glance slide down her slender neck to her breasts. He could see the swelling mounds beneath her neckline.
His gut twisted with desire, remembering the shape of her breasts and the color of her nipples bedewed with milk. He shouldn't have looked at her yesterday. Then he wouldn't know what a lovely sight she was when nursing his baby, and he wouldn't be remembering it now. But he had had to look, or die.
Her breasts were noticeably fuller than they had been ten months ago. That only made the rest of her figure appear trimmer. Her feet looked incredibly childlike in the barefoot sandals.
He cleared his throat of congestion. "Where's Tony?"
"Asleep in his room."
With an economy of movement and an absence of sound, he turned and went toward the nursery. Aislinn marveled over how agilely and silently he could move.
By the time she had followed him into the nursery he was bending low over Tony's crib. The tenderness with which he gazed at his sleeping son coaxed an emotion from her that she didn't want to acknowledge. To deny it, she asked him, "Did you think I was lying? Did you have to see for yourself that he was still here? Did you think I had hidden him from you?"
With that same animal-like grace, he turned around to face her. "You wouldn't dare."
For several beats, their eyes held. He glanced back at the child once more before crossing the room, taking her by the arm, and leading her back into the hallway.
"Get me something to drink," he said.
She started to snap something sarcastic like, "This isn't a tavern, you know." But she decided that sitting in the kitchen with the table between them was better than sharing the living-room sofa.
"All right. If you'll let go of me," she answered, working her arm out of his grasp. She didn't want to know the warm, strong pressure of his fingers, which seeped through the cloth of her sleeve. His touch evoked too many memories she had spent months eradicating from her mind. She wanted to yell at him to keep his hands off her, but she didn't want to provoke his temper unnecessarily. Now wasn't the time to gamble with his moods, not when she must appeal to his reason.
"None of Tony's things are packed," he observed, sitting down in the same chair as the day before.
"What would you like? Juice or a soft drink?"
"A soft drink." She took one out of the refrigerator and went through the same ritual as yesterday, finally handing the icy glass to him.
"None of Tony's things are packed," he repeated before taking a single sip of the drink.
She sat down across from him, willing her hands not to shake. "That's right."
"Then I take that to mean we're getting married."
"Then you take it wrong, Mr. Greywolf. I'm not marrying you or anybody."
He drank from the glass; then with careful thoroughness, scooted it away from him. "I will have my son."
Aislinn licked her lips. "I think Tony should know you. That's only fair to both of you. I won't keep you from seeing him. You may come here whenever you like. All I ask is that you give me several hours' notice to prevent any conflicts in schedules. I'll try to cooperate— Where are you going?" Lucas had suddenly left his chair and headed for the door.
"To get my son."
"Wait!" She bounded out of her chair and caught his arm. "Please. Let's be reasonable about this. You can't believe that I'll stand by and let you cart my son off with you."
"He's my son, too."
"He needs his mother."
"And a father."
"But not like he needs me. Not now, anyway. Yesterday you said yourself that you couldn't feed him."
His eyes dropped to her breasts. She held her ground. "There are other ways," he said tersely and tried to move away.
She gripped his arm harder. "Please. Maybe when he gets older."
"I told you my alternative. Apparently you've chosen not to accept it."
"You mean marriage?" She let go of his arm, realizing how close they were standing and how tenaciously her fingers were curled around his forearm. She turned her back and went to stand at the sink. As she tried to think of a graceful way to broach this subject, she nervously crossed her arms over her middle and ran her hands up and down her opposite biceps. "Marriage between us is out of the question."
"I fail to see why."
His obtuseness made her grind her teeth in frustration. He was forcing her to spell it out for him and she hated him for it. "I can't marry you because of all it entails."
"Leaving the city, this house?"
"That's part of it."
"What's the other part?"
"My studio."
"Your studio is being capably operated by two employees. Try again."
"All right then," she cried, spinning around to confront him. "Living with you. And … and…"
"Sleeping with me." He finished her sentence for her. The low, sandy sound of his voice was so intimate she could all but feel it brushing against her skin.
For answer, she turned her back to him again and bowed her head low. "Yes."
"Then we're not talking about marriage, are we? We're talking about sex. I used the term 'marriage' in a strictly legal context. Apparently you read more into my proposal."
"I—"
"No, no. Since you brought it up, let's explore all the possibilities."
He moved up behind her. She could sense he was there even before she felt his warm breath drifting over her neck as he bent his head down. It was a taunting movement, as though he had trapped her, but before devouring her, wanted to play with her.
"You can't stand the thought of having sex with me, is that it?" He slid his hand around her, pressing it flat against her midriff, drawing her closer. "You didn't seem to have any objections that morning on top of the mountain."
"Don't." Her breathy command carried little weight. It didn't stop him from nuzzling her hair with his nose until his mouth touched her ear.
"Did I miss something that morning? Or do white society girls say no differently from others?"
"Stop, stop this," she moaned. His fingertips lightly brushed her nipple, coaxing a drop of moisture from it.
"It sure as hell sounded like you were saying yes."
"It should never have happened."
"What's the matter, Miss Andrews? After all this time are you getting squeamish about screwing an Indian?"
She threw off his arms, spun around and smacked his hard cheek with the flat of her palm. The sound cracked through the room like a slashing whip. Both were as stunned by the sound as they were by her flare of violence and the crude words that had precipitated it.
She withdrew her hand quickly. "Don't ever talk to me like that," she said breathlessly, her breasts rapidly rising and falling with anger.
"All right," he growled, taking the few steps necessary to pin her against the countertop. "Then let's talk about why you're all dolled up today. Did you want to make sure I'd notice your blond beauty? Did you think you would intimidate the Indian boy with it? How dare I ask such a golden goddess to marry me? Is that what you wanted me to think?"
"No!"
"Then why do you smell so damn good? And why did you make yourself look good enough to eat?" be asked through clenched teeth. "And why do I want to?"
He couldn't resist the groan that rumbled from his throat, anymore than he could resist crushing her against him. He buried his face in the hollow of her throat and held her tight. He rubbed his chest against her breasts. His hips pantomimed lovemaking against hers.
The embrace lasted only a few seconds before he shoved himself away from her. His chest was heaving. A few buttons on his shirt had come loose. The color in his dark cheeks had deepened. To Aislinn's startled eyes he looked undisciplined and dangerous, and wildly sexy.
"You see, Miss Aislinn, I can control my lust. Don't flatter yourself into thinking that I want you any more than you want me. You're just excess baggage that has to come along with my son because I don't have mammary glands. But I'm willing to pay the price of living with you in order to make a home for Tony." He ran his hand through his hair and took several more restorative breaths. "Now I'm going to ask you one last time. Do you come along or not?"
Before she could collect herself enough to form an answer, the doorbell rang.
* * *