* * *
Aislinn slipped through the bedroom door and closed it quietly behind her. The doorbell rang for the second time. She rushed down the hallway to answer it, hurriedly tucking loose strands of hair up into her casual ponytail. She checked her appearance in the hall mirror and saw that she was at least decent. Her face was expectant and wearing a half-smile when she pulled the door open.
The smile never made it to a full-fledged one. Indeed, it froze in place when she saw who her caller was. Her eyes glazed; she slumped against the door for support. For a moment she thought she would very likely faint.
"What are you doing here?"
"Did I frighten you again?"
"Are you … out?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Today. Released this time. I walked out a free man."
"Congratulations."
"Thank you."
The conversation was ridiculous, of course, but for someone having just received the shock of her life, Aislinn thought she was doing fairly well. She hadn't fainted at the sight of Lucas Greywolf She was maintaining her equilibrium with the help of the door, though her palms had become so slick with perspiration that she might slide down its smooth surface at any moment. Her mouth was dry, but she hadn't completely lost her capacity for speech. If the world had suddenly turned upside down, she couldn't have been more astounded. Taking all that into consideration, her behavior was remarkable.
"May I come in?"
One hand fluttered up to her throat. "I … I don't think that's a very good idea." My God! Lucas Greywolf in her house? No!
He stared down at the toes of his boots for a moment, then raised those unforgettable gray eyes up to hers. "It's important or I wouldn't trouble you."
"I—"
"I won't stay but for a minute. Please."
She looked everywhere but directly into his face, knowing that it would exude the determination of the Rock of Gibraltar to remain standing where it was. There was a hint of humility in his tone, but it was backed by generations of Indian resolve.
Finally she nodded briefly and moved aside. He came in and she shut the door behind him. The entrance hall seemed to shrink around them. She had been under the same roof with him for fewer than ten seconds, but already she was having difficulty breathing.
"Would you like something to drink?" she asked hoarsely. Say no, say no.
"Yes, please. This is my first stop."
She almost tripped on her way into the kitchen. Why here? Why had he made her house his first stop? Her hands were shaking as she reached into the cabinet for a glass. "A soft drink?" she asked.
"Fine."
She took a can of soda out of the refrigerator and opened it. It spewed over her hand. She yanked up a towel and clumsily blotted the sticky mess off her hand and the countertop. She was all thumbs as she opened the freezer and took out ice cubes, thunking them into the glass. Only when she had poured the soda over the ice did she turn around. Disconcertingly, her eyes were on a level with his chest. She was surprised to find him still standing.
"I'm sorry. Please sit down." She nodded toward the table.
He pulled out a chair and sat down, accepting the cold drink with a terse thank-you. His eyes roamed around the kitchen. They stopped on the rack of knives, then slowly moved to her. "I wouldn't have used the knife on you."
"I know." Before her knees gave way, she sank into the chair across the table from his. "I mean I know that now. Then, I was scared to death."
"You demonstrated remarkable courage."
"I did?"
"I thought so. But then you were my first hostage."
"You were my first abductor."
They should have smiled then. Neither of them did.
"Has your hair grown back out?"
"What?"
"Your hair. Remember that hank of it I chopped off?"
"Oh, yes," she said distractedly. Unconsciously she reached for that shorter strand. "It's tucked in there somewhere. Barely noticeable now."
"Good."
He sipped his drink. She pressed her hands together and slid them between her thighs, keeping her arms stiff. The tension squeezing her chest felt very much as she imagined a heart attack would. She feared suffocation.
From moment to moment she didn't know if she could stand the anxiety any longer without losing control. However, the silence was more unbearable than the stilted conversation, so she asked, "Have you been home yet, seen your mother?"
He shook his head. "I meant it when I said this is my first stop."
He hadn't even seen his mother before coming here? Don't panic yet, Aislinn. "How did you get here?"
"Mother and Gene came to the prison last week. Gene left my truck there."
"Oh." She rubbed her palms up and down her thighs, wiping the sweat on her jeans. But her hands were cold and her bare toes felt bloodless. "Why did you come here?"
"To thank you."
Startled, she looked straight at him. His steady stare caused her tummy to do a flip-flop. "Thank me?"
"Why didn't you press charges against me?"
She let go of her pent-up breath on a rushing gust. If that's all he wanted to know, she could live with that. "The sheriff and all those policemen who came to pick you up didn't even know about me." She recounted for him the events that followed his capture. "They had taken you away before anyone even noticed me coming down off that mountain."
Their eyes met fleetingly, each remembering what had taken place on that mountaintop.
Quickly she started speaking again. "They, uh, they questioned me about who I was and what I was doing there with you." She blushed, recalling how awkward she had felt, wondering if the men who interrogated her could tell that she had recently been made love to. Her hair had been a mess. Her lips had still felt swollen from ardent kisses. Her breasts still tingled. Her thighs—
"What did you say?"
"I lied to them. I told them I had met you on the road and given you a ride. I denied knowing that you were an escaped convict. I said that I had agreed to drive you to your grandfather's house because he was gravely ill and I felt sorry for you."
"They believed you?"
"I suppose so."
"You could have been implicated."
"But I wasn't."
"You could have had me charged with any number of crimes, Aislinn." The sound of her name startled both of them. They glanced at each other. Their eyes locked and held for a moment before falling away. "Why didn't you tell them the truth?"
"What would have been the point?" she asked, coming out of her chair and moving restlessly around the kitchen. "I was safe. You were going back to prison anyway."
"But you had been … hurt."
The euphemism fooled neither of them. They both realized that had she wanted to accuse him of rape she could have, and probably got him convicted of it. It would have been his word against hers, and who would have believed him?
"The scratch on my arm was superficial. Besides that wasn't your fault." Both knew that he hadn't been referring to the scratch, but it seemed prudent to pretend that he had been. "I think it was wrong of the prison officials not to let you go see your grandfather. In my eyes your escape was justified. No harm had been done. Not really."
"No one missed you?"
It cost her a great deal of pride to answer, but she told him the truth. "No." She had returned home as soon as the officials had released her. There hadn't been any media present in the canyon when Greywolf was arrested, so no one knew she had been involved.
"What about the people at your business?" he asked.
"What people?"
"You told me you would be missed."
"Of course I told you that."
"Oh," he said, shaking his head with chagrin, "there weren't any people."
"Not then. But I have two employees now."
He actually grinned. "Don't worry. I don't intend to pull a knife on you this time."
Aislinn smiled back, struck by how handsome he was. Now that the shock of seeing him had subsided, she was able to truly look at him for the first time. His hair was a trifle shorter in front, though it was still collar-length at the back. No prison pallor lightened his bronzed skin. Had she asked why, he could have told her that he ran every day around the prison yard, encircling it numerous times until he got in his quota of miles, which also accounted for his superb physical condition.
The silver earring still pierced his right lobe. The cross still rested in the soft black hair on his chest which she could see through the open collar of his shirt. His mother and Gene must have brought him new clothes for his release. His shirt and jeans looked new. Only the cowboy boots and the turquoise-studded belt around his trim waist were familiar to her.
"Well," he said, coming to his feet, "I promised you I wouldn't stay long. I just wanted to thank you for not making things rougher on me."
"You didn't have to bother."
"I started to write, but I wanted to thank you in person."
Lord, it would have been much easier on her nerves if he had mailed her a thank-you note! "I'm just glad you're out."
"I don't like being in anyone's debt, but—"
"You're not in my debt. I did what I thought was right, just as you did."
"Thanks all the same."
"You're welcome," she said, hoping that would end it. She led him through the living room and into the entrance hall.
Lucas had dreaded this meeting, not certain of how she was going to react to seeing him. The second she opened the door, she could have run screaming in terror and been justified in doing so.
He had been desperate the night he randomly chose her house to break into seeking food and shelter for a few hours. Desperate men did things they wouldn't ordinarily do. Like take a blameless Anglo woman hostage. It was still incomprehensible to him that she hadn't made him pay for that.
But now that he had accomplished his mission and thanked her, he was reluctant to leave. Odd. He had thought that once he had said what he had come to say, he would be more than ready to leave Aislinn Andrews for good and close that page of his life's history.
He hated to admit, even to himself, that he had thought about her while he was in prison. It had been months since that morning on the mountaintop, when she had given herself to him. He still found it hard to believe that it had really happened. Before his escape, his desire had been for a woman, period. Any and all.
But after his escape, his desire had had a face, a name, a tone of voice, a scent. And all of them belonged to Aislinn. Many nights, lying alone in his narrow prison bed, he had convinced himself that she wasn't real and that he had imagined the whole thing.
His body told him otherwise. Especially now, while his eyes were taking in the snug fit of her casual slacks over her bottom and thighs. She was shorter than he remembered, but maybe that was because she was barefoot. Her shirttail was out. It was an old shirt, a trifle too small for her. Oh, yes, while he had been sitting there sipping her soda, he had been thinking about sipping her breasts. He couldn't help but notice how amply they filled the front of the old shirt.
As she led him toward the front door, he was hypnotized by the swaying motion of her youthful ponytail. Was her hair as silky as he remembered? Had that rich blondness, such a flagrant trademark of her Anglo background, actually known his pillaging, Indian hands? And did her mouth, the one giving him a vapid, vacant smile now, remember the hard, searching strokes of his tongue inside it? He did.
"Good luck to you, Lucas. I hope all goes well for you now." She stuck out her hand.
"Thanks." He clasped her hand. Their eyes met. Held.
Then the sound.
It came from the back of the house. It was so out of context that at first he thought his ears were playing tricks on him. But then he heard it again. He glanced in that direction, his brows drawn into a puzzled frown.
"That sounds like a—"
Aislinn jerked her hand out of his. Surprised, his head snapped around. The instant he saw her face, he knew his ears hadn't been deceiving him. She looked as pale as a ghost and as guilty as sin. He went perfectly still. He stared at her with eyes razor sharp enough to flay her skin away, much less any deceit.
"What is that?"
"Nothing."
He moved her aside and stalked across her fashionable living room.
"Where are you going?" she cried, chasing after him.
"Guess."
"No!" She grabbed his shirt and held on with the tenacity of a bulldog. "You can't just come waltzing in here and—"
He spun around, knocking her hands away. "I did before."
"You can't."
"The hell I can't. Watch me."
He was intent on finding the source of that sound. Sobbing, Aislinn trailed after him, clutching at him ineffectually. He swatted her off like a pesky fly.
He glanced into her bedroom. It was exactly as he remembered it. Feminine, neatly arranged. He passed it. At the end of the hallway he came to a closed door. With no hesitation, certainly no apology, he turned the knob and pushed it open.
Then even he, the man with the heart and blood of an Apache warrior, was brought up short.
Three of the walls in the room were painted a soft yellow. The other was papered with a pastel Mother Goose print. A Boston rocker with thick cushions stood in one corner. A chest of drawers was topped by a quilted pad. It was lined with jars of cotton swabs and tube of ointment. White shutters had been closed against the afternoon sun, but enough light seeped through the slats to silhouette the crib in front of the window.
Lucas closed his eyes, thinking that this must all be a bizarre dream from which he would awaken and have a much-needed laugh. But when he reopened his eyes, everything was unchanged. Especially that unmistakable sound.
He crept forward, illogically making as little noise as he could, until he reached the crib. It was rimmed with a padded border. A teddy bear smiled at him from the corner. The sheet was yellow to match the room. As was the downy blanket.
And beneath the blanket—squirming, squalling, flailing its tiny fists in rage—was a baby.
* * *