Chapter 8
"Who is that?"
"I don't know," Aislinn said.
"Were you expecting somebody?"
"No."
Always polite and adhering to the rules of etiquette, she asked him to excuse her. In light of what had just transpired, her courtesy was rather ludicrous. She left the kitchen and went to answer the front door bell, but she was distracted. Her mind had stayed in the other room with Greywolf. What was she going to do?
She swung the front door open and for several seconds didn't move. She just stood there wondering what else would happen to make this day one of the most disastrous of her life.
"Aren't you going to invite us in?" Eleanor Andrews asked her daughter.
"I … I'm sorry," Aislinn stuttered. She moved aside and her parents stepped into the living room.
"Is something wrong?" her father asked.
"No—I, uh, just wasn't expecting you." As usual, they intimidated her. Her parents could always make her feel like a child on the verge of being reprimanded. It wasn't something she liked to admit, but it happened every time she saw them. Today was no exception.
"We just left the club," Eleanor said, propping her tennis racquet against the wall, "and thought that as long as we had to come this way, we'd stop by."
Not very likely, Aislinn thought. If her parents had stopped by, there was a reason behind the impromptu visit. They didn't keep her in suspense long. "You remember Ted Utley," her father said for openers. "You met him at a symphony ball several years ago."
"He was married then," her mother supplied.
As Eleanor expounded upon Mr. Utley's unfortunate divorce and fortunate real-estate investments, Aislinn tried to view her parents objectively. They were both tanned and handsome and fit. They personified the American dream come true. They lived what most people would consider the good life. Yet Aislinn wondered if either of them had ever experienced any passion for living.
Oh, they smiled for the camera on Christmas mornings. Her mother cried daintily at funerals. Her father got emotionally involved when he discussed the national debt. But she had never once heard them either laughing lustily together or shouting in anger. She'd seen them kiss, formally, and pat each other affectionately, but she'd never intercepted a smoldering glance between them. They had produced her, yet she thought them to be the two most sterile people she had ever met.
"So we want you to come to dinner next Tuesday night," her mother was saying. "We'll eat on the patio, but wear something nice. And make arrangements with a sitter for … the … the child."
"The child's name is Tony," Aislinn said. "And I won't need to make arrangements with a sitter because I won't be coming to your dinner party."
"Why not?" her father asked, scowling. "Just because you've had an illegitimate baby doesn't mean you have to hide yourself away."
Aislinn laughed. "Why, thank you, Father, for your broadmindedness." Her sarcasm escaped them. "I don't want to go through an embarrassing evening where you and Mother try to match me up with some man who has a tolerant attitude toward fallen women."
"That's enough," he said sharply.
"We're only doing what we feel is best for you," Eleanor said. "You've made a mess of your life. We're trying to rectify your mistakes as best we can. I think the least you could do is—"
Eleanor ended her lecture with a soft indrawn breath. She even raised a fearful hand to her chest as though to ward off an attacker. Willard Andrews followed his wife's startled gaze and he, too, was visibly taken aback. Without even turning around, Aislinn knew what had ruffled her usually unflappable parents.
Indeed, when she turned and looked at Greywolf, she felt that tingling in her system that was a combination of fear and anticipation. Every time she saw Lucas, she experienced that initial reaction.
He stood straight and tall in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. His unwavering gray eyes were fixed on her parents. His mouth was set in a hard, thin line. His shirt was open almost to his waist, and his torso barely moved as he breathed. He was so still he could have been a statue had it not been for the latent energy he emanated.
"Mother, Father, this is Mr. Greywolf," Aislinn said, her voice cutting through the heavy silence.
No one said a word. Lucas gave the Andrews a curt nod of his head in acknowledgement of the introduction, but Aislinn thought that was because Alice Greywolf had probably grilled her son in proper manners and not because Lucas felt any deference or respect for her parents.
Lucas could have been an uncaged tiger for the fearful stare Eleanor gave him. Willard was almost as dumbfounded, but he finally asked, "Lucas Greywolf?"
"Yes," Lucas answered in a clipped tone.
"I read about your release from prison in this morning's paper."
"My God." Eleanor swayed and gripped the back of a chair for support. She had the white-faced look of a victim about to be massacred and scalped, who was calling on a deity for mercy.
Willard subjected his daughter to a hard look. Out of habit, Aislinn lowered her eyes. He said, "What I can't understand, Mr. Greywolf, is what you're doing in my daughter's house, apparently with her consent."
Aislinn kept her head lowered. She had thought her encounters with Lucas were bad, but nothing could be worse than this. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lucas leave the doorway and silently move into the room. He came directly toward her. Eleanor recoiled and uttered another gasp when he reached out and jerked Aislinn's chin up, forcing her to look at him.
"Well?"
He was giving her a choice, albeit not much of one. Either she was to tell them what he was doing in her house or he would. She lifted her chin off his index finger and turned her head slightly to meet her parents' incredulous stares. Taking a deep breath and feeling like she was about to step off a gangplank, she said, "Lucas is … is … Tony's father."
The following silence was so thick it could have been cut with a knife. Aislinn could hear the thudding of her own heart as she met the glazed expressions on the face of her mother and father. Never at a loss for words in any social situation, they now stared at her as wide-eyed and gape-mouthed as dead fish on the beach.
"That's impossible," Eleanor wheezed at last.
"Lucas and I, uh, met when he escaped from prison ten months ago," Aislinn said.
"I don't believe it," Eleanor said.
"Yes you do," Lucas said scornfully, "or you wouldn't be so horrified. I'm sure it comes as an unpleasant shock to you to learn that your grandson is also the grandson of an Indian chief."
"Don't you dare speak to my wife in that tone of voice!" Willard ordered stridently and took a belligerent step forward. "I could have you arrested for—"
"Spare me your threats, Mr. Andrews. I've heard them all. And from men richer and more powerful than you. I'm not afraid of you."
"What is it you want?" Willard demanded. "Money?"
Greywolf's face went hard and cold with contempt. He pulled himself up straighter. "I want my son."
Eleanor turned to Aislinn. "Let him have him."
"What?" Aislinn fell back a step. "What did you say?"
"Give him the baby. That would be best for everyone."
Aghast, Aislinn stared first at her mother, then at her father, who, by his silence, had endorsed Eleanor's suggestion. "You expect me to give my child away?" It was a rhetorical question. She could tell by their expectant faces that her mother was sincere.
"For once in your life, listen to us, Aislinn," her father said. He reached out and clasped her hand. "You've always gone against our wishes, bucked the system, done what you knew we would disapprove of. But this time you've gone too far and made a ghastly mistake. I don't know how you could have…"
Unable to bring himself to say it, he merely cast a scathing glance at Lucas, a glance that said it all. He turned back to his daughter. "But it happened. You'll regret this mistake the rest of your life if you don't give the child up now. Apparently Mr. Greywolf sees the wisdom in it even if you don't. Give him the child to raise. If you like, I'll send money occasionally to—"
Aislinn wrested her hand from her father's and backed away from him as though he were diseased. At the moment, she thought he was—diseased in the heart. How could either of her parents even suggest that she give Tony away? Never to see him again. To dispose of him as though he were the incriminating debris of a wild party.
She looked at them and realized they were strangers. How little she really knew them. Even more, how little they knew her. "I love my son. I won't give him up for anything in the world."
"Aislinn, be reasonable," Eleanor said testily. "I can admire your attachment to the child, but—"
"I think you'd better leave."
Even if Greywolf's voice hadn't been so raspily commandeering, his stance was. He seemed to tower over the three of them when, as one, they turned at the soft dangerous sound.
Willard snorted scoffingly. "I sure as hell won't be ordered from my own daughter's house by an … by you. Besides, this discussion doesn't involve you."
"It involves him very much," Aislinn contradicted. "He's Tony's father. Whatever my decision is, it concerns him."
"He's a criminal!" her father exclaimed.
"He was unjustly accused. He took the blame for something others did." She noted that Lucas swung around toward her, revealing his surprise at the way she defended him.
"The courts didn't think so. According to the record, he's an ex-con. And, as if that isn't enough," Willard said, "he's an Indian."
"So is Tony," Aislinn said courageously. "That doesn't mean I love him any less."
"Well, don't expect us ever to accept him," Eleanor said coldly.
"Then I guess you'd better do as Lucas suggested and leave."
Willard came as close as Aislinn had ever seen him to losing his temper, but he held it in check and said tightly, "If you have anything, anything, to do with this man, you'll get nothing more from me."
"I never asked anything of you, Father." Tears were stinging her eyes, but she held her head up proudly. "I paid back your investment in the photography studio, which I didn't want in the first place. I don't owe you for anything, not even for a happy childhood. You said a moment ago that I had always bucked the system, but that isn't true. I always wanted to, but you always dissuaded me. I bowed to your wishes in every major decision of my life. Until now. If you and Mother can't accept the fact that Tony is your grandson, then I can't hold a place in your lives either."
They weathered her ultimatum with the same cool control they had every sad crisis and joyous occasion of their lives. Without a word, Willard took his wife's arm and steered her toward the door. Eleanor paused only long enough to pick up her tennis racquet before they left. They never looked back.
Aislinn's head dropped forward. The tears, which had been threatening for the past several heart-wrenching minutes, slowly slid from under her eyelids and rolled down her cheeks. Her parents wanted to dominate her life completely or have no part in it at all. She couldn't believe that they could be so resolute in their prejudice as to refuse to acknowledge their own grandson. She bitterly regretted their decision.
On the other hand, if they were that narrow-minded and unbending, she and Tony were better off without them. She wanted her son to be unashamed of the emotions he experienced. She wanted him to grow up having the freedom to express himself in a way she had never been allowed to. She wanted him to feel things intensely, as she had with…
Aislinn spun around and looked at the man standing so still and silent behind her. Her thoughts had inevitably brought her to those days she had spent as a captive of Lucas Greywolf. Then for the first time, life had been unpredictable. She dearly recalled the rushes of excitement, of joy and sadness. That brief period of time hadn't been romanticized in her mind, as she had later thought it had been. It hadn't all been wonderful. Far from it. But it had been real. She had never felt so alive as during those turbulent hours.
"What are you going to do?" Lucas asked her.
"Do you still want me to marry you?"
"For our son's sake, yes."
"Will you be a good, loving father to Tony?"
"I swear it."
It was the hardest thing she had ever had to ask another person, but she met his pale gray eyes steadily. "And to me? What kind of husband can I expect you to be?"
"You are the mother of my son. I'll treat you with the respect that deserves."
"You have frightened me on numerous occasions. I don't want to live in fear of you."
"I would never harm you. I swear it on the body of my grandfather, Joseph Greywolf."
What a bizarre proposal, Aislinn thought. Like most women, she had imagined candlelight and roses, wine and soft music, a full moon and professions of undying love. She smiled weakly and with self-derision. Oh, well, one couldn't have it all.
She had just closed the door on everything that was safe and familiar. There would be no going back. And besides, Lucas wasn't going to give up his son. He had made that perfectly clear.
It would be a loveless marriage, save for their common love for Tony. There was no love in her life now anyway, so it wouldn't be missed. Life with Lucas and Tony wouldn't be just an endless series of days, made monotonous by their sameness. It would at least hold some surprises.
Her eyes were steadfast as she looked up at him. Without further hesitation she said, "All right, Lucas Greywolf. I'll marry you."