Honor Bound(24)

He eased away from his mother, and bobbed his chin toward Aislinn. "I brought a hostage with me."

The blunt statement brought his mother around and she saw Aislinn for the first time. She raised a dainty hand to her chest. "A hostage? Lucas!"

"Have you lost your mind?" Doc asked angrily. "Hell, man, they're looking all over the state for you."

"So I've noticed," Greywolf said with casual disregard.

"They'll slam you back in prison so fast it'll make your head spin. And this time they might throw away the key."

"That's a risk I was willing to take," Lucas said, matching the other man's anger. "I asked permission to leave the prison in order to see my grandfather before he died. The formal request was denied. I played by their rules, but it did me no good. It never has. This time I've learned my lesson. Don't ask, just do."

"Oh, Lucas," his mother sighed, slumping down into a chair. "Father understood why you couldn't be here."

"But I didn't," Greywolf said fiercely, baring his teeth and spitting the words out. "What difference would it have made to let me out for a few days?"

The three fell silent because there seemed to be no answer to that question. Finally Doc stepped forward and kindly said to Aislinn, "I'm Dr. Gene Dexter."

She liked him immediately. His looks were unremarkable, but his demeanor was soothing and reassuring … or did it just seem so because she had spent the past forty-eight hours in the volatile company of Lucas Greywolf? "Aislinn Andrews."

"You're from…?"

"Scottsdale."

"You look tired. Won't you sit down?"

Gene Dexter offered her a chair and she accepted it gladly. "Thank you."

"This is Alice Greywolf," Dexter said, laying a hand on the woman's shoulder.

"I'm Lucas's mother," she said, leaning forward in her chair. Her dark eyes were filled with sincerity. "Will you ever forgive us for what's happened?"

"He's your father?" Aislinn asked softly, pointing to the still figure on the cot.

"Yes, Joseph Greywolf," Alice answered.

"I'm sorry."

"Thank you."

"Can I get you something?" the Anglo doctor asked Aislinn.

She sighed tiredly and gave him a wry smile. "You can get me home."

Greywolf made a scoffing sound. "I was an unpleasant surprise to Miss Andrews when she came home the night before last and found me scavenging food out of her refrigerator."

"You broke into her house!" Alice exclaimed in disbelief.

"I'm a criminal, Mother. Remember? An escaped convict." He poured himself a cup of coffee from the enamel pot on the table. "Excuse me." He gave Aislinn a smirking smile before he returned to the bedside of the dying man.

"He escaped prison, broke into my house, and took me hostage just so he could come here to see his grandfather before he died?" All the perplexity Aislinn felt went into the question she hardly realized she had spoken aloud.

When she recalled how Greywolf had frightened her, how he had threatened her with the knife, how he had taunted and tormented her, she wanted to get up, walk across the dirt floor, jerk him up by his long hair and slap him as hard as she could.

She had submitted to his threats because she had thought him capable of violence. Looking at him now as he leaned over the old man, whispering tender words, stroking the creased forehead with a loving hand, she doubted Lucas Greywolf would harm a fly.

Aislinn drew her eyes back to the two people who were quietly watching her as though she were an object of curiosity. "I don't understand."

Alice Greywolf smiled gently. "My son isn't easy to understand. He's impulsive. He has a short temper. But his bark is worse than his bite."

"Personally I'd like to whip his butt for involving this young woman," Dr. Dexter said. "Why would he make things more difficult for himself by kidnapping Miss Andrews?"

"You know how determined he is, Gene," Alice said with resignation. "If he made up his mind to get here before Father died, nothing could have stopped him." She looked at Aislinn with concern. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

Aislinn hesitated before answering. She could tell them he had humiliated her by forcing her to watch him strip off his clothes and take a shower. Then he had made her strip and had tied her to him while they slept. He had mauled and pawed her, but never for recreation. He had verbally abused her, subjected her to embarrassment many times, but she couldn't honestly say that he had hurt her.

"No," she answered quietly. Confused, she shook her head as she glanced down at her clenched hands. She was protecting him again. Why?

"Your arm is bandaged," Gene observed.

"I hurt it trying to get out of a rest room."

"A rest room?"

"Yes. He, uh, locked me in."

"What?"

Aislinn backtracked and told them everything that had happened, leaving out the more personal aspects of her encounter with Greywolf and glossing over the incident at the roadblock. "Lucas bandaged my arm just an hour or so ago."

"Well, I'd better check it," Gene said, going to the basin in the dry sink and pumping water into it. He began to wash his hands with a cake of yellow soap. "Alice, get my bag, please. She probably ought to have a tetanus shot."