Honor Bound(45)

"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."