Luke looked down at the ground. “Elysia was your first?”
Tom hesitated, but he was too stunned by what he’d learned to conceal it anymore. “Yes,” he said bluntly. “And the last. There hasn’t been anyone else, ever.”
Luke looked up, quietly compassionate. “Not for her, either,” he said. “Not even her husband.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Yes, I am,” Luke countered. “He was too ill most of the time, and she never felt like that about him. She was honest. Then when Crissy was born, they seemed to find common ground. That child was wanted and very much loved.”
Tom’s hand clenched by his side. “And now that I know about her—” he nodded toward the child “—what the hell do I do?”
Chapter 3
“On that subject,” Luke mused, “I would say that you’ve got a real problem on your hands. Elysia never meant for you to find out about Crissy. And here I’ve given the game away.”
He shook his head. “Crissy gave it away,” he replied, “when she said her dad was redheaded. I believe in recessive genes, of course, but not to that extent. She’s a dead ringer for my sister, Kate.”
“I noticed that, too,” Luke replied.
“What am I going to do?” Tom groaned, pushing his hands through his hair in frustration. “I can’t walk up to Elysia after all this time and demand my rights to my daughter. I let her leave New York pregnant, although I swear I didn’t suspect that she could have been after one night, and I never even tried to see her again. She won’t understand why.”
“Care to tell me?”
Tom laughed coldly. “Because I was too ashamed,” he said. “I got drunk and had sex,” he said with self-contempt. His eyes closed. “My God, I thought I was sure to go to hell after that. I didn’t realize that the hell was going to be living with myself afterward. I missed her,” he confided. “She’d been with me for two years, and it was like losing part of my own body. But every time I thought about what I’d done, I was too ashamed to try to contact her. I never thought of a child,” he added huskily. He shook his head. “I wasn’t very clued-up for a twenty-eight-year-old man. And Elysia thought I was a playboy. How’s that for irony?”
“You should have told her the truth,” Luke told him. “She’s not the sort of woman who would think less of you. I’d guess that it would impress her very much.”
“How could I have told her something like that? I’m thirty-four now, but when I knew Elysia I was twenty-eight already. How many male virgins of that age have you ever known?” Tom asked him with an irritable glance.
Luke grinned. “One.”
Tom burst out laughing. It didn’t seem so terrible now, that he’d had a woman and a child had come of the experience. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more pleasure he felt. Those pangs of conscience were receding at least a little. But he was knee-deep in problems, with no solutions in sight. Elysia was the biggest one of all. He remembered the things he’d said to her recently and he wanted to throw back his head and scream. Even if she’d have let him come around Crissy before, she’d never allow him close to the child now. He’d burned his bridges by accusing her of sleeping her way up the corporate ladder. He groaned aloud. How could he have been so blind?
“You might come to supper tonight,” Luke said.
Tom’s eyebrows lifted. “She’d have me stuffed and baked if I walked in the door. Either that, or she’d smother me in all that tomato sauce you said she made.”
“No guts, no glory,” Luke reminded him. He looked at the child, who was just joining them. “Crissy, what would you think if Mr. Walker came to dinner tonight?”
“I’d like that,” the child said seriously, grinning up at him. “I’d like to know all about Indians.”
Tom sighed. “I only know family lore, and not much of that,” he confided. “Kate and I went to live with our grandmother, and she didn’t like that side of our family at all. She refused to let us talk about it.”
“How mean,” Crissy muttered.
“It was, wasn’t it?” Tom agreed, having just realized that it was a form of discrimination on the old woman’s part. “But my sister’s husband knew someone on the Sioux reservation who was related to our great-grandfather—and therefore to us. He asked for the history, and Kate went to see the woman and wrote it all down.” He searched the little face so much like his own. “One of our ancestors was at the Little Bighorn, and we have distant relatives in Canada and South Dakota among the Sioux.”
“Do you visit them?” Crissy asked, wide-eyed.
“I haven’t yet. I think I might like to,” he added. He smiled. “Maybe you and your mom could come along.”
“You could ask her,” Crissy said doubtfully. “She doesn’t like to go places.”
“You said she took you to a powwow,” Tom reminded her, cherishing the memory.
“She liked it,” Crissy agreed. “She told me all about the Plains Indians and about that place where General Custer got shot, too.”
“Colonel Custer,” Tom told her. “He had a Civil War battlefield promotion to Brigadier General, but that was a brevet commission. He was only a colonel in the 7th Cavalry.”
“Touchy subject, hmmm?” Luke teased.
“Very,” Tom replied. “And isn’t it a hell of a thing that it should be? I haven’t paid a lot of attention to my ancestry before now.” He looked at Crissy. “But it’s in the genes.”
“It sure is,” Luke replied amusedly.
“I want to catch a big fish for you to eat at our house,” Crissy said. She tried to throw the hook into the water, but she wasn’t tall enough to cast the line out.
Tom squatted just behind her, holding her with one arm while he guided the small hand holding the line. “Like this, sweetheart,” he said gently.
She grinned at him over one shoulder. “Thanks. You smell nice,” she added.
He chuckled, hugging her close. “So do you, tidbit.”
He got up, leaving her to hold the pole tight in both hands. He’d never used endearments, but the child seemed to invoke them effortlessly. He stared down at her with pure pride, unaware that Luke could see that pride.
“She’s very like you,” Luke remarked quietly.
“Yes,” came the reply. Tom went back to his own pole, baited the hook and tossed the line out into the lake. His thoughts were dark ones. He knew Elysia wasn’t going to want him in her house, but he had to try to make his peace with her. He glanced at his daughter and knew that it was worth the effort.
They caught five big bass between them, which Luke volunteered to clean. “Come over about six,” he told Tom.
Tom glanced from the child’s eager face to Luke’s. He grimaced. “I don’t know…”
“You have to,” Crissy pleaded. “Me and Uncle Luke and Mama can’t eat all these big fish alone. Please?”
“Okay,” he relented. “I’ll see if I can rent some body armor,” he murmured to himself. “Boy, am I going to need it!”
He went home to clean up, wondering how Luke was going to fare when he broke the news to Elysia. It would probably be bloody.
“You what?” Elysia exploded.
Luke held up a hand. “Go upstairs and clean up, pumpkin,” he told Crissy.
She