“You can’t,” Elysia cried when her daughter was out of sight. “You can’t have him here! If he’s around her enough, he’ll see…!”
“He already has,” Luke said.
He jumped forward and helped her into a chair, because she looked as if she might faint.
“You told him,” she accused hoarsely.
“I did not. Crissy did.”
“Crissy? But she doesn’t know!”
“She told him that her dad was redheaded,” he explained. “It wasn’t a great leap of logic from that to the way she resembles his sister—not to mention himself.”
“Oh, dear God,” Elysia whispered, closing her eyes. “Dear God, what’ll he do?”
“Nothing, judging by this afternoon,” Luke said. He knelt by her chair, one hand on hers in her lap. “Listen, he’s not vindictive. He doesn’t blame you. He’s got secrets of his own,” he added, hoping to get her attention.
That did. She looked at him through misty eyes. “He does?”
“You remember what we were speculating about?” he asked. “Well, we were right on the money. Sex was a taboo at home. Their father beat them for showing the slightest interest in the other sex. He said his conscience was eating him alive about you. He thought he’d go to hell for sleeping with you.”
She gasped. “Good heavens!”
“He said that it’s taken all these years for him to come to grips with it,” he continued quietly. “The main thing that came out is that he was angry at himself, not at you. It was guilt and shame that caused him to let you go without a word, and kept him from coming after you. He didn’t even consider that you might become pregnant. His father taught him that desire was nothing more than sick lust.”
She closed her eyes and shivered. “How he must have felt,” she whispered.
“He’s a case,” he agreed. “I don’t suppose there was a woman brave enough to chase him at all until you came along. That cold reserve of his is rather formidable, even to other men.”
“I’ll say,” she agreed, remembering the Tom of six years ago. She looked up. “Why is he coming to dinner?”
“Because I invited him.” He held up a hand. “This can’t go on,” he informed her. “Half the town’s talking already about the way the two of you avoid each other. We all have to live here. It’s time to make peace. Or at least, a public peace. This is the first step.”
“He’ll be lucky if he gets in the door unwounded,” she said coldly. “Do you have any idea what he’s been saying to me lately?”
“No,” he said warily.
“He’s accused me of sleeping with that damned Frenchman to market my boutique’s designs,” she said furiously. “He thinks I’m a slut!”
“No, he doesn’t…”
“You can’t imagine the things he said to me at the business meeting just the other day,” she added. “Not to mention that we were about to have lunch in Rose’s Café downtown and when he saw me come in the door, he gave up his place in line and left.”
He pursed his lips. “He didn’t mention that.”
“He was probably too busy thinking of ways to get to my child,” she raged. “Well, he won’t get her. He can come here tonight, but you are never to invite him into this house again while I’m living in it, Luke! I won’t be persecuted by him, not even for my little girl’s sake!”
“He’s not out for revenge,” he reminded her. “He’s had as rough a time as we had. Maybe rougher. You can at least try to be sociable, can’t you? Crissy likes him.” He searched her wan face. “You loved him once.”
“A long time ago,” she replied, “and he never felt the same way, even then. He talked to me, but it was never more than that, until he got drunk. He doesn’t love me. He wanted me that once, and now he doesn’t anymore. He thinks I’m a gold digger, out for money and nothing else. He told me so. That was a week or so before the business meeting.”
“Tom actually accused you of that?” Luke was surprised, because Tom hadn’t said anything about that to him, either.
“We had words on the street, and I slapped him.” She flushed at her brother’s level look. “Well, he deserved it! He made me out to be cheap, and all because that French buyer had humiliated me loud enough for the whole town to hear.” Her eyes flashed. “Hell will freeze over before I give him a contract for our designs,” she added coldly. “He did that deliberately because I wouldn’t have an affair with him.”
“Did you tell Tom that?”
“He didn’t let me tell him anything,” she replied. “He made a lot of nasty accusations and I hit him. I’m glad I hit him,” she added. “I only threw a shoe at him and missed at the business meeting, but I’ll practice,” she assured herself. “Next time, I’ll knock his brains out!”
Luke had to bite back a grin. “He has got quite a few hang-ups,” he reminded her. “It will take a brave woman to live with a man like that, if she can even get him in front of a minister to get married. He’s frozen halfway through because of his father.”
“I wish I’d known that in New York. It’s too late to matter much now. A man that age isn’t going to change.” She stared out the window and grimaced. “But I’m sorry he had a bad time of it.” She glanced back at her brother with a rueful smile. “I guess his upbringing was like ours.”
He smiled sadly. “I guess it was,” he agreed. “The world is full of wounded children who grow up to be wounded adults. Sometimes they get lucky and find solace in each other.”
“Sometimes they withdraw and strike at anyone who comes close,” she replied.
He chuckled. “An apt description of our Mr. Walker. But he has a weakness. Crissy. She winds him around her finger.”
“He really likes her?” she asked.
“He’s crazy about her,” he said. “She likes him, too. If you’re wise, you won’t try to separate them. There’s already a bond growing.”
“I wouldn’t deny him access,” she said defensively.
“But it’s going to complicate things. He doesn’t like me at all, and it’s mutual.”
“He doesn’t know you, Ellie. Give him a chance.”
“Even if I would, he’ll never give me one,” she said finally.
He saw that arguing with her wasn’t going to solve anything. He winked at her instead. “I’ll clean those fish for you.”
She was a bundle of nerves by five-thirty. Crissy, in a neat little pink skirt and tank top, was setting the table. She glanced at her mother with wry amusement for such a young child. Elysia, in a sedate denim dress and loafers, was pacing the floor. Her hair, in a neat chignon, gleamed in the sunlight filtering through the window.
Luke came down the hall with a grin on his handsome face. “You’ll wear holes in the floor,” he told her. “Quit that.”
“I’ll go mad long before six o’clock,” she moaned. “Oh, Luke, why did you…” Her voice trailed off into a faint gasp as she heard the crunch of car tires on the gravel driveway. She looked out the window, and there was the gray Lincoln.
“He’s here.” She choked.
“Is it him?” Crissy called, running into the living room. She looked out the screen door. “It is!” She opened the door and ran to him. “Hi, Mr. Tom!”