by Donna Fasano
Tyne shook her head. “He works with teens all the time. Shouldn’t he know better?”
The grin on Lucas’s face had to suffice for an answer when the sommelier approached, introducing herself as Christy. He chatted with the young, smiling brunette and Tyne took in the woman’s short, edgy haircut. Her black eye-liner and heavy mascara made her eyes look large on her delicate, pale-skinned face. The sophisticated, knee-length skirt and silk bolero jacket hugged her rail-thin body. Tyne slipped her hand beneath the table to give the hem of her skirt an awkward tug, her bare toes curling in her casual sandals.
Once Christy sauntered off to fetch the wine Lucas ordered, Tyne said, “She’s cute.”
Lifting one shoulder just a bit, Lucas tilted his head. “Never noticed. I only have eyes for one woman tonight.” His tone grew hushed. “The one I brought.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Lucas. Really?”
He leaned his elbows on the edge of the table. “What do I have to do to get you to take me seriously?”
Saturday night had changed everything between them. The few heady moments they had spent under the oak tree had made them overly conscious of each other. For the last four days, every word, every glance, every inadvertent touch seemed to hold extraordinary meaning. Tyne had tried, but ignoring the awareness that shivered between them had become impossible.
Her gaze lowered to the crystal water goblet sitting in front of her.
“Tyne, what you said this weekend is true,” he told her. “We’re not teenagers anymore. We should be able to talk about what’s going on between us.”
“But that’s just it.” She strained for levity. “There’s nothing going on.”
Without a word, he fisted his hands and rested his chin on his knuckles. Although he didn’t speak, his obsidian eyes disagreed with her completely. The air went so taut it nearly vibrated in tune with the harpist’s melody.
“Okay, okay,” she finally relented. “We need to talk.”
A faint smile curled his mouth. “Thank you for not making me come over there and wrestle that out of you.”
The glint he offered her held enough sexual innuendo that her pulse quickened. She only rolled her eyes at his teasing.
“You said that we’re not the same people. That time has changed us. And I’d have to agree with that theory. We don’t know each other. So—” he shrugged “—the first thing we have to do is fix that, right? We spend time together. We talk. We laugh. We fill in the gaps of all those missing years.” The candlelight made his eyes glimmer. “Who knows where all that talking and laughing and filling in will lead?”
Her mind went blank and she did her best to disregard the distinct tightening in her groin. If she wasn’t careful, she might do something she’d end up regretting.
“You were also worried that if we were to explore a relationship that it would complicate our circumstances.” Again he shrugged and this time he accompanied it with a small shake of his head. “We’re mature adults. We can handle complicated.”
She picked up her napkin simply to have something to do with her hands. “But what if the problems become too difficult to deal with?”
His lips quirked and he shook his head. “There you go, focusing on the negative. I think we should concentrate on the positives. And there are many.” He leaned forward. “All I can think about is that kiss. And how you tasted. And how your skin felt warm and soft under my fingers. And how all I wanted to do was—”
“Lucas—” she twisted one corner of the napkin in her lap “—there’s more to a relationship than sex.”
His deep chuckle sent a tingle down her spine strong enough to make her want to arch her back like a cat lazing in sunshine, and the throbbing in her vagina intensified.
“Yeah, but,” he murmured, “we gotta start somewhere.”
Rosy buds of heat blotched her cheeks and perspiration prickled the back of her neck.
“Now, that is what I call cute.”
Her face flamed hotter. “Lucas, stop.” He continued to stare and she shot him a half-hearted grimace. “You’re making me feel…strange.”
Lightheaded, happy…desired.
He grinned. “Strange wasn’t what I was going for, at all.”
The raw eroticism in his voice was unreal, and she knew his intention was to knock her off-balance.
She smoothed out the wrinkles she’d creased in the square of linen. “Lucas, if you’re serious about talking—”
“I love it when your face goes pink like that.”
She crossed her arms, leaned against the chair’s back, and went quiet.
He chuckled. “Pushed you as far as I can, huh?”
The man was handsome when he smiled, but he was orgasmically gorgeous when his sharp-angled features shifted into that let’s-get-down-to-business expression. Tyne pinched the corner of the napkin again and started coiling.
“Let’s hear it,” he said. “I can see from the look on your face that you’ve got reservations.”
She nodded. “I do. I-I really do.” She stopped long enough to take a sip from her water glass. “I mean, I will admit that there’s something there.” Her gaze dipped for an instant as she muttered, “An attraction or whatever.”
“Good.” A smile hid just beneath the surface of the short response. “At least we do agree on that much.”
“But don’t you see the past as a problem?” She’d twisted the napkin into such tight coils that, when she released the fabric, it squirmed like a snake in her lap. Thank goodness the draped tablecloth covered her nervous handiwork. “I do. I see it as an obstacle. A huge obstacle. Too big for us to climb. Too big for us to overcome.”
He reached across the table, opening his hand in invitation. When she lifted hers from her lap, she was vaguely aware that her napkin slithered to the floor. His palm was warm against her fingers.
“Stop looking for trouble,” he told her. “We had a son together. And because you were brave enough to raise Zach alone, I have the opportunity to know him.” His eyes warmed. “Personally, I think that’s something to celebrate.”
“But…” What about the ugly details, she wanted to ask but couldn’t get her tongue to form the words.
“Tyne? It is you. Tyne Whitlock!”
The high-pitched female voice made Tyne wince. The bosomy woman approaching their table looked vaguely familiar. Her stone-gray hair spiked outward behind her ears, and she’d gained a considerable amount of weight, but when Tyne placed her, remembering her name, the blood drained from her face.
“Mrs. Denver?”
The elderly woman waved her hands in a ‘come, come’ motion and Tyne slipped her fingers from Lucas’s and stood without giving it a thought. Good Southern manners prohibited any other choice. Vera Denver’s Chanel N° 5 hit Tyne like a solid wall when they hugged.
“I just knew that was you. I told Earl, but he didn’t believe me.” Vera shifted her shoulder so her husband could nod hello.
Tyne raised her hand to him in greeting, but dread had her face too numb to smile.
“I saw your mother in church on Sunday,” Vera said. “And she didn’t say a word about your being home.”
“She doesn’t know.”
“Oh!” The woman clapped her fleshy hands together. “I can’t wait to call her—”
“Please don’t.” Tyne’s throat constricted so tightly that she could barely squeeze out air, let alone words.
Vera nodded, the ends of her spikes bobbing at her neckline. “Ah, I see. A surprise, is it? Lovely!” She glanced at the table and then Lucas before looking at Tyne. Vera blinked, then let her gaze fall down the length of Tyne’s body, evidently taking in her casual attire for the first time. The delight in her voice withered when she hesitantly murmured, “I came over to invite you to join us.”
The prospect had Tyne flattening her palm against her stomach. “Oh, thank you for the offer, but—”
“Excuse me, Tyne, but we have to go.”
; Both the women turned to Lucas who was already standing with his wallet in hand, pulling out several bills, and dropping them onto the table.
“Mrs. Denver, this is Lucas Silver Hawk,” Tyne introduced. “Lucas, Vera Denver. She’s a good friend of my parents.”
“Life-long friends. Why, I changed Tyne’s diapers,” Vera supplied.
Lucas smiled politely at the woman and then gave Tyne a sad look. “I just got a text. I’m needed. I hope you don’t mind, but we have to leave now.”
The man was a quick thinking and skilled liar. She could have kissed him.
“No, no. I don’t mind.” She reached for her purse and looked at Vera. “Enjoy your evening. It was lovely to see you.” The fib snagged in her throat like a barbed fishing hook.
Christy arrived at the table with their open bottle of pinot grigio.
“Ah, I’m terribly sorry,” Lucas told the woman, “but there’s been an emergency.” He pointed to the money. “That should take care of things, though.”
The young woman’s gaze darted to the bills on the white tablecloth, and then she offered him a wide smile. “Yes, sir. Don’t worry about a thing.”
He took Tyne by the elbow and guided her toward the front door.
Once they were in the car, the engine idling, the air conditioner blasting, Tyne took a deep breath. “Thank you.”
He just smiled. “I thought we’d better get out of there before you threw up all over dear Vera’s pretty, pink dress. In fact, you still look a little green.” He waved his hand in front of his face. “And you smell like an old-ladies’ perfume factory.”
She groaned. “Of all the people to meet. My mom is going to know I’m here before the night’s out. I just know it. Vera’s probably in there dialing her number now.”
“You asked her not to say anything. Maybe she won’t.”
Tyne only sighed.
Traffic was heavy for a Wednesday evening. Lucas maneuvered the car onto the highway.
“Maybe you should go see them,” he suggested. “Get it over with, and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
She stared hard at his profile. “You’re kidding, right?”
His silence told her he wasn’t.
The ugly details of how she’d left town reared up in her mind like the hissing snakes on Medusa’s head. He wouldn’t understand until she described them for him, fangs and scales and venom and all.
The leather seat felt cool against the backs of her arms and thighs when she settled herself. Softly, she confessed, “I’m angry with them, Lucas. I’ve been angry with them for a long time.”
Tyne was only vaguely aware of the bright lights of the businesses they passed along the way.
“My mother betrayed me,” she said, her voice flat. “I went to her for help, and she ran right to my father with the news of my pregnancy. I was so young. And they shut me off from everyone. Lectured me. Hounded me. They hashed out the options, planned my life and my future like I wasn’t even sitting there. Abortion, they finally decided.” Her stomach clenched sickeningly. “That was the best answer. We would slip away in the night, so no one would see. We would make this problem go away. And I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion.
“That exam room was cold.” The memory made her shiver. “And stark. And scary as hell with all those instruments lined up on that stainless steel tray.” She swallowed. “They left me there on that table, practically naked, and all alone.” She could still feel the rough paper gown grazing her skin. “I can’t adequately describe the rage and resentment that filled me while I waited for the doctor who was going to come and abort my baby.”
Too angry to cry, that’s when she decided she could no longer be the good little girl, the obedient daughter. “I slid off that table and got myself dressed and walked out of that room. Mom went completely crazy. She was yelling like a banshee.” Tyne swiped weary fingers across her forehead. “I’ll never forget the last thing I heard her say before I pushed my way out of that clinic. ‘What am I supposed to tell your father?’”
The question rang in her head and it roused her fury even after all this time.
“There was a second round of lectures—god, I thought they would never shut up—and when I didn’t budge on the abortion idea, they started harping on adoption. They were like some tag team. Dad would go a few rounds, shouting about how he refused to let me ruin my life, and Mom would start spewing out propaganda about making the dreams of some childless couple come true.”
She covered her face with her hands. “I was so damn confused. I knew I had disappointed them. Knew I had messed up. I only wanted to make things right. I am so sorry, Lucas—” she glanced at him before burying her face in her hands again “—and I never wanted you to know this, but I came to the conclusion that adoption was something I could at least live with.”
His stony silence tensed her gut into anxious knots.
“They put me on a plane to Palm Beach,” she said. “Aunt Wanda was very gentle and compassionate.” Her voice went all fuzzy as she added, “I’ll always be grateful to her for that.”
She shrugged. “But I disappointed everyone once again. I just couldn’t, Lucas. I thought I could. I even met the people. The prospective parents. The couple who wanted my baby. They were very nice. They fawned all over me, but I guess that’s natural. I was the teenaged genie who came to grant their wish.”
The bright cluster of city lights had faded into wider-spaced suburban street lamps and strip malls.
Tyne sighed. “I took one look at those beautiful, dark eyes and that head full of black hair and knew I was keeping my son. He was perfect, Lucas. His skin was so transparent, I could see the little blue veins in his cheeks. His nose, his fingers, his toes. Everything about him was—”
You, she’d nearly said. She watched the passing scenery for a few minutes, wondered what all those people were doing inside all those houses. Were any of them desperately explaining their decisions of the past? Were any of them nervous as hell because their justification was receiving no reaction whatsoever?
“I never talked to my parents directly again. Aunt Wanda became my go between.” The muscles in her shoulders and neck began to ache from the tension. “Dad was adamant that the only way I could come home was alone. Mom phoned her sister with promises to work it out. That she’d talk to Dad. That she’d make him come around. That she wanted me home even if it meant ‘that child’ had to come too.”
She reached over and turned down the setting of the air conditioner’s fan. Lucas gripped the steering wheel with both hands. She’d tried to warn him that the past was unpleasant.
“I’m sure she tried,” Tyne said. “But…I didn’t…things just…” She exhaled and closed her eyes, searching for the right words that would make him understand. “I was so mixed up. I hated them for how they treated me. But I wanted their love. Was desperate for their approval.” She raked her fingernails over her scalp. “It sounds so twisted, doesn’t it?”
Tipping up her chin, she looked up. The leather lining the roof was smooth and taut and unblemished.
“Aunt Wanda came to me one day,” she continued, directing her gaze forward out the windshield. “She was smiling. Happy. She said my mother had called, that she was nearly there. My dad would agree to let me and the baby come home any day now.” Her throat swelled and tears stung her eyes. “I was breastfeeding Zach out on the sun porch. I looked into his big eyes, smoothed my fingers over his chubby cheek, and I remembered how my father had treated you. The terrible names he’d called you. And that’s when I realized the awful truth. My father would never accept my son. Never.”
She moistened her lips. “And that’s when I decided I wasn’t going home.”
The headlights of the car glared against the Wikweko sign. Talking had worn her out.
The car bumped up onto the driveway and came to a halt. Lucas shut off the engine but didn’t pull the key from the ignition.
He shifted in his seat, turning
toward her, and she saw the single tear trailing down the hollow of his cheek for only an instant before he dashed it away. He swallowed and frowned.
“I’m sorry.” His words where thick and rusty sounding.
The silence stretched out like a yawn.
“It would have been easier for you to give him up, I think.”
Every ounce of tension left her when she heard no anger in his voice, saw no judgment in his eyes. Relief flooded through her, the impact of it making her feel almost woozy-headed.
“I couldn’t do that, Lucas,” she whispered. “He was all I had left of you.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The empty darkness was a perfect cloak for someone hiding a shameful secret. The clock’s orange numbers glowed 2:47 on the stove. Guilt, like a jolt of caffeine, kept him wide awake.
Lucas stared out the kitchen’s wide bay window. Dim light cast by the thin crescent moon shrouded the yard in shadows. Tonight would have been the perfect opportunity to unload his oppressive burden. She’d opened herself up completely, exposed all she had gone through when she’d been eighteen and pregnant. He could so easily have followed suit.
But after she had divulged her experiences, when he’d learned of the agony her parents had put her through, he simply hadn’t been able to confess the truth.
He’d spent a lot of years harboring anger and bitterness about how Tyne had handled things back then…or rather, how he’d thought she’d handled things. For a long time, he’d done his best to remember her as a spoiled brat.
Their first arguments as teens had been when he’d voiced that very opinion. She’d wanted a new dress for some event or other, and she’d been spitting nails over the fact that her mother had refused.
“If I’m bringing you as my date,” Tyne had wailed, “she said I couldn’t have a new outfit. Can you believe that?”
The concept had been an easy one for Lucas to understand. Her parents were doing what they could to deter their daughter’s relationship with an Indian. Tyne had ranted on, ad nauseam, about the sorry state of her life until Lucas couldn’t take another minute of her whining. He’d asked her what was wrong with the clothes she was wearing, and then he’d called her a snot-nosed baby. Somehow, he’d fit in the spoiled brat moniker, as well.