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especially
    after the way you acted before she left
    town."

    Tom grimaced.
    "If it's any consolation, Fred had leukemia when they married, and he was already infirm. They lived together as friends, nothing more, and she was fond of him. She needed a name for Crissy. For a small town like this, we're pretty tolerant, but Elysia couldn't bear having people gossip about us more than they already do." He searched Tom's eyes. "You'll have heard about our father, I imagine?"
    Tom nodded. He drew in a long breath. "My father was a madman," he confided quietly.
    "I've had my
    share of beatings, too," he added, and a look passed between the two men. "The difference was that my father died of a brain tumor—while he was beating my sister for smiling at a boy she liked. He called her
    a slut, if you can imagine being labeled that for a smile."
    Luke grimaced. "Good God, and I thought I had it bad."
    Tom laughed coldly. His eyes were on the child. "One time," he said half to himself, "in my entire life, and
    there was a child."
    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 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html 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