In spite of the pinched look in his eyes, he allowed himself a twist of a smile at her choice of words. “Erica. You had a right to your choices. You had a right to say what you needed and wanted. The ring on your finger—I couldn’t turn it into a prison chain. That wouldn’t have been love—and I’d
been
chained by ties that destroyed love. I was locked in by the debts I owed to my father—financial, moral… Hell, you know I love the wood. I’ve been trying to tell you that you’re no prisoner, Erica. I’ve been trying to tell
myself
that loving you meant ensuring that you had choices.”
Her whole body suddenly went still in shock, even before the import of what he’d said registered in her head. “Are you trying to tell me that you
knew
Morgan was coming on to me? You
knew?
”
His body had turned to stone at the tone of her voice; his eyes were searching hers, but he was silent. “You
knew?
” She kicked a footful of sand at him. Then leaned down and picked up a fistful of it, hurling at him. The sand connected with his chest, and she reached down to pick up another handful. He dodged the spewing sand that would have connected with his face; his eyes were suddenly blazing like her own. She couldn’t have cared less.
“Was that the idea? Letting me experience someone else’s love so that I could make a
choice?
”
“No!”
The word came from his gut, but she was no longer listening. She whirled around in a tempest of red-gold hair and started running. Her toes dug into the sand so hard they hurt; air clogged so tight in her lungs that it choked her. When he’d said he understood about Morgan, she thought he meant that Morgan had talked to him first, told him lies. She never dreamed that Kyle had known that Morgan was coming on to her like a heavy-handed octopus and never lifted a finger to help her…
Love?
A few minutes ago, every instinct had told her she had his love. Now the pain kept coming, like needle-sharp waves. He
let
that happen? She barely heard his husky voice, rasping with emotion.
“Erica…”
“You just leave me completely alone!”
There was only one place to run to in that deserted landscape.
A jagged concrete arch was all that remained of the door to the lighthouse. The floor was covered with sand, and straggly weeds weaved near the curved steps; moonlight illuminated the eerie entrance. The spiral staircase wound upward. She wanted a haven, and she wanted to be
alone,
and she didn’t care that the staircase looked unsafe and very, very old.
The first step held when she put her weight on it, and the second and the third. The fourth creaked ominously, and Erica balanced herself with her hand on the cement wall, her heart beating frantically. Whatever railing might have been there at one time no longer existed. The fifth step seemed to tremble beneath her foot, and her heart stopped beating completely. She went down on hands and knees as a child would.
“Erica, dammit! It isn’t safe at night—”
“Leave me alone!”
Finally, she reached the top and took a deep, anguished breath. The floor of the lighthouse was solid, but there was no longer a roof or windows, no longer a desk or the instruments a lighthouse keeper might have taken for granted a long time ago. All she could see was the sky above the lake. The stars glittered above the water like a spray of diamonds.
It was all there. The place where ships had counted on the beacon of light to save them. The place where men would have died if that beacon of light had failed.
She could feel Kyle’s presence the moment he reached the top of the stairs, but she refused to turn around. She was trying to catch enough breath to fill the emptiness in her lungs, in her heart.
“You’re going to listen.”
“The hell I am.”
He blocked the stairs, moving directly into her line of vision. She didn’t want to look at him, but his bold features held her gaze. His strong nose and brilliant blue eyes, his thick, black hair curling in the wind, his brawny shoulders and his pride…the loneliness of his pride, she thought achingly. And told herself desperately that she didn’t care.
His voice came out a thick baritone, vibrating with emotion. “I needed some sign from you, Erica. That it wasn’t just loyalty that kept you by my side. I asked you for it, in every way I knew how. I always knew Morgan cared about you, and I always knew you regarded him as a brother. He could offer you every damned thing that I no longer could. Everything I’d taken from you by moving to Wisconsin. I
had
to know it was more than loyalty that kept you by my side—”
“Kyle—”
“Hush.”
Startled, she leaned back against the ragged cement edge and stared at him.
“So, in principle, I wanted you to test any waters you needed to test,” he said heavily. “The reality was a little different.” He moved toward her, one slow, stalking step at a time. “The reality was seeing you after the belling, guessing what he’d tried to do to you. You never wondered where the hell I was for all those hours later that night? I went crazy, Erica. I did more than send him packing—”
“
You
sent him packing!” Erica sputtered through a furious sparkle of tears. “
I
sent him packing. I told him to take a hike, to leave me alone. To leave
us
alone.”
Later she would realize that the bleak, haunted look had left his expression, had disappeared the instant she picked up that fistful of sand and hurled it. All she knew at the moment was that he was a desperately unfair, cruel man. Gently, he reached out to brush away a tear that trembled on her cheek. His palm cradled her face, then smoothed away a single strand of hair that had fallen down over her forehead.
“Dammit. Don’t,” she said shakily.
“Tell me,” Kyle said, his voice vibrant. “Just tell me…”
Never, she thought—but the words burst out as if the dike had been washed away. “I felt so awful,” she burst out. “Kyle, he was your friend, and I thought he’d come to help us. To help
you.
I kept trying to believe I was misunderstanding him…I’d hugged Morgan a thousand times! I hug my mother; I’ve hugged Martha; dammit, I’ve hugged the cat! I never thought anything about it. I’ve never felt so guilty in my entire life, suddenly realizing how he must have seen it… I was so damned
stupid
…”
“Oh, my love…”
“And then he threatened to tell you that I’d…that we’d…I was so scared to tell you, that you wouldn’t believe me, that you’d believe
him
…”
“I thought you wanted to come here to talk about a separation, Erica. I thought…” His palms cupped her face, raising it so he could look into her eyes. “You told me you’d had enough, if we couldn’t go back the way we were. We can’t go back to the Florida lifestyle, Erica, the affluence…”
She shook her head helplessly. “Kyle, I was talking about love, not money. I thought you didn’t love me anymore, that you were trying to push me away. That’s why I thought
you
wanted to come here, that you were trying to be kind by taking me away from everyone, so you could tell me—”
“
Never
that,” he whispered. He turned her around and pulled her back against him, folding his arms under her breasts, cradling her against his thighs. His chin nuzzled her hair back so that her neck was bare for the soft kiss he placed there. “Never that,” he repeated. “All I wanted was to bring you to a place where you couldn’t escape. I thought that if we could just
be
together I could remind you how much love we’ve always had, Erica. No matter how things changed, no matter how I thought your feelings had changed, I still wanted a chance to show you…I can give you a wealth of security in terms of
love
…”
Her arms covered his, tightening as his did. “Oh, Kyle…”
“It took me so damned long to get my own house in order. I wanted so much for you, Erica. The world. I saw too much in terms of
things,
because I wanted the best life for you. I still want the best, the most of laughter and loving, the most of sharing and commitment. I just didn’t know what real security was until I thought I’d lost it.”
She twisted in his arms, lifting her head up to stare at him, her eyes searching his. “Couldn’t you have shared it?” she whispered. “After nine years of marriage, couldn’t you have let me know how badly you were hurting, Kyle? Couldn’t you have trusted me to understand, instead of keeping all your hurt inside you?”
His mouth dipped down on hers, blocking out the soft moon rays, sweeping her up in that sensual world they’d always shared with each other. She felt his pain, something he had never been able to communicate before, his desperate grappling with his instinctive pride. Now he told her, with exquisite, sensitive tenderness. His fingertips trembled in her hair, combing the strands over and over, winding the silk in his hands. His lips whispered over her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks. His chest rubbed against the tightening tips of her breasts, and his thighs grazed hers.
“I made the sunburst for you,” he said softly. “I see you that way, as my sun. As light and fire and softness, sometimes elusive, always warming everyone around you, Erica. Should it be easier because we have nine years behind us? I think it’s harder. I love you so much more, with so much more depth; we’ve shared so much. The thought of losing you now is infinitely more painful even than when I first loved you. I feel so…vulnerable. I feel that in loving you I should always be able to do the best thing for you, even if it hurts me…”
By unspoken agreement, they made their way back down the circular stairs, and walked across the sand to their camp. They bundled their sleeping bags into their arms and retraced their steps to the lighthouse. Erica listened as Kyle kept talking, anticipating much of what he had to say…needed to say out loud. He hadn’t turned to her in time of trouble—out of shame. He’d turned his back on his father when he was eighteen to make his own way, at a time when Joel was drinking heavily and needed him. At eighteen, Kyle could take no more of poverty, of insecurity, of responsibilities he’d carried from the time he was a small child.
Financially, he’d continued to care for his father, but the burden of desertion had always weighed heavily on his conscience. He wasn’t proud of his actions, and he hadn’t wanted Erica, who was raised in health and sunshine and silver-spoon security, to know about the kind of childhood he’d had. But when his father was dying, he had accused Kyle of running out on everything that really mattered to him, not only on his father, but on his love of wood, his roots.
Joel had accused Kyle of running and had challenged him to come home to see if he wasn’t right. “And he
was
right,” Kyle said quietly. “The need to work with my hands was always there, the urge to create in my own way. The need to make the McCrery name mean something again, as a last loyalty to my dad. And as a loyalty…to myself.”
They spread the sleeping bags side by side at the top of the lighthouse again and stretched out on their sides, with a star-sprinkled sky for a ceiling, their haven a symbol of shelter in that lonely landscape. Erica listened, the puzzle pieces all falling into place, aching for the man who’d tried so hard to do right, even as a small boy. She could finally see so clearly how he’d confused love with loyalty thinking that the two were in opposition. She reached over to touch his face, to smooth away the last lines on his forehead. He pressed a kiss into her palm.
She wanted desperately to tell him that he had nothing to feel guilty about, that he had been as good to his father as any son could be. In time, perhaps, he would listen to her; she knew he had been working out the feelings all through these many months. Now it seemed more important that she just listen; that was what he most needed from her. And she needed to hear that he was willing to solve those problems through the channel of communication that they’d allowed to develop. It was never Joel McCrery or Morgan who had nearly destroyed their relationship; it was their own failure to talk to each other. Clearly.
Erica was willing to talk all night.
Kyle was willing to talk all night.
Something happened, though, as they continued to speak in whispers. They found other ways of communicating, as she touched his face, as he touched her hand, as they stared at each other so long in the moonlight. The night breeze obliged them by turning cool; they moved closer together. Two sleeping bags were suddenly too many.
Her knee touched his and found itself captured between his long legs. He couldn’t seem to keep his hands out of the sun-gold of her hair. Erica, as aware as Kyle of what was happening, smiled radiantly.
She heard a husky growl that sounded suspiciously like laughter at her response, from deep in his throat. She heard it, and then she felt it when his lips teased an evocative little message on hers. “Mrs. McCrery, through thick and thin, you may have noticed that a few things have never changed.”
She slid her hand down his side, over his lean ribs to his narrow hips, watching his whole body tense in response. She tried it again, with even more pleasing results. Restlessly, he drew her hips closer to his with one long leg, his hand beginning a gentle, sweet discovery of her left breast, as if he’d never touched it before. “What has never changed?” she inquired lightly.
“Your body loves mine.”
“I think your body is the problem, Mr. McCrery. It’s got a one-track mind. It always has had.” She sucked in her breath when he leaned over her, his tongue replacing his hand on her breast. “Kyle…”
“In a minute, Erica.”
A minute was just too long. She forgot the thought. There was a time for lovemaking that took hours, and a time for loving that captured all the emotions in short order. This was a short-order time. It was all there, the lonely trial they’d put each other through, their renewed hope and faith in the future, their stronger feelings of love. And the first time they made love that night, it was with a desperate need to deal with all of that, a hunger to reseal the bonds of commitment, a desire born of love, an urgent need to please and know each other. And last, the simplest wish, to communicate with each other on a level beyond words.
Afterward, Kyle held her close, still warming her in his arms, pressing soft, tender kisses on her forehead, in her hair. She lay still, watching the stars above them, feeling precious and cherished and well, well loved. They would survive; she knew that. There would be other crises; she knew that, too. That came with the territory of marriage. The thought filled her with more anticipation than fear. Their love measured up, had strength to endure all trials.
She curled up against his chest, only gradually waking from the aftermath of loving to look up at him. His turquoise eyes deepened to sapphire by starlight; she loved that. “I’m sorry,” she said gently, “about Morgan. Sorry you lost a friend.”
“He wasn’t,” Kyle said simply. “I think I’ve known that for a long time, really. But his family was so good to me when I was in school.”
“Loyalty again, Kyle?” she asked.
He kissed her forehead, lightly branding her.
“Where exactly
were
you the night after the belling? I waited and waited—”
“At the hospital.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, staring at him in the darkness. “At the—?”
“Morgan broke his nose. He had to be patched up before he could take that trailer of his back where it came from, Erica. I don’t understand how he could have fallen against that packing crate—”
“
Kyle!
You
hit
him?”
“Of course not. Grown men don’t hit other grown men. You were the one who sent him away, Erica. That’s what counts.” He leaned over and kissed her chin, then the small hollow in her throat. “I came damned close,” he whispered, “to taking that St. Christopher’s medal around his neck and strangling him. You haven’t got a perfect husband, Erica. If anyone knows that, you do. He cracked a rib, too. On another packing crate.”
“Kyle—”
His lips touched down on her shoulder. “Mine,” he whispered. The same lips captured her right breast, neglected until now in favor of the left one. “Mine,” he whispered. “I don’t like people who hurt you, Erica.”