Jennifer Greene - Sunburst

“Dammit. You know I love you. And I swear if you ever do anything like that again-”

He would murder her. Fine. She savored the thought. For someone who’d been afraid of anger all her life, she suddenly relished his, understanding it was a measure of how much he loved her. More instincts, she thought fleetingly. She didn’t need words; she’d been listening to words for months, had torn herself apart with words. From now on, she would listen only to her different heart.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the shore, stopping only when they’d reached the pebble-strewn sand. “Wait here,” he barked. She couldn’t imagine where he thought she would go.

He stalked back from the campsite seconds later with a cotton blanket that he draped over her, rubbing her thoroughly until her flesh came alive again and took on heat. She couldn’t seem to stop looking at him. His hands, so fiercely rubbing her skin, were trembling. Chill water was still streaming down his body; he didn’t seem to notice.

His bold features were forbiddingly carved, but that wasn’t the message his eyes were sending her. His eyes were dark blue and full of torment, registering that she was safe, measuring the loss he had nearly suffered.

It was no small effort for her to extricate herself from the blanket he had so possessively swathed her in. She managed, taking him off-guard as he was about to begin scolding her again. All she had to do was brush her hands over the taut muscles of his shoulders, and the next thing she knew he had snatched her up tight against his chest, his head buried in her hair and the blanket lying forgotten in the sand.

“God, Erica, if anything had happened to you…”

“Hold me,” she whispered. “Keep on holding me…”

Kyle’s body was cool and damp; it was her turn to do the warming. She didn’t bother with a blanket. Although she had been freezing just short minutes before, she had never felt warmer than now, had never felt more capable of wrapping him up in the warmth that emanated from her soul. Her hands swept over his shoulder and his long, lean back. Her breasts, warm and full, absorbed his chill; her bare thighs pressed his. The friction of her lips rubbing against his was so frenzied that it could have started a fire.

Kyle slowed his pace. His whole body shuddered, but no longer from chill. Gently, his palms cradled her head, framing her face, his thumbs tracing the satiny texture of her cheeks as if he would memorize the shape and feel of her features. When he let his hands fall, it was only to wrap his arms around her again, this time with tenderness, and his lips pressed kiss after kiss in her hair.

She inhaled, feeling a love so strong it hurt, a love so strong she felt a crazy blur of tears in her eyes that blurred the landscape around her, doubled the stars, added silver to the sand, enriched the dark shadows with an ebony sheen.

“How I love you,” she whispered. “How I love you, Kyle. Only you. There was never anyone else.” The words spilled out in a desperate rush. “There was never Morgan. No matter what you think happened, no matter what he told you-”

“Erica. Don’t lie.” He wrenched her hands from him and stepped back, his face suddenly a dark, expressionless mask. “I never needed Morgan to tell me what happened. I knew. And the hell of it was that I understood.” Without another word, he turned his back on her and stalked up the sandy shore toward their camp.

Erica stared at Kyle’s retreating figure for all of a minute before chasing after him. Furiously, her hand closed on his upper arm, catching him off-balance and forcing him to face her. “What exactly is it that you think you know?” she demanded.

“Stop it.”

She shook her head wildly. “No way, Kyle. You’ve got to listen to me.”

He sighed, throwing back his head, resting his hands on his hips. “I understand,” he said bitterly. “I’ve understood from the first. I’m not judging you. Erica. I’ve been in your shoes.”

“You stop it. Stop talking in riddles, for God’s sake, Kyle. You’ve been trying to tell me something for months. Just tell me!”

“Look,” he said harshly. “There’s nothing to tell. I could see. History repeating itself.” He took a breath. “When I was a kid, we had only a cookstove for heat in the winter, Erica. People looked down on the McCrerys; walking to school in tennis shoes through the snow. My father just didn’t give a damn about anything from the time my mother died. No one could have accused me of lack of loyalty toward him; I loved the man. Really loved him, as a child. But as I grew older, the anger and resentment kept building, at things we could have had that we never did, at security that was never there… I declared my love and loyalty so loud and strong that I didn’t know what they’d really turned into, until it was too late.

“You think I was going to stand around and watch your love turn into resentment, Erica? You declared your loyalty with never a single resentful word, as if you had a little halo around your head. You’re never going to tell me that you didn’t have second thoughts about our moving to Wisconsin, that you didn’t resent the changes in our lifestyle. How I could see myself in you! I never showed an ounce of resentment toward my father, either-and maybe that’s why I never saw what was happening between us until it was too late. And no, it wasn’t a damned cookstove, Erica, but I brought you down-”

If she were a man, she would have shaken him. As it was, her eyes blazed up at his, filled with hurt and pain. “You didn’t bring me down, you stubborn bastard! When are you going to get that through your head? The only time you hurt me was when you failed to share your feelings with me. I had a right to know what you were feeling. I had a right to know you were mucking up everything in your head-”

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.