Keeper of the Light

care?” he asked. “Take it off. It’s too damn hot in here.”

He held the jacket while she leaned forward to slip her arms out of the sleeves. He folded it and set it on the back seat.

“Better?” he asked, and she nodded. They were both quiet as he began driving again, and it was a few minutes before he realized she was crying, her face turned to the window, her sniffing practically silent. He pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition.

“Olivia.” He undid her seatbelt as well as his own and pulled her into his arms. For a moment, she clung to him and he felt the dampness of her skin beneath her thin white blouse.

“I’m sorry,” she said, when she could finally get the words out. She had pulled away from him slightly, her face lowered, the top of her head brushing his lips. He shut his eyes and rested his lips there, in the warm silk of her hair.

“I haven’t talked about it for so long,” she said. “I haven’t even thought about it.” She looked up at him, tears glistening on her dark lower lashes. “Thank you for saying there was nothing I could have done about Clint. I’ve always thought I should have been able to rise above what happened to me somehow. Put the past aside and help him, but…”

“But you knew you couldn’t do that and take care of your self at the same time.”

She nodded. “God, I was lucky I was raped. It got me out of there.”

“No,” he said. “You were not lucky. You would have found some other way out.”

“I don’t know.” She let go of him, sitting back in her seat, her eyes closed. “It got me out of there, but it took such a toll.” She opened her eyes, and there was a faraway look in them as she stared out the window of the car. “It left me afraid of men and terrified of sex and feeling more worthless than I already felt.”

Alec studied the steely edges of her profile. “You’ve over come all that, though, haven’t you?”

She nodded. “Paul changed it for me. He was so incredibly patient.”

Yes. He imagined Paul would be that way.

Olivia smiled, that dreamlike look still in her eyes. “I was so nervous,” she said. “I’d gotten it in my mind that I didn’t heal properly after the rape, that I couldn’t let anyone casually touch me, or try to make love to me, because I didn’t know how I would react, physically or emotionally. Paul was the first person I met who I knew I could trust, who would bear with me. I wanted to make love so badly, but it still took about four or five nights for us to…complete the act. He’d get in a little further each time before I’d freeze up.” She blushed, red blotches forming quickly on her white cheeks, and looked over at him. “Am I embarrassing you, talking this way?”

“No.” His voice was more of a whisper than he’d intended. “I like listening to you, and I need you to remind me about Paul, because sometimes when I’m with you I forget about him.”

She held his eyes for a moment before continuing. “He’d write poetry,” she said. “Every day he’d show up with a new poem, chronicling our progress. Sometimes they’d be sweet and touching, others were metaphorical—a hunter with his spear closing in on his prey.” She laughed. “Finally we did it. I was twenty-seven years old and it was my first orgasm ever, and I’d had no idea it could be so…powerful.”

“You came the first time you made love?” He knew the question was tactless the moment he’d blurted it out, but Olivia seemed unperturbed.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s pretty easy for me. I can’t not come.”

“You’re lucky. Annie…” Alec hesitated, discovering he could not talk about this quite as openly as Olivia. “It was always hard for Annie,” he said, “though I figured out after a while that she just didn’t care. Sex didn’t mean much to her. She only wanted to feel close, to feel cared about. She said being close was the medicine she needed to feel good, and sex was just a side effect.”

Olivia frowned. “All those years you were married to her, you had to put your sexual feelings on hold?”

“No. You forget I was married to the world’s most generous woman. I never went without.” He had a sudden stab of guilt for talking about Annie so candidly. “Whew,” he smiled weakly. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

Olivia returned his smile. She stretched her arms out in front of her and sighed. “How about dinner?” she asked. “I’m starving, and I could use the air conditioning.”

They stopped for dinner, switching to the safe topic of the lighthouse and their respective speaking engagements. Back in the Bronco, Olivia fell asleep, her head cradled between the seat back and the window. He woke her as they crossed over the bridge into Kitty Hawk. The sunset was too beautiful to miss, the sky surrounding them with purple and gold. They rolled down their windows to let the Bronco fill with the damp evening air and the scent of the sound. Olivia undid her seatbelt and turned around, getting to her knees to look out the rear window. There was a skewer-thin run in her stocking where it covered her calf, and her blouse puckered above the safety-pinned waistband of her skirt in a way that touched him, that made him reach over to lightly run the back of his fingers over her hair.

She sat down again as they drove into Kitty Hawk, and Alec turned onto Croatan Highway in the direction of her house.

“Will you be all right alone tonight?” he asked.

“Yes.” She reached into her purse for her keys. “As soon as you woke me up and I got a whiff of Outer Banks air, I felt better.” She leaned her head back against the seat and looked over at him. “Even though I only have one friend here—namely, you—it feels like home.”

Alec smiled at her. Then, on an impulse, he made a U-turn at the next intersection.

“What are you doing?” Olivia asked.

“I’m taking you someplace. You’ve earned the right to see it.”

“The lighthouse!” she said as he took the right turn off the highway toward Kiss River.

The road leading out to the lighthouse was dark, the trees forming a green-gray tunnel for the Bronco. Alec