Sunburst

“You want to talk about last night?” he whispered.

She shook her head. It was just there, so suddenly, a too-warm feeling as if she were about to melt inside. His sun-warmed flesh and his strength, the hair whose texture she loved, the energy that vibrated from his body, the scent of him.

“We have to, Erica.”

She shook her head again.

His thumbs gently caressed the sides of her cheeks, his fingers tilting her face up to his. “You locked me out last night; you’ve never done that before,” he whispered. “If I come upstairs, I’m going to make love to you, Erica. You know that.”

She did know it, and drew back. She’d loved him, climbing that crazy tree. She’d loved hearing him laugh with Leonard, seeing him tussle with the Calhoun kids; she’d ached for him as she began to understand what raw and frightening beginnings he’d had as a child. Yet nothing could obliterate the memory of their abandoned lovemaking in the wheat field, followed only hours later by his rejecting her love as if it meant nothing to him. It wasn’t that she loved him less or wanted him less, but doubt about his feelings for her made her draw back into the shadows of the room, not comfortable looking at him.

“Erica…” His face hardened, the blue eyes turned haunted.

“You said there was no love without choice. I didn’t understand, Kyle…except that you made a choice the day you married me, and quite obviously you don’t feel the same now-”

“And you don’t either,” he said swiftly. One hand slowly raked through his hair. “We’re not kids anymore. That’s the point. I was trying to talk about your choices, your feelings. Trying to force you to let out some of the resentment you must have felt since we moved here. Maybe I was even trying to get you angry so you would finally tell me what you were really feeling-but I didn’t mean to hurt you, Erica.”

“But I’ve told you how I feel. A thousand times.” In the wheat field, in their work, in their living together. To Erica, her feelings were so clear.

“Perhaps,” Kyle said quietly. “And perhaps you told me only what you thought I wanted to hear. You’re a beautiful, loving lady. Sweet, soft as silk, as elusively radiant as an opal. You’d do almost anything to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.”

He sucked in his breath at her silence, a stark, bleak look in his eyes. His voice hardened. “Erica, I know you. I believe I know how you feel, even if you don’t have the courage to say it. I’ve been there, exactly in your shoes. And I don’t want you living the way I lived for too many years. Trying to love, feeling resentful-”

Trying to love, she thought bleakly. Not really loving? Was it possible she had been blinded by her feelings for him so long that she’d never seen his own feelings changing?

“Erica, we’ve both changed,” Kyle said quietly. “I feel so much at fault. At eighteen I wasn’t a very honest man. Not honest with myself, not honest with you, at least not about the things that mattered to me. I’m not proud of that. But I can’t be less than honest anymore. Part of that is admitting we didn’t have the relationship we thought we had…”

“No,” she choked out, and headed for the stairs. If they talked any further, she was afraid he would say out loud things she couldn’t stand to hear. She wasn’t ready to walk out on their marriage. She was terrified that was what he really wanted, that he was trying to tell her he had only believed he loved her.

“Erica-”

His hand closed on her wrist; she jerked free. “All I want is for things to be as they were, Kyle.” When he loved her. To hell with the beach house and the luxuries, but at least she’d never doubted his loving her when they lived in Florida. “If we can’t have that, there just isn’t anything else to talk about.”

He was silent then, making no move to impede her climbing the stairs…alone. For a moment, she saw anguish carved in stark ashen color in his features, but she saw it through a blur of tears. Not wanting him to see the tears, she averted her face and escaped to the loft.

Chapter 9

Outside, a dismal little mist of rain fell, and a blustery breeze kept snatching leaves and hurling them at the windows. “Now listen, you two,” Morgan said humorously as he pushed aside his dinner plate and looked at both of them. “It’s raining, so there’ll be no work tonight. I think it’s time we all got out of here for a little while. Let’s head for a movie.”

Erica glanced up from her plate at the suggestion, though it had no appeal for her. She had made every effort these past three days to work herself into the ground, and at the moment she was physically and emotionally exhausted. Neither she nor Kyle had mentioned the word divorce, but emotionally she felt as if she were hanging on to life by a fraying thread.

Kyle was as tired as she was, having spent every waking minute completing the roof of the new building. Abrupt and short with everyone else, he had simply been quiet with Erica. He outworked every man employed by him with a drive and single-minded determination that struck her at times as frightening; he was barely willing to stop for sleep. She worried that he wasn’t sleeping…

And in the meantime, there was Morgan, who could visit a quadriplegic in the hospital and walk out two hours later without ever having mentioned illness. Why bother with “how are you” when a fool could see the answer was “terrible”? He made no mention of the fact that Erica and Kyle were avoiding each other like wary kittens in the same territory, and simply stepped in as if he enjoyed having the floor, a born entertainer.

And if the idea of going out to a movie had no appeal, suddenly it occurred to Erica that neither was it fair for Morgan to be continually thrust into their own pervasively glum atmosphere. She stood up from the dinner table. “We could see what’s on,” she suggested, handing Morgan the newspaper before she started stacking the dishes.

He found a romantic comedy that sounded campy-exactly Morgan’s cup of tea. “Unfortunately, it starts in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes!” Erica cast an appalled look at her faded jeans. The blouse had once been a good one, a tailored, formfitting, dark crimson cotton, but there was a worn spot on the shoulder. Having showered just before dinner, she had simply snatched the first thing she found in the closet, in a hurry to have dinner ready and be prepared to work again afterward.

“You look fine, sweetheart, and you know it,” Morgan admonished. “Isn’t the idea for the lady to show off her figure with the clothes she puts on? More than successful, those jeans…”

She made a face at him. The idea of getting out had begun to seem more appealing, almost enough to put life into her features after days of numbness. And the men were hardly decked out in finery. Morgan’s black turtleneck had a few years behind it, and Kyle’s simple work shirt was old and soft, a honey color that rivaled his tan.

“So get some shoes on,” Morgan scolded.

“I am! I am!” She scooted up to the loft for a pair of sandals, slipped them on and hurried back down with a hairbrush in her hand. From the hall closet, she snatched a raincoat, and on her way through the kitchen, she put the broiler pan under water to soak.

“Come on!”

“I am!”

Morgan was holding the door open, letting in torrential blasts of rain, and she hurried toward him, only now realizing that Kyle was not part of the hustle. She turned with a questioning look toward him.

“No, I’m not going,” he said quietly. “There’s work I have to get done. Nothing that you need to be involved in, Erica.”

That changed the option suddenly. Though she would have said no if Kyle had asked her one on one, Morgan’s being there made it possible for the two of them to be together without friction. But going with just Morgan… The brightness faded a little from her eyes. Her purse slipped from her shoulder and she snatched at it. “Listen, why don’t you two go, then?” she suggested. “Perhaps I can do whatever you planned on, Kyle, and there are really a thousand other things I have-”

“You go, Erica.” Kyle spoke quietly, but his jaw tightened as if he were impatient with the subject.