Sunburst

tan possible to impress the girls. On the job, though, they had caved under to Kyle, put their all into the work, and what good-natured complaints had been shouted did not take away from the essential respect they had shown him.

He’d earned that. She’d never seen him fail to earn the respect of the people he worked with, but the kids were still something special. They were amateurs, and they made mistakes, but Kyle had developed a sense of pride in them as they learned. It was their building; she knew they felt that way as she walked toward it now. The anticipation and frenetic pace of weeks had finally peaked.

Lord, she was proud of him.

The lemon sun shimmered on the new windowpanes, on the rough grayish siding that blended right into the wooded area beyond. Kyle had known exactly what he wanted and had done it, and the new building was a fine, tasteful structure that still had the scent of newness to it, the stuff of which dreams are made. She opened the door, imagining a customer doing it, imagining a hundred customers doing it. Teak and mahogany, catalpa and pine, oak, of course, even wicker from willows… First, the customer would see finished products, from sculptures to cabinets, each fashioned from the wood that most suited its form and function.

A compact, well-lit office was just beyond. Erica walked through, imagining the finished floor where there were only bare boards now, seeing in her mind’s eye displays on the walls where there was nothing yet, imagining samples of wood, the unique tools of the trade… Her sandals clicked on the floor as she walked through.

Kyle was standing at the very back of the building, staring out the window with his hands on his hips and his head high. He turned when he heard her footstep. There was no smile on his face, but a look of satisfaction was in his eyes. The moment’s triumph and his dreams were emblazoned there. She caught her breath when he so naturally reached out his hand for her.

She covered the last few steps with a radiant smile and took his hand.

“You see my lumberyard, don’t you? That’ll be part of it, in the long run.” He pointed out the window. There was, of course, nothing there. A cleared space where a good-sized truck could back in to unload supplies. The drive was gravel, not asphalt yet. A rather scruffy stand of poplars was beyond that, and then a nice little stand of oak, hickory and maple.

“I see it.”

“It’s so damned big it cuts out my view of the woods,” he complained.

She reached up to hug him, long and hard, and then moved away quickly, not wanting anything that was between them to spoil his moment of dreams.

Both men were in the backyard when she came out with a tray of lemonade at four-thirty. They were both lying back in lounge chairs, half in shade, half in sun, both stripped down to cutoff jeans and bare feet. Both claimed they were moving nowhere for the rest of the day, but they energetically hooted down her lemonade in favor of something alcoholic.

She returned a few minutes later with a second tray, bearing glasses and a full pitcher of celebratory screwdrivers, more vodka than orange juice, and again faced the two stretched-out figures who refused even to open their eyes. “Will this suit?” She pressed an ice-cold glass directly to Kyle’s stomach. He groaned just as Morgan did with similar treatment. “Do you think you can rouse enough energy to drink it? I mean, you’ll actually have to raise your heads,” she said with mock sympathy.

“Sit down and relax, General,” Morgan ordered.

“Actually…” Her eye rested on a monarch butterfly as it flitted gracefully through the yard. Then on Kyle, who had been so relaxed with her today that she felt the delicious urge to pounce on him, liberated hormones like tantrums in her bloodstream. Then she looked at Morgan, whose eyes had slitted open just enough to take in the snug white shorts she wore, and the bright yellow top that showed every curve. Quickly, her eyes skimmed away from Morgan to rosebushes she had been trying to grow. She had planted some delicate white flowers, whose name eluded her for the moment, as well. The scent of the white flowers came out only at night, an overpowering perfume next to the window. Then her glance flickered back to Kyle again, to the way his jeans fit over his thighs, to his smooth forehead with its boyish shock of black hair, to his fine Irish nose and the broad bones in his cheeks, to his dark eyebrows so shaggy that they shaded his eyes in sunlight. As if he knew she was watching him, Kyle suddenly opened his eyes, a startling turquoise next to his tanned skin. To her dying day, those eyes would evoke bedrooms. She glanced deliberately back to the garden. “Actually, I think I’ll do a turn at those weeds in the garden…”

Morgan groaned. “Where did you get her?” he complained to Kyle.

“Where did I get her?” Kyle echoed lazily, and leaned back with his arms behind his head, eyes closed. “I picked her up at a third and seventeen in the fourth quarter of a Cotton Bowl game. Literally. Surrounding her was the cream of the freshman class, the female portion, all dressed to the teeth and demurely chugging their sterling flasks. Not Erica. She was standing on the bench shouting her head off. Do you have any rope?”

Morgan denied it. “There might be some in the shop.”

“Too far to move, unfortunately. We could have tied her to the chair. Erica, just see if you can manage to sit still for a full fifteen minutes. You might even decide it feels good for a change. As I was saying…”

She threw a look of mock disgust at both of them. After a moment, she poured herself a screwdriver and flopped obediently into a lounge chair between them. It was so poignantly reminiscent of other times, when there were no troubled waters, no ships floundering. She would have stood on her head to ensure that nothing marred this day for Kyle, feeling the simplest pleasure at just seeing him being lazy and…easy. Leaning back, she closed her eyes.

“Some drunk was trying to get past her, and Erica didn’t see him. She was too busy shouting down to the coach, telling him how to run his team-”

“Kyle,” she scolded absently. Morgan was already chuckling. God knew why. He had heard the story a thousand times before.

“I was just passing, but I’d stopped at the rail to watch that critical play before I went back to my seat-which, you may remember, Shane, I worked night and day to pay for, and it was still nowhere near the fifty-yard line where Erica and her upper-crust friends were sitting. Anyway, the next thing I know she’s flying off the seat-”

“Gross exaggeration,” Erica murmured.

“There’s no point in interrupting,” Morgan scolded wryly.

“No one else,” Kyle said loudly, “seemed to know what to do with her. I mean, what do you do with a girl who seems to be upside down in the middle of the stadium where the rest of the crowd-even the drunks-are right-side up and screaming… One of the classic pass interceptions in football history, and I missed it. In fact, I missed the entire rest of the game. Someone had to sponge her off. Half the sterling flasks in the crowd had contributed a dribble or two on her way down. She had a bump on her forehead the size of a goose egg-”

“Have you noticed how the size of that bump grows from year to year?” Morgan muttered in an aside to Erica.

“…smelled like a liquor factory, had a run in her stockings and was so hoarse from all her solo cheerleading that she could barely croak for the next two hours. I had to carry her fireman-style to the first-aid station…”

“Why did you have to get him started?” Erica demanded plaintively to Morgan.

She should not have sat down. There had been too many weeks of almost nonstop work; now her limbs felt glued to the lounge. She felt cradled in, cocooned both by simple tiredness and by the memories Kyle was invoking. She could so easily close her eyes and see the Kyle McCrery of nine years ago, wickedly attractive, looking far too old for her at first glance, and very definitely a total stranger. He had not carried her fireman-style, but he might as well have, ignoring her hoarse objections as he hustled her through the crowds, burrowed her into a little room she would never have guessed existed, and brushed the first-aid attendant’s administrations aside in favor of his own. He had made her lie down on the cot and told her to close her eyes. Then he had gently placed a damp cloth on the bump on her forehead, and suddenly he was unbuttoning her beautiful aquamarine suit, and her eyes had opened as wide as saucers.

“The front of your suit was all damp. I was just trying to…” She hadn’t believed him then, and she didn’t now, but he had buttoned the suit up again…for a time. They were both students at the University of South Florida in