“Kyle-”
“Dammit. Sleep, Erica.”
She heard him rustling next to her. While she’d been dozing in the Jeep, he’d been busy. He had spread a tarp beneath both their sleeping bags to ward off the night’s dampness; their totes were next to both of them. She heard him take off his jeans and slide into the sleeping bag not two feet away from her. He turned on his side, facing away; by that time her eyes had adjusted to the starlight.
Her whole body ached, trying to cope with rejection. In nine years of marriage, she knew his body as well as her own. He had wanted her. His body was stiff with tension from wanting her now; he wasn’t sleeping. She knew Morgan was the problem; and she still wasn’t sure how to bridge the distance between them. It mattered too much that Kyle believe her. “Kyle…”
His tone was abrupt, as if he’d been waiting for her to try. “We’re here to talk, Erica. Not make love.”
She took a shaky breath. “You can’t think I would let anyone else touch me, Kyle. Not intimately. I know you don’t believe that. Please let me tell you what happened-”
“There’s no need to,” he said harshly. “I
For a long time, she stared up at the sky. Separating was what he wanted to talk about in the morning; she understood that. Believing she’d been with Morgan had only intensified the feelings she’d been afraid he’d had all along. He was angry and he was proud and he’d built an impenetrable wall between them…and she thought of the sweatshirt that he must have dug out solely to make sure she was warm, of the possessive way he had cradled her to him, of his light kiss on her forehead as he’d carried her to the sleeping bag.
She awoke to a watery sunlight on her face and the screeching calls of gulls. Totally disoriented, she sat up immediately…to see the most desolate stretch of beach she had ever seen in her life, strewn with driftwood and fallen logs. Behind her, tall birch and spruce encroached almost to the water’s edge. Birds were screaming as they fished for their breakfast, and there was water as far as the eye could see ahead of her, beginning with a splashing, foamy little surf, the lake smoothing to glass beyond.
Rationally, she knew they had reached Vermilion last night, but the fact didn’t register until she looked east. The lighthouse, a hundred yards away, was a crumbling structure, all but covered with sand as if it had been deserted for centuries. There was no sign that any human being had been here in years. The silence was eerie, ghostly. Perhaps too many ships’ captains had tried to save themselves by following the lighthouse beacon. The air around the whispering sand had a give-up sort of sadness, the isolation complete.
Erica turned quickly to the sound of copper pot meeting copper cup. Kyle’s sleeping bag was next to her, but empty. The Jeep was farther down the beach, and the sounds came from the other side of it, along with a wisp of smoke that said Kyle was up and fixing breakfast and had probably built a driftwood fire.
She crouched in the sand and brought out clothes quickly from her tote, suddenly half smiling-at herself. Her first need was a bathroom, the lack of which startled more than appalled her. Spoiled, Erica… There might not be any marble taps or makeup mirrors, but a few thousand acres of privacy lay in the woods beyond the beach.
She headed for the trees. Fallen pine needles, softened with weather and brushed with sand, made a carpet for her bare feet. Inside the woods, it was instantly cool. The breeze from the lake was incredibly crisp; on the beach she had been conscious only of the steady beating of the sun.
She stripped completely and put on fresh jeans and a short-sleeved lime-colored top, leaving her feet bare as she started, with toothbrush in hand, for the shore again. Marital crisis notwithstanding, one did not begin a day without brushing one’s teeth…
She yelped when her bare toes tested the water. The playful surf was like ice just melted, and the stones that made up the shoreline were smooth and slippery. She rolled up the cuffs of her jeans and bent down; the splash of ice water on her face destroyed any further illusions of sleepiness. After she had brushed her teeth, she stood up again.
Kyle was standing a few feet from her, his hands on his jeaned hips and his open-necked shirt flapping in the breeze. She liked the way he stood with shoulders back in this desolate country, the sunlight behind him. She saw a man with a bearing of fierce pride, yet those shoulders relaxed just perceptibly as he came toward her, as he took in the tumbling red-gold hair and the rolled-up jeans, the peach freshness on her skin from the icy water, her face tilted up to his.
The kiss wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t forced it. She ignored his sudden stiffening and simply reached up; her lips tentatively brushed against his just long enough to feel the slightest answering pressure, the slightest tightening of his hand on her shoulder. He might not want to talk, but he was not immune to her. She rocked back on her heels, smiling at him. “I was worried.”
“You didn’t sleep well?”
“I slept perfectly well. It was the toothpaste. Whether it was biodegradable. This is a very special place, Kyle, and when we leave it, I don’t want to think we’ve mucked it up in any way.”
“I really don’t think you have to worry about a dab of toothpaste in sixty-seven trillion gallons of water, love.”
The last word had slipped out; she could tell from his eyes. But then, maybe he wasn’t quite prepared for her particular brand of nonsense this early in the morning; nor did she make it easy for him to rebuff her when she laced an arm around his waist, hugging him. “I love it. You couldn’t have chosen a better place to get away from it all in a thousand years.”
“I…” He hesitated. “All I could think of a few weeks ago was that I wanted you to see it. I hate to admit that I didn’t think much beyond that, the rough setting and no johns… You aren’t used to such accommodations. We could stay in a motel-”
“
She’d clearly taken him back another five yards, and she felt a rush of satisfaction as intoxicating as champagne. If he wanted a pampered little brat, he’d have to carry around a picture of her when she was a child. It was one of those issues she’d wanted to make clear a very long time ago… She scampered ahead of him, calling back, “But for now, if you’ve eaten all the food I packed in that box for breakfast-”
“Erica?”
She turned, brushing the burnished hair from her face in the breeze.
“You really like it here?”
“It’s lonely and desolate-and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.”
He strode up behind her, hooking his arm around her neck. “In that case, I might just feed you,” he said gruffly.
She laughed when she saw his organized feast. Bananas and nuts and apples, bits of dried pineapple for a sweet tooth. He had set the small metal grill over a small driftwood fire; on that the coffee pot rested, giving off its aroma as she sat down on a log. Kyle kept pushing tidbits at her until she was more than stuffed. Gradually, she watched her husband relax, begin to tease her as he always had… Had Morgan really been their guest for only two weeks? Because even as she absorbed Kyle’s good-morning mood, she was suddenly aware of how quiet he had been for those two weeks, how much Morgan had affected Kyle as well as herself.
“You haven’t said what you thought of it.”
“The lake?”
“Of course the lake, bright one. Superior’s the biggest body of fresh water in the world, you know. In the winter, the waters can freeze up to forty feet down, a respectable-sized iceberg.”
“Safe skating,” she said gravely. “Now tell me something good. You know statistics go in one ear and out the other.”
“Hollow between your ears,” he said sadly, and she kicked a footful of sand at his ankles. “Let’s see…Superior has a tide, just like an ocean. It has also had tidal waves.”
“You can only fool some of the people some of the time.” She leaned back against the log with her second cup
