Sunburst

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.

His voice came out a thick baritone, vibrating with emotion. “I needed some sign from you, Erica. That it wasn’t just loyalty that kept you by my side. I asked you for it, in every way I knew how. I always knew Morgan cared about you, and I always knew you regarded him as a brother. He could offer you every damned thing that I no longer could. Everything I’d taken from you by moving to Wisconsin. I had to know it was more than loyalty that kept you by my side-”

“Kyle-”

“Hush.”

Startled, she leaned back against the ragged cement edge and stared at him.

“So, in principle, I wanted you to test any waters you needed to test,” he said heavily. “The reality was a little different.” He moved toward her, one slow, stalking step at a time. “The reality was seeing you after the belling, guessing what he’d tried to do to you. You never wondered where the hell I was for all those hours later that night? I went crazy, Erica. I did more than send him packing-”

“You sent him packing!” Erica sputtered through a furious sparkle of tears. “I sent him packing. I told him to take a hike, to leave me alone. To leave us alone.”

Later she would realize that the bleak, haunted look had left his expression, had disappeared the instant she picked up that fistful of sand and hurled it. All she knew at the moment was that he was a desperately unfair, cruel man. Gently, he reached out to brush away a tear that trembled on her cheek. His palm cradled her face, then smoothed away a single strand of hair that had fallen down over her forehead.

“Dammit. Don’t,” she said shakily.

“Tell me,” Kyle said, his voice vibrant. “Just tell me…”

Never, she thought-but the words burst out as if the dike had been washed away. “I felt so awful,” she burst out. “Kyle, he was your friend, and I thought he’d come to help us. To help you. I kept trying to believe I was misunderstanding him…I’d hugged Morgan a thousand times! I hug my mother; I’ve hugged Martha; dammit, I’ve hugged the cat! I never thought anything about it. I’ve never felt so guilty in my entire life, suddenly realizing how he must have seen it… I was so damned stupid…”

“Oh, my love…”

“And then he threatened to tell you that I’d…that we’d…I was so scared to tell you, that you wouldn’t believe me, that you’d believe him…”

“I thought you wanted to come here to talk about a separation, Erica. I thought…” His palms cupped her face, raising it so he could look into her eyes. “You told me you’d had enough, if we couldn’t go back the way we were. We can’t go back to the Florida lifestyle, Erica, the affluence…”

She shook her head helplessly. “Kyle, I was talking about love, not money. I thought you didn’t love me anymore, that you were trying to push me away. That’s why I thought you wanted to come here, that you were trying to be kind by taking me away from everyone, so you could tell me-”

“Never that,” he whispered. He turned her around and pulled her back against him, folding his arms under her breasts, cradling her against his thighs. His chin nuzzled her hair back so that her neck was bare for the soft kiss he placed there. “Never that,” he repeated. “All I wanted was to bring you to a place where you couldn’t escape. I thought that if we could just be together I could remind you how much love we’ve always had, Erica. No matter how things changed, no matter how I thought your feelings had changed, I still wanted a chance to show you…I can give you a wealth of security in terms of love…”

Her arms covered his, tightening as his did. “Oh, Kyle…”

“It took me so damned long to get my own house in order. I wanted so much for you, Erica. The world. I saw too much in terms of things, because I wanted the best life for you. I still want the best, the most of laughter and loving, the most of sharing and commitment. I just didn’t know what real security was until I thought I’d lost it.”

She twisted in his arms, lifting her head up to stare at him, her eyes searching his. “Couldn’t you have shared it?” she whispered. “After nine years of marriage, couldn’t you have let me know how badly you were hurting, Kyle? Couldn’t you have trusted me to understand, instead of keeping all your hurt inside you?”

His mouth dipped down on hers, blocking out the soft moon rays, sweeping her up in that sensual world they’d always shared with each other. She felt his pain, something he had never been able to communicate before, his desperate grappling with his instinctive pride. Now he told her, with exquisite, sensitive tenderness. His fingertips trembled in her hair, combing the strands over and over, winding the silk in his hands. His lips whispered over her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks. His chest rubbed against the tightening tips of her breasts, and his thighs grazed hers.

“I made the sunburst for you,” he said softly. “I see you that way, as my sun. As light and fire and softness, sometimes elusive, always warming everyone around you, Erica. Should it be easier because we have nine years behind us? I think it’s harder. I love you so much more, with so much more depth; we’ve shared so much. The thought of losing you now is infinitely more painful even than when I first loved you. I feel so…vulnerable. I feel that in loving you I should always be able to do the best thing for you, even if it hurts me…”

By unspoken agreement, they made their way back down the circular stairs, and walked across the sand to their camp. They bundled their sleeping bags into their arms and retraced their steps to the lighthouse. Erica listened as Kyle kept talking, anticipating much of what he had to say…needed to say out loud. He hadn’t turned to her in time of trouble-out of shame. He’d turned his back on his father when he was eighteen to make his own way, at a time when Joel was drinking heavily and needed him. At eighteen, Kyle could take no more of poverty, of insecurity, of responsibilities he’d carried from the time he was a small child.

Financially, he’d continued to care for his father, but the burden of desertion had always weighed heavily on his conscience. He wasn’t proud of his actions, and he hadn’t wanted Erica, who was raised in health and sunshine and silver-spoon security, to know about the kind of childhood he’d had. But when his father was dying, he had accused Kyle of running out on everything that really mattered to him, not only on his father, but on his love of wood, his roots.

Joel had accused Kyle of running and had challenged him to come home to see if he wasn’t right. “And he was right,” Kyle said quietly. “The need to work with my hands was always there, the urge to create in my own way. The need to make the McCrery name mean something again, as a last loyalty to my dad. And as a loyalty…to myself.”

They spread the sleeping bags side by side at the top of the lighthouse again and stretched out on their sides, with a star-sprinkled sky for a ceiling, their haven a symbol of shelter in that lonely landscape. Erica listened, the puzzle pieces all falling into place, aching for the man who’d tried so hard to do right, even as a small boy. She could finally see so clearly how he’d confused love with loyalty thinking that the two were in opposition. She reached over to touch his face, to smooth away the last lines on his forehead. He pressed a kiss into her palm.

She wanted desperately to tell him that he had nothing to feel guilty about, that he had been as good to his father as any son could be. In time, perhaps, he would listen to her; she knew he had been working out the feelings all through these many months. Now it seemed more important that she just listen; that was what he most needed from her. And she needed to hear that he was willing to solve those problems through the channel of communication that they’d allowed to develop. It was never Joel McCrery or Morgan who had nearly destroyed their