“But that doesn’t explain it. Why should that have driven a wedge between us? I always wanted whatever it took to make you happy.”
“You did,” he agreed, “or at least you gave it lip service whenever I tried to discuss my decision about Halloran Industries with you.”
“Lip service?” she repeated, obviously stung by the charge.
“Yes. As long as what I wanted didn’t change too substantially, you went along with it. But along the way I did change substantially. Not necessarily for the best. My needs changed and, no matter what you said aloud, I could see the way you really felt about those changes. It was as if I’d betrayed you, as if I’d betrayed what we’d once fought so hard against. You kept your ideals. I caved in. The accusation was there every time I looked into your eyes.”
As the full meaning of Kevin’s words sank in, Lacey was shocked by his interpretation of what had gone on between them. “Did I ever say that?”
“You didn’t have to. Like I said, it was in your eyes every time you looked at me. When I went to work for Dad, when I bought the house, I always sensed you were making a judgment and that I was coming up short.”
“That was your own guilt talking, not me.”
“Then why did you begin to withdraw?”
Withdraw? Her? How could that have been, she wondered. “I never meant to do that,” she said with total honesty. “Kevin, I didn’t hate your job or that house because they represented some evil standard of living. I worried because it seemed to me that you took the job for all the wrong reasons, that you took it because you thought it was your obligation to your father and to Jason and me.”
“And the house? What about that?”
“I hated the house because it no longer seemed like our home, not the way our first house did. I couldn’t keep the new one up, so we hired a maid and a housekeeper and a gardener. All the things I loved to do, all the things that I needed to do to take care of my family, to feel I was making a contribution were in the hands of strangers. I felt as if I’d been cast adrift.”
Her claim hovered in the air until at last he said softly, wearily, “I never knew that.”
“Because we never talked about it. That was my fault, I suppose. I should have explained how I felt.”
Kevin caressed her cheek, the touch light and fleeting. “I just wanted you to have everything,” he explained. “It never occurred to me that in giving you all that, I was taking away something that you felt was more precious.”
“My identity,” she said quietly. “How could you not have known, Kevin, that all I ever wanted was you?”
Something in Kevin’s face shut down at her words. Lacey had meant them to be reassuring, but it was clear he hadn’t taken them that way.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, as an odd chill seemed to invade her.
For the longest time he didn’t answer, and during that time she was sure she could hear every tick of the clock on the bedstand, feel every anxious beat of her heart.
Finally, his eyes troubled, he met her gaze. There was so much raw anguish in his face that she was trembling even before he spoke.
“I can’t be your whole world, Lace. I just can’t.”
“But that’s not what I meant,” she protested.
He shook his head. “Isn’t it? The pressure of that, it’s more than I can handle.”
Stunned by the bleak finality of his tone, she could only watch as he left the bed, grabbed his clothes and went into the bathroom. She was still helplessly staring after him when he left the house just moments later.
Chapter Fourteen
No one was more stunned than Kevin at the words that had popped out of his mouth just before he’d left the house. Where had those thoughts come from? How had he gone for so many years without the vaguest sense that there was so much resentment buried deep inside him? A shrink would surely have a field day with that one.
As he walked on the beach, oblivious to the sun’s heat and the pounding of the waves, Kevin tried hard not to remember the quick flash of hurt and confusion in Lacey’s eyes. His implied accusation that her dependence on him had somehow weighed him down had been cruel, especially since he couldn’t even explain what was behind it.
Hell, he was the one who’d carved out his role as her protector early on. He’d liked feeling ten feet tall when she looked to him for answers to everything from math lessons to politics. If some of that uneven balance had carried over into their marriage, wasn’t that as much his fault as hers?
What worried him more than casting blame for that was the discovery that he had hidden such feelings from himself. Were they really buried in his subconscious or had they merely been a quick, defensive reaction to the guilt he’d accepted too readily for far too long?
Lacey was perfect. Their marriage was perfect. Wasn’t that why he’d wanted so desperately to win her back? Surely he wasn’t one of those men who clung to the past, simply because they couldn’t bear the thought of change.
But if that were so, if he were convinced that everything was so perfect, why did he have this nagging sense that he’d been fooling himself? Had he simply grown comfortable in the role of martyr, accepting the blame heaped on him and feeling noble for ignoring his own doubts?
No, dammit! He did love Lacey. He tried that claim out in his head. It rang just as true as
