Sunburst

Chapter 3

The carpeted spiral staircase that led to the loft, with its wrought-iron banister, never failed to give Erica the illusion of climbing to another world. Which it was, when she reached the top.

The beamed ceiling stretched in a long inverted V the full length of the large room. The far wall was all glass, allowing the moon and stars to cast a shimmering light on the dark carpet. There was none of the clutter or cheerfulness of the room below; the mood here was one of peace and privacy. They’d built the bed on a carpeted platform; to the right of the stairs was Kyle’s private area-bookshelves, a recessed desk space; to the left of the stairs was her own niche, with recessed cabinets where she stored her needlework and other personal projects. Both areas were separated from the bedroom proper by hand-scrolled screens that could easily be put aside. Quiet colors and textures made the loft a haven that contrasted sharply to the vibrant hues and energy of the downstairs areas.

Kyle moved past her to the bathroom, and Erica absently wandered to the dresser to take out a nightgown. She’d switched on the lamp by the bed when she came up for Morgan’s bedding; now she switched it off and moved to the glass wall.

The bushes were trembling below in a night breeze. A gnarled old elm reached up to stroke a light-leafed branch against the window. Fleeting clouds were playing a game of chase across a midnight sky, the moon a stark lemony crescent behind them.

The country road in front of the house rarely saw a passing car at this hour. The town of Three Oaks was only a ten-minute drive, and it was Three Oaks and a half dozen other small towns like it that brought in their business, though Madison, the state capital, was not too far away. In the short time she’d lived here, Wisconsin had impressed Erica by its lack of skyscrapers and the absence of the hustle-bustle that went with them. Oh, there was industry from Green Bay down to Milwaukee, but that wasn’t the flavor of the state.

The flavor was country and country towns, where European immigrants had settled some generations before with their crafts and their customs and their desire to establish roots and live in peace. The Wisconsin landscape, with its winding roads and endless woods and streams, offered shelter, a gentle privacy that had changed very little for generations. In Erica’s imagination, Wisconsin was all lush greens, not the arid leaf color she associated with Florida. The nights were more velvet here, the earth a rich dark color… It mattered somehow. The place had had a sensual appeal for her, a feeling of tightness, even from the beginning.

She heard Kyle behind her and turned to him with the nightgown still in her hand. In the darkness, she could hear him moving toward the bed, drawing down the sheets. Absently, she reached behind her to unsnap the hooks of her smocked dress. “Kyle?”

“Mmm?”

He was exhausted, she knew that; it was the worst of times to bring up anything that mattered. Still, she couldn’t quite let it go. “When you were talking to Morgan,” she asked tentatively, “what did you mean? What was the promise you made to your father?”

“It doesn’t matter, Erica.”

But it did-to her. Leaning back in the shadows, she waited. Kyle shifted restlessly against the pillows. “My father told me the McCrery name meant nothing to me,” he said neutrally. “He died lonely, because of my pride. I misjudged him badly over the years…”

She shook her head violently, though he couldn’t see the gesture in the darkness. “Kyle, you were good to him,” she protested. “I know you lived far away, but that…just happens. You called; you always saw that he was cared for; you sent him money. Morgan told me once that you even built this house; you were in school, working three jobs, and he thought you were crazy to come back up here that summer… And you stayed with him that whole month before he died-”

“I left the minute I was eighteen and never really came back. I knew I was all he had. He knew how I felt; he told me so before he died. The respect of one man for another-I never had it for him, and I was wrong. But I didn’t know how much it mattered that he didn’t have it for me.”

“I don’t understand,” Erica said, her voice growing angry. “Kyle, I don’t have to understand. He was wrong.” She slipped the dress over her head impatiently. She shivered a little, but the cool night air was like silk on her skin. Moonlight brushed the delicate lines of her collarbone and shoulders, her long, slim thighs. Her mind was racing, trying to find the right words to say to Kyle, trying to understand how and why his feelings for his father had so painfully changed him from the man she had married.

Her hair fell in a slow-sweeping red-gold arc as she bent to remove her panties. When she straightened, her entire profile was illuminated, her skin tinged with the satin sheen of moonlight. “Listen,” she began.

He was out of bed, moving up behind her. He pulled her back against his chest, nuzzling her hair back with his chin so he could kiss the hollow in her shoulder. “We can’t have you standing in that window, love. Anyone passing by would undoubtedly have an accident. The look of you-that natural sensual grace of yours-could well cause a five-car pile-up.” His lips dipping for her shoulders again, he added gravely, “We can’t have that on your conscience.”

She remembered that low, vibrant tone of his all too well; her heart instinctively changed beats. She felt warmer suddenly, in a way she hadn’t felt warm for weeks, loving the feel of his calloused hands on the smooth skin of her stomach. “There’s never anyone out here at this hour. Except,” she qualified, “raccoons.” There were two tiny beacons that could have been raccoon eyes in the distance, bright pinpricks behind a giant oak.

“They’ll have to go. This is my view,” he asserted, and she chuckled, turning in his arms to face him.

He was naked. It seemed a century since she’d felt free simply to run her hands over his arms, over the smooth contours of his shoulders. “It never occurred to me that you might be jealous of raccoons,” she remarked innocently. “Do you have the same mistrust of foxes? Squirrels?”

He took a nip of the tender skin of her neck. “I’m jealous of the air that touches you, Erica. A well-kept secret.” His voice was so low she could barely hear it. His weariness seemed to have disappeared. The vibrant sheen in his eyes caressed her as intimately as his hands.

She hadn’t forgotten what they had been discussing; it mattered too much…yet she closed her eyes for a second at his seductive touch, savoring the sweet rush of heat in her limbs. This was Kyle again, not the stranger whose distant manner so frightened her. She craved his warmth, hungered for closeness, yet she wanted a mating of more than bodies. “Kyle…”

He pushed her gently toward the bed. The sheets felt oddly cool against her warmed skin. “Don’t talk.” He leaned over her, smoothing back her hair, stealing the pillow away from her head so she lay flat and vulnerable. His lips brushed hers fleetingly, his thumb tenderly caressing her cheek. “No more talk,” he whispered fiercely. “I know your loyalty, Erica. God, I never meant to drag you into this.” His mouth suddenly claimed hers, with a searing pressure of urgency and hunger. “When I first met you, you were like sunlight in a very dark world,” he murmured. “You’ve never changed, not for me. Sunlight and softness, elusive and fragile; I wanted to protect you, shelter you, in a way you can’t possibly understand. I need you as I need breath…”

“Kyle…” It wasn’t his words so much as the desperate intensity she sensed behind them. It was the words he wasn’t saying, didn’t know how to say; she felt frightened suddenly. As if he were talking about something that was irretrievably lost already… Fiercely, his lips settled on hers again, stifling the words she needed to say, and in spite of herself she felt a quiver of longing run through her like quicksilver. He was part of the night, her Kyle, part of every sensual dream she had ever had. Suddenly, it only made sense to reach out, to cleave to him, to try to bridge the distance between them at a level more basic than talk.

His eyes burned down to hers in the darkness in a way that made her tremble inside. He shifted still closer, pinning her with the solid weight of his thigh as the feather-light touch of his fingers skimmed over the delicate line of her collarbone. Then his head bent, his teeth nipping at her soft neck with a roughness that teased, his palm sweeping down the length of her, taking in breast and stomach and thigh. He knew her well. The contrast of rough and soft, gentle and fierce, ignited the most primitive needs, unleashed the kaleidoscope of fantasies secreted within her. Her mind spun in sweet, fierce splendor as she reached for him.

His hand clasped hers before she could touch him. “Let me. Just let me,” he murmured. In a light hold, he pinned her wrists above her head with one hand. His lips parted hers, his tongue stealing inside first to taste and savor, then to drain her special private flavor. She felt her blood race, a delicious sense of helplessness flooding through her that was potently erotic. His free hand teased at that forced submissiveness, pirating down slowly to knead one pillow-soft breast until it swelled and the peak firmed and hardened for him, pouting when his palm deserted it to move down her ribs, then lower.

The late hour, the long day of work, the tension he’d worn all day like an extra layer of clothes…he was in no hurry. For long moments, he seemed mesmerized by the play of moonlight on her skin, by the hollows and shadows the night created. Then his palm smoothed over the flat satin of her stomach and down to her thigh, so slowly that a whispery shudder seemed to take over her whole body. She longed to touch as well as be touched. She could feel his arousal throbbing against her thigh, could hear the change in his breathing. To share was to love, and he’d taught her all about that; passivity no longer pleased her. Desperately, she wanted to give as well as take, and her hands twisted…

His wrist tightened on them. “This one’s for you…”

“No,” she whispered. “For us. Please, Kyle…”

Again his mouth covered hers, drowning her words and her senses. Petal-soft, his fingertips grazed the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, his touch as tantalizingly light as his kiss was possessively firm. His lips gradually relinquished hers, only to trail lazy kisses down her throat and neck. Restlessly, she tossed her head from side to side as his mouth settled hungrily on one breast. His tongue lapped over and over until the nipple peaked and ached; she could feel her hands curl into fists above her head. “Kyle…”

He hushed her in velvet whispers. As his lips feasted at her breasts, his free hand sought the silky down of her womanhood. The more responsive she was, the more slowly he explored, savoring every possible inch of flesh as if this were the first time, the last time…as if her pleasure were the only thing that mattered. She drew in her breath when his lips touched her thighs. She felt insanely vulnerable, his plundering tongue against her flesh a shocking rough-smooth sensation that laid open a need that came from her soul. She heard a feverish moan in her throat. He whispered endearments to her…

Finally, he shifted, locking their bodies together before she could even draw breath. His warmth was suddenly everywhere, surrounding her; his powerful rhythm-a rhythm designed to block out mind and heartache and time-was inescapably her rhythm, too. He knew exactly the cadence of movement to take her soaring; no one else in the world knew her like that, understood how to take that surge of wildness and spin it completely out of control. “Please…”

There was a feverish glaze of almost-tears in her eyes when he finally freed her hands, and she desperately clutched at the damp silk of his back, holding on, holding him with her. She felt his hand suddenly over her mouth to muffle her helpless cry when her body seemed to turn liquid. Liquid gold.

When it was over, he touched her cheek with his palm, soothing away the hint of tears. He tucked her inside the curve of his shoulder in the darkness. For a time, their breathing was labored, then his quieted as he fell asleep.

Erica lay still, trembling, for a long time. Sleep should have come instantly, yet it eluded her. The sensual, lethargic aftermath of love faded slowly; finally, she moved from beside Kyle’s sleeping form and groped her way to the chair in her corner of the room.

He had an incredible power in his hands, her virile lover. He’d had it from the beginning; for her there had never been a question of withholding a response from him, of inhibitions or hesitation or shyness. She loved the lover as well as the man, but there’d been something different tonight. He hadn’t wanted her to touch him; he hadn’t wanted to be loved in return. He gave so much, but at the very moment he himself most needed loving. She knew it as an instinct, felt it in her heart…

Erica got up, found a long, cream-colored robe, put it on and curled up in the chair. The night was silent except for Kyle’s breathing, and once the whispery hooting of an owl. Erica sat in the chair, wide-eyed, tearless, frightened. Kyle’s love play so closely paralleled other things that were happening in their marriage, the way he so often closed himself off to her…

She had believed their marriage was perfect-until Joel McCrery died and that tragedy had uncovered depths of feeling she hadn’t known existed, emotions and capacities in herself that had never been tapped. Their changed circumstances had given her the opportunity to stand by Kyle, to fight for something together, to change and grow with him… Yet while her love for him had grown, his feelings for her seemed to have diminished. He had shut her off when she had tried to talk. Now, when she wanted to touch…

She didn’t know what to do, what to think, what she was supposed to feel. She hurt, she suffered-it was a raw, confused, nameless sensation. Unwillingly, she closed her eyes in exhaustion, and finally made her way back to bed.

Erica cracked an egg against the counter and plopped it gently into a pot of boiling water, bounced a slice of bread into the toaster, snatched up knife, fork and napkin, and set them on the counter in front of Morgan. In another few seconds, she had two cups of coffee poured, an apple sliced and a glass of juice waiting for Morgan. The poached egg was ready by the time the slowest toaster in the Midwest noisily popped up one browned slice of bread. She handed Morgan’s plate to him as she perched on a stool on the opposite side of the counter. “Now eat,” she ordered as she picked up an apple slice and motioned to his plate with it. “It’ll give you something to do besides bore that dead-man stare of yours into my back. Didn’t you sleep well?”

“I just don’t understand how anyone can move so fast first thing in the morning.” Morgan’s blond hair was rumpled, and he had put on his suit pants but nothing else. A dangling St. Christopher medal hung from his tanned neck, and on one hand he sported a full-carat sapphire. High-class disheveled, Erica privately labeled him. As much as she cared for him, she was in no mood to entertain anyone this morning, much less Morgan, who seemed determined to study the hollows of fatigue beneath her eyes.

“Honey, those jeans couldn’t get much tighter.”

“Oh, hush.” The jeans were old, white and ideal for applying varnish to a roll-top desk. Her navy top was another paint-spattered T-shirt, and today, in deference to Morgan, she wore a bra.

Kyle was gone. When Erica awakened, the bedroom had been empty; there had been no sound or sight of him. A squirrel had been chattering outside the glass wall, a pair of robins had been pecking at the dew-drenched grass for a gourmet breakfast of worms, and the brilliant early morning sunshine had promised a lovely day; it had all been rather annoying. When one’s life was falling apart, nature should at least have the courtesy to provide a mucky, rainy day. Instead, a seven-thirty sunlight was streaming into the bright kitchen, and Morgan’s brown eyes were steady on hers like admiring beacons. Worse, he was already full of his particular brand of nonsense.

“One small smile, eked out after three sips of coffee and an apple,” he observed. “I think it was the lady who had a little problem sleeping last night.”

“A little,” she admitted. “Oh, Lord!” She glanced furtively at the front door as they both heard a scratching from behind them, and in a second she was off the stool, grabbing a bowl from the cupboard and opening the back door. The cat stopped scratching instantly and leaped in to tangle herself around Erica’s legs as she reached out to get the milk from the refrigerator and pour some into the bowl. “We will not mention this to Kyle,” she said severely to Morgan.

“I take it Kyle doesn’t like cats.” Morgan leaned back with his cup in hand, grinning broadly. “Does the thing have mange, or has it just been in an accident?”

“Not you, too!” Erica protested. “Hurry,” she urged the creature. The cat was a skinny faded calico, with strangely long legs and tufts of fur at intervals. When the bowl was empty of milk, she curled around Erica’s legs again. Erica crouched down, stroking her. “What could I do?” she said helplessly to Morgan. “She comes every day.”

“You don’t suppose it’s because you feed her, do you?” Morgan suggested helpfully.

“She was starving!”

“So are all those children in China.”

“Morgan!” she said disgustedly as she shooed the cat back out the door.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he assured her with a grin. “Although you’re kidding yourself if you think Kyle doesn’t already know you’re a sucker for lost causes. Now quit jumping around for two seconds and sit down with your coffee. I want to talk with you.”

“What about?” she asked. She washed out the empty bowl and put it away.

“What’s wrong?” he asked abruptly.

“Pardon?”

He sighed impatiently. “I’ve known Kyle for twelve years and you for better than nine. Kyle looks as if he’s carrying the world on his shoulders, and you, love, are more tense than that cat could ever be.”

“Nothing’s exactly wrong,” she protested, as she drank her coffee. She sipped too quickly, the scalding liquid fiery on her tongue, meeting his probing eyes only for an instant over the rim of the cup before she looked away. She was not good at lying, and Morgan had been a friend for too long for her simply to tell him to mind his own business. “Kyle’s just terribly tired,” she said finally.

“So he’s driving himself to the limit. Why? You two chose to come here. You left a successful business…”

“Yes,” Erica interrupted rapidly. “And this one is doing well, too, Morgan. It’s just that we started out with so many…”

“Debts,” Morgan supplied smoothly.

She had never intended to say that, but she could tell from the expression on Morgan’s face that he had already guessed.

“I would have to be a fool not to have realized that there was more to the move here than Kyle’s sudden love affair with wood,” Morgan continued. “Woodworking may have been in his blood for generations, but it sure as hell didn’t show up until now. So how bad was it, Erica?”

Totally unhappy with herself, Erica drained the coffee cup and turned away to set it in the sink. Kyle had chosen not to tell Morgan about their circumstances; knowing that made her feel helplessly disloyal. But Morgan was Kyle’s best friend; perhaps another man’s perspective was exactly what Kyle needed. Maybe he should talk out his feelings with Morgan. Taking a breath she said quietly, “Joel didn’t have any health insurance. The doctors performed open-heart surgery three times to try to get his heart going, but it was too badly damaged. He spent months in the intensive care unit…and before that he had bought thousands of dollars’ worth of lumber, none of it paid for. Other debts he seemed to have just accumulated… Of course, toward the end, Joel wasn’t well enough to work,” Erica said awkwardly. “But in the meantime, it couldn’t have been a worse time for Kyle to sell his business, with the economy so sluggish. He had a lot of capital out, or something; he’d just started another little plant…” Her voice trailed off. Then, chin lifted, she determinedly met Morgan’s eyes. “We’re out from under now,” she assured him. “For that matter, when I see the way Kyle works with a piece of wood, when I see what he can do with his hands…I wonder how he could ever have been really happy with a suit-and-tie sort of life. You wouldn’t believe what he’s been able to accomplish in six months, but there’s been so much stress…” She took a breath. “Perhaps if you talked to him, Morgan…”

“That was a hell of a pair of shoes to leave you,” Morgan said abruptly, as if he hadn’t even heard her suggestion. “But is that all that’s wrong, Erica?”

His sharp brown eyes looked intensely into hers. “Of course that’s all,” she said.

“Is it?”

She nodded nervously. “I like working with Kyle.”

“I still don’t understand. Erica. Kyle’s one story, but you’re another. You can’t possibly like it here, a tiny country town with nothing to do. It’s not just the lack of entertainment, but security, everything you grew up accustomed to…”

He was like a dog worrying a bone. All she wanted was for Morgan to give Kyle moral support-as Kyle had done for him a thousand times. “Morgan, we both like it here. We like working with wood. And Kyle has roots here…”

“You don’t,” Morgan said bluntly.

“I have Kyle.” But it sounded wrong, suddenly. She wasn’t at all sure she did have Kyle anymore.

“Yes.” Morgan stood up, lazily stretching, the silver metal on his chest glittering in the morning sun. “Well, kiddo, I’ve got to hit the road. This time, though, it’s not going to be such a long lapse between visits.”

“Super,” she said brightly, relieved he’d changed the subject. “You know we’re always glad to see you.”

He snatched at her hand as she moved past him. “So give us a goodbye kiss to tide us over,” he said swiftly.

She raised her cheek obediently for his peck and instead found his mouth on hers, the still-warm aroma of coffee mixed with a fractionally too intense pressure of lips. Somewhat startled, she stared up at him, as if searching his face for some assurance that it hadn’t been the kind of kiss it seemed to be. His hands lingered on her shoulders, and then he dropped his arms to his sides, pure Morgan in his cool expression, the usual hint of deviltry in his eyes. “You know, I’ve been waiting nine years for you to find some fault with that Irishman,” he teased.

Somehow it did not have the playful ring that it should have had. Still, she found the smile for him that she supposed should be on her face. Morgan was just…Morgan. He’d be stealing from the cookie jar when he was ninety.