Sunburst

Chapter 6

Morgan was waiting for them.

The late afternoon remained stormy, and the lights in the house were on. Erica was still laughing, Kyle pushing her ahead of him to hustle both of them out of the rain, although it was obvious there was nothing to hurry for-they were both soaked, cold and grass-stained. Erica was well aware that her hair was irretrievably matted and that her blouse was probably ruined with snags and blotches of green. She couldn’t have cared less…

Morgan was standing rock-still when Kyle closed the door behind them, locking out a distant crash of thunder. The bright lights in the kitchen heralded the fact that it was past their normal dinner hour. Morgan had started the meal for them. So thoughtful of him…but when Erica glanced up, she saw Morgan’s eyes narrowed on both of them, a grim expression on his face, that startled her from their laughter.

It must have been obvious what they had been doing. She shivered unconsciously, feeling the unwanted heat of embarrassment in her cheeks even as she glanced at Kyle. “We didn’t mean to be late,” she said in a rush. “We just went out for a little walk…”

“Yes, Erica,” Morgan said mockingly. He winked lewdly at Kyle, and she felt a wave of sheer distaste. Kyle appeared to ignore the wink as he offered her first crack at the shower and poured himself a glass of brandy.

She took the stairs two at a time. In the bathroom, she quickly discarded her damp clothes and turned on the hot water in the shower until the room was steaming. The pelting hot water soothed away the chill, yet she could not rid herself so easily of the resentment and annoyance she felt toward Morgan. She reminded herself how much help he was giving Kyle as she stepped out of the shower and enfolded herself in a thick, bright towel. She reminded herself, too, how much she cared for him, what a good friend he was…but she so desperately wanted to be alone with Kyle tonight! Since the building project had started, they had had a chance to put things back together, to reestablish communication, but Morgan always seemed to be there. They had had to steal away from their own home this afternoon…

By the time Kyle mounted the stairs, Erica had the hair dryer on full blast, a warm terry-cloth jumpsuit covering every inch of her in burnt orange. He said nothing, not that she could have heard anything over the whine of the dryer. Not, for that matter, that she would have said anything about Morgan…

She had never complained about Morgan in the past. These days, she thought fleetingly as she applied blusher and lipstick, Morgan was Mr. Consideration, all warmth and affection. It had not been that way when she first met him, at a time when he and Kyle had shared both a house and a reputation that would have put wolves on the kitty-cat list. The way Morgan used to look at her, the knowing expression that she saw on his face every time Kyle wasn’t looking.

Morgan’s bedroom should have had a revolving door; he certainly had no right to judge anyone else, but actually it wasn’t judgment she saw in his eyes-only a comprehension that had mortified her. He seemed to look at her and speculate about how it was with her and Kyle. She would have felt foolish telling Kyle of her unease around his best friend, and it wasn’t as if she’d felt ashamed.

She wasn’t ashamed. She was in love with Kyle, and if she worried constantly that it had all happened too fast and too powerfully, those thoughts never diminished her love. Kyle wasn’t looking for a child, and she had grown up, learned to look Morgan in the eye, wearing her love like a shield and her pride in that love like a cloak.

With one last flick of the brush, she finished dressing and headed back downstairs determinedly. Morgan had a glass of brandy waiting for her. He was wearing a charcoal short-sleeved shirt and lighter gray pants, the image of a manual laborer instantly dissolved by the skill and costliness of his tailor. Their conversation was stilted as they finished the preparations for dinner and waited for Kyle.

As she sipped at the brandy, Erica noticed hollows of weariness beneath Morgan’s eyes, and felt foolish for her uneasiness. Stop this, she scolded herself finally. Stop being so…silly. She found a smile for him, her real one, and the social graces to put him at ease. It occurred to her that he might not be comfortable in his position, as a third wheel. She did not have to remind herself again how hard he had been working-and only because he cared about her and Kyle.

Yet her nerves prickled uneasily once more when Kyle came back down, his damp hair curling at the edges of his collar, his pale blue shirt heightening the color of his eyes. He refilled his brandy glass before he sat down at the table, and for a moment Erica was afraid the easy laughter was gone; there was a hint of brooding stillness in him when he glanced at Morgan.

Then it was gone, just that quickly. Morgan brought platters to the table with a flourish that announced a gourmet delight. It was impossible to tell what he would come up with when he was given free rein in the kitchen. Tonight the menu was Chinese-chicken, pea pods and peppers in a tangy-sweet sauce, rice and a salad she could guess Kyle’s reaction to, with sprouts, fresh mushrooms, some sort of raw fish.

“It looks delicious,” Erica hurriedly assured Morgan.

“When are you going home so I can have my cook back, Morgan?” Kyle questioned blandly.

Morgan only chuckled. “Listen, McCrery, you can’t survive exclusively on meat and potatoes. I’ve been trying to expand your tastes ever since we were in school together.”

“Don’t buy that,” Kyle told Erica. “When we roomed together, he volunteered to do the cooking if I’d do the general cleanup. If I’d known I was going to end up the sacrificial lamb as a result of that arrangement…” He shook his head. “I can remember the first ‘flaming’ dish he put on. Or put out, to be more accurate. The effect was wasted on his redhead of the moment. We ate smoke for a week.”

Erica chuckled.

“You’re out of your mind,” Morgan informed him. “I get sole credit for the fact that you’re alive today, McCrery. You were trying to survive on four hours’ sleep and potato chips.”

“The only time I was sick in four years was the day you tried out that Indian curry. You’d have thought we’d been drinking contaminated water.”

“It wasn’t that bad-”

“You were sicker than I was.”

Erica relaxed, familiar with their baiting of each other. Thunder crashed outside, lightning streaked a flight of stairs in the sky. She got up to close the long curtains at the front windows. When she returned to the table, she picked up her fork again, only to hear an insistent scratching at the back door. She did her best to ignore it. Blessedly, neither of the men seemed to hear anything. She was relieved to hear them bickering normally; at times lately, they seemed to have less and less in common with each other…

When her plate was empty, Erica got up as if her sole purpose were to set it on the counter. The counter, of course, was a stone’s throw from the back door. The cat was inside before anyone could notice-if the creature had only had the sense not to leap directly for Kyle. Morgan burst out laughing.

Nuisance, she had named the animal, and truthfully the feline looked as good as she was ever going to look after all Erica’s care. The cat was much fatter, her coat almost healthy-looking… But not now. Drenched, Nuisance resembled an oversized rat. Kyle glared down beneath the table, as the cat promptly wound itself damply around his legs.

“She likes you,” Erica said lamely. “Kyle, I couldn’t just leave her out in the rain.”

She quickly set down a saucer of milk to divert the cat, but Nuisance was already roaring a thunderous purr on Kyle’s now-damp stockinged feet. He glanced again under the table and gave a mock shudder of disgust for Morgan’s benefit.

“Cheer up,” Morgan advised. “They say you can at least temporarily ward off a woman’s maternal urges if you get her a pet. I have a feeling you two wouldn’t exactly appreciate a baby right now. A cat’s a hell of a lot cheaper.”

Something changed; Erica couldn’t define it. Kyle leaned back lazily in his chair, eyes riveted on Morgan. “Why on earth would you have the feeling we wouldn’t welcome a baby right now?”

Morgan shrugged. “Well, obviously, financially…”

Kyle shoved his half-full plate away from him, shaking his head mockingly at Morgan. “Sorry, Shane, but one baby wouldn’t be any more problem than one cat, financially or in any other way,” he said shortly, and gave another wry shake of his head at Nuisance, who was staring up at him adoringly. “Though Erica would have to find the mangiest feline in the whole country to take on. I had hoped she could keep her secret a little longer. I have a continual nightmare that, given the least encouragement, she’d have a dozen cats wandering all over the place.”

“Of all the unjustified, exaggerated…” Erica sputtered indignantly.

“Now you have been known to go overboard when you get started on a cause,” Kyle chided teasingly. “Particularly a lost cause…”

But she was watching, mesmerized, as his long arm reached down and his fingers lazily scratched the cat’s neck. When she bent down for a better look, his hand whipped back up to the table, but she wasn’t fooled. “You’ve been feeding her, too,” she accused.

“Never! A cat?”

“I thought we were going through an awful lot of milk.”

“Erica. I hate cats.” But his hand was sneaking down again and Erica smiled broadly at her big, tough, brooding Irishman.

“So that’s why you haven’t produced a little McCrery,” Morgan interjected harshly. “You think she wouldn’t want to stop at one.”

Erica’s head whipped around at his strangely abrasive tone. A tone that Kyle suddenly matched. “Still worrying about it, Morgan? You’ll be a godfather, all in good time. You’re the only one we know with enough money to be godfather to the brood Erica and I want.”

“And I’m sure they’ll all be black-haired, blue-eyed little Irishmen,” Morgan said sarcastically.

“You can bet on it.” Kyle smiled.

Erica could have turned water to ice cubes with her smile. The brood of children she wanted was news to her. The subject of a family seemed to have come out of nowhere, along with Morgan’s hostility and Kyle’s matching antagonism. Kyle had wanted her to himself in the beginning. He had made no secret of that, and it was exactly what she had wanted as well. He’d been a busy man, and she’d wanted every free minute she could have with him. Only for the past year and a half or so had her maternal urges become more insistent yearnings…but then his father had become ill. Children were important to her, but never as important as Kyle.

The men moved away from the table, went down to the living room, and Erica hurried to take care of the dishes. Morgan was as uneasy as a prowling cougar. Restlessly, he paced to the drapes and back to his chair; then he was up again to pour drinks for both men. Though they were talking about the progress of the building, Erica noted again a charged tension between the two men that never used to be there. She didn’t know what to make of it, but she had the curious feeling that if she didn’t get away from them, the whole brilliant happiness of the earlier afternoon was going to splinter like shattered glass.

She finished the last of the dishes, switched off the counter lights and scooped up the cat as she paused by the stairs. “Excuse me, will you two?” They were oblivious to her. Nuisance curled to her neck, encouraged by the rain-silken curtain of her hair. Upstairs, Erica sank into the chair in her own special corner of the room, feeling a sudden weariness as she reached for the basket of crewel beside her. As she worked with her hands, she felt the tension inside her evaporate. The lamp made a soft halo all around her in the peaceful room. The cat nestled at her side, batting interestedly at the bright yarn as she worked.

The men’s voices carried upstairs, but she paid no attention. Absently, she noticed that there were two packages still to be put away. She folded the negligee with care and shook out the dress before hanging it up, admiring both garments silently, crumpling the wrappings and tossing them in the wastebasket. The little noises blurred the sound of voices from below, until she sat down with her embroidery again.

“We’ve known each other a long time, yet only once, Kyle, did you ever really talk about your father,” Morgan was saying. “We were both drunk out of our minds, we had just sent a pair of twin blondes home. Do you remember?”

The cat’s claws instinctively tightened on Erica’s thigh when she stiffened. Kyle’s quiet voice had the kind of timbre that carried.

“I remember our sophomore year as a time when we took on everything in three-month binges, from philosophy to social causes to drinking. Hardly a time to put much stock in anything either of us said.”

“You said he was a failure. You were scared as hell of following in his footsteps. You washed floors to put yourself through school, waited tables, anything, McCrery, to make sure you had what you needed to get to the top-”

“My father wasn’t a failure,” Kyle replied curtly. “I thought that, yes. I thought a lot of asinine things when I was twenty. He refused to do what he didn’t want to do, and he lived as he chose to live. I no longer call that being a failure; I respect him for it. Rising to the top to meet someone else’s standards doesn’t build self-respect, Morgan. You should know that. You’ve played the game on your father’s heels; I played the game to get out from under my father’s. The end is the same. What exactly do you think you have if you don’t live by your own rules? What do you think of yourself when you look in the mirror in the morning?”

There was a tense silence. Unease settled like a hard lump in Erica’s throat as the voices wafted to her with undercurrents she had never heard before. As she glanced at the embroidery frame in her lap, she saw that the stitches were haphazard, awry. She dropped it, unconsciously putting the cool fingers of one hand to her forehead and stroking the cat with the other hand.

“That’s all very nice,” Morgan drawled suddenly. “But the point is that you’re here. A little country town in the middle of nowhere. A lot of trees and your business, and a drive-in movie on a Saturday night-more power to you, if that’s what you want.”

“Shane, why the hell don’t you say what you want to say?” Kyle said wearily.

There was another silence. “For how long?” Morgan asked finally.

“I don’t know.”

“One year? Ten? The rest of your life?”

“I don’t know.” He spoke so quietly that Erica had to strain to make out the words. She stood up suddenly and folded her arms instinctively across her breasts in a protective gesture she couldn’t explain.

“It’s not right. You know it isn’t.”

“It’s none of your business, Morgan.”

“I wonder whether you even asked her ahead of time if she wanted to come here after your father died. She talks it up real well, McCrery, but I don’t think you’re so sure. I’ll even bet that you didn’t consult her before you borrowed from the bank for that building. Did you?” There was a short silence, and then Morgan barked out a laugh that sounded triumphant.

As quietly as possible, Erica closed the door on them. She felt a wave of nausea flood through her. She hated arguments. She had grown up in a houseful of them, although her parents claimed to have a happy marriage. It was just their way. Because of “their way,” she had nightmares so terrible that her mother had taken her to a psychologist when she was eleven. He had sent her home after the first visit. A very bright girl, he had said, certainly not in the least emotionally unstable. She was simply oversensitive, at a difficult age. She would outgrow it.

She hadn’t. She closed her eyes, hearing the muted sound of voices raised in anger, and then, shortly afterward, a door slammed. Morgan going to his trailer.

She didn’t understand. Vaguely, she was aware that Morgan was trying to champion her. That thought brought about a massive sense of distress inside. She didn’t need champions, didn’t want one…but so much more than that she hadn’t understood. They were sniping at each other, not at all like the friends they had always been. Yet Morgan had come here solely to help; Kyle had seen Morgan through crises so many times… It made no sense.

Nor did destroying a friendship of long standing because of a thirty-minute argument, no matter what the cause.

Erica headed downstairs. It was tomb-silent below. Kyle was standing next to the couch, amber liquid in the glass in his hand. When she approached his side, his eyes met hers, hooded blue, and he took a sip from the glass. He had retreated inside himself and was as different from her lover of the afternoon as the sun from the moon.

“I couldn’t help hearing,” she said hesitantly.

“I heard you close the door. You missed the best part.”

She took a breath. “Kyle, I don’t know what it was about, but it doesn’t matter,” she said carefully. “Morgan…maybe he shouldn’t have brought up your father. Maybe it sounded as though he was questioning you, Kyle, but…surely you know that he’s really always been jealous of you? No matter how much he has, he never seems to have the…inner strength that you have. He’s always challenged you. He comes to show off his toys; he comes…”

“What a good defender you make for him,” Kyle snapped. “As he does for you. A mutual admiration society.”

The comment stung. “I wasn’t trying to defend him,” she said quietly. “I just don’t want the two of you to destroy a friendship that’s important to you. I know he came here to help you, but I still have the feeling that things are really the other way around-that Morgan needs something from you right now, Kyle-”

“That’s my Erica,” Kyle interrupted wearily. He emptied the contents of his glass in a long gulp and stared at her. “You do like underdogs, lady. The only problem is that I’ve never been willing to play that role. Not for anyone.” He refilled his glass with straight scotch from the sideboard cabinet. “And you’re as loyal as they come,” he added broodingly. “You’d stick with me through thick and thin and never tell a soul it was tearing you into little pieces.”

“What are you talking about?” she said unhappily, feeling awkward as she stood frozen to the spot.

“Loyalty, Erica. The difference between loyalty and love. You’ve dug in with me; I know exactly what that feels like. I’ve been there,” Kyle said harshly.

She stared at him blankly. He made loyalty sound like something sick. Emotions clogged her throat, hearing him talk to her this way after the afternoon in the wheat field a few hours before. She could easily have told him why she had dug in with him, could have said love and loyalty, but she was suddenly achingly certain that he would throw her feelings back in her face. Confused, she tried to back up. “I don’t know what this has to do with your argument with Morgan…”

“Don’t you? Morgan’s got it all, Erica. Security, wealth, the kind of position in life you have a right to.” His eyes were like ice as he forced a drink into her hand; she took it and gulped. It would have spilled if she hadn’t. Her hands were trembling.

“What Morgan has or is has nothing to do with us. He’s your friend, Kyle.” She hesitated. “God in heaven, if you don’t want him here, why don’t you send him away?”

Kyle’s brooding eyes settled on her. “Do you want him to go?”

Erica hesitated, afraid anything she said would be wrong.

“You find that such a difficult question?”

“No.” She flushed, adding awkwardly, “And no, I don’t want to see him leave. Not right now.” Not when the two of them were at odds; not when their separating in anger would destroy the friendship. Nor did she want to be responsible for severing the tie between the two men.

“I didn’t think you did.”

His sarcasm wounded her. She turned away, feeling how stilted her movements were, and bent to turn out the light between the two chairs, setting down her drink. The shading darkness was better. All she wanted was to go back upstairs before he could say any more…

Suddenly, he was behind her, his hands on her shoulders spinning her to face him, her chin uptilted as she was trying to gulp for air. His fingers closed around her upper arms as if he wanted to shake her.

“Please, Kyle,” she protested.

“What the hell are you thinking. Erica?” A desperate frustration seemed to explode inside him. He was a stranger, a strong man with too many feelings she could barely understand pent up inside him. “You’re shaking like a leaf; you think I don’t know you can’t stand the sound of raised voices? Lord, Erica, I’d never hurt you, but I’ve got to know what you’re feeling. I have to know you have the courage to make a choice for yourself, even if it means hurting people. You’ve got to take a stand, not from loyalty but from what you genuinely feel, what you need in your life. There’s no love when there’s no free and open choice with it-do you understand?”

How could he expect her to understand anything when he was shouting at her? Confusion and fear pulsed through her; all circuits crisscrossed inside. Then the confusion cleared, and she was left with a very clear picture in her mind of their lovemaking that afternoon, of the rain falling on them and her own whimpered pleasure, of his laughter, his mastery of her, of the moment she had given every vestige of herself in loving him. The man towering above her, shouting at her, made a mockery of that. Her hand reached up and cracked like lightning across his cheek.

The blow must have stung like fire. His cheek was red, his eyes dulled with shock. She had never felt so deadly calm. “You wanted me to express how I was feeling?” she asked evenly. She nodded for him when he didn’t answer. “Fine,” she said flatly. “You got what you wanted, Kyle.”