“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.”
Chapter 7
Erica woke before the sunrise, to a scratchy little tongue trying to wend its way into her ear. Her hand automatically reached outside of the covers to stroke the cat. A thunderous purr resulted.
Unsmiling, she opened her eyes. The room was gray in the predawn light, lifeless and silent. She had locked the door to the loft; she had no idea where Kyle had slept.
The air was chilly, and a crisp breeze stirred the draperies at the open windows. The cat nuzzled insistently, uncaring of the early hour, the chill, anything so irrelevant as heartache. Nuisance wanted food, and to go back out on the prowl. In a few minutes, Erica was dressed in a short, loosely knit topaz top and dark brown jeans. She tried applying makeup to hide the shadows under her eyes, but the effect looked painted; she wiped it off, brushed her hair vigorously, and headed downstairs, the cat leading the way.
Kyle and Morgan were both in the kitchen nursing their coffee, their shoulders hunched and weary. The sun was peeking through the kitchen window; the men for the building project would be arriving soon. Kyle and Morgan were talking in low, morning voices, but she felt both pairs of eyes on her as she prepared a bowl of milk for the cat and then poured a cup of coffee for herself.
She felt Morgan. He radiated concern. She didn’t want it.
Kyle looked-the problematic Celt he was. He had not brushed his black hair yet, and he had probably slept in his T-shirt, but he had the kind of good looks that were enhanced rather than obliterated by hollows beneath his eyes. He was straddling the stool, his jeans stretched taut over his lean thighs, all hard muscle and no waste. He had the look of a very strong and complicated man, who could wear his melancholy like an air of mystery, and whose dishevelment implied sensuality to her, even now.
The cat lapped up the milk. Erica found a breakfast roll for herself, and as soon as Nuisance was done drinking, she opened the back door and followed the cat outside.
“Erica?”
She heard Kyle’s quick step, but she closed the door behind her quietly, deliberately. She wasn’t giving him the silent treatment, nor was she sulking. She simply had nothing to say. What could she possibly say when he had all but told her he no longer loved her?
Her mind was still spinning webs of anger and hurt just as it had through the long night. It was not the kind of morning on which she noticed the crystal gleam of sunlight on dew-soaked grass, or the bright chatterings of cardinals and blue jays above her head as she walked toward the old shop. She just kept remembering the sting of her palm, the cold look in his eyes, the nauseating realization that her love and loyalty meant nothing to him…
Absently, she tossed the unfinished breakfast roll to a trio of squirrels waiting hopefully at the edge of the woods. Kyle seemed to have been trying to tell her last night that it was over. There’s no love without an active choice, he’d said.
But there was love without choice: the feeling a parent had for a child; the sensations one felt on seeing an attractive person of the opposite sex; the feeling one had when the sun was out on a certain kind of day. But the kind of love that mattered in a marriage was not free at all; it involved commitment, an active choice day after day, just to live through those days when the sun wasn’t shining, the days after a spat over a good-looking man who had made a pass, the days when one of them had the flu and courtesy was the only thing that helped them get through the hours. One made that choice to muddle through because the love was worth it, because the relationship was worth it…because the man was worth it, she thought achingly. And she’d made her choice; it just increasingly seemed that Kyle was choosing differently.