“You think I was going to stand around and watch your love turn into resentment, Erica? You declared your loyalty with never a single resentful word, as if you had a little halo around your head. You’re never going to tell me that you didn’t have second thoughts about our moving to Wisconsin, that you didn’t resent the changes in our lifestyle. How I could see myself in you! I never showed an ounce of resentment toward my father, either-and maybe that’s why I never saw what was happening between us until it was too late. And no, it wasn’t a damned cookstove, Erica, but I brought you down-”
If she were a man, she would have shaken him. As it was, her eyes blazed up at his, filled with hurt and pain. “You didn’t bring me down, you stubborn bastard! When are you going to get that through your head? The only time you hurt me was when you failed to share your feelings with me. I had a right to know what you were feeling. I had a right to know you were mucking up everything in your head-”
In spite of the pinched look in his eyes, he allowed himself a twist of a smile at her choice of words. “Erica. You had a right to your choices. You had a right to say what you needed and wanted. The ring on your finger-I couldn’t turn it into a prison chain. That wouldn’t have been love-and I’d been chained by ties that destroyed love. I was locked in by the debts I owed to my father-financial, moral… Hell, you know I love the wood. I’ve been trying to tell you that you’re no prisoner, Erica. I’ve been trying to tell myself that loving you meant ensuring that you had choices.”
Her whole body suddenly went still in shock, even before the import of what he’d said registered in her head. “Are you trying to tell me that you knew Morgan was coming on to me? You knew?”
His body had turned to stone at the tone of her voice; his eyes were searching hers, but he was silent. “You knew?” She kicked a footful of sand at him. Then leaned down and picked up a fistful of it, hurling at him. The sand connected with his chest, and she reached down to pick up another handful. He dodged the spewing sand that would have connected with his face; his eyes were suddenly blazing like her own. She couldn’t have cared less.
“Was that the idea? Letting me experience someone else’s love so that I could make a choice?”
“No!”
The word came from his gut, but she was no longer listening. She whirled around in a tempest of red-gold hair and started running. Her toes dug into the sand so hard they hurt; air clogged so tight in her lungs that it choked her. When he’d said he understood about Morgan, she thought he meant that Morgan had talked to him first, told him lies. She never dreamed that Kyle had known that Morgan was coming on to her like a heavy-handed octopus and never lifted a finger to help her… Love? A few minutes ago, every instinct had told her she had his love. Now the pain kept coming, like needle-sharp waves. He let that happen? She barely heard his husky voice, rasping with emotion.
“Erica…”
“You just leave me completely alone!”
Chapter 15
There was only one place to run to in that deserted landscape.
A jagged concrete arch was all that remained of the door to the lighthouse. The floor was covered with sand, and straggly weeds weaved near the curved steps; moonlight illuminated the eerie entrance. The spiral staircase wound upward. She wanted a haven, and she wanted to be alone, and she didn’t care that the staircase looked unsafe and very, very old.
The first step held when she put her weight on it, and the second and the third. The fourth creaked ominously, and Erica balanced herself with her hand on the cement wall, her heart beating frantically. Whatever railing might have been there at one time no longer existed. The fifth step seemed to tremble beneath her foot, and her heart stopped beating completely. She went down on hands and knees as a child would.
“Erica, dammit! It isn’t safe at night-”
“Leave me alone!”
Finally, she reached the top and took a deep, anguished breath. The floor of the lighthouse was solid, but there 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…”