“I thought you wanted to come here to talk about a separation, Erica. I thought…” His palms cupped her face, raising it so he could look into her eyes. “You told me you’d had enough, if we couldn’t go back the way we were. We can’t go back to the Florida lifestyle, Erica, the affluence…”
She shook her head helplessly. “Kyle, I was talking about love, not money. I thought you didn’t love me anymore, that you were trying to push me away. That’s why I thought you wanted to come here, that you were trying to be kind by taking me away from everyone, so you could tell me-”
“Never that,” he whispered. He turned her around and pulled her back against him, folding his arms under her breasts, cradling her against his thighs. His chin nuzzled her hair back so that her neck was bare for the soft kiss he placed there. “Never that,” he repeated. “All I wanted was to bring you to a place where you couldn’t escape. I thought that if we could just be together I could remind you how much love we’ve always had, Erica. No matter how things changed, no matter how I thought your feelings had changed, I still wanted a chance to show you…I can give you a wealth of security in terms of love…”
Her arms covered his, tightening as his did. “Oh, Kyle…”
“It took me so damned long to get my own house in order. I wanted so much for you, Erica. The world. I saw too much in terms of things, because I wanted the best life for you. I still want the best, the most of laughter and loving, the most of sharing and commitment. I just didn’t know what real security was until I thought I’d lost it.”
She twisted in his arms, lifting her head up to stare at him, her eyes searching his. “Couldn’t you have shared it?” she whispered. “After nine years of marriage, couldn’t you have let me know how badly you were hurting, Kyle? Couldn’t you have trusted me to understand, instead of keeping all your hurt inside you?”
His mouth dipped down on hers, blocking out the soft moon rays, sweeping her up in that sensual world they’d always shared with each other. She felt his pain, something he had never been able to communicate before, his desperate grappling with his instinctive pride. Now he told her, with exquisite, sensitive tenderness. His fingertips trembled in her hair, combing the strands over and over, winding the silk in his hands. His lips whispered over her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks. His chest rubbed against the tightening tips of her breasts, and his thighs grazed hers.
“I made the sunburst for you,” he said softly. “I see you that way, as my sun. As light and fire and softness, sometimes elusive, always warming everyone around you, Erica. Should it be easier because we have nine years behind us? I think it’s harder. I love you so much more, with so much more depth; we’ve shared so much. The thought of losing you now is infinitely more painful even than when I first loved you. I feel so…vulnerable. I feel that in loving you I should always be able to do the best thing for you, even if it hurts me…”
By unspoken agreement, they made their way back down the circular stairs, and walked across the sand to their camp. They bundled their sleeping bags into their arms and retraced their steps to the lighthouse. Erica listened as Kyle kept talking, anticipating much of what he had to say…needed to say out loud. He hadn’t turned to her in time of trouble-out of shame. He’d turned his back on his father when he was eighteen to make his own way, at a time when Joel was drinking heavily and needed him. At eighteen, Kyle could take no more of poverty, of insecurity, of responsibilities he’d carried from the time he was a small child.
Financially, he’d continued to care for his father, but the burden of desertion had always weighed heavily on his conscience. He wasn’t proud of his actions, and he hadn’t wanted Erica, who was raised in health and sunshine and silver-spoon security, to know about the kind of childhood he’d had. But when his father was dying, he had accused Kyle of running out on everything that really mattered to him, not only on his father, but on his love of wood, his roots.
Joel had accused Kyle of running and had challenged him to come home to see if he wasn’t right. “And he was right,” Kyle said quietly. “The need to work with my hands was always there, the urge to create in my own way. The need to make the McCrery name mean something again, as a last loyalty to my dad. And as a loyalty…to myself.”
They spread the sleeping bags side by side at the top of the lighthouse again and stretched out on their sides, with a star-sprinkled sky for a ceiling, their haven a symbol of shelter in that lonely landscape. Erica listened, the puzzle pieces all falling into place, aching for the man who’d tried so hard to do right, even as a small boy. She could finally see so clearly how he’d confused love with loyalty thinking that the two were in opposition. She reached over to touch his face, to smooth away the last lines on his forehead. He pressed a kiss into her palm.
She wanted desperately to tell him that he had nothing to feel guilty about, that he had been as good to his father as any son could be. In time, perhaps, he would listen to her; she knew he had been working out the feelings all through these many months. Now it seemed more important that she just listen; that was what he most needed from her. And she needed to hear that he was willing to solve those problems through the channel of communication that they’d allowed to develop. It was never Joel McCrery or Morgan who had nearly destroyed their relationship; it was their own failure to talk to each other. Clearly.
Erica was willing to talk all night.
Kyle was willing to talk all night.
Something happened, though, as they continued to speak in whispers. They found other ways of communicating, as she touched his face, as he touched her hand, as they stared at each other so long in the moonlight. The night breeze obliged them by turning cool; they moved closer together. Two sleeping bags were suddenly too many.
Her knee touched his and found itself captured between his long legs. He couldn’t seem to keep his hands out of the sun-gold of her hair. Erica, as aware as Kyle of what was happening, smiled radiantly.
She heard a husky growl that sounded suspiciously like laughter at her response, from deep in his throat. She heard it, and then she felt it when his lips teased an evocative little message on hers. “Mrs. McCrery, through thick and thin, you may have noticed that a few things have never changed.”
She slid her hand down his side, over his lean ribs to his narrow hips, watching his whole body tense in response. She tried it again, with even more pleasing results. Restlessly, he drew her hips closer to his with one long leg, his hand beginning a gentle, sweet discovery of her left breast, as if he’d never touched it before. “What has never changed?” she inquired lightly.
“Your body loves mine.”
“I think your body is the problem, Mr. McCrery. It’s got a one-track mind. It always has had.” She sucked in her breath when he leaned over her, his tongue replacing his hand on her breast. “Kyle…”
“In a minute, Erica.”
A minute was just too long. She forgot the thought. There was a time for lovemaking that took hours, and a time for loving that captured all the emotions in short order. This was a short-order time. It was all there, the lonely trial they’d put each other through, their renewed hope and faith in the future, their stronger feelings of love. And the first time they made love that night, it was with a desperate need to deal with all of that, a hunger to reseal the bonds of commitment, a desire born of love, an urgent need to please and know each other. And last, the simplest wish, to communicate with each other on a level beyond words.
Afterward, Kyle held her close, still warming her in his arms, pressing soft, tender kisses on her forehead, in her hair. She lay still, watching the stars above them, feeling precious and cherished and well, well loved. They would survive; she knew that. There would be other crises; she knew that, too. That came with the territory of marriage. The thought filled her with more anticipation than fear. Their love measured up, had strength to endure all trials.