Jennifer Greene - Sunburst

Trying to love, she thought bleakly. Not really loving? Was it possible she had been blinded by her feelings for him so long that she’d never seen his own feelings changing?

“Erica, we’ve both changed,” Kyle said quietly. “I feel so much at fault. At eighteen I wasn’t a very honest man. Not honest with myself, not honest with you, at least not about the things that mattered to me. I’m not proud of that. But I can’t be less than honest anymore. Part of that is admitting we didn’t have the relationship we thought we had…”

“No,” she choked out, and headed for the stairs. If they talked any further, she was afraid he would say out loud things she couldn’t stand to hear. She wasn’t ready to walk out on their marriage. She was terrified that was what he really wanted, that he was trying to tell her he had only believed he loved her.

“Erica-”

His hand closed on her wrist; she jerked free. “All I want is for things to be as they were, Kyle.” When he loved her. To hell with the beach house and the luxuries, but at least she’d never doubted his loving her when they lived in Florida. “If we can’t have that, there just isn’t anything else to talk about.”

He was silent then, making no move to impede her climbing the stairs…alone. For a moment, she saw anguish carved in stark ashen color in his features, but she saw it through a blur of tears. Not wanting him to see the tears, she averted her face and escaped to the loft.

Outside, a dismal little mist of rain fell, and a blustery breeze kept snatching leaves and hurling them at the windows. “Now listen, you two,” Morgan said humorously as he pushed aside his dinner plate and looked at both of them. “It’s raining, so there’ll be no work tonight. I think it’s time we all got out of here for a little while. Let’s head for a movie.”

Erica glanced up from her plate at the suggestion, though it had no appeal for her. She had made every effort these past three days to work herself into the ground, and at the moment she was physically and emotionally exhausted. Neither she nor Kyle had mentioned the word divorce, but emotionally she felt as if she were hanging on to life by a fraying thread.

Kyle was as tired as she was, having spent every waking minute completing the roof of the new building. Abrupt and short with everyone else, he had simply been quiet with Erica. He outworked every man employed by him with a drive and single-minded determination that struck her at times as frightening; he was barely willing to stop for sleep. She worried that he wasn’t sleeping…

And in the meantime, there was Morgan, who could visit a quadriplegic in the hospital and walk out two hours later without ever having mentioned illness. Why bother with “how are you” when a fool could see the answer was “terrible”? He made no mention of the fact that Erica and Kyle were avoiding each other like wary kittens in the same territory, and simply stepped in as if he enjoyed having the floor, a born entertainer.

And if the idea of going out to a movie had no appeal, suddenly it occurred to Erica that neither was it fair for Morgan to be continually thrust into their own pervasively glum atmosphere. She stood up from the dinner table. “We could see what’s on,” she suggested, handing Morgan the newspaper before she started stacking the dishes.

He found a romantic comedy that sounded campy-exactly Morgan’s cup of tea. “Unfortunately, it starts in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes!” Erica cast an appalled look at her faded jeans. The blouse had once been a good one, a tailored, formfitting, dark crimson cotton, but there was a worn spot on the shoulder. Having showered just before dinner, she had simply snatched the first thing she found in the closet, in a hurry to have dinner ready and be prepared to work again afterward.

“You look fine, sweetheart, and you know it,” Morgan admonished. “Isn’t the idea for the lady to show off her figure with the clothes she puts on? More than successful, those jeans…”

She made a face at him. The idea of getting out had begun to seem more appealing, almost enough to put life into her features after days of numbness. And the men were hardly decked out in finery. Morgan’s black turtleneck had a few years behind it, and Kyle’s simple work shirt was old and soft, a honey color that rivaled his tan.

“So get some shoes on,” Morgan scolded.

“I am! I am!” She scooted up to the loft for a pair of sandals, slipped them on and hurried back down with a hairbrush in her hand. From the hall closet, she snatched a raincoat, and on her way through the kitchen, she put the broiler pan under water to soak.

“Come on!”

“I am!”

Morgan was holding the door open, letting in torrential blasts of rain, and she hurried toward him, only now realizing that Kyle was not part of the hustle. She turned with a questioning look toward him.

“No, I’m not going,” he said quietly. “There’s work I have to get done. Nothing that you need to be involved in, Erica.”

That changed the option suddenly. Though she would have said no if Kyle had asked her one on one, Morgan’s being there made it possible for the two of them to be together without friction. But going with just Morgan… The brightness faded a little from her eyes. Her purse slipped from her shoulder and she snatched at it. “Listen, why don’t you two go, then?” she suggested. “Perhaps I can do whatever you planned on, Kyle, and there are really a thousand other things I have-”

“You go, Erica.” Kyle spoke quietly, but his jaw tightened as if he were impatient with the subject.

More loyalty he didn’t want? Or was she being irrationally sensitive? Yet a simple decision had somehow turned into something absurdly complex.

“Would the two of you quit fighting over my company?” Morgan complained humorously.

“Nut,” she retorted, as she finally pulled up her collar and headed out the door. It was a nasty evening. The wind had a bite to it; the rain was spattering down from a cold, black sky. Morgan snatched at her hand to hurry her to his Porsche, and when she settled breathlessly in the seat and glanced back at the house, Kyle was at the window, a still, tall form without expression, his face in shadow.

For a moment, there was the sharpest pain in the region of her heart. Kyle had already turned away as Morgan started the engine, and the unfamiliar sound of such power in a car distracted her from the intense ache of loneliness she felt, both from within her and from the look of the man she was married to.

“This is luxury!”

“You’ll be spoiled, I guarantee it.”

She tried to be impressed with the car, to please Morgan. The seats had a soft, velvety feel, and the chrome up front glittered beneath wet street lamps as they sped along. The Porsche appeared to take corners on a dime and certainly swallowed the road, making Morgan grin like a small boy showing off. On one curve, his shoulder inevitably brushed hers, and gradually it occurred to her that she was actually alone in the car with Morgan, as if she were single, on a date.

His aftershave was pervasive in the closed car, and his profile was outlined as the glow of street lights spilled in to silhouette it-a very good-looking Roman profile with just the slightest hint of extra flesh beneath his chin. The black turtleneck emphasized his blondness, and she saw a rather cruel cut to his mouth she hadn’t noticed before. The gleam in his dark eyes she had always seen as softness now seemed something else. Predatory. It was nothing unnerving, just an awareness of how Morgan might actually be on a date, his seduction plans too carefully masked by the charm of the hours before. She shivered.

“We’ll have you warm in a minute. But I can hardly believe we have to turn on a heater at the end of July.”

There was a crowd in front of the small movie theater as Morgan’s car pulled up. She stepped out of the car automatically, and Morgan chided her for it. “I still happen to like opening car doors for a lady. You’ve obviously been married too long, sexy.”

She laughed, but perhaps that was the beginning of a rather silly feeling of unease. His arm went around her shoulder to protect her from the windy rain as they waited on line, and though it was just a normal affectionate gesture, she felt disquieted again. There was a little contretemps when she pulled out her change purse to pay for her ticket, and she gave up, finally. The idea of her paying actually seemed to offend him. At the popcorn counter, they had a prolonged debate over candies-still another strangeness. Chiding herself for her oversensitivity-this was Morgan-she followed him into the theater as the lights were dimming.

Once the movie started, she managed to relax. The story was exactly what had been promised-a man who bed-hopped was finally caught by a Little Miss Priss type. Priss was, of course, sexy as hell once she took off her glasses; the hero never knew what hit him. The story didn’t have a shadow of realism to it, and the theme was antiquated, but it did have humor and warmth and lightness…abetted by Morgan, who provided a whispered running commentary next to her. “Do you believe that fool?” he hissed in her ear. “No one could be that stupid.”

“The worst rakes always fall like gangbusters,” she whispered back. “You just know how happy you could be being led around on a leash, sweetheart.” She had taken off her sandals and had her legs curled under her, which was the way she always watched movies. Morgan’s shoulders filled the adjoining seat, and he had one leg crossed over the other; he was a husky man who took up space. He’d insisted she hold the popcorn that she hadn’t wanted in her lap, and he continually reached for it. She shifted regularly. His fingers invariably brushed her thigh or stomach in the dark before they found the container of popcorn. She was sure he was unconscious of it, but she was all too aware of these intimate contacts.