She was barely aware of the grin that rose to her lips. But she was aware of opening her arms. “Want to make the earth move again?”
Kirk didn’t answer. He showed her instead.
* * *
Before morning’s first light could creep into the room, Kirk left her bed. Though she was sound asleep, she still knew the moment he withdrew. The emptiness engulfed her, leaving her cold and alone. It seeped into her dream until she awoke to discover that her dream was a reality.
He was gone.
The place beside her was still warm, and she laid her cheek against it, savoring the feel of it, imagining him still there.
“Oh, Kirk,” she whispered softly to the darkness, “where do we go from here?” She knew where she wanted them to go, to the next logical level. But it was never simple with Kirk. There were still layers to remove and secrets to uncover.
If he let her. If he trusted her.
Rachel refused to let the bereft feeling that hovered about her eat away at her. She knew he’d had to leave before Ethan woke up. This wasn’t the time for sadness. Instead, she dwelled on the night they had spent together. On the passion that they had shared. She vowed silently that it would happen again. All she had to do, she thought as sleep began to revisit her, was keep a positive attitude. She’d never given up hope on Ethan, and look where that had led.
She didn’t doubt, not even for a moment, though she knew his emotional baggage was far greater, that the same would happen with Kirk.
* * *
Kirk spent Sunday in the dark. Literally. He had set up his studio, complete with a makeshift darkroom, in the back bedroom. After leaving Rachel, he had gone directly there.
It soothed him to work with what he knew. Calmed him. He developed roll after roll of the film that he and Ethan had taken, scrutinizing each shot carefully. He selected only the very best for enlarging. Still, as the hours passed, the pile of photographs on his worktable increased steadily. Kirk was careful to keep the ones Ethan had taken separate from the others. They would be subtly mixed in later, to reflect the child’s perspective on the town they had all grown up in.
Rachel would like that, he thought. It was the kind of thing she enjoyed.
It would make a good farewell gift. When he left Bedford the last time, he had given Rachel a leather-bound collection of Agatha Christie’s novels. This time, he would give her Bedford, bound up with a ribbon, with her son’s imprint on it.
He would give her the album, and a piece of his soul he knew he wouldn’t be taking with him when he left.
Kirk shut out the thought as he continued to work. Behind him, the shadows slowly lengthened on the walls.
* * *
She hadn’t seen him in two days. Two long, miserable, endless days.
Rachel knew that Kirk hadn’t left town. In her heart, she told herself that he couldn’t possibly leave so abruptly, without saying goodbye. Her belief was reinforced by the light she saw in his room at night.
She wanted to go over and demand to know what was going on. Demand to know why he was hiding from her.
She didn’t.
Somehow, though she was given to barging into the lives of people she cared about, she just didn’t think it was right for her to intrude on his privacy. Yet.
Maybe, she thought, he just needed to work all this through. There were times when he was far too intellectual for his own good. Or hers.
Waiting around was killing her.
He didn’t return all day Sunday, the way she had hoped he would after he slipped out of her room like a wisp of a dream. Monday was one of her two early days, so she didn’t need Kirk to pick Ethan up.
She just needed him.
Kirk had obviously used that as an excuse not to come over at all. By then it had been all she could do to restrain Ethan from bounding over to Kirk’s house and presenting himself at his front door. Just the way she wanted to.
Today was Tuesday. Per their agreement, Kirk had to pick Ethan up. That meant he would be there when she arrived home. But would he be there because he had to be, because they had a bargain, or because he wanted to be?
Their night of passion had put an entirely different spin on their relationship. Had it destroyed it altogether?
She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully as she sat at her desk, facing her nine-o’clock class. Had she and Kirk crossed a line by making love the other night? A line he wouldn’t cross back? Had making love frightened him away permanently? God, she hoped not. She had no idea how he was reacting to what had happened between them, but she knew that, for her, once wasn’t enough. Once only served to make her want him that much more.
It wasn’t the sex, though that had been breathtaking. It was the tenderness that called to her, the reverence in his touch that had her aching for more.
Damn it, Kirk, don’t turn your back on this.
“Ms. Reed?”
Horrified, Rachel suddenly realized that she was staring at a student, and that he had been asking her a question. Repeatedly, from the expression on his face. A question she hadn’t heard.
Rachel blinked, suppressing the embarrassment she felt. “I’m sorry, yes?”
The young man exchanged a look with the girl on his left. Both looked somewhat confused by her behavior. “Will that be on the test?”
She had absolutely no idea what the student was referring to. Rachel debated making a confession, then decided to bluff her way through. Her smile was nothing short of mysterious.
“Why don’t I just leave that as a surprise?” she suggested. Her words were met with a communal groan that she was certain echoed out into the hall through the open classroom door. She refused to be drawn in by the plaintive looks. “Always study as much as you can. Remember, it’s better to be overprepared than underprepared.”
The bell rang just then, mercifully saving her from having to continue with her charade. The past forty-seven minutes were a blank to her. She sincerely hoped she hadn’t sounded like a complete idiot.
The last student shuffled from the room, and she let out a sigh. Automatically she began piling her books and notes into her briefcase. She was going to have to get back on the ball, Rachel thought, upbraiding herself. She couldn’t let her students suffer, just because their instructor was suddenly behaving like a love-sick puppy.
“Is that your general rule of thumb? Be overprepared?”
Her heart became swiftly and firmly lodged in her throat as she swung around. Kirk had come to see her.
“What are you doing here?” But joy instantly evaporated as Rachel fell upon the only plausible reason for his appearance. “You’re not going away, are you?”
Kirk couldn’t recall when he’d seen such pronounced disappointment on her face. He suspected it was vanity that caused him to feel pleased.
“No.” He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his faded jeans and pretended that her smile of relief didn’t warm his heart. “I should be, but no, not yet.” He felt awkward, being here. Awkward because he wanted to be here so much—because she was here. “I thought I’d haunt your stomping grounds for a while.”
“Fair enough.”
Kirk watched as she snapped the locks on her briefcase. That was what he was straining against, he thought. Locks. Locks on his soul. Locks on his freedom. Locks like the ones on the closet his father had habitually pushed him into as a child, even when he begged to be let out.
Kirk looked around the room, noticing everything. And seeing nothing.
“The truth is—” he lowered his voice so that she had to strain to hear “—I told myself to stay away.” She said nothing as she picked up her case. He struggled on. Words were not his medium. “But I wanted to see you.” He shrugged his shortcomings away. “I thought it was safer in a public place.” His eyes skimmed over her mouth. His own felt like dried-out cotton. “That way, I wouldn’t be tempted.”
She knew him well enough, or thought she did, to read between the lines. Locking the classroom door b
ehind her, she turned to him. “Is it working?”
“No.” He shook his head as he fell into step beside her. “I’m still tempted, but at least here I can’t do anything about it.”
Her laughter slipped effortlessly under his skin, branding him. Unsettling him further.
“I have a tiny office,” she offered. “It just about fits two.”
He took her arm, and they moved toward the exit, a little more quickly. He figured she was kidding, but he wasn’t taking any chances. “You’re not making it any easier, Funny Face.”
She’d always taken the name to be a term of endearment. But it was different now. It signaled his retreat. “No more Rachel?”
“Not for now.” Not ever, if he could help it. It was her sake he was thinking of. Not his own. He would have wanted nothing more than to take her now in the first out-of-the-way place he could find.
There was a small coffee shop just off campus. Rachel opted to go there with him, rather than to the cafeteria. It was quieter.
She shrugged as they took the footbridge that connected the campus to the shopping area. It hovered over the street traffic like an arched brow. “Well, I don’t intend to make it easy for you Kirk. Running away shouldn’t be.”
A green sports car zoomed by just as they reached the other end of the stone bridge. The coffee shop stood just a few feet beyond it.
Kirk scowled. “Who’s running away?”
“You, if you’d left immediately.” She placed her hand just beneath the word Jeffrey’s on the shop’s glass door and pushed it open.
Kirk followed her inside. “Two mocha coffees,” he told the man behind the counter. They sat down at a tiny round table for two.
Rachel smiled. He remembered the fact that she liked mocha coffee, she thought, warmth permeating her.
She waiting until he was seated. “Let someone love you, Kirk,” she urged softly. “You deserve it.”
“Someone,” he echoed. “You?”
She wasn’t quite ready to admit that. She feared that if she did, it would frighten him away. The man behind the counter brought over their coffees and set a steaming mug down in front of each of them. She waited until he retreated before saying anything.
“Me. Ethan. Cameron.” There was safety in numbers. Being loved by them wasn’t as intimidating, she judged, as being loved by her. “We all care about you, Kirk.”
He wrapped his hands around the hot mug in front of him and stared at the steam. “I don’t know how to deal with that. I never had to before.”
“Yes, you did.”
Though it had never been verbally expressed, it was no secret that the three of them had all cared about one another when they were growing up. That they could all always count on one another.
“Nothing’s changed.” Saturday night whispered softly in the corners of her mind, and she smiled. “Well, maybe some things, but not the essence. I always loved you. So did Cameron,” she added quickly. “You matter to us. There might not be any blood between us, but that doesn’t mean anything. Just because you’re related doesn’t automatically mean someone cares about you.”
How well he knew that, he thought.
“Being family doesn’t always mean you’re related,” she continued. “Let Cameron and Ethan and me be your family, Kirk. We are anyway, whether you want us to be or not,” she added. “You might as well enjoy it.”
In her innocence, she didn’t quite know what she was tacitly getting into, he thought. “I’d ask a few questions before I drew up the adoption papers, if I were you.”
She studied his face for a moment. “If I asked, would you answer?”
He had walked right into that one, Kirk thought. He paused as he took a long sip of his coffee, regarding her over the rim of the white mug.
“Maybe,” he finally said.
It was a start. “I’ll hold you to that.”
She was incredible. “To a maybe?”
Rachel grinned. “You’d be surprised what I can do with it.”
A smile rose to his face of its own volition. “No, after Saturday I don’t think anything would manage to surprise me.”
She laughed as she set down her mug. “Don’t be too sure.” The tension she’d been living with for two days had completely left her. She felt back on her old footing with him. With a delicious bonus. “Tell me, where were you Sunday? You left while I was still asleep.”
He toyed with the dangling earring at her ear. “If I had waited until you were awake, I wouldn’t have left.”
The bell above the door tinkled as a lone student walked in. Rachel took no notice. She was completely intrigued by Kirk’s admission. “Sounds promising. So where did you go?”
“Back to the house. I wanted to work on the photographs that I took with Ethan.” Mostly he’d wanted to work her out of his system. He’d discovered that it was impossible.
“That was what Ethan thought.” She remembered how eager he’d been to join Kirk. And how disappointed he’d been when she refused to let him. “He couldn’t stop talking about you the next day. I think you’ve been elevated just above Jose Canseco. He wanted to go over and help you develop the films. I practically had to tie him up to keep him from coming over.”
“Why did you?”
She shrugged, watching the whipped cream dissolve in her coffee. She knew that he was really asking her why she hadn’t come over. “I thought perhaps you might like some time to yourself.”
She knew him so well, he thought. Up to a point. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. I owe you.” Kirk raised his brow, and she knew what he was thinking. “Not that,” Rachel added quickly, her eyes sparkling with amusement. “For the conversation you had with Ethan. The difference in him is absolutely incredible. It’s like night and day.”
He didn’t want her being grateful to him. It only complicated matters. “I told you, you don’t have to keep thanking me.”
She wasn’t going to let him push her away, no matter how hard he tried. She was accustomed to digging in. “I will, until you learn how to accept it. You’ve got a lot of good things to offer, Kirk. To everyone you come in contact with.”
Her words struck a nerve. “You wouldn’t say that if—” He bit off the rest of it.
Almost, she thought. He’d almost told her. Rachel covered his hand with her own. “If what?”
He slipped his hand from hers, pulling into himself. “If you knew.”
She frowned. So near, and yet so far. She was at a loss as to how to persuade him to trust her. She only knew he had to. It was the one thing she needed. Besides his love. “Did something happen that made you come home?”
He toyed with his mug. “In a way, yes.” He drained the last of his coffee and set the mug aside. “In another way, it was just a steady compilation of things.”
No more excuses, she thought. “I have an hour until my next class. We can order more coffee.”
He shouldn’t have said anything. It was funny how she always managed to draw things out of him. “It would take more than an hour.”
Her eyes wouldn’t allow him to retreat. “An hour would give you a start.”
He shook his head, avoiding her eyes. “It isn’t as easy as that.”
She wasn’t going to let him shut her out any longer. This was more important than their making love together. It went beyond the physical. This involved a melding of their souls.
“It’s as hard as you make it,” she insisted, quietly, firmly. “Ax murderers can confess in under an hour, Kirk. They start out by saying, ‘I did it.’”
In his case, he thought, he hadn’t done it. And that was where the whole problem lay.
Kirk was quiet for so long, she was certain that he wasn’t going to answer her at all.
“I saw a man die,” he finally told her, in a voice so soft and distant, it hardly seemed to be coming from him at all.
She saw the anguish in his eyes and struggled with her conscience. Her inclination was to pull away fro
m the painful subject, to spare him this. But her heart urged her on.
“You covered a lot of different conflicts, or whatever they choose to call them officially. I would have thought that you saw a lot of men die.” Her hand offered mute comfort as she laid it on his. “What was different about this one?”
For a moment, he thought of dismissing it, but it was too late to back away. Perhaps if she knew what he’d become, she’d understand why he was all wrong for her. Why he wasn’t capable of loving her.
“I saw him die through the viewfinder of my camera.” He could tell by her expression that she didn’t understand what he was telling her. “Don’t you see? He wasn’t a person to me, he was a photograph. I was so intent on getting the shot, I didn’t stop to save him.”
Her voice was low, calming. “Could you have?”
He blew out a breath as he dragged a hand through his hair. “Maybe.”
Maybe wasn’t good enough. “But not for certain.”
He understood what she was trying to do, and was grateful to her. But it didn’t negate what had happened. “It was in Bosnia. Nothing’s certain there.” Or in any of the half-dozen other places he’d been that had been just like Bosnia. Or worse.
Rachel refused to let go. She worked the tapestry of what he had said like a skilled craftsman. “And you could, in all probability, have been wounded, killed or captured, if you’d tried.”
His conscious denied it, but his common sense agreed with her. “Maybe.”
Rachel folded her hands before her, struggling to keep her emotions out of her voice. Only reason would have any effect on him. “As I see it, you taking his photograph, you preserving that moment of horror for the world to see what was going on in this man’s country, might have done the greater good.”
His anger rose, not against her, but against himself. Against his fatal inertia. “Tell it to the man’s widow. Or his kids. Or his mother.”
As determined as he was to blame himself, she was more determined to absolve him. “How many more widows and orphans would there be if no one knew about these wars, these conflicts?”
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