Summer Fling

by Sarah Morgan

  ‘Of course.’ She took the keys and waited for him to say something that indicated he understood the way she was feeling. Something that acknowledged the power of what they’d shared during the storm. But he didn’t even look at her.

  His handsome face was grim and serious as if he had a thousand things on his mind and none of them related to her.

  ‘That’s fine.’ She forced herself to speak normally and not show her disappointment. ‘I’ll bring the suit. Will I be able to find it?’

  ‘In the wardrobe in my bedroom. Just choose one. And Kyla.’ Finally he looked at her but there was a bleakness in his eyes that did nothing to alleviate the growing ache inside her. ‘This evening, we have to talk.’

  Talk? She watched him stride towards his car, the lump in her throat as big as the weight in her heart.

  She loved him, she realised with a sinking feeling. Somehow, over the past weeks, she’d grown to love this complicated man. And up until five minutes ago she would have sworn that he had feelings for her, too.

  Had she imagined what they’d shared in the castle?

  No. She definitely hadn’t. She was just being paranoid, she told herself as she turned and let herself into her own house. She’d shower and change and then collect his suit on her way to work.

  She had nothing to worry about.

  The fact that he was suddenly serious and detached was just Ethan being Ethan. He was thinking about work. That was what he did.

  As she stripped off her clothes she was suddenly deliciously aware of the unfamiliar ache in various parts of her body and a soft smile touched her mouth. He felt something for her, of course he did. How, otherwise, could he have made love to her in the way that he had? She just had to be patient and allow him the space he obviously needed.

  He wasn’t a man who opened up easily, she knew that.

  She dried her hair, dressed in her uniform and picked up his keys.

  Inside his cottage, she sprinted up the stairs, found the suit and carried it out of the house. It was only as she went to hang it in the rear of her car that she saw the letter that had dropped out of the pocket onto the road.

  With a frown, she picked it up, intending to push it back into the suit pocket. And then a sentence caught her eye and she froze in shock. And started to read.

  ‘So are you going to transfer Fraser to the mainland for a CT scan?’ Ethan asked the question as Logan reached for the telephone.

  ‘Yes. I’m pretty sure he’s just displaying signs of concussion but I need to be sure. It’s best to play it safe because I don’t want any last-minute emergencies.’ He broke off as the door crashed open and Kyla strode into the reception area. ‘Oops. My sister obviously climbed out of bed on the wrong side.’

  Ethan felt himself tense as she kicked the door shut behind her, dropped her bag by the reception desk and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes.

  Then she looked at him.

  And he saw that she knew.

  There was contempt in her eyes as she stalked over to him and thrust the suit into his hands, her face unsmiling. ‘Your suit, Dr Walker. Better put it on quickly. It’s part of your disguise.’

  Logan gave her an incredulous look. ‘Are you hormonal?’

  She whirled on her brother, anger sparking in her blue eyes. ‘No. I am not hormonal.’

  ‘Then what the hell is wrong with you?’

  ‘You’d better direct that question to Dr Walker,’ she suggested in an acid tone, and Ethan inhaled sharply.

  ‘Kyla, why don’t we go somewhere quiet and talk?’

  ‘Don’t you mean somewhere quiet so that we can carry on keeping our secrets? Or rather your secrets.’ Her gaze was accusing. ‘And what do you mean, talk? Since when did you ever talk, Ethan? You’re more of a listener, aren’t you? Especially when you’re finding out about people.’

  Wishing he hadn’t taken so long to tell her the truth, Ethan watched her steadily. She was a woman of wild extremes. Whatever Kyla did, she did it with an abandoned passion. She made love as though she was enjoying her last moments on earth and she lost her temper with the same degree of intensity. With Kyla, there was no neutral. No grey areas.

  So how on earth was he going to explain himself to her? Especially when he couldn’t even explain things to himself.

  ‘Surgery is about to start,’ Logan pointed out in a quiet tone, ‘so whatever it is that’s bugging the pair of you, you need to shelve it until later. There’s enough gossip on this island without adding more.’

  Kyla turned to him. ‘Ethan is—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it, Kyla.’ Logan’s voice was firm. ‘Get set up for clinic. We’ll talk later. And now I need to sort out Fraser.’

  Kyla hesitated and it was obvious that she was struggling with her emotions. Then she blinked several times, swallowed hard and walked towards her room with her head down.

  ‘Women,’ Logan said wearily, watching her go. ‘Don’t you ever wish they came with an instruction manual?’

  Kyla buried herself in her clinic but her mind wouldn’t focus. She didn’t know whether to cry or punch something and in the end she just did everything on automatic. She took blood pressures, she talked about asthma management, she syringed an ear, took a cervical smear and changed two dressings. Then she realised that she hadn’t even noticed what the wounds underneath had looked like.

  All she’d been thinking about was Ethan.

  And the letter.

  She gave up and went next door to Evanna.

  ‘I’m sorry to ask you this.’ Her voice was gruff. ‘But have you got time to finish my clinic? I’ve only got three more to see but I’m not concentrating. I think I need some air before I put a dressing on someone who needs an ECG.’

  Evanna put down the tourniquet she was holding. ‘Of course. What’s the matter? Are you ill? Perhaps it was being stuck in that dark tunnel in the storm.’

  ‘I’m not ill,’ Kyla assured her dully, backing towards the door. ‘I just feel a bit—I need to—’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Evanna said in a soft voice, waving a hand at her. ‘Just go. You don’t need to explain.’

  Kyla gave her a grateful smile and slid out of the room just as Ethan emerged from his.

  They looked at each other and then she sucked in a breath and made for the car park.

  ‘Kyla, wait.’ His voice was a firm command but she ignored him and lengthened her stride. He’d had plenty of opportunity to talk to her and he hadn’t bothered. And she certainly wasn’t ready to talk to him. Maybe she wouldn’t ever be ready. She felt completely betrayed.

  She climbed into her car and sped away, determined to find herself somewhere peaceful to think.

  Instinctively she headed for the ruined castle and then wished she hadn’t because the place was now layered with memories of Ethan and it was impossible to think clearly with thoughts of earlier intruding.

  There was no trace of the storm now and the sun shone in a perfectly blue sky, but still Kyla shivered as she sank down onto a rock and stared bleakly out to sea.

  And then she heard a firm, masculine tread behind her and she rose to her feet, accusation in her eyes because she knew who it would be. And perhaps, secretly, she’d wanted him to follow her so that they could say what needed to be said, in privacy.

  ‘Why did you follow me?’

  ‘Because we need to talk and we don’t need to do it in public.’ He stopped a little distance away from her and she turned away, ignoring the wisps of hair that blew across her face.

  ‘You mean that you don’t want anyone else to hear your secret.’

  ‘I don’t want them to hear it yet.’ His voice was even. Steady. ‘First, you and I need to talk.’

  ‘Why?’ She turned back to face him, so angry that she clenched her hands into fists. ‘So that you can make excuses?’

  ‘I’m not going to make excuses.’

  How could he be so calm? ‘You deceived us, Ethan.’ Her voice broke and she hated herself for sh
owing just how badly his betrayal had hurt her. ‘You deceived us all. Not just me but Logan, Evanna—the whole island. We thought—we thought you were—’

  ‘You thought I was Ethan Walker, and that’s exactly who I am.’

  She looked him full in the face, not giving him room for escape. ‘But you’re also Catherine’s brother,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Catherine’s brother.’

  He stepped towards her. ‘Kyla—’

  ‘You’re not a stranger. It wasn’t serendipity that brought you here. You came here for a reason. You came to find her child, didn’t you? You came for your niece. You came after Kirsty.‘

  Tension stiffened his shoulders. ‘I wanted to meet her, yes.’

  ‘No, Ethan.’ Kyla shook her head and hugged her arms around her waist. ‘Wanting to meet her would have been you walking off that ferry and saying, “Hi, I’m Kirsty’s uncle.” And you didn’t do that. You stayed on the edges and watched. You ate our food and you drank our drink. You listened to our conversations and lived our lives with us, and all the time you were just watching.’

  ‘There were things I needed to understand. I wanted to get to know you all.’

  ‘And is that your excuse for making love to me? Did you need a few extra intimate details for your research?’ She forced herself to say the words—forced herself to stare hurt in the face. ‘I suppose that’s the ultimate way of getting to know someone, isn’t it? What are you going to do next? Move on to Evanna just to check that you know her, too?’

  ‘Don’t, Kyla—’

  ‘Don’t what? Don’t face up to facts? I’m being honest, which is more than you’ve been up until now.’

  His shoulders were tense. ‘What happened between us had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I’m Catherine’s brother.’

  ‘Yes, it did, because you wouldn’t even have been here if you hadn’t been Catherine’s brother! We would never have met. You deliberately hid your identity from me. From all of us.’

  ‘I tried to tell you.’

  ‘But you didn’t try hard enough, did you? What were you thinking?’ The lump in her throat threatened to choke her and the anger burned inside her. ‘Were you checking out whether Logan was a fit enough father? Because I can tell you now that he’s worth six of you. Logan is honest and straightforward, and if you are thinking of doing anything that will hurt my brother or his child, I will personally see you off this island.’ Breathless, she stopped, her chest rising and falling as she struggled for control.

  A muscle worked in his lean cheek, an indication of his own rising tension. ‘You want me to explain so let’s start with that. You feel protective of Logan. You love him.’

  ‘Of course I love him.’ Her tone was both dismissive and impatient because she couldn’t understand why he was wasting time stating the obvious. ‘He’s my brother. He’s family.’

  ‘You make it all sound so straightforward, but life isn’t always like that, Kyla. It’s complicated.’

  ‘What’s complicated about telling the truth? You should have just told us. That’s what I would have done.’

  Ethan swore softly and closed the distance between them. ‘Maybe it is, but I’m not like you and my family is nothing like yours.’

  Kyla tried to step backwards but he caught her shoulders and forced her to look at him.

  ‘You want to talk about this? All right, let’s talk about it.’ His voice was raw with a depth of emotion that she hadn’t heard from him before. ‘Your family is a single unit. You’re in and out of each other’s lives, interfering and interacting. You’re individuals but you’re all small parts of a whole.’

  She ignored the fact that his fingers were digging into her shoulders. ‘So? That’s what families are.’

  ‘Not mine.’ He released her then and his hands dropped to his sides, his tone hoarse. ‘Not mine, Kyla.’

  ‘I know your parents were divorced and remarried, but—’

  ‘You don’t know anything.’ He stared out across the sea. ‘Catherine and I didn’t share the same brother-sister relationship that you have with Logan. You love Logan. Do you want to know how I felt about Catherine? For most of my life, I hated her. There.’ He turned to look at her, a smile of self-derision on his handsome face. ‘Now are you shocked?’

  She didn’t know what to say so she didn’t say anything, and he turned away again with a humourless laugh.

  ‘Oh, yes, you’re shocked, because hating your family isn’t something that really happens around here, is it, Kyla? Around here, on Glenmore, family is the most important thing. But the truth is that I hated Catherine. And she hated me, too. From the moment we met when I was eleven and she was eight, we hated each other. She hated me because my father married her mother and she liked it being just the two of them. It meant that she had to compete for attention. I hated her because she was the most selfish person I had ever met. She believed that the whole world had to revolve around her and it drove me mad. She took drugs, she stole, she did just about anything a person can do to gain attention. And I hated her.’

  Reminding herself that he’d deceived her, Kyla tried to hold onto her anger but she felt it slipping out of her. ‘You were a child.’

  ‘Don’t make excuses for me. Catherine and I spent the next ten years trying to make each other miserable, and usually succeeding. We argued, we fought, we each blamed the other for our terrible home life. She was half-wild, always running away from school and driving my father mad. Three times he had to collect her from the police station—did she ever tell you that? I thought she was incredibly selfish. She thought I was aloof, remote and judgmental. We couldn’t wait to get out of each other’s lives.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Ten years ago.’

  ‘Ten years …’ Kyla tried to imagine not seeing Logan for ten years. ‘So—why did you follow her here? Why now if you didn’t have that sort of relationship?’

  For a long moment Ethan didn’t answer. ‘She wrote to me, a year ago, and I realise now that it was probably just a few days before she went into labour with Kirsty. It was the only letter I ever had from her and probably the only communication we had that wasn’t tinged with bitterness. She wrote because she said that she’d discovered paradise. She told me that she’d settled in Scotland and suddenly felt different about life. She realised that family were important and she wanted to make contact. She told me that I was going to be an uncle.’

  ‘Did you write back?’

  ‘By the time I received her letter, she was already dead.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I was working in the Sudan, Kyla. I was in Africa. I was battling heat and dust and disease like you cannot possibly imagine.’ His voice was raw and she suddenly realised just how much of this man she didn’t know. She’d assumed he’d worked in London. ‘She sent the letter to my flat in London. For some reason it wasn’t forwarded. I only received it two months ago when I finally came home.’

  ‘So why not just turn up here and introduce yourself? Why pretend to be someone else?’

  He frowned in response to her question. ‘I didn’t pretend.’

  ‘But her surname was King. How can you be Walker?’

  ‘Her mother refused to take my father’s name. She was always King and I was Walker.’

  ‘She never mentioned you,’ Kyla told him. ‘She always said that her family could have done with living on Glenmore for a while. I suppose she felt that having the baby was a time to make a fresh start.’

  ‘That letter has tortured me. It left me with so many unanswered questions. The Catherine in that letter bore no resemblance to the Catherine of my childhood. She claimed it was this place that had changed her.’ He breathed in and looked around him. ‘She said that it was Glenmore. The sea, the ruins, the wildness. And most of all the people.’

  ‘She arrived on the ferry one day with a backpack and never left. Glenmore has that effect on some people.’ But not on him. The island hadn’t changed him or caus
ed him to open up to others. He was as reserved and self-contained as ever.

  ‘Something in her letter affected me deeply. She described everything in such detail. Not just the scenery but the people. She talked about everyone as if she knew them. It was the first time I’d ever had the sense that she had been interested in anything other than herself. That letter showed me a completely different side of her.’

  ‘She fitted in very quickly.’ Kyla watched his face, trying to gauge his reaction, but as usual he gave nothing away. ‘So what made you come here? Was it just Kirsty?’

  ‘No. I felt as though I’d lost something. Which was ridiculous because up until that letter Catherine and I had never had anything that we could lose. We’d never shared anything. But she’d obviously discovered a different part of herself and new priorities. And maybe I had, too.’ He gave a faint smile. ‘A year working in Africa does tend to sort out your priorities. Her letter was intriguing. I suppose I wanted to see the place that had changed her so dramatically. I wanted to see Glenmore the way she would have seen it. And, of course, I wanted to meet my niece and the man who my sister fell in love with and married.’

  ‘And you couldn’t just have been honest with us?’ Despite what he’d told her, she was still angry with him. Angry that he hadn’t told her the truth. ‘Couldn’t you have told me?’ Her implication was clear, and he didn’t flinch from her gaze.

  ‘I’m used to doing things by myself. I’m used to finding my own way. That’s the person I am, Kyla.’

  She refused to let him duck the issue. ‘You deceived us.’

  ‘Not intentionally and not in the way that you mean. I was always going to tell you. I’m just sorry you found out in the way you did.’

  ‘The letter fell out of your pocket. I didn’t intend to read it but then I saw Kirsty’s name.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So what happens now? Are you going back to Africa?’ Her question hovered in the air between them and for a long moment he didn’t answer.

  ‘Not Africa,’ he said finally. ‘I want very much to be part of Kirsty’s life, so Africa isn’t an option, but as to what else …’He shrugged and the fact that he still made no reference to what they’d shared—made no attempt to touch her—hurt more than she could have imagined possible.