The Fall of Lucas Kendrick Read Online Free Page A

decided, a good reason. And that had helped the hurt.
    She wondered now, with the same shock as when she’d seen him this afternoon, if she had always really believed in the back of her mind and the deepest part of her heart that he would come back to her someday.
    It was a strange shock, a frightening shock,and Kyle shook away the feeling for a second time. Ridiculous, of course.
    She had been different then. Escaping to a large college from the cloying protection of her wealthy family, she had been wild with the reckless need to distance herself from the essentially cold, dignified, and unemotional aspects of her upbringing All her emotions had been dammed by a wall of forced reserve, and when that wall had burst, she had nearly drowned in the floodwaters of release.
    Did a woman ever really forget her first lover? Kyle knew only that she would never forget hers—because he was Lucas, and because he had been a part of that glorious period of freedom. She had loved him the way only a woman-child could love a man, with a reckless abandon that scorned possible hurt.
    All her caged romanticism had burst forth in that long-ago flood during her first year of college. She had loaded her schedule with poetry and literature and history, and had memorizedevery great love poem history boasted. Madly idealistic, she had adopted one cause after another, throwing herself into each with boundless enthusiasm.
    And she had fallen in love.
    Now, from a distance of ten years, Kyle realized that loving Lucas had been a part of that freedom but not caused by it. She had been ripe for love, but what she had felt for him had not been born of mindless rebellion. It had never occurred to her then or since that he might not have won the approval of her family. She had given him all the pent-up affection and passions of her life, and he had responded. He had loved her in return. She had believed that.
    Then.
    She hadn’t experienced that kind of freedom again. The skydiving, mountain climbing, hang gliding—none of it had been any more than a series of gestures. Outwardly reckless but with no burning fire of resentment and glorious release blazing behind it, she had been searching for something she could feel deeply about.
    For the better part of ten years, she realized with a distant jolt, she had been going through the motions of rebellion and feeling … nothing. Except empty searching.
    She could remember vividly the months of college and the weeks with Lucas. Remember feelings so vast, so powerful, that they had overwhelmed her.
    And at the end the aching bewilderment of desertion that had, as the days turned into weeks, frozen her inside. With no explanation offered to her, she had made up various excuses for him, and that had kept a girl’s love safely stored intact somewhere inside her. But he was gone; he had vanished from her life without leaving a trace. So she had obeyed her father’s request a few weeks later and left college after a year, going to Europe and the finishing school her family thought proper. Years in limbo. And then a second rebellion, this one outward, while she’d remained frozen inside.
    Kyle stared out at the peaceful mountains. Why?
Why?
If only she’d known what hadbeen behind Lucas’s actions then, perhaps, she could put it all in the past where it belonged. But she had never known, and even then the scope of his deception had bewildered her. He pretended he attended the university; he had a room on campus; he participated in activities. Why? What had been behind all that?
    She had wanted desperately to ask him outright. She needed to know what had been more important to him than their feelings for each other. But it had been ten years, and somehow she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
    And now, knowing that he was working for a secret government agency, the questions became even more disturbing. Had he been doing something similar then? Both Lucas and Josh Long had made it clear that Lucas was working for