To the Ends of the Earth

by Elizabeth Lowell

  She didn’t answer.

  His lips brushed her forehead again and again, the caresses like tiny breaths whispering over her. He tried not to think about what might have been, love and time and the future, all the things that money can’t buy. Instead, he watched moonlight and shadows move over her face, staring at her as though if he looked closely enough, he would be able to see through darkness to the end of her pain.

  It was the same on the nights that followed. They slept until Cat awakened, and then Travis held her until she slept again. But he didn’t sleep again. He couldn’t.

  Her nightmare had become his.

  Each night after Travis soothed Cat back to sleep, he slipped out of the bed and went out on the deck alone. There he stood with the moonlight and sea, the ship steady beneath his feet and the night haunted by voices, voices turning and crying around him like black gulls, voices telling him how little he could do, how much he had lost.

  Cat’s voice, alive with wonder. I’m dreaming. First you, then that ship. Don’t wake me up, Travis, not yet.

  Cat’s voice caught in pain. Why? Why couldn’t I have met you in January, when we might have had a chance to love?

  Ask me to go away with you again in January. By then I’ll have paid all my debts that matter.

  I don’t want your money. Can’t you understand that?

  If you stopped buying women, you might just find out that there are women who can’t be bought.

  But Travis had been afraid to believe.

  And then he had believed, only to be betrayed.

  Do you believe in miracles? I’m pregnant, my love. I’m pregnant! A baby! Travis, my man, my lover, my love. Our baby!

  The joy in Cat’s voice could wound him even in memory. Especially in memory. He should have shared that joy, should have gone down on his knees and thanked God for a miracle. Instead, he had been locked within his own fear of making the same mistake all over again, costing another baby its chance to live.

  You’re going to have that baby and then it will be mine. My attorney will have the papers to you in a few days.

  He had let the past and Tina’s lies blind him to the present and Cat’s truth.

  Travis looked at midnight without seeing it. His hands were locked around the railing, his whole body taut with pain and the voices cutting him until he bled silently, invisibly, hearing his own words with a kind of numb horror.

  If you’re holding out for marriage, you can forget it. Marrying a whore is the kind of mistake I don’t make twice.

  Yet it was Cat’s voice that stripped Travis to his soul.

  I wouldn’t give up this child to be raised by a man who can’t see love when it stands in front of him. Like me, now. I love you, Travis. But that’s my mistake. I should have known better. Rich men just don’t know how to love.

  Thank you for my child, even though it was an unwilling gift. I’ll take the baby. And you, T. H. Danvers, you can take your money and go to hell.

  Dr. Stone’s voice, each word another drop of agony eating at Travis’s naked soul as she outlined the many ways he had failed Cat.

  She was simply too physically depleted to sustain a pregnancy. Everything we did was too little, too late.

  For a time she was connected in the most intimate possible way with another life. Now that is gone.

  She described her feelings to me very well—a hole at the center of everything. She stumbles in and then she falls and keeps on falling.

  Money is too small a bandage to put on a wound like Cathy’s.

  And money was all Travis had.

  The despair that lay beneath anger and pain lapped at his will. He had been so certain that Cat would respond to her cameras, to the sea . . . to him.

  She wouldn’t speak to him.

  She wouldn’t even look at him.

  He didn’t blame her. If he could have, he would have shed himself like an ugly skin and walked away, but that wasn’t possible. He wanted to cry her name and his love to the night, but his throat was blocked by grief. Like Cat, he could only endure each moment in a silence haunted by all the mistakes of the past.

  Head bowed, Travis endured because it was the only thing he could do for Cat, the only way he could be close to her, joined by grief as he had refused to be joined by love.

  I know you hate me. I came back to you too late. If you don’t want my baby, then another man’s.

  Anything, Cat, anything. Scream and call me names. I deserve all of them. At least cry. Tears will heal you faster than anything else.

  It seemed to Cat that no sooner had she been soothed out of nightmare and back into sleep by Travis than she awakened again. She didn’t know what had disturbed her. There was no nightmare clawing her out of sleep. Nor was she cold.

  Slowly Cat realized that she had awakened because she was alone in the bed. She was used to being within reach of Travis in the terrible darkness, within touch, breath and warmth mingling.

  Making no noise, Cat went up onto the deck. Though she wore only the soft T-shirt she had found forgotten in a drawer, she wasn’t chilly. The night was like velvet. Wind Warrior had taken them south to summer.

  All around the ship, a school of dolphins leaped in silver calligraphy against the seamless midnight sea. Balanced on the horizon, a full moon poured radiance over the night.

  It was a moment before Cat saw Travis at the bow, outlined against moonlight. His arms were braced against the rail, his head was bent, his body rigid. Despite being half turned toward her, he didn’t see her. He seemed to be looking at the ebony sea and the dolphins’ quicksilver grace.

  Cat stood without moving, without breathing. The crystal beauty of the moment sliced through her. She heard a harsh sound and thought that she had cried out. Then she realized the sound had come from Travis. He buried his face in his hands, but not before she saw the silver sheen on his cheeks.

  He can’t be. Crying. Rich men don’t care enough about anything to cry.

  Confused, shaken, Cat stumbled back to Travis’s cabin, his bed. She lay awake, sorting through certainties that had been shattered by moonlight and a man’s tears. No matter how many times her thoughts scattered, they reformed around one impossible truth.

  Travis had cried for her when she was unable to cry for herself.

  Guilt might make him replace her cameras. Pity might make him bully her into health. But neither guilt nor pity could force tears out of his strength.

  Trembling, almost afraid, Cat wondered how many nights Travis had comforted her and then gone out on deck alone with no one to comfort him.

  As quietly as moonlight, tears came to her, burning her, searing through ice to the agony beneath.

  Cat didn’t know how long it was before she heard Travis walk softly into the cabin and ease himself onto the bed. Silently she turned toward him, fitting herself against him, holding him as he had held her so many times. She tried to speak, but her breath came out in a ragged sob that was his name.

  It was all she could say, over and over. She wept even harder when his arms closed around her, crying because he had cared enough to cry for her when she couldn’t cry for herself.

  Travis buried his face in Cat’s unexpected warmth, holding her as tightly as she held him, sharing the terrible wrench of emotions returning to her.

  When there were no more tears, they still held one another, warmth in the cold center of night.

  Cat awoke with the taste of Travis on her lips, bittersweet residue of tears. He was watching her as though he was afraid she would turn away.

  And he was. When she moved closer to him, his arms tightened to hold her. He breathed raggedly, no longer fighting against the pain that ate at his soul.

  “I should have been with you,” Travis said. “I should have cooked your meals, bathed you, carried you into the sun, held you.” His voice tightened into silence as he fought for control. “I didn’t believe you loved me. I kept telling myself that you would call, you would come to me, that all you wanted was to marry
my money. Then you told me you sold your cameras.”

  Travis was holding Cat so hard that she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t notice. She knew nothing but his face, his eyes, his words, his warmth.

  “You sold your cameras to keep my baby and never called me, never spoke to me, never asked one thing of me.”

  When Travis closed his eyes, Cat almost made a sound of protest. His face was so bleak without their unique light, so despairing.

  “I thought,” he said slowly, “that nothing could be worse than seeing that wave break over you and Jason, seeing your blood pooling on the deck, hearing you scream.”

  Cat tried to speak, to protest, but the pain she saw in Travis was too great for words to ease.

  “I was wrong,” Travis said. “The last few weeks have been like watching you die by inches, knowing I’d killed you but not cleanly, not quickly. Nothing I did helped you. The nights, Cat. My God, the nights.”

  She tried to speak, but couldn’t for all the emotions twisting through her, telling her she was alive.

  His eyes opened, but there was no comfort in them, no beauty, no life. His face was turned away from her.

  “And the nightmare will go on forever because I can’t change the past,” Travis said in a raw whisper. “I can’t take back the moment when you saw blood on the deck and fell into nightmare, screaming.”

  “Travis,” Cat said, her voice husky from lack of use.

  “I can still hear you screaming beneath your silence. I can’t stop it. I can’t help you. I can’t change the past. I can only relive it one savage memory at a time. And hate myself.”

  “You didn’t do any—”

  “The hell I didn’t,” Travis interrupted. “I’ve seen you locked in nightmare because of the miscarriage. I can’t change the nightmare. I can’t help you live with it. There is no end to it.”

  “The nightmare,” Cat said painfully. “The nightmare began before I miscarried, not after.”

  At first Travis wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. Slowly he turned his head, facing her, revealing himself.

  What Cat saw shocked her, turning her world and her heart inside out. She touched his cheek tenderly, wanting to take the certainty of despair from his eyes. She saw his breath hesitate at her caress, then still completely, as though he was afraid to believe. To hope. To trust.

  She took a shaky breath. “I knew from the beginning that I would almost certainly miscarry. And I knew that it wasn’t my last chance, that I could have other babies. But I didn’t want another man’s child. I wanted yours. I wanted you, but I’d lost you. That’s when the nightmares started. When I lost you.”

  A shudder ripped through Travis. He started to speak, but she covered his lips with her fingers.

  “Please,” Cat said. “Let me finish. Let me be like you, strong enough to bend.”

  His lips moved against her fingers, and he said nothing.

  “For seven years I prided myself on standing alone, and then I fell alone,” she said. “I’m still falling. Don’t leave me, Travis. Not yet. I know I’m not rich enough for you to trust, to love. I don’t care about that anymore. All I care about is here, now, you. Let me run before this storm with you. And when it’s over you won’t have to say anything, do anything. I’ll know, and I’ll leave.”

  Travis’s breath came out in a rush as his lips moved from her fingers to her palm to the pulse beating in her wrist.

  “You’re richer than I ever was or ever will be,” he said. “You’re fire and life and love. If I thought I could buy you, I’d sell even the Wind Warrior, my soul. But you can’t be bought, can’t be begged, and borrowing isn’t good enough.”

  Without warning, his arms moved swiftly, fitting her body against his.

  “But you can be stolen, sweet Cat. And that’s what I’ve done. The Wind Warrior owns three quarters of the world. No one can find you and take you away from me.”

  He held her so tightly that she couldn’t move or speak. It didn’t matter. She didn’t know what to say and she didn’t want to go anywhere except even closer to him.

  “But I promised Harrington I wouldn’t keep you against your will,” Travis said.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t really believe that your green angel would force you back to work just to meet a deadline, did you?”

  She just blinked and looked at Travis like a puzzled cat.

  “The publisher told me your photos were so good that he’d cheerfully wait until hell froze over to get the rest of them,” he said. “The rest was just a lie to get you on board.”

  “Some angel,” Cat whispered, but the line of her mouth was soft.

  “He’s no angel at all. He wouldn’t help me until I promised to let you go when you were well, to let you find a man you could love. And he’s right. You deserve that love, Cat. I’ll let you go, I promise it.”

  Yet even as Travis spoke the words, he sensed the hole at the center of the universe opening beneath his feet. Waiting for him. Waiting to swallow the man who learned to love too late.

  “But don’t leave me yet,” he whispered raggedly. “Don’t make me let you go right away. I . . . can’t.”

  Cat traced his mouth with fingers that trembled. “I’ve already found the only man I could love. Nothing has changed that. Nothing ever could. I love you.”

  “Then marry me,” he said urgently, his beard caressing her cheek, her neck, his lips warm and firm on her skin. “Please marry me, Cat. I need you so much that I can’t—don’t know how to say—don’t know what to say.”

  She pulled away and stared at Travis.

  “I know it isn’t fair to ask you now,” he said in a low voice. “You should have time to recover, but I’m afraid that once you’re well you won’t need anyone, and I need you . . . I need you. Marry me.”

  “Don’t,” Cat whispered. She closed her eyes, afraid that if she looked at him, she would accept without asking whether guilt or passion made Travis offer marriage. “The miscarriage wasn’t anyone’s fault. Not yours. Not mine. Not Jason’s. Don’t marry me out of pity. I can take anything but that.”

  Travis made a harsh sound. “Pity? I’d as soon pity a storm. You’re so strong.”

  “Strong?” Cat’s voice was frayed. Her eyes opened, luminous with tears. “Yeah. Right. That’s why I wake up in a cold sweat every night.”

  “You spent a month going through the nights alone. I’ve spent only a week and it’s tearing me apart.”

  “You helped me just by being here, holding me. It’s much better now. Don’t feel guilty. Don’t feel you have to marry me.”

  “I love you, Cat.”

  Travis felt the tremor that went through her, saw shadows of pain and doubt in her haunted gray eyes. His lips brushed hers as his tongue licked at the corners of her mouth.

  With a small sound she opened her lips, let him fill her mouth with his breath, his taste, his tongue meeting hers until she forgot to breathe. She felt the sweet heat of his skin beneath her hands, felt his body change, felt his need break over her.

  His lean, scarred hands moved beneath the T-shirt she wore, his shirt, a shirt he had envied for too many nights. He stroked her hungrily while she trembled and sighed, telling him how much she liked his touch. His hands moved from her hips to her shoulders, and then over her head, leaving her naked.

  Cat lay in the dawn pouring through the porthole, watching Travis, asking nothing of him but his presence here, now. He bent until his lips could brush her face, his warmth touching her temples, her eyes, her mouth. His tongue lingered over hers for a time, moving slowly, deeply, sending desire quivering through her.

  When he ended the kiss she made a sound of protest. He called her name and buried his hands in the silky fire of her hair. She arched against him, asking him to touch all of her.

  His fingers curled around her breasts, caressing her as his tongue rasped softly over her skin. With slow, unhurried movements he cherished her, moving over her like the sun, warming every s
hadowed hollow.

  She changed beneath his touch, his tongue setting fire to her until she moaned. Her hands clenched rhythmically in his hair as she cried out in the wordless language of ecstasy. With a deep male sound of pleasure he held her straining hips until the storm passed. Then slowly, reluctantly, his mouth released her sultry flesh. He tasted his way back up her body, savoring the salt-sweetness that misted her skin.

  “I didn’t steal you out of pity or guilt,” Travis said against Cat’s mouth, catching her lower lip in his teeth, moving his hips hungrily against her and drinking her ragged moan of pleasure. “I stole you because I had to. I want to sink into your soul the way you sank into mine. You taught me how to love. And then I drove you away before I could discover how much I loved you. Now I know. I’ll give you whatever you want, even a life without me. If that’s what you want. Is that what you want?”

  She looked at the tourmaline depths of his eyes, felt his arms hard and strong around her, the heat of his aroused body burning against her. He had given her everything, asked nothing, not her love, not even the easing of his own need.

  “You,” Cat whispered, pushing Travis over onto his back, her hands sliding down his body. “I want you.”

  “Are you sure? The money hasn’t changed.” His lips twisted in a sad, ironic smile. “I’m rich and getting richer every minute.”

  “Fuck your money.”

  Travis looked startled. Then he laughed until Cat’s hands slid knowingly between his legs. He made a hoarse sound and rolled her onto her back.

  “I have a better idea,” he said. “Marry me. Then the money will be yours and you can do what you like with it. Even that.”

  Before Cat could answer, his hips moved against her sensually, opening her. But he stopped just short of the union she wanted.

  “Travis . . .”

  The word was both name and plea.

  “Do you want me?” he asked, moving just a bit, touching her, teasing her.

  “Not fair,” she said. Lightning raced through her again, seething currents that promised to consume and renew her in the same burning ecstasy. “Not fair.”

  “Whoever told you pirates fought fair?” he drawled.