Eden Burning

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Hello.” His voice was tight, raw.

  “Nicole called Lisa a few minutes ago,” Dane said.

  Chase let out a harsh breath. “And?”

  “The drawing lesson is on for this evening.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “I’m coming to dinner.”

  “No.”

  “Look—” Chase began roughly.

  Dane kept talking. “If Nicole sees your car, she won’t come in. If you arrive after her, she’ll leave. You know it. I know it. Do you want the kids to know it, too?”

  “Hell no, but—”

  “Give her some time before you corner her again,” Dane interrupted.

  Chase swallowed a raw curse. He wouldn’t have a chance to drum for Pele tonight because she wouldn’t be at the club, she would be teaching his daughter how to draw. He wouldn’t have a chance to talk with Nicole until . . .

  Never, if she had her way. She didn’t want to see him. Period. If he tried to force the issue, he would just make things worse.

  If that was possible.

  “All right,” he said heavily, accepting what he couldn’t change. “When should I pick Lisa up?”

  “No rush. You can worry about moving her into the cottage when you’re here for more than a few weeks at a time.”

  “That could be Christmas,” Chase said, thinking of all the loose ends that needed tying up on the Mount Saint Helens project, plus the various Mexican projects. “I’m going to be commuting back and forth to the mainland for quite a while.”

  “And you’re going to be spending most of the next few weeks hiking all over the island preparing for your book. Leave Lisa with us. We love having her around. She has the sweetest little smile.”

  “I know. I missed her like hell after the divorce.”

  Dane hesitated, then said bluntly, “Lynette damn near ruined Lisa. She needs a home, Chase. A real one. You can’t give her that right now. Jan and I can.”

  “So can I.”

  “Can you?” Dane drew a deep breath. “I realized this morning that a lot has happened to you that I didn’t know about. Lynette changed you.”

  Chase’s hand tightened around the phone until his knuckles ached. He remembered all too vividly what he had done to Nicole because he couldn’t believe that she wasn’t another Lynette, out to wreck homes and lives for no better reason than pure selfishness.

  “I won’t argue that,” he said finally. “But Lisa is my daughter. I love her, and she loves me. Don’t fight me on this, Dane. You’ll lose. I don’t want it that way. There’s been much too much hurting already, too much losing. It ends now. Here.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line, followed by a sigh.

  “Sorry,” Dane muttered. “My protective instincts are in overdrive. I’ll call you after Nicole goes home. You can pick Lisa up tonight. I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. It’s just—Damn it, Chase!”

  “I know.” His voice ached with the effort of speaking calmly. “I’m sorry I hurt Nicole. I don’t want to corner her. I just have to make her understand that it was my mistake, not hers.”

  “She’d rather be left alone.”

  “Scars aren’t the same as healing. I learned that this morning when I realized how badly Lynette had scarred me. I thought I was whole again. I wasn’t. I don’t want Nicole to ‘heal’ the same way I did. I couldn’t live with doing that kind of damage to another human being.”

  Dane let out another long breath. When he spoke again, his voice was warm, affectionate, full of memories. “That sounds more like the older brother I used to worship. You always were a rough son of a bitch, but you were also the one who taught me the meaning of the word ‘decency.’ ”

  Chase’s laugh was short, almost sad. “Pull the other one, brother. You fought me tooth and nail over the damnedest things.”

  “Like I said, full-on hero worship. I had to keep testing myself against you to find out how much I’d grown.”

  “Now you know,” Chase said, his voice layered with emotions.

  “What?”

  “You outgrew me.”

  Very gently Chase hung up. For a time he simply stood, seeing nothing. Then he went to the living room and sat by the wall of windows overlooking the garden.

  The path to Nicole’s cottage was an elusive, flower-lined thread winding through the trees. He wanted to walk down it, sit on her doorstep, wait for her to return. He wanted her to understand. Somehow she had to understand.

  His mistake, not hers.

  He had to make it right again. Maybe then he would be able to look in the mirror without his stomach turning over.

  And maybe not.

  Once, when he had been studying an erupting volcano, the wind had shifted without warning. He had been wrapped in caustic gases and a rain of burning cinders. No matter which way he turned, he had been seared.

  It was the same way now. Impressions of the morning kept erupting without warning, burning him.

  Nicole’s pale face and wounded eyes.

  The clear knowledge that she would have walked through fire to avoid him.

  A humiliation so deep it had literally sickened her.

  Thank you for not hurting me.

  His teeth clenched until the pain of it shot through him. He barely noticed as he stared into the night. He had not felt such helpless rage and fear since the day he stood in court and listened while his daughter was handed over to a woman who shouldn’t have had custody of a stone.

  There had been nothing he could do then. But there was something he could do now. He could talk to Nicole.

  Corner her.

  The thought made uneasiness spread through Chase, the kind of uneasiness he had felt and ignored last night. Tonight he wouldn’t ignore what his instincts were telling him. Dane was right. Nicole wasn’t ready to talk to the man who had cut her up so badly, so wrongly.

  Yet he needed to talk to her. Needed.

  He didn’t know how long he could hold out against that kind of urgency, so he got back into his car and drove beneath the rising moon to the top of Mauna Loa, putting temptation beyond his reach. When he stood and looked out at the icy, lunar reality of the mountaintop, he knew he should have stayed home.

  The mirror he had avoided was all around him.

  When Nicole’s car pulled to a stop in front of the path to her house, the moon was well above the trees. Although she kept reassuring herself that she would be able to handle the unavoidable moment when she confronted Chase again, she wasn’t eager for it. In truth, she was dreading it. When she saw that his car wasn’t parked in its usual place, she was so relieved that her hands shook.

  Coward.

  All right. I’m a coward. So what? I’ll be stronger tomorrow anyway.

  As excuses went, it wasn’t bad. It might just be true. Pleased with salvaging even a little bit of pride, she hurried down the path. Usually she stopped to touch to the cool, fragrant petals of the night-blooming flowers, but not tonight. Tonight she just wanted to hide from . . .

  What? Chase Wilcox? Don’t be stupid. He can’t hurt you any more than he already has.

  She stopped. Deliberately her fingers stroked a white flower the size of her hand. The memory of Chase delicately tasting a hibiscus flashed into her mind, shaking her. She shoved the memory aside. She knew he was a sensual man. She didn’t need to be reminded of it, for then her own failure as a woman simply loomed larger.

  Like a corpse.

  She fled down the path to her cottage, flung her purse onto a chair, and shut the door behind her. The room was stifling. She pushed open the windows, then the French doors leading into the garden. The filmy privacy curtains on either side of her began to lift and turn on the night breeze like streamers of fog.

  Common sense told Nicole that she should shower and eat and go to work on her ideas for Islands of Life. Yet the instant the thought came, she rejected it.

  Chase was head of that project. It was u
p to him to tell her what to draw, when to draw it, where to draw it. She had already settled that in her mind while she sat in her tiny, hidden kipuka.

  She wasn’t going to leave Hawaii.

  That meant she wasn’t going to leave any part of the life she had built for herself here either. After tonight she would continue dancing at the Kipuka Club. She would work at the observatory. She would illustrate Islands of Life. She would take Chase’s daughter on picnics.

  Nothing would change.

  Nicole’s glance skimmed over the futon. It was still open, the sheets still tangled. The memory of those few instants when she had felt hot and wild at Chase’s touch raced through her, tightening her body. The sensations were new, sharp, all but unbearable. She had no defense against them.

  With a choked sound she spun away from the evidence of her stupidity. Dizziness made her sway. She reminded herself she had missed two meals and only played with the one Dane had put in front of her a few hours ago. No wonder she was light-headed.

  Yet she knew that the truth was much more difficult than a simple lack of food. She wanted desperately to be capable of the kind of response that would hold a sensual man like Chase Wilcox.

  But she wasn’t.

  Nothing had changed. Nothing would change. Nothing could change. She was the way she was.

  Cold.

  She had to remember that. She wouldn’t survive another mistake like the one she had made with Chase. She wasn’t even sure right now how she was going to survive that one. The aftershocks of it kept tearing through her unexpectedly, shaking what little calm she had managed to find in the kipuka.

  Eat something, she told herself impatiently.

  Her stomach flipped.

  All right. Forget that. Maybe later.

  First she would wash the sheets. Or at least change them.

  As though she was handling live snakes, she peeled off the bedding and stuffed it into the corner of her closet along with the rest of her laundry. She told herself she couldn’t smell the sweat and musk of sex on the sheets.

  She lied.

  She told herself she was disgusted.

  Then why are you holding your hands against your face and breathing in like it’s a fine perfume?

  Hastily she scrubbed her hands against her muumuu. The cloth made a sound like smug laughter. The scent that tantalized her was in her mind, not on her hands. It was the scent of the few minutes in her life when she had felt like a woman.

  I should have gone to the club and danced. Even if he was there, I should have gone. I’ll drive myself crazy pacing this room.

  She had to find something to do, or she would be in worse shape than she had been when she fled to the kipuka that morning. Without really thinking about it, she sorted quickly through a stack of CD cases. When she found the one she wanted, she put it in, hit the repeat button, and turned the volume up high enough to make the floor vibrate. Then she waited for the sensuous thunder of Tahitian drums to beat within the aching silence that was herself.

  At first she simply listened, letting the primal rhythms sweep through her until they drove everything else from her mind. After a while it wasn’t enough just to listen.

  Like Chase, the drums called to her in a way she had never really understood. Unlike Chase, she simply accepted the lure of the drums without thought. She had accepted it from the first moment Grandmother Kamehameha had held out her hand, said “Pele,” and taught Nicole’s body the dances that had always lived in her soul.

  When the CD cycled back to the beginning, Nicole threw aside her clothes, shook out her hair, and gave herself to the elemental, driving rhythms of Tahiti. She danced until the CD started over again, and then again.

  And again.

  She danced until sweat gleamed like molten gold and her hair was wild around her. She danced until she could remember nothing that had come before the endless moment of the drums’ rolling thunder and could imagine nothing beyond this moment. She danced until she was a flame burning in the midst of darkness, and she and the drums were one, inseparable.

  Whole.

  Chase sat by the open window of his own cottage and listened to the thunder of drums rolling through the darkness. He wished he could see Nicole dance but knew it was better this way. Less painful.

  If he saw her, he would be forced to face how much he wanted her. With every drumbeat, every heartbeat, he measured his own emptiness.

  “Daddy?”

  Turning, Chase saw Lisa standing uncertainly in the doorway of her bedroom. He held out his arms and smiled.

  “Having trouble sleeping, punkin?”

  “Can’t.”

  He smiled at the echo of Benny in her short answer.

  As Lisa hurried to him across the wooden floor, the fanciful creatures on her nightgown looked like they were taking flight. Chase had seen the pale silk and golden fairies in a store window and had thought instantly of his elfin daughter. The delighted smile on her face when she opened her present tonight told him he was right.

  “Drums keeping you awake?” he asked, lifting and settling Lisa’s slight weight in his lap.

  “Kinda.”

  “Just kinda? Kinda isn’t enough to keep you awake. What else is kinda nibbling on you?”

  Eyes as clear as rainwater looked up at him. Though she tried to sound brave, her lips trembled. “I woke up and thought you were gone. Really gone. Like Mother.”

  With aching throat and stinging eyes, Chase stroked Lisa’s black hair, so like his own. And her need to be loved. That, too, was like him. Lynette hadn’t understood love, hadn’t needed it, hadn’t given it, hadn’t even known it existed.

  “Never-never,” he said huskily. “I love you, Lisa. When I go back to the mainland on business, I’ll try to take you. If there are times when I can’t, then Jan will kidnap you and hold you hostage until I get back.”

  Lisa giggled at the thought of her aunt kidnapping her. She snuggled against her father. “Love you, Daddy.”

  “Love you, too, Lisa.” He kissed her hair, felt her cuddle closer, and thanked God that Lynette had decided she didn’t want to play mommy after all.

  “Stay up?” Lisa asked.

  “Sure, punkin. Anything else keeping you awake?”

  She shook her head. Fine, silky hair tickled his throat.

  “If you think of anything, I’m here,” he said. “That’s what daddies are for. Listening.”

  “And hugs.”

  “Hugs,” he agreed. And did.

  Lisa’s gentle presence eased some of the pain within Chase. For a time he and his daughter simply sat and listened to the urgent drums throbbing in the darkness. He believed now that Nicole didn’t have anyone to kiss her hair and hug her and reassure her. She was alone in the same way he had been alone in the courtroom, stunned and disbelieving as he lost everything he loved at the stroke of a judge’s gavel.

  He wanted to go to Nicole, comfort her as gently as he was comforting Lisa.

  He wanted to be comforted in the same way.

  “Daddy?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Nicole dancing?”

  His eyelids closed against a sharp stab of pain. “Probably.”

  “But she told the club she didn’t want to dance tonight.” Like Bobby, Nicole had plenty of words for what was important. “Was it a white lie?”

  “Maybe she changed her mind about dancing. Probably she just wanted to be alone.”

  Lisa was silent, thinking about the unpredictable world of adulthood. “Why?”

  “Why not? Don’t you ever start out to do one thing and end up doing something else?”

  “Sure, but . . .”

  “But?”

  “I’m a kid.”

  “Adults have kids inside them.”

  “Like babies?” Lisa asked, startled.

  He laughed softly. “No, punkin. I just meant that all adults were kids once, and part of them always stays a kid.”

  “Oh.” She leaned back and looked at as much
of him as she could see. “You must have been a really big kid.”

  “Guess so.”

  Lisa snuggled into her father. “I’m gonna be big like you.”

  “You’ll be something better.”

  “What?”

  “Big like Jan. A heart big enough to hold the world.”

  “And Nicole.”

  It was a moment before Chase could answer. “Yes, like Nicole.”

  Closing her eyes, Lisa relaxed into her father’s strength. “I love Nicole. She always has time for me and never laughs at Benny.”

  Chase couldn’t think of anything to say, so he made a noise that said he was listening.

  The drumbeats stopped. He let out a long breath, hoping that Nicole had finally danced until she was tired enough to sleep. God knows he hadn’t been able to sleep, even after a savage workout at the local gym.

  The drumbeats began again, rolling thunder through the night.

  “Can’t we watch her dance?” Lisa asked.

  Just the thought of it made his heart leap. “Not tonight, punkin.”

  “Why?”

  “She doesn’t want an audience.”

  Lisa’s full little lips pouted. “Sure-sure?”

  “Sure-sure.” He kissed her forehead. “If Nicole wanted people to watch, she would be dancing at the club. Right now she’s dancing just for herself.”

  “Like Benny.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Benny draws and never shows. Except to me. He loves me.”

  “Everybody loves you, punkin.”

  “Mommy doesn’t.”

  Anger flicked like a whip across Chase. There was no point in denying what the child knew for a fact.

  “Remember that puzzle you tried to work at Aunt Jan’s?” he asked.

  “Dumb thing. Didn’t work. Hate it.”

  “Don’t hate it, punkin. It wasn’t the puzzle’s fault. It wasn’t your fault. The blue pieces were missing, that’s all. Your mother is like that. All the love pieces are missing. But you’re not like that. You’re whole. You’ll work out just fine.”

  Lisa looked up at him with wide gray eyes. “You, too.”

  He smiled and said lightly, “Sure.”

  But as Chase sat and listened to the drums, he wondered how he had mislaid enough pieces to hurt a woman whose only sin had been to trust him before he trusted himself.