Death is Forever (22 page)

“I’m pained that you distrust us so much.”

“Yeah, I’ll just bet you are. Right in the ass. Using Lai as bait was a mistake. Good-bye, Wing. I won’t call to give you progress reports. I’m sure your obedient little spy will take care of that for me.”

Cole broke the connection and turned to the woman who had been standing silently behind him. His face was expressionless as he looked at her, a golden feminine statue standing in the exact center of a nimbus of light from the doorway. He wondered if she’d always been like that—every movement, every breath calculated to display her extraordinary beauty.

He didn’t remember Lai as calculating. He remembered the seething violence of her sexuality, a hunger that had seemed as unforced as the sunlight pouring over her right now.

Grimly Cole measured how young he’d once been, and how old Lai had always been. Without warning his hand flashed out and closed almost gently around Lai’s throat. She stood motionless but for the sudden, heavy beat of her pulse beneath his thumb.

“I trust you heard everything,” Cole said.

“Yes,” she said softly.

“You’ll tell your men.”

“Yes.”

Gray eyes measured the delicate, perfectly formed woman standing before him. Once he’d dreamed of having Chen Lai in his grasp again. Wing must have known that. Certainly Uncle Li had. So the Chen family had made Cole’s dream come true. As long as the diamond mine was found, Cole could do whatever he wished to Lai, punish or humiliate or rape her, take anything he wanted from her.

Even her life.

Lai knew her risk as well as Cole did. It was there in the hidden tremors that made her quiver, in the rapid pulse beating beneath his thumb, in the shallow, rapid breaths that touched him across the few inches separating their bodies, in the luminous black eyes that watched him.

But it wasn’t fear Cole saw in Lai’s glance. She was looking at him as though he was meat and she’d been long without food. The delicacy of her perfume was mixed with the primitive, far more heady scent of female desire. Against the thin silk of her blouse, her nipples showed as hard buttons.

She wanted him.

Cole’s thumb moved against Lai’s soft throat in what could have been either a caress or a threat. “Such an obedient daughter of China.”

She lowered eyelashes the color of midnight. “Thank you,” she said huskily, moving her chin slowly, caressing the hard hand at her throat. She shifted, easing forward, flowing against him as she lifted her hand and traced the line of his jaw with her fingertips. “We were always very good together, Cole. I have dreamed of you.”

Erin came to the doorway holding two cups of coffee. She saw Lai moving against Cole and Cole’s thumb caressing Lai’s throat. For an instant Erin was too shocked at the intimate tableau to speak.

Then she wasn’t.

“Obviously you have your hands full,” Erin said sarcastically. “I’ll leave your coffee in the kitchen.”

“Stay.”

The quality of Cole’s voice was like a whip. She found herself automatically obeying. That, too, infuriated her.

“Do you keep pets?” she asked in a clipped voice.

He turned away from Lai and focused exclusively on Erin. “Pets?”

“Sit. Stay. Roll over. Pets.”

He smiled crookedly, released Lai, and walked over to take a cup of coffee from Erin. “No pets, honey. Nothing would have me.”

“Really? I’ll bet there’s a Venus-flytrap close by with your name on it.”

Cole’s laughter was lost as the beat of a helicopter’s rotor blades washed over the house, the sounds magnified by the humidity.

“Tell him we’ll be out in a minute,” Cole said.

The words were for Lai, but he didn’t look away from Erin as he spoke.

Lai turned and left the room. Not once had she looked at Erin.

Over the rim of the coffee mug, Cole measured the depth of Erin’s anger. He regretted it, but now wasn’t the time to do anything about it. He was too angry about her lack of trust in him to be civilized on the subject. Cautiously he sipped the black coffee, found it hot but not scalding, and drank it without ceremony. The sound of the helicopter blades diminished to a lazy
whap…whap…whap
that told of a machine throttled down to idle.

“Ready to fly?” he asked her. “Maybe by the time we get back, Wing’s army will have the new plumbing straightened out for a shower and a washing machine.”

The casual words enraged Erin. She thought about refusing the conversational gambit but decided she would appear even more foolish than she already felt after displaying her jealousy.

“Just wear your clothes when you shower,” she said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as he had. She didn’t succeed. She’d never been a very good actress. “A shower gets the clothes clean enough. I did it all the time in Alaska.”

“Washing clothes with you in them, huh? Sounds like fun.”

The sensual teasing was unexpected, baffling her even as it made her more angry. “It’s a game for one,” she said in a clipped voice. “Like solitaire.”

“That doesn’t sound like fun.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not the only woman in the Kimberley whose clothes need washing.”

“You’re the only one whose clothes I want to wash.”

Her breath came in hard. “My God, I know I was stupid to talk about love, but even stupidity has its limits. I’m not blind. If I’d come in a few minutes later, Lai would have been all over you like a rash.”

“But I wouldn’t have been all over her.”

“Bullshit,” Erin said angrily.

The sunlight that had changed Lai into a diminutive golden statue sent streamers of fire through Erin’s hair and transformed her eyes to brilliant green gems. Unlike Lai, Erin was unaware of her own allure, her color and heat and shimmering life.

Cole wasn’t. He wanted Erin until he had to look away or reach for her; because if he reached for her now, she would refuse him. He didn’t trust his own temper if that happened. He was never at his best during buildup and he knew it.

“Don’t let Uncle Li get away with it,” Cole said, when he could trust his voice not to betray his rage.

“With what?”

“Putting Lai between us.”

“You should have thought of that sooner. You sure as hell didn’t mind where Lai was standing a few moments ago.”

He made a throttled sound. It had been a long time since he’d lost his temper, but he felt it slipping away now. His head ached, the scab on his thigh pulled with every motion, he hadn’t slept more than a handful of hours since Los Angeles, the temperature at the station was well over one hundred, the humidity wasn’t far behind, and now Erin was watching him like a stranger, wary and distant, like she’d never been tangled with his naked body and whispered her love.

“Look—,” he began harshly.

“I did,” she cut in. “Unlike you, I didn’t like what I saw.” Then, before she could stop herself, she asked, “Who is she?”

“Wing’s communications specialist,” Cole said through his teeth.

“You know what I meant. Who is she to you?”

He slammed his coffee mug down with enough force to shatter it. Before the pieces hit the floor he took a long stride forward, coming so close to Erin that she had to tilt her head back to see his eyes.

Nothing in his eyes comforted her, but she didn’t back up an inch.

“To me,” he said in a low, savage voice, “Lai is a living, breathing reminder of how rock stupid a man is to trust a woman’s cries of love. Abe had the right idea about women. Fuck them, but don’t love them.”

Abruptly Cole turned and headed toward the back of the house. “Lai knows where your new camera gear is. Get it and be out back in three minutes.”

Angrily Erin walked to the bedroom.
Lai knows where your new camera gear is.

But Erin would happily roast in hell before she’d ask the gorgeous Ms. Lai for a drop of water, much less anything as important as camera equipment. Fiercely Erin grabbed her battered camera bag and went outside.

The violence of the sun brought her up short. It had been hot and sticky in the house. It was insufferable outside, a steaming sauna with no walls and no exit.

Flies flocked to her.

She waved them away automatically and walked toward the helicopter that was crouched off to the rear of the house. If the chopper had ever had doors, they had been removed.

Cole was talking with the pilot. After a moment the man climbed down and let Cole into the pilot’s seat. He looked at gauges and brought up the revs. The rotors whirled more quickly, sending billows of grit into the sky. Artificial wind scoured over the ground, where Abe had made an informal dump for station trash. Beer cans went bouncing and flying out of the yard, only to become tangled in bunches of spinifex.

When Cole was finished with his preflight check, he gestured Erin over. His mouth flattened when he saw that she carried only her old camera bag. Photography was not just her profession, it was her passion—yet she wouldn’t even ask Lai where to find the rest of her camera equipment.

That told Cole how angry Erin was, which told him how little she trusted him despite her whispered protestations of love. Her mistrust goaded Cole’s emotions even as his mind told him not to lose his temper again.

Don’t let Uncle Li get away with it,
Cole told himself savagely.
Divide and conquer is the oldest game of all.

Because it worked. Especially in the hellish climate of Western Australia in the time known as buildup.

But even knowing his opponent’s tactics didn’t change the emotions snaking through Cole, testing his control. Uncle Li had an uncanny instinct for the jugular, the crotch, the Achilles’ heel.

Cole hadn’t known that he was Erin’s vulnerable point.

He’d just found out she was all three of his.

God damn Uncle Li.

“Buckle up and put on the headset,” Cole said curtly over the helicopter noise. “There are sunglasses and sunscreen in the seat pocket. Use them.”

She stepped up into the chopper, put on the safety harness, and began looking over the headset. There was no switch for speaking.

“Voice activated,” he said loudly as he put on a pair of dark glasses.

She nodded, put on the headset, adjusted it, fished out her own sunglasses, and settled them on her nose. The relief from the intense light gave the illusion of coolness. Unfortunately, it was only an illusion. She reached for the sunscreen, which was also an industrial-strength insect repellent.

“Ready?” he asked.

His voice came clearly through the headset. She nodded again.

He cursed silently at her refusal to talk to him, but he didn’t push her. His own temper was still too raw. He hadn’t been this angry since Lai had aborted his child.

The realization shocked him.

He brought the revs up until the helicopter was quivering like a racing greyhound waiting to be released. He let it go.

The chopper leaped into the burning sky.

When Erin finished applying the sunscreen, she sat and stared out the window, seeing nothing of the land and too much of a delicate, extraordinarily beautiful face, eyes like black tears watching Cole, worshiping him—and his hand caressing the graceful line of Lai’s neck, touching her as though she was made of fire, touching and watching her burn.

With a sense of bafflement and surging anger, Erin wondered if all males were untrustworthy or if she simply had wretched taste in men.

Don’t be ridiculous,
she told herself angrily.
Cole doesn’t owe me anything but his expertise as a diamond prospector. He didn’t make any promises, not even the implicit one of saying he loves me. He didn’t talk about what would happen after we found the mine or gave up looking for it.

Fine, it’s rude of him to lust after another woman while I’m in the house, but it’s hardly the first time in history something like that has happened.

Nothing new.

No big deal.

A close brush, but this time I got away intact. Once I get out of this hell-ridden climate and get a full night of sleep, I’ll laugh about the whole thing.

Beneath her bracing thoughts, she sensed darkness condensing, depression growing one slow drop at a time, draining light from her. Knowing that her response was irrational didn’t change it, any more than knowing she’d been the innocent victim in an undeclared war seven years ago had changed the extent of her psychic and physical injuries afterward.

At least Cole doesn’t keep score with a switchblade. Any scars he leaves on me won’t show.

There was little comfort in the thought, but the past had taught her to accept small comforts. Better she found out about Cole now than later. Better the dreams stop now than later.

Better if she’d had the sense never to dream at all.

“We’ll fly the east edge of the station first,” Cole said finally, breaking the silence. He dropped a map in her lap. “Then we’ll do the north leg. Dog One is on the northern edge. I’ll keep the chopper at about a thousand feet and go slow.”

He paused.

She didn’t say anything.

“I’ve never had a chance to see the station from the air,” he continued, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. “Sometimes you can pick up things you’d miss on the ground. While we fly, try to match features down there with the map.”

She nodded to show that she’d heard. Deliberately she unfolded the map and forced herself to focus on it rather than on her foolish feeling of betrayal.

As the chopper bored through the sky, she looked from the map to the landscape below. The variation in the ground surface surprised her after the unrelieved flatness of the area around Derby. On Abe’s station there were low ridges and blunt pinnacles of black rock. In between the ridges there were narrow grasslands and sparse trees. At very rare intervals there were startling bits of vivid green. Cattle trails braided around the fragments of green.

“Seeps and small springs,” Cole said finally, seeing her interest. “The black rocks are Triassic limestone outcroppings.”

She nodded absently, absorbed in the landscape below.

When she didn’t answer him, he turned and looked impatiently at her. The line of her shoulders wasn’t as stiff as it had been when she’d gotten into the helicopter. Her mouth was more relaxed, too. She was wrapped up in the land rather than locked in anger at him.

He told himself that it was an improvement.