Eden Burning (17 page)

Chase saw that Nicole was clinging to her control by her fingernails. “Nicole—” His voice broke. “My God—I never meant—I didn’t think I could hurt you that—that you—”

“It’s all right,” she said, talking quickly over his words, not listening. She couldn’t bear to hear him, to look at him, to know what he really thought of her. She desperately wanted it to end—all the words, the fear, the tearing need to scream and keep on screaming and yet knowing she must not scream. Not yet. “I understand.” She gave Dane another ghastly smile. “Sorry I was so obvious about liking you. I hope Jan didn’t—”

The thought of Jan wondering if her friend was stalking Dane snapped the last of Nicole’s control. With no warning she bolted past Dane and down the hall, catching both of the men flat-footed. She paused only long enough to scoop up the purse she had dropped on the living room floor.

When she heard the men calling her name, she knew they weren’t going to let her go alone. She fumbled her keys out of her purse, jammed the correct one in the car’s ignition, and heard the fickle engine roar to life.

Thank you, God.

Leaves and fallen blossoms flew wildly from beneath the spinning tires. She barely kept the car from fishtailing out of control. But she managed. Just.

Chase saw the little car accelerate. Cursing steadily, he spun around and headed for his own car.

Dane tackled him.

“Forget it!” Dane panted, struggling to hold on to his larger, stronger brother. “By the time you back out, she’ll be long gone. No sense in having two emotional wrecks on the road at once. Not a damn thing you could do anyway, even if you did catch her.”

With a controlled, violent motion, Chase broke Dane’s hold. “I could see that she gets home safely.”

Warily Dane circled Chase, knowing quite well that his brother would be happy to take out his anger the old-fashioned male way—a good brawl.

“What makes you think she’s going home?” Dane asked.

“Where else would she go?”

“To the mountain.” Dane gestured toward Kilauea. “Benny says she always goes there when she gets mainland sad.”

The thought of some other man comforting Nicole nearly cut loose Chase’s temper. “Benny? Who the hell is he? You said she didn’t have any boyfriends!”

“Benny Kamehameha.” Dane watched his brother with narrowed eyes, gauging his mood. He had never seen Chase like this. Raw. Wild. Dangerous. “Bobby’s youngest son. He’s ten. Surely Lisa mentioned him to you? Benny of the short sentences?”

Chase took a deep breath and slowly unclenched his fists. “Oh. That Benny. I see.”

Dane saw that the danger had passed. “Do you? Nicole likes kids, and they like her. Of course,” he added sarcastically, “she could just be buttering up the kids because they have rich daddies.”

“Fuck you,” Chase snarled, turning on his brother suddenly.

Dane’s smile was razor thin. “Just wanted to be sure the hair shirt fit, brother. It’s so hard to find clothes in your size.”

Chase’s mouth flattened into a line. “That’s the second one.”

Dane nodded, understanding the old phrase from their childhood. If he needled Chase again, he could expect a no-holds-barred fight.

“What is ‘mainland sad’?” Chase asked carefully. His whole body was clenched with the effort of controlling himself. Like Nicole, he wanted to go away somewhere and try to understand how he could have been so brutally wrong. But he needed information about her more than he had to be alone. He needed that information with an intensity he didn’t even question. “Is she homesick?”

Slowly Dane shook his head. “Nicole loves it here. She was born for the islands. It just took her a few years to find her way over here.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never asked. She’s never offered. I assume it’s something to do with men, because she never dated. Until you. You were different.”

Chase closed his eyes, realizing too late the simple truth. “So was she.”

He turned away from his brother.

“Where are you going?” Dane asked.

“To the mountain.”

“It’s a big place. I don’t think you’ll find her.”

“No, but maybe I’ll find what she’s looking for.”

“What’s that?”

“Peace.”

For the first few miles Nicole drove, she spent as much time looking in the mirrors as she did at the road ahead. Not until she reached the first of the sugarcane fields that had been transformed into cattle pastures did she begin to relax.

She was over the first, and worst, hurdle. Now all she had to do was hang on long enough to find the tiny kipuka she thought of as her personal sanctuary. Once she was there, she would be free to do whatever she wanted—cry or scream or curse—and most of all to ask
why
until either answers or the fragile peace of emotional exhaustion came to her.

She took an unmarked, rough spur road that went about two thousand feet up Kilauea’s fertile, lava-scarred flank. The road ended in a thick lava flow. It was just one of the many black-stone rivers twisting down toward the sea and just one of many roads that ended beneath a cooled lava flow. The flows came from fissures that gushed liquid stone from the volcano’s flanks whenever magma bubbled and seethed upward in response to shifts in the immense pressures beneath the earth.

Each frozen river marked a time of desolation and renewal, of plant life destroyed while more land was created. Death and rebirth, the paradox of the burning mountain.

Both the desolation and the creation called to Nicole. In a way that she couldn’t describe, the ravaged land spoke to her, giving silent testimony to the stubborn endurance and ultimate beauty of life. For each savage moment of new land boiling up from the earth’s molten interior, for each violent river of fire scorching through green vegetation, there was also a long time of tranquillity and renewal.

No matter how bad it looked after an eruption, the destruction was never total.

Within the lava flows themselves, kipukas survived. These tiny islands of life were landlocked arks that nourished plants and animals until it was safe to leave again. Then, once more, life grew and changed, meeting the new conditions of the newly born land, life creating something both soft and vital from the fertile ashes of destruction.

That was what Nicole needed as she stumbled over a track that only she and Benny ever walked. She needed to sit in the midst of life that had survived incredible devastation. She needed to look beyond the safety of the kipuka and see the tiny signs of life venturing out once more, colonizing land that was as hard and sharp as the moment it had cooled years and years ago.

What tiny, fragile flowers could do, she could do.

Survive.

But first she had to find her own inner islands where emotions had survived the morning’s devastation.

If nothing had survived, she had to know that, too.

Without kipukas it took longer for life to enrich the landscape of volcanic creation, but life
did
win out. Even islands that had been first covered with and then surrounded by half a planet’s worth of water finally managed to rise above the waves and clothe themselves in ferns and flowers and sweetly singing birds. If Hawaii was possible, anything was possible.

Anything.

The kipuka was small, hardly more than an acre. It was a startling emerald garden bordered by the scrubby plants and grasses that struggled to conquer the brilliant black of a pahoehoe flow. Unlike most kipukas, this one was a small hill poking above the flow rather than a hole surrounded by walls left by more recent lava flows. The kipuka was thick with plants, because its lava floor was old enough to have crumbled into a thin, fertile soil. Ferns grew where other plants couldn’t. Colorful kopiko and ohelo bushes were everywhere. So was the familiar ohia tree, raising its graceful crown, silently offering hundreds of bright red flowers to the sun.

Nicole eased through the thick growth, seeking her favorite spot beneath a many-trunked koa tree. A remnant of once-vast forests, the tree with its thickly spreading roots had prevented other woody plants from moving in too close. The result was a sun-splashed opening where mixed grasses and small flowering plants like koali morning glories or white strawberries grew.

With a feeling of relief so great it was painful, she sank down onto the grass and leaned back against one of the koa’s nearly smooth trunks. She didn’t try to think, to question, to understand. She simply sat, letting the peace of the kipuka seep into her like a healing balm.

It was a healing she desperately needed.

After a while the tiny sounds of the kipuka resumed around her. It was a reassuring symphony of pollinating insects and immigrant songbirds moving like bright, musical shadows just behind curtains of green foliage.

Eyes closed, Nicole became part of the timeless kipuka. She asked nothing of herself except that she keep her thoughts from spiraling down in smaller and smaller circles. She didn’t want her body to become as raw and tightly knotted as her mind.

Eventually, when she felt calmer, she allowed herself to think about what she would do when she left the kipuka. The impulse to flee the island was very deep. She had fled a disaster once before, and it had worked.

Had it?

Or had running simply set the stage for a bigger disaster? Chase Wilcox.

That unhappy thought kept her still for a long time.

Finally she decided that running wouldn’t help. She had run halfway around the world once before. If she did it again, she would be back where she started.

No. She would be much worse off. Hawaii was her home. If she was driven from that, she would have nothing, nothing at all.

In any case, wherever she went, she would already be there, waiting for herself to arrive. Same woman.

Or rather, the same failure as a woman.

She doesn’t know the meaning of the word passion . . . about as skillful in the sheets as a corpse.

With a cry, Nicole wrenched her mind away from Chase’s harsh words. She would have given anything to doubt their truth.

No. That’s stupid. That’s how I got here.

She would accept his words.

Doubting the truth of her own frigidity was how she had fallen into the sensual trap with Chase. In the deepest level of her mind she had doubted her husband’s judgment of her as a woman, so when something in her had seen Chase and said,
This is the man,
there had been no inner voice to warn her that she was being stupid.

Now there wasn’t any doubt.

Her husband had been right.

She had been wrong.

In Chase Wilcox she had made the most agonizing mistake of her life. Now she had to accept the truth, live with it, and finally live beyond it, giving the islands of life inside her time to slowly spread out and heal the ruined landscape of her dreams.

If there was anything left to heal.

“Pele? She’s not here,” Bobby said.

With an easy motion he popped the cap off an ice-sweating bottle of beer and handed it to Chase. Except for the two men, the Kipuka Club was empty, chairs tucked beneath freshly set tables, glasses shining along the bar, everything waiting for the Sunday night crowds to arrive when the doors opened at five.

“Do you know where she is?” Chase asked, taking the beer.

“Benny told me he saw her up on the mountain this afternoon.”

Chase had looked for Nicole on the volcano, but he hadn’t found her. As Dane had pointed out, the mountain was a big place. So Chase had come back to Hilo, even though he doubted that Nicole would show up at the Kipuka Club to dance tonight.

But she just might.

Thin as the possibility was, it was his best hope of seeing her.

“Was she all right?” Chase asked.

Bobby stopped in the midst of uncapping his own beer and gave the other man a sharp look. “First Dane, now you. What’s going on?”

Chase watched creamy foam climbing the narrow neck of the beer bottle and sliding down the smooth brown glass. Bubbles caressed his knuckles with tiny, bursting kisses before he bent and licked up the savory froth.

“Thanks for the beer,” he said, and saluted Bobby with the bottle. “Need a drummer tonight?”

The Hawaiian’s black eyes narrowed. “I’m beginning to think I might need a dancer named Pele.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“So you tell
me.
Is she all right?”

“If she can climb the mountain, she must be.” Chase tipped the icy neck of the bottle to his lips.

Bobby said something in Hawaiian. He didn’t offer to translate.

Chase didn’t ask. He met the giant’s black glare without flinching.

“Man trouble,” Bobby said flatly. “Worse kine trouble. You be dat man?”

Until that moment Chase had thought Bobby’s side trips into pidgin were both amusing and amazing, given the man’s education. But this was like the harsh rumble just before a volcano explodes.

“Yes-no?” Bobby demanded.

“Yes or no,” Chase said softly, “it’s none of your business. Unless Nicole’s your woman?”

“You slower dan aa,” Bobby said in sardonic tones. “Dat wahine belong
no
man. No-no.”

“Ever?”

Bobby lifted his beer bottle and didn’t set it down until there was nothing left but a thin sheen of foam inside the bottle. In silence he opened another beer. Only then did he lean over the polished bar and look around the empty club in the mirror.

“You asking for a special reason?” Bobby said mildly.

“I’m asking.”

“I get the feeling that’s pretty special for you. Asking.”

Chase’s head moved slightly. It could have been a nod. It could simply have been that he shifted position. He gave away no clues, except perhaps in his very stillness while he waited for Bobby’s answer.

“I don’t know how she lived on the mainland.” Bobby took a long drink of beer. “Don’t give a damn either. When she came here, she looked like hell. Pale as death. Eyes like bruises. No life in her hair or her walk. Her idea of a smile made you want to cry.”

Chase’s eyelids flinched involuntarily. He had seen Nicole look just like that this morning. The image haunted him, making cool sweat break out on his skin as his stomach lurched.

“She didn’t let anyone close,” Bobby said. He had seen Chase’s reaction, the flicker of eyelids and the drawn lines on the other man’s face, and it made Bobby want to pound on something. But maybe he was wrong.

Maybe.

“She got work up on the mountain, did her job, and tried like hell to be invisible.” Bobby smiled slightly. “Woman like Pele, that isn’t easy. Some of the men gave her a try despite her stonewalling. At first she just ran from them.”

Chase waited.

So did Bobby.

“And then?” Chase asked through clenched teeth.

“She started turning down the men with a quip and a smile. Her skin changed to gold and her smile was the prettiest flower on the island. And her walk . . .” Bobby’s eyes half closed and his lips curved into a very male smile.

“Was it a man?” Chase asked, the words a bitter taste in his mouth.

“A boy. And a dance.”

“I don’t get it.”

Bobby gave him a look that said he wasn’t surprised. He had an unhappy suspicion that Nicole had come out on the losing end of whatever had happened between her and the only man who could keep up with her onstage.

“It’s easy, haole,” Bobby said coolly. “Benny ran away when he was six. She found him up in a kipuka only God and that kid knew about. She didn’t know us, but she brought him home when we were going nuts trying to find him. My mother took one look at Nicole, said ‘Pele,’ and taught her how to dance.”

“That’s all?”

Bobby laughed hugely, a sound that wasn’t as warm as it should have been. “Nicole doesn’t ask for much. I couldn’t believe the change in the next year.”

“What change?”

“She smiled,” Bobby said simply. “She laughed. She let herself be touched.”

Chase didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. What he was thinking was written in the rigid flex of jaw muscles.

For the space of one long swallow of beer, then another one, Bobby let him stew. Then he said, “I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about family touching. Hugs and pats and kisses and kids on your lap smearing you with fruit juice and ice cream.”

Chase didn’t want to ask, but he did. It was better than watching Bobby drink beer. “No dates?”

The Hawaiian shook his head.

“No lover?” Chase persisted.

“Nope.”

“You sound very sure.”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“I would have been the man,” Bobby said simply.

Chase looked down at Bobby’s big left hand where a worn wedding band gleamed.

This time Bobby didn’t wait for the question. “Hazel and I were sleeping separate then, and Nicole was like a little wounded bird to me. I knew I could heal her if she would let me. I wanted to. I used to lie awake nights thinking how it would feel to have her sleeping in my arms, that red hair of hers like a cool fire across my chest.”

Absently Bobby spun the beer bottle on the bar top, watching the color leave Chase’s face and then slowly return. “Why does thinking of her with me bother you? It never happened. Now it never will.”

“Because you and Hazel are back together?” Chase asked roughly.

The other man shook his head. “We have an understanding about wounded birds of both sexes.”

Chase couldn’t completely conceal his surprise.

The big Hawaiian smiled slightly. “It works better for us than being separate did.”

“Then what’s the problem with you and Nicole?”

Chase heard his own his own words with a sense of shock. He hadn’t meant to ask. But he had to know. The memory of Nicole’s hesitations with him and her physical ease with Bobby and Dane were a real part of why Chase had misjudged her so completely.

The Hawaiian looked from his beer to the glittering length of glassware decorating the bar and told himself that it was a good thing his gut told him to trust Chase Wilcox. Otherwise there would be some serious ass kicking coming down.

There still might be.

“A while back some mainland scientist did an experiment,” Bobby said slowly. “He raised kittens in a place that had only horizontal lines. No verticals. After four or six weeks he put the kittens in a cage with vertical bars.”

Chase waited.

“The kittens kept walking into the bars,” Bobby said. “They literally couldn’t see them. Their little kitten eyes only knew how to interpret horizontal lines.”

With an oddly graceful motion Bobby turned his back to the bar, propped both elbows on the polished surface, and watched the other man with eyes the color and sheen of volcanic glass.

“Keep talking,” Chase said.

“I thought you were quicker than that.”

“Yesterday I thought so, too.”

Bobby’s eyes narrowed into glittering dark lines. “It’s simple, haole. Somebody conditioned Nicole to avoid sex. She literally couldn’t see me as a lover, or any other man. The men who tried to make her see, lost her. I like Nicole too well to lose her just to tangle up some sheets. I want to heal her, not hurt her. She senses that, so she trusts me. But she can’t
see
me.”

“If I remember that experiment correctly,” Chase said, “eventually the kittens adjusted to their new reality. They saw both horizontal and vertical lines.”

Slowly Bobby nodded. “Interesting thing is that no one tried to find out what would have happened if the kittens had been stuck back in the original cage, or in some variation, like a diagonal world. I’ll bet it would have paralyzed them. They’d have been terrified to do anything for fear of slamming into more invisible obstacles.”

Chase prayed that Bobby couldn’t see what the words were doing to him: Nicole finally freed from one cage, only to slam into another one.

Christ Jesus, if only I’d known.

Bobby shifted onto one elbow. The thick muscles in his upper arm swelled with the sheer physical strength that was so much a part of him. The beer bottle looked like a toy in his hand.

“But we’re talking about a woman, not kittens,” Bobby said. “Nicole
saw
you. She took one look and decided that if any healing got done, you’d be the healer, not me.” He smiled, but it went no farther than his brilliant white teeth. “You fuck it up, brother, and I’ll be waiting for you.”

Chase looked into the bottomless black eyes of Bobby Kamehameha. He didn’t blame the Hawaiian for the blunt threat. If Chase had been in Bobby’s shoes, he would have reacted in exactly the same way.

No, not quite. I would have trashed Bobby. I would trash any man who hurt Nicole.

The depth of his feeling startled Chase, telling him how guilty he felt for misjudging her.

“You don’t have to wait any longer,” he said flatly. “I’m here. So are you.”

The beer bottle slammed down on the bar with enough force to dent wood. “Are you telling me that—”

Chase cut in ruthlessly. “I’m telling you that kittens aren’t the only living things that can be conditioned not to see all of reality. Men can be, too.”

A ripple of simple physical rage went through Bobby’s huge body as he realized what Chase was saying.

“Are you seeing all of reality now?” Bobby asked, his voice low and hard.

“I’m working on it.”

The Hawaiian’s mouth shifted into a smile that was almost cruel. “Then you’re figuring out what you lost.” He flexed his dark, powerful hands. “I guess that’s punishment enough.”

“Wrong,” Chase said softly. “I haven’t lost. Stay away from her. If there’s any healing to do, I’ll do it. Hear me?”

A shadow of amusement crossed Bobby’s broad face. It had been years since anyone had challenged him physically. And then it had been four men, not just one.

“Would it change your mind to know that I have a black belt in karate?” Bobby asked idly, looking down at Chase without even having to stand up straight.

“No.”

“You think you can beat me?”

“In a fair fight? I doubt it. But I’d beat you, Bobby. One way or another. Count on it.”

There was moment of tense silence before Bobby’s smile flashed hugely. “It’s a good thing I like you, haole son of a bitch. Otherwise we’d trash this club and each other while we sorted things out.” He looked around at the tables and chairs and potted flowering plants. “Hell of a waste, too. Just redecorated last fall.” Then he turned and pinned Chase with a fierce glance. “But if she comes to me—”

“She won’t,” Chase interrupted.

He headed for the front door with long strides and wished he was half as certain as he sounded. Even more, he wished he knew why it mattered so much to him that he be the one to heal Nicole’s wounds.

But he didn’t know why. He knew only that the feeling and the need went too deep to be denied or ignored.