Eden Burning (18 page)

Leaving the Kipuka Club behind, Chase drove to the Kamehameha estate. He was hoping that Nicole had finally gone back to her home.

No such luck. Her car wasn’t parked in front of the path that wound down to her cottage. He did a quick circuit of the driveway leading to the big house. Her car wasn’t there either.

An anger that came from desperation spiked through him. He wanted to see Nicole, to talk to her, to explain to her that he had misjudged her, that he was sorry, that . . .

What? What else can I do?

Chase didn’t know. All he knew was that his need to see Nicole was too deep for words.

When he got to his own cottage, the phone was ringing. Hoping against all logic that Nicole was calling him, he grabbed the receiver.

“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 up 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.