Eden Burning (27 page)

When Chase came to Nicole’s cabin that night, Lisa was with him. Nicole was glad to see the little girl and disappointed at the same time.

You can be alone with him later,
Nicole told herself briskly.
Now let Lisa know she’s welcome.

“Hug?” she asked the girl.

“Hug-hug!” Lisa said, and leaped up into Nicole’s arms.

Holding her, Nicole spun around and around, making her little armload laugh with delight.

Despite the pain of seeing Nicole and knowing how badly he had screwed up something beautiful, Chase smiled to see his daughter’s pleasure. She was getting over Lynette’s casual cruelty, and part of the reason Lisa was coming out of her shell was the redheaded dancer who was spinning her.

“If I had known you were coming,” Nicole said, stopping and kissing Lisa’s cheek, “I would have bought some peppermint ice cream.”

“Benny did,” Chase said. “Like I said, that boy is uncanny.”

“He’s perfect,” Lisa said quickly, defending her friend.

“Perfectly uncanny,” Chase agreed.

“Is uncanny good?” she asked doubtfully.

“Sure is.” He took his daughter’s hand. “Means he’s a wizard.”

“Oh.” Lisa shrugged. “Well, of course he is. He’s Benny.”

Chase smiled. “That he is. Remember our deal?”

She nodded and turned to Nicole. “I’m going to draw while you and Daddy work. Is that all right?”

“Sure-sure. You know where everything is.”

“Fourth drawer?” Lisa asked, wanting to be certain.

“That’s the one.”

When Lisa skipped off into the kitchen, Nicole tried not to stare at Chase. The shadow of a half day’s growth of beard lay across his jaw. Fatigue or something less easily defined had drawn his face into dark planes and angles that shifted when he smiled or spoke, but never really softened.

“Sketches?” he asked, yawning.

“Over here.”

The futon was in its couch mode, folded to more or less comfortably support a seated adult. A folder of sketches lay on the floor in front it.

No matter what its present shape, Chase didn’t trust himself to sit down on the same futon where he had once taken Nicole. He was too tired, too unhappy, too close to the edge of his control. If she sat next to him, he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands to himself, even with the bright-eyed little chaperone in the kitchen.

Bending over, Chase raked up the folder in one hand and flipped it open with the other.

“Some of the sketches aren’t of native fauna,” Nicole said quickly, “but they should give you an idea of how I treat subjects in close-up as well as part of a whole landscape.”

He nodded and began sorting through the sketches. He had meant to work quickly, almost impersonally, but the drawings simply took him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Each line was distinct, crisp, yet each flowed into another line, capturing the seamless grace of nature itself.

A solitary bird dodging waves at sunset.

A palm tree dancing with the wind.

A green coconut that could have been a fertility goddess.

An asbestos-shrouded scientist edging up to take a sample of molten lava.

The absolute desolation of newly created land.

The graceful, almost living sweep of pahoehoe curving back on itself like a snail.

He looked up and saw her watching anxiously. “These are wonderful,” he said simply. “You draw both the fact and the art of nature.”

Before she could do more than smile, he was looking at sketches again. He went through them once, twice, three times, and each time he murmured fragments of praise. The words didn’t mean as much to her as the fact that he was obviously impressed by her work.

One sketch in particular compelled him. The drawing was almost stark in its simplicity: a single jacaranda bud at the tip of a supple twig. The bud was swollen to bursting, but neither the color nor the softness of the coming bloom showed in the tightly furled bud.

Chase studied it for a long, long time. Then he looked up, pinning her with his bleak eyes. “This is a brilliant drawing, Nicole. On the verge of sweet becoming, but the bud will never bloom for us, will it? Caught forever between all and nothing at all.” He looked back at the bud frozen in time. “I don’t know when I’ve ever seen anything quite so beautiful or even half so sad.”

He put the sketches back into the folder and handed it to her, careful not to touch her in any way.

“Keep going in this vein,” he said neutrally, “but concentrate on native fauna when you can.”

“What about a new kipuka? I mean, going there. Hiking.”

And all the rest. The hugging and the holding, the heat and the pleasure.

“Not tomorrow,” he said, yawning again. “Too much work at the lab. Maybe when I get back from my next trip to the mainland. But you don’t need to wait with your sketches. The native fauna is the same no matter which kipuka it’s growing in.” He turned toward the kitchen. “C’mon, punkin. Time to go. Your old dad is worn out.”

Lisa came running out of the kitchen and launched herself at her father. He caught her, lifted her high, and tucked her squealing under one arm.

“Thanks for sharing the drawings,” he said as he walked to the door. “Are you dancing at the luau?”

“Only if you drum for me.”

He hesitated. “Sure, Pele. It’s a deal. We’ll see you at the luau.”

Nicole didn’t know how long she stared at the door Chase had closed behind him. It must have been a long time, because night had gathered thickly in the garden outside.

Too much work at the lab.

You don’t need to wait.

We’ll see you at the luau.

She didn’t know she was pacing and crying until she felt the cold glide of tears off her cheeks. She kept pacing, kept crying, kept hearing him, kept seeing him.

Missing him.

He’s back, so why am I still pacing? Why am I still missing him?

Why am I crying!

No answer came but the unvarying rhythm of her feet over the wooden floor. She glanced toward the CD player, then looked away. Even dancing didn’t appeal to her right now. Nothing did.

Except Chase.

Marry me, butterfly. Be with me all the time.

With a throttled cry she paced the living room over and over. Remembered words followed her like shades of darkness.

Don’t look so sad, butterfly. You can respond to other men. But I won’t leave you until you know that’s true. The honey will be here until you open those velvet wings and fly away.

Her hands clenched and she paced more quickly. She didn’t want it to happen like this. Too fast. She needed time. She needed to think. She needed—

Chase.

Are you dancing at the luau?

Only if you drum for me.

Sure, Pele. It’s a deal.

The time between now and tomorrow’s luau yawned in a chasm as deep and wide as the night.

Damn it! Why is he doing this to me!

There was no answer except the seething, unpredictable currents coiling deep inside her. She was like Kilauea itself, racked by hidden, secret forerunners of an explosion to come.

He hadn’t kissed her. Not even once. Not even casually.

She had waited and waited, her heart a wild thing caught in her ribs.

Why didn’t he kiss me?

Then she understood, and she wanted to scream.

If she wanted him, she would have to come to him like the butterfly in the forest. The sweetness was there, waiting for her. All she had to do was light within his hand and drink.

She closed her eyes and saw the jacaranda bud quivering with potential.

On the verge of sweet becoming, but the bud will never bloom for us, will it? Caught forever between all and nothing at all.

“Chase,” she said hoarsely, putting her face in her hands. “You want too much from me! You’re too much man. I’m too little woman. I’ll disappoint you and destroy myself.”

All or nothing at all.

And like the bud, she was imprisoned between.

By the time morning came, Nicole was as restless as the melted rock seething beneath Kilauea’s black shield. She had almost gone to Chase’s cottage many times during the long hours of darkness. She wanted to see him, to talk to him, to . . .

What?
she asked herself impatiently.
What do you want?

There wasn’t any answer in the moon-silvered night, just a mixture of fear and restlessness, loneliness and longing.

There wasn’t any answer in the rising sun and the dazzling rainbows arching down from the clouds.

There wasn’t any answer in the blazing glory of sunset and the excited speculations of the scientists at the luau about Kilauea’s latest harmonic stirrings.

There wasn’t any answer in the familiar faces gathered around the luau fires on the beach. There wasn’t any answer in the conversations of friends.

Worst of all, there was no man with rain-colored eyes and midnight hair and a bittersweet smile to break her heart. There was nothing for Nicole at the luau but the feeling of being frozen between past and future, pain and pleasure, nothing and everything.

And then the drums began to beat.

Nicole turned away from Bobby in mid-word, leaving him to watch her retreating back with rueful understanding. She didn’t even notice. She had room for nothing in herself but the elemental summons of the drums.

Come to me.

Barefoot, her hair tumbling freely to her hips, she came to stand in front of Chase. She wasn’t aware of the applause or the sudden end to conversations around her. Nothing existed for her but the drums and the man who made them speak to her soul.

His hands moved quickly and the drums called out to her in complex, driving rhythms.

Dance for me. Dance. For me. Dance!

Nicole shook back her hair and let the rhythms take her body, giving herself to the drums. To Chase. Her hips moved sinuously beneath the blazing curtain of her hair. Firelight gleamed on her skin, giving it a lush golden color. The lavalava she wore low on her hips was the same golden-red as her hair.

Wrapped in fire, she moved elegantly, sensually, letting her body speak for her, dancing for the only person in the world besides herself.

Chase.

Minute by minute he watched her through narrowed silver eyes while his hands moved skillfully, relentlessly, driving toward a climax that would demand everything from himself and the drums and the dancer.

Burn for me, Pele. Burn. For me!

And she did.

Time stood still while she danced out at the edge of her control, giving herself to the wild, sweet violence of the drums. Finally her body couldn’t sustain the blazing demands of the dance any longer. With a cry she threw up her arms, surrendering the night and the victory to the intricate thunder of the drums.

The drums stopped in the same instant Nicole did, leaving only the bonfires to burn among the stately rhythm of the breaking waves.

Chase stood and smiled, acknowledging the applause. Then he stepped back into the shadows of the palms and disappeared.

Nicole stared in disbelief at the place where he had been. It was empty. She called out to him, but the sound of clapping hands overwhelmed her words. When she started after him, she was slowed down by the enthusiasm of her friends. She put them off with a smile and raced to catch up with Chase.

There was no one waiting for her on the moonlit path.

No one waiting for her in her cottage.

No one waiting in his.

Wearily she returned to her own cottage and waited for him to come to her.

Nothing came to the cottage except the sounds of laughter floating up from the beach. When she could take no more of the numb waiting, she stripped off her clothes and stood for a long time in the shower, wishing she could wash away memories as easily as tears.

At last the steamy confinement of the shower lost its appeal. She put on a black silk blouse and an ankle-length lavalava. As she anchored her hair in place with ivory chopsticks topped by tassels of chiming bells, she admitted to herself that she really didn’t want to go back to the luau.

She didn’t want to stay in the cottage either.

She wanted Chase.

Obviously he didn’t want her.

Slowly she walked back out into the garden and down the twisting, overgrown path to her jacaranda grove. Brushed by moonlight and warm winds, the blossoms were shimmering silver clouds crowning midnight branches. Petals lay in drifts and shifted in pale streamers over the ground. At each sigh of wind, more blossoms floated down, falling soundlessly to the warm earth.

With a weariness that had nothing to do with her recent dance, Nicole stretched out on the oversize chaise. The petals pressed between her body and the cloth cover of the chaise felt cool. Every breath of wind sent more petals drifting down to settle over her body as softly as a kiss.

For a long time she lay without moving, letting the silent, fragrant cascade of blossoms swirl around her, trying very hard to think of nothing at all.

Finally she slept.

Only then did Chase step out of the shadows and come to stand by Nicole, watching her sleep in the moonlight, all her fires banked. As he looked down at her, he told himself how many kinds of fool he was to be here. He should have kept walking along the beach, kept counting the thundering waves or the stars or the number of steps he took away from the woman he wanted more than he wanted to breathe.

He wanted her in too many ways.

She wanted him in only one way.

Sex wasn’t enough to ease the need inside him. Sex alone would only make the need worse. Much worse. It would be unbearable to make love to her and lose her all over again because she didn’t love him. Couldn’t love him.

He knew that, just as he knew he should have kept walking alone in the night. Yet here he was, counting the silent flowers drifting down to rest on skin that was softer and more fragrant than any blossom.

She wanted him, but not enough.

He wanted her.

Too much.

The way he had hurt her weeks ago. Too much.

Nothing he did could take back that morning, those cruel words, the bitter destruction of the first budding of love. In those few scalding minutes he had lost her.

All that remained of what might have been was her own buried sensuality. He could release that, giving it to her and to himself, a burning gift and epitaph to what might have been.

Making love would free her from the cruel past.

And enslave him to a cruel future.

He knew that as surely as he knew there was nothing else he could give to her but the velvet wings of her own sensuality and the freedom to fly.

There had been no one for him like the woman sleeping in a gentle storm of falling blossoms. She had shown him how wrong he was about women and love. She had healed the black scars that life had left on him and scarred herself in turn on the uncooled fires of his rage at women. The least he could do was heal some of Nicole’s scars.

And when it scarred him in return . . . he would survive. He had Lisa and Dane and Jan, people who loved him, people he loved. It would be enough.

Who are you kidding?
Chase thought bleakly.
You can’t even imagine not having Nicole to talk to, to laugh with, to dance for you. No matter what you tell yourself tonight, tomorrow you’ll be on your knees praying that she’ll find life without you to be as lonely as hell.

And then she’ll come to you, needing you and only you.

Won’t she?

With a sad smile at his own dream of love, Chase sat next to Nicole on the broad chaise. Still asleep, she turned toward him. At every stirring of her body, golden bells sang. Their tiny notes were unexpected, sweet. They pierced his soul.

Very gently he slid the ivory chopsticks from the piled coils of her hair, letting it spill like cool fire over his hands. This time he would know the full glory of her hair wrapped around him. And if the memory of it was more salt in the wounds of his loss, so be it. He had given her too much pain to hold back simply because he knew that pain would come to him in turn.

As Chase set the ornaments aside, ivory and gold gleamed and sang softly in the moonlight. Slowly he bent down to her. At first he simply breathed in her warmth, her scent, her presence. The moon shadow of her eyelashes lay like black lace on her skin. He kissed the fragile shadows, then the delicate warmth of her eyelids, the smooth hollow of her cheek, the sensitive inward spiral of her ear, the sensual curve of her lips.

And he felt her come alive at his touch, felt her lips opening to him, her breath washing sweetly over him.

“Chase?” Her voice was husky, dreamy, neither fully awake nor asleep. “I looked for you. I wanted to drink the sweetness from your hand.” Her breath came out in a broken sigh. “I couldn’t find you.”

His hands tightened in her hair. “I know,” he murmured, sipping gently at her lips. He had been running from the hurt of loving and not being loved in return. If he had any sense at all, he would still be running. “I’m here now, butterfly.”

“Don’t leave me.” She threaded her fingers deeply into the rough silk of his hair.

“Not until you know that you can fly.” Then he took her mouth before she could ask what he meant.

All her questions vanished as his tongue caressed her, showing her again how complex a simple kiss could be. Feeling the first currents of fire stir deep within her body, she made a soft, broken sound and kissed him in return.

Her hands trembled as they slid from Chase’s hair to the flexed power of his shoulders and back. Her fingers dipped into the open collar of his shirt, tracing lines of tendon and muscle, tangling in the curling midnight hair of his chest. She tried to search lower, wanting to know the delicious power of teasing his nipples into hardness.

His shirt was in the way. She made a frustrated sound and tugged at the cloth.

“Tell me what you want,” he said. “It’s yours.”

With exquisite care he bit her lower lip, silently showing her how gentle he would be.

“You,” she whispered.

She opened her eyes and saw him looming over her. He was huge, blocking out the stars. Shivering, smiling, she savored the certainty that his strength wouldn’t be turned against her. The twisting, trembling feeling deep in her body wasn’t fear.

It was anticipation.

“I want to touch you like I did before,” she said. “And then I want you to teach me other ways to touch you.”

His breath came in swiftly, hotly. With slow movements he eased his hands from the silky bonds of her hair. Watching her eyes, kissing her between heartbeats, he unbuttoned his shirt and let it slide to the ground.

“Better?” he asked.

“You’re so beautiful. . . .” She smiled when she saw his expression and pulled him down on the chaise beside her. “I know, men aren’t beautiful. But if something as powerful and wild as a volcanic eruption can be called beautiful, why can’t you?”

He laughed, not knowing that the sound sent more currents of fire through her. Then he felt the heat of her mouth tracing a path across his chest, and laughter wedged in his throat. She gently scraped her teeth over one of his nipples.

When she felt the sensual tightening take him, she smiled against his skin and tugged lightly at the tiny, hard nub she had called from his flesh.

“I love doing that to you,” she said, nuzzling against him. “I love feeling your response.”

Torn between laughter and the nearly painful clench of desire, he could barely get the breath to speak. “That makes two of us. Definitely. Two.”

“Is that a hint?”

She raked lightly across his chest, found his other nipple. She felt his heartbeat quicken as she tasted, stroked, and savored him. Then she began nibbling across and down his chest, following the dark path of hair as it narrowed to his waistline.

Chase’s breath came in and stayed. Women had touched him before, and a lot more intimately. But never had he felt so savored, so enjoyed, so deeply aware of the power of his own body as seen through a woman’s eyes.

With loving deliberation Nicole’s hands and mouth traced every line and ridge of muscle, every hollow, every shift in the pattern of dense hair. When she found his belly button, she stabbed it lightly, repeatedly with her tongue. His response pleased her. She returned again and then again, until finally the lure of more exploration called her away. Her tongue slid along the line of skin just above his low-riding lavalava.