Eden Burning / Fires of Eden

by Elizabeth Lowell

  And every night when she finally hung up the phone, she cried. She wanted to see Chase so much that she felt like she was being scraped with a dull knife.

  He said he would get back as soon as he could, she told herself for the tenth time in as many minutes. Now, get to work so you’ll have time to play when he does come back.

  There was a lot of work to do, but the drawing wasn’t going very well. No matter where she looked or what she looked at, all she could see was his face, his smile, his hands on the drums. On her.

  Stop it, she snarled silently at herself.

  Sitting cross-legged on her big garden chaise, she lectured the dreamy-eyed woman who had taken over her mind. After a while she was able to concentrate on the jacaranda trees arching overhead. They had burst into bloom, lifting masses of lavender flowers in silent, generous offering to the sun.

  Thousands upon thousands of blossoms shivered when the breeze slid caressingly over their soft surfaces. Some of the blooms came undone with the gentle pressure and were swept away on transparent currents of air. In time those flowers floated to the ground to lie heaped in sweet windrows that swirled with each new touch of the breeze.

  Normally she loved these days when the jacaranda bloom was at its peak and blossoms showered the land with a fragile lavender rain. But for the last ten days she had done little more than sketch unhappily during the daylight hours and pace her cottage after dark, waiting for Chase’s nightly call.

  When she slept, it was badly.

  When she awoke in the night, it was to a body quickened by sensations that made her breath catch in her throat and stay there until the dawn came. Just the thought of the time she had spent in his arms was more than enough to send heat lancing through her, tightening her until she wanted to scream.

  It had been like that since the day he had led her into the sea and taught her how much more he knew about her body than she did. Now she waited for him to come back with an intensity that made her tremble like a wire strung too tight. She didn’t know why she trembled. She knew only that she did.

  Maybe today. Or tomorrow, she thought, doodling on the edges of a failed sketch.

  She wanted to return with Chase to the warm, creamy sea. She wanted him to miss her the way she missed him, to lie awake nights and spend his days distracted, to not take three breaths without thinking of her.

  So you pleased him a little, she told herself. So what? The world is full of women who can please him a lot more than a little.

  That was something she tried not to think about.

  She didn’t succeed.

  With a silent curse she threw down her pencil and stopped pretending to be sketching the jacaranda trees.

  “Bad day?”

  Nicole spun around so quickly at the sound of Chase’s voice that her sketchbook went flying. There was no hesitation, no shyness in her greeting. She simply came off the chaise and into his arms and held on to him as though that was the only thing keeping both of them alive.

  He held her the same way. “Miss me?”

  Her answer was a shudder and a ragged sound that was all emotion.

  “That’s the way I missed you.” He buried his face in the fragrance of her braided hair and inhaled deeply. “I thought if I couldn’t see you or touch you, I wouldn’t want you so much it felt like I was breathing broken glass.” His laugh was short, harsh. “I was wrong. I keep being wrong about you, butterfly.”

  He picked her up, held her against the length of his body, and let her presence in his arms flood through him. She pressed her face against his neck and clung to him with every bit of her dancer’s strength.

  All that Chase had been thinking and feeling since the moment he realized just how badly he had misjudged Nicole came pouring out in a torrent of words. He knew it was too soon to say such things, but his own exhaustion and her abandoned greeting swept away common sense.

  “I kept thinking about how Lisa smiles when she sees you coming up the path,” he said. “Then I’d remember your laughter at one of Mark’s awful puns and the way you listen, really listen, when I talk about the islands.” He found her mouth and kissed her deeply, fiercely, shuddering at her open, wild response. “I remembered that, too. The taste and the heat of you. I don’t want to be without you anymore. Marry me, Nicole. Let me—”

  “Marriage?” she interrupted, pulling back in shock.

  Even before Nicole spoke, Chase felt her rejection in the sudden stiffness of her body. Too late he remembered how she felt about marriage.

  Being a man’s thing. All day. Every day. And the nights.

  Closing his eyes, he cursed his foolish dream savagely, silently. Just because she jumped up and threw herself into his arms didn’t mean that she wanted to risk belonging to him in any important way. He had shown her only a little of the fire buried within her body, let her taste just a bit of the wild honey.

  Naturally she had missed him. She didn’t know that any man could kindle the flames and drink the sweetness of mutual sensuality with her.

  “Sorry, butterfly.” He set her on the ground again. “I never should have asked. Blame it on jet lag and the heat of the moment. Like I said, you keep taking me by surprise. You make me respond at every level. I make you respond somewhat at one.” With a bittersweet smile he touched the tip of her nose with his lips in a casual kiss. “But then, nobody ever said life was fair.”

  Nicole tried to hold on to her spinning thoughts long enough to make a sensible statement. She couldn’t. “I didn’t mean— It’s just that I hadn’t thought about— After Ted, I promised myself that I would never, ever, ever—”

  Chase kissed her gently, stopping the tumble of words. “It’s all right. I understand. You have no reason to trust me with your happiness and a lot of reasons not to.”

  He let go of her and backed up several steps, putting her out of reach. With every breath he berated himself for jamming three weeks of work into ten days so that he could rush back to her.

  And ruin everything.

  “Please don’t,” she said in a raw voice. “Don’t feel guilty about what happened that morning at Dane’s house. I know you’d never hurt me. Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you,” Chase said wearily. “But the absence of pain isn’t enough. Not for sex. Not for love. Certainly not for an enduring marriage. Mind. Body. Soul. That’s what marriage has to be to work. I didn’t know that the first time around. Lisa paid the price for my stupidity. But I know now. All or nothing at all.”

  “Does that mean you won’t—that we can’t—” Nicole closed her eyes and clenched her hands together so fiercely they ached. “Please don’t go away from me,” she whispered. “I couldn’t bear it. You make me feel so many things that I didn’t even think were possible for me.”

  “Any man could do the same.”

  Her eyes flew open. “That’s not true!”

  “Oh, it’s true,” he countered calmly. Then his mouth turned down in a sad smile at her disbelief.

  “But it’s only with you—” she began.

  “I just happened to be the man you saw when you were starting to split the past’s cocoon,” he said, interrupting her before he could hear any more of the words that cut so deep and hurt so much because he wanted so desperately for them to be true, really true, all-the-way-to-the-soul true. The way it was for him, but not for her. “For you, I’m a stage that will pass.”

  “No,” she said, tears brimming in her eyes. “That’s not true!”

  With a choked sound she threw herself back into his arms and held him fiercely, shaking with emotions and thoughts that were too new and much too powerful for her to sort out, much less understand.

  For several minutes Chase held her and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice about matter-of-fact things. His voice and his words belied the darkness in his eyes and the grim brackets etched deeply on either side of his mouth. Slowly the harsh tension began to leave her body.

  “What’s this I hear about a big luau?” he ask
ed.

  She drew in a broken breath and accepted the neutral topic. After another breath she was able to answer him. “It’s the annual Kamehameha bash. Pig in a pit. Fires on the beach. Dancing all night. Everything tourists think of when they think of Hawaii.”

  “Where will it be?”

  She pulled away from him just enough to point toward the tangle of greenery that led from the high ground where they stood to the beach below. “Down there.”

  He stroked her hair lightly and stepped back from her arms. “When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “That soon? Good.”

  Something in his voice made her go still. “You’re going back to the mainland again, aren’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “When?”

  “Soon.” Silently he added, A lot sooner than I’d hoped. But it’s the only way, butterfly.

  I can’t trust myself around you. I almost took you that day in the ocean, and I want you far more right now than I did then.

  She watched him undo his tie with a few quick jerks. For the first time it registered on her that he must have come straight from the plane, not even taking time to change out of his mainland business clothes.

  “Where’s Lisa?” Nicole asked.

  “With Benny. Somehow he knew we were back. He was waiting at the cottage door.”

  Her throat tightened as she saw the lines of strain beneath his exterior calm. “You must be exhausted.”

  “I’ve been up most of the last three nights. I got most of my paperwork done when Lisa was asleep.” He yanked, and the tie hissed out from beneath his collar. He unbuttoned more buttons, took a long breath, and let it out in a sigh. “Have any sketches for me to look at?”

  “None that I like.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted very slightly. “Do you ever like them?”

  “Not very often,” she admitted.

  “Then it’s a good thing I have the final say. I’d hate for my words to have to carry the whole Islands of Life project.”

  The thought that he might need her professionally startled her. Silently she watched while he unbuttoned his shirtsleeves, rolled up the cuffs, and then started back up the trail.

  “Can you meet me at my cottage in about an hour?” he asked without looking back. “That will give me time to clean up and eat before we look at the sketches.”

  “Eat?”

  “Dinner. My stomach is still on mainland time.”

  “I’ll make you something,” she called after his retreating form.

  “That’s all right, butterfly. I’ve been cooking for myself for years. I’m getting pretty good at it.”

  Nicole watched Chase merge into the greenery along the tangled garden trail and wondered why she was crying. He was back. She could see him, touch him . . .

  And he seemed farther away than ever.

  33

  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 c
ame 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.