To the Ends of the Earth / The Danvers Touch

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Books by Elizabeth Lowell

  To the Ends of the Earth (1983)

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  To the Ends of the Earth (1983)

  AKA The Danvers Touch

  For Evan man to my woman

  PROLOGUE

  SHE WAS perfect. Sleek, sensuous, responding to the lightest touch.

  And therefore dangerous to the man who tried to control her. He would have to be catlike in his reflexes. A moment’s inattention would—

  The phone rang, destroying his concentration.

  Travis Danvers looked up from his computer screen and blinked like a man surfacing after a long dive into uncharted waters. His blue-green eyes were unfocused. He rubbed his short, tawny beard, shook his head briskly, and tried to concentrate on the here and now rather than on the ever-changing interplay of wind, hull, water, and sail.

  Through an open window near the desk, the scent and sound of ocean waves poured into the room, calling to Travis at a level deeper than words. The Santa Ana wind had blown Southern California’s usual smog all the way to Catalina Island. The land lay revealed in all its bronzed, late summer splendor. The ocean was a shimmering, restless blue.

  He should be out there on the water, feeling the Wind Warrior heel over as her sails filled and she stepped into the wind.

  The phone kept on ringing.

  Travis glared at the dainty instrument. He hated all phones in general and this one with a special passion.

  Pink.

  Bloody hell. What was my cousin thinking of when she redecorated the house—Easter eggs and nurseries?

  The phone rang for the eighth time. Travis blew out a breath and flirted with the seductive idea of ignoring the phone and slipping back into the computer-driven virtual world where he tried out new ideas for catching every last whisper of wind in a ship’s sails.

  The phone rang. Number nine.

  With a muttered curse he saved his most recent design changes, grabbed the silly pink receiver in his big hand, and snarled his usual telephone greeting.

  “What!”

  “Swear to God, Danvers, you gotta work on your manners.”

  Most of Travis’s irritation vanished the instant he recognized the voice. Rodney Harrington was one of his favorite people.

  “Why should I work on my phone etiquette?” Travis asked, stretching his long, rangy body and yawning at the same time. “You’re the only one who has my cousin’s telephone number.”

  Harrington made a pleased sound. “Then you’re actually in Laguna Beach? My call hasn’t been forwarded to Tierra del Fuego or some other benighted place?”

  “I’m here, pink phone and all.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My cousin redid the house since my last visit. Pink. Pink. More pink. Repeat. PINK.”

  “You’re surrounded by pink?”

  “Mostly, yeah. Lavender, too.”

  “Um. I’d like to see that. The thought of a man your size lolling around in a pink villa is . . . piquant.”

  “So visit me,” Travis retorted. “I’ll put you in the special guest room, the one with the candy-striped canopy bed.”

  Harrington snickered. “Does this mean you’ll be having the Wind Warrior’s hull repainted in fuchsia?”

  “Was that the reason you called, to find out if I’m repainting my ship?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Harrington laughed and then spoke quickly. “I just wanted to be sure the Wind Warrior is all slicked up for her debut.”

  Travis looked at the pink receiver as though it had licked him. “Harrington, are you all right?”

  “In the pink, actually.”

  “Awful pun. You’re fine.”

  Travis flexed the muscles in his back and shoulders, trying to work out kinks that came from spending hours bent over a computer. His tall, rawboned body had been designed for physical work. If it weren’t for his lengthy morning swims, he wouldn’t have been able to sit still long enough to use his fancy computer.

  “What’s this about my ship’s debut?” he asked. “She’s hardly a virgin, you know.”

  “Remember my idea for a splashy coffee-table book featuring you, your ship, and your designs?”

  Travis remembered. “Suddenly the pain in my neck just moved lower. A lot lower.”

  “Stand up and walk around,” Harrington said cheerfully. “God made bodies like yours for action, not computers. I’ve hit upon the perfect photographer.”

  Travis had no problem following the non sequitur. His brain was as quick as his body was rangy. “If this is another of your—”

  Harrington kept talking in the manner of a man who knew he was going to have a hard sell for a pet project. “Cochran! I don’t know why I didn’t think of her sooner. She—”

  “You did,” Travis interrupted ruthlessly. “I vetoed it.”

  “Did you? Why?”

  “One word. Female.”

  “Rather narrow-minded of you, boy-o.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was silence, then a long-suffering sigh. “Swear to God, Danvers, you can be a real pain in the butt.”

  Travis grimaced and looked out the window to the rock-lined beach and the endless sweep of Pacific Ocean. He knew he was being unreasonable. Using one lame excuse or another, he had also turned down all the male photographers Harrington mentioned. Travis didn’t want to be bothered with having an outsider underfoot on the Wind Warrior, or someone looking over his shoulder while he tinkered with sail and hull designs on his computer.

  But he owed Harrington a lot, and Harrington had wanted to do this book for several years.

  “You’re in Laguna,” Harrington said neutrally. “Cochran lives in Laguna.”

  “Rod—” Travis began.

  The other man ignored him. “You’re going to be there for at least a few weeks. Your ship is at Dana Point. Cochran has a car. She’s familiar with ships, both power and sail.”

  Silently Travis groaned. He had always known he was going to give in to his friend about the damned book.

  He just hadn’t thought it would be today.

  Maybe he could hold out a little longer, until the new sail design was stitched, rigged, and ready to try out at sea.

  “Rod, have you thought of—”

  “Stop interrupting,” Harrington said crisply. “It’s rude. The publisher is on board, so to speak. He’s willing to pay a nice advance to the photographer.”

  “What about me?” Travis asked dryly.

  “What about you? You’re as rich as I am. Richer, probably, if you followed my advice about the stock market.”

  “Now that you mention it, I was going to ask you about—”

  “Nice try, but no,” Harrington interrupted. “The subject of this conversation is a book about you and your exquisite, ruthlessly efficient designs. You won’t be paid because all you will have to do is ignore the photographer and do what you would be doing anyway.”

  “Does that mean you’ve given up on the idea of me writing the damned book?”

  “I’m not entirely stubborn. Some poor grunt will do
the captions for five free copies and a pat on his balding head.”

  “I never thought of you as a ‘poor grunt.’ ”

  “Swear to God, you never think of me at all or you wouldn’t be such a wart on the pickle of my progress!”

  Travis started laughing and knew he had lost. “All right, all right. Set up a meeting with this photographer for—What day is this?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Toward the end of the week, then. We’ll see. No promises.”

  “Next Thursday. I’ll leave the details on your answering machine.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Buy one. Or use E-mail. You’re a hard man to get hold of.”

  “I like it that way.”

  “In-the-Wind Danvers. You and Cochran should get along fine.”

  An uneasy prickle went over Travis. “What does that mean?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Such a nasty bark. All I meant was that Cochran, like you, gets too wrapped up in her work to care about mundane things like sleep or answering telephones.”

  Travis wasn’t buying it. “My bite is worse than my bark. Keep it in mind.”

  “Truer words were never muttered. Don’t use your teeth on Cochran. She’s a particular friend of mine.”

  “As in mistress?”

  “Cochran?” Harrington laughed sadly. “Not in the past, not now, not ever. She doesn’t like the opposite sex. Another thing you two have in common.”

  “I’m quite fond of the opposite sex.”

  “You like sex. It’s not the same.”

  “And you don’t?” Travis retorted.

  “I like women,” Harrington said simply. “Sex is part of it, but not all of it. Women genuinely see the world from a different point of view than we do. It’s fascinating. Each time I think I’ve figured women out, they surprise me.”

  “Rather like designing and sailing a ship.”

  “If you really believe that, you’re getting far too intimate with your ship,” Harrington retorted.

  “Ships don’t screw you. What you put into them is what you get back.”

  “Tina was a long time ago.”

  Travis’s hand tightened around the phone, but only for an instant. Tina had been a savage lesson in the difference between women and men. He had had years to get used to the depth of her betrayal. He couldn’t change his past, but he could make damn sure it never happened again in his future.

  And he had.

  He had simplified his relationships with women to mutually beneficial business transactions. No hard feelings and no regrets between consenting adults.

  “Tina was a very bad mistake,” Travis said matter-of-factly. “Unfortunately, the highest price was paid by the most innocent. Considering that price, I would be a cruel, stupid son of a bitch not to learn my lesson, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Hell,” Harrington said gruffly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring her up.”

  “No apology needed. I don’t talk about my former wife if I can help it.”

  In fact, Travis could count on one hand the number of times he had discussed his disastrous ex. Four of those times had been with his lawyer. The fifth time had been with Harrington, over a bottle of very, very old Scotch. While the Wind Warrior’s hull rode on the dark blue breast of the sea, they had toasted the past’s bitter lessons under the endless daylight of the Antarctic summer sun.

  “How much time will this book project take?” Travis asked.

  Nothing in his voice even hinted at the rage that still coiled in his gut at Tina’s memory. He wasn’t even aware of his feelings. They were so deeply burned into him that he would have been aware of them only if they were absent.

  “Depends on how much time you give the photographer,” Harrington said. “It shouldn’t be tough duty.”

  “Why? Is she easy on the eyes?”

  “Cochran is a pro. She could teach you about hard work.”

  “So she isn’t good-looking.”

  “She’s a photographer, not a future mistress. What do you care what she looks like?”

  Travis laughed. “Just curious. Bet that she asked you about me.”

  “Nope.”

  “Not even whether I was married or ugly or lecherous or gay or—”

  “Nope,” Harrington interrupted. “Cochran’s only questions were when, how long, and what was the advance. She’s no more eager to dillydally than you are. She’s supporting three other people.”

  “Children from a bad marriage?”

  “Bad luck. Her mother’s, not hers. Cochran is putting her twin siblings through medical school and keeping the wolf from her dear, ditsy mother’s door until January.”

  “What happens in January?”

  “Her mother marries one of my friends.”

  “Rich?”

  “But of course.”

  Travis’s voice turned sardonic. “Found a dumb one to support her, huh?”

  “He’s quite bright for a tax lawyer. Worships the ground she walks on, et cetera. She returns the favor and sets up elegant charity dinners for his law firm. Quite a good match, if I do say so myself.”

  “You introduced them?”

  “Little old moi,” Harrington agreed smugly. “One of my better efforts.”

  The prickle of unease went over Travis’s body again. Harrington took too much pleasure in nudging people—or shoving them, if it came to that—in a new direction.

  “About this photographer,” Travis said evenly. “I won’t sign up for anything at all until I’ve seen her work.”

  “I should hope not.”

  “I don’t want a series of full-color postcards.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Or sappy—”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” Harrington interrupted, satisfaction oozing from his voice.

  “Damn it, you’re purring. I hate it when you purr!”

  Harrington was still laughing when he broke the connection.

  Travis glared at the receiver, smiled ruefully, and hung up. Then he turned back to the computer screen and looked at his latest sail design.

  It was good, but not nearly good enough. Maybe if he flared a corner here and took two long, curving tucks there . . .

  He crouched over the computer again. As the hours went by, the changing design on the screen was reflected in his tourmaline green eyes. He was lost in curving lines of force, wind, and the infinite possibilities of the sea.

  For the next three days Travis didn’t think about his ex-wife, the photographer, or the book he didn’t want to do. Except for his strenuous dawn swims, he was consumed by the endless, changing, fluid beauty of ocean and wind, hull and sail, design and freedom.

  Freedom most of all.

  Freedom from a past he couldn’t change and couldn’t stop regretting.

  ONE

  CATHERINE COCHRAN was too caught up in the sensuous beauty of ocean and sunset to realize that the tide was creeping up on her. Earlier, when the light had begun to slant and deepen into late afternoon, she had picked her way out on the rocky point below her house, set up her camera, and settled in to wait for the moment when the sun would set fire to the serene face of the sea.

  She hadn’t noticed that the tide was coming up as the sun was going down. The inward sweep of each deceptively smooth wave brought her an inch closer to real trouble. But each wave also brought her closer to the picture she had spent weeks trying to get.

  Everything was perfect today. The tide was low, the sky was clear, the sun was setting, and the surface of the sea was a liquid gemstone shimmering with light. If she was patient, the moment she had been waiting for would finally come.

  Behind Cat a ragged line of rocks thrust out of the water, gathering height and power until they finally became a headland braced against the seductive rush of waves. In front of her the ragged tongue of land dissolved into random rocks covered by thick beards of mussels and slick green water plants.

  That was what held Cat’s attention now. The
textures of shells and seaweed, smooth waves and slanting light, were what had lured her out beyond the tide pools and slippery intertidal rocks to this spot midway between land and sea. She had been daring but not foolish in her quest for just the right photo; at low tide, the top of the rock she crouched on was dry and beyond the reach of all but the biggest waves.

  The rocks behind and in front of Cat were below water most of the time. Their rough, powerful faces emerged only during an unusually low tide. As soon as the balance of sea and moon shifted, the rugged rocks would sink again into the ocean’s liquid embrace. Then the image she had worked so hard to capture on film would be beyond reach until the next time that tide, sun, and weather worked together again.

  As the evening sea swept toward the outer rocks, Cat counted out the seconds between the rhythmic waves. When she sensed that the light and time and wave finally would be right, she braced herself more securely and let out her breath. At the exact instant the fluid curve of water met the rocks, she triggered the motor drive on her camera.

  Well beyond the six-hundred-millimeter lens, wave met rock. Water exploded into creamy cataracts. Fountains of iridescent bubbles licked over black stone.

  That was the moment she wanted to capture, the fragile caress of foam and the rock that had broken a billion waves . . . the rock that was itself being melted by rainbow bubbles until finally it would be one with the sea it had so long withstood.

  Not defeat, but equality, for wave and rock defined each other. Without the wave, the rock would never know the power of surrender. Without the rock, the wave would spend itself quietly on the shore, never finding a way to transform its smooth perfection into a fierce explosion of beauty.

  Cat lost count of the waves, of the times she triggered the camera, of the rolls of film she loaded into the Nikon’s compact body. Her legs cramped, protesting their unnatural position. She ignored discomfort. Until the light was gone, she wouldn’t allow anything to break her concentration on the changing images pouring through the long lens into her camera.

  Beneath her practiced, calm motions, excitement threaded through Cat. Her trademark was the kind of photos that made the viewer stop, stare, and reassess reality. She knew the shots she was taking now would be some of her best work, combining stark light and shadow, elemental textures, and the changed perspective that was possible only with the use of a very long lens.