To the Ends of the Earth

by Elizabeth Lowell

  With a quiet breath she wiped all expression from her face. She turned only partway around before she saw him, dressed in clothes as black as her own, nearly invisible in the dimly lit room.

  “Travis.”

  Cat hardly recognized her own voice, cool and remote, as untouchable as a winter halo around the moon. A voice for Ashcroft, not Travis, but she said nothing more because she couldn’t. So much had gone wrong that she was afraid even to believe he was back.

  And for how long? A night? An hour? A minute?

  Not that it mattered. A lifetime was hardly enough, and Travis wasn’t interested in sharing lifetimes.

  “I knocked. No one answered,” Travis said. “The door was open, so I came in.” He shrugged, but the eyes examining her face were intent rather than casual. “What’s wrong?” he asked bluntly.

  Cat closed her eyes. Hearing his voice again, seeing him close enough to touch but so very far away . . .

  Cold and empty.

  Her hands clenched again, each nail returning to the red crescents that hadn’t faded from her palms. Against her will her eyes opened again, hungry to see the angles and shadows of Travis’s face.

  “Cat?” he asked, his voice softening. Of all the things he had imagined when he came back to Laguna, this remote, brittle angel of exhaustion wasn’t one of them. “You look transparent. Are you all right?”

  “Long day, that’s all,” she said, trying for a light voice and failing badly, betrayed by her own body at a time when she most needed strength.

  Travis was standing there as though nothing had happened, as though she hadn’t lived in hell for five days.

  “Just a long day,” she said. “One in a long series. Getting longer every day.”

  Cat forced herself to look away from Travis’s eyes, more black than blue or green in the low light, as sensual and mysterious as a midnight sea. Abruptly she unclenched her fingers and began to gather up the careful rows of slides she had built from Ashcroft’s rejections.

  Travis reached toward her without meaning to, then dropped his hand, angry and concerned at once. He had pleaded for her to come away with him and she had refused. He still wasn’t sure why he had come back to her. He knew only that he hadn’t had any real choice.

  The discovery had made him uneasy and angry. Furious. But nothing had erased the need to see Cat again. So he had come back to her, something he had never done with any woman.

  And now she was hardly falling all over herself to greet him. She acted as though it had been five minutes rather than five days since she had seen him.

  Travis had wondered how much Cat would miss him. Now he knew. He didn’t like the knowing any more than he liked the needing.

  “How was your trip?” Cat asked.

  Travis clenched his teeth. “Lonely.”

  The single savage word was like a slap. Her hands shook, spilling slides.

  “Damn it!” she said violently. “You were the one who left!”

  Travis crossed the room in three strides. His hands closed over her arms.

  Strong hands. Warm hands. Familiar hands. Cat could no more hide the tremor that went through her than she could stop the beating of her own heart.

  “Look at me,” he demanded.

  She shook her head, refusing, and stood rigidly beneath his hands.

  Baffled, Travis gripped Cat’s arms and stared at her bent head. He didn’t know why she was angry when she had been the one who turned her back on his pleas as though they—and he—meant nothing to her. Yet despite that, despite his frustration and anger at being turned down flat, her scent was as warm and familiar to him as dawn; and like dawn, it stole over him, ravishing him.

  He almost hated her at that moment. She made him defenseless, vulnerable, enraged.

  And he barely touched her cool surface.

  “I missed you,” Travis said harshly. “Too much.”

  “It was your choice, both the leaving and the missing.”

  The words were like Cat herself, without heat, without emotion. As lifeless as ice.

  “I wanted you to come with me,” he said. “Remember?”

  She forced herself to look at the blue-green gems that were his eyes. They were like his voice, savage.

  “You didn’t want me enough to wait for me.” Cat stepped out of Travis’s grip and turned back to the light table. “But thanks for the invitation,” she said, blindly stacking slides. “It made me feel less like a piece of ass.”

  Cat heard Travis’s sharply indrawn breath and almost regretted her words.

  Almost.

  But they were true.

  “You’re acting like you were the one who was dumped,” he said bitterly.

  “Wasn’t I?”

  “I had to go!”

  “Fine. But did you have to be so cruel about the way you left?” Cat asked, gathering slides with jerky motions of her hands.

  “Cruel? I didn’t—”

  “It was cruel to let me wake up alone in your bed,” she interrupted, talking over Travis. “It was cruel to walk alone to my own house with the taste and scent and memory of you everywhere on my body, even inside me, and I knew every step of the way that you were gone, that you left me so easily when it cost me so much not to go with you.”

  “Cost you? You?”

  Travis’s uncertain hold on his temper snapped. He turned Cat to face him so quickly that the slides she was holding flew out of her hands and fluttered to the floor like brilliant butterflies. She cried out and reached to gather up the slides, only to find herself chained by his hands.

  “My slides—” she began.

  “Screw the slides,” he snarled.

  “They haven’t been duplicated.” Cat’s voice was thin, stretched to the point of breaking. “If they’re ruined, I can’t replace them.”

  Then she remembered Ashcroft’s words. Cold and empty. Strength drained out of her, leaving her nearly limp in Travis’s grasp.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “Ashcroft won’t be using the slides. They’re cold and empty. Like me.” She looked at Travis with blank silver eyes. “That’s why you left, isn’t it? I wasn’t worth staying for.”

  Travis was too shocked to speak.

  As though unable to believe it was Cat talking, he ran his fingers over her face. Her skin was almost cold to his touch. The shadows below her eyes were deeper, the hollows beneath her cheekbones more pronounced, the bones in her face very close beneath her translucent skin, her eyes as colorless as winter. She looked both fragile and oddly powerful, a sorceress caught in a moment of human weakness.

  Almost hesitantly, Travis brushed his lips over Cat’s and gathered her into his arms, holding her as though she was more fragile than frost.

  “We’ll talk after the slides are safe,” he said. “Neither of us is making much sense right now.”

  Before Cat could respond, Travis released her and began picking up slides. When she didn’t move, he looked back at her. She was watching him. The expression on her face was puzzled and shaken and dazed, a cat that for once had failed to land on its feet. He smiled crookedly, relieved to know that he wasn’t the only one who was off-balance.

  “Where do you want the slides?” he asked.

  Like his smile, his voice both soothed and disturbed Cat. She wanted to smile and cry at once.

  “On the light table,” she said faintly.

  She bent down to pick up the rest of the slides. When she was finished, she started to put them on the light table.

  That was when Cat realized he was studying the images Ashcroft had rejected. Unlike the poet, Travis had figured out how to use the magnifying tool without instruction.

  Cat had an almost overwhelming impulse to snatch away the slides and hide them. The feeling appalled her. She was used to criticism; it came with the territory called professional photography. She knew all about differences in taste as opposed to differences in artistic or technical quality.

  Yet seeing Travis look at her sli
des made her want to crawl into a dark corner and pull the shadows in after her until she was invisible.

  If Travis didn’t like her work, she would be devastated on a level that had nothing to do with professional pride. Just as the Wind Warrior was part of his soul, these slides were part of hers. If he saw them as cold and empty . . .

  Trying to drive away the chill that covered her skin more thoroughly than the black sweater, Cat dragged her palms over her arms.

  Without looking up from the light table, Travis took her hand and rubbed it slowly against his beard, warming her skin. When he shifted the magnifying glass to another slide, he didn’t let go of her. He worked one-handed, staring down at the slides with an intensity that was almost tangible.

  His anger at her, at himself, at everything, had vanished. Nothing was real to him but the slides, intense visions that were as unflinching, intelligent, complex, and passionate as the woman standing next to him.

  Finally Travis straightened and looked at Cat as though he had never seen her before. It was the way she had looked at him when she first realized that he was the designer of the ship that had sailed across the sun.

  He kissed her palm and said simply, “They’re brilliant.”

  Cat drew a ragged breath, realizing that it was the first one she had allowed herself for a long time.

  “Ashcroft didn’t think so,” she said. “He told me they were cold and empty. Like me.”

  “Ashcroft has the aesthetics of diarrhea.”

  She laughed almost helplessly. “But he’s the boss. I’m reshooting the lot. Postcards coming up. Boring, superficial, and pret-ty,” she said, her voice mocking the last word.

  “Pretty pictures for pretty boys, is that it?”

  She nodded, then looked into Travis’s eyes. “I’m very glad you don’t feel that way.”

  His hand tightened on hers. He looked at the slides spread across the light table, colors glowing, exquisite visions enclosed in white squares.

  “You see an extraordinary world,” he said in a low voice. “Things stripped down to their essential curves. Colors that reveal rather than conceal meaning. Your images are as balanced, graceful, and powerful as a good racing hull.”

  Travis touched one slide, moving it into a place by itself. Cat recognized the slide. It was the one she had taken the day she met him, when the tide came in and he lifted her off the rocks.

  “No wonder I had to drag you away,” he said. “If I’d seen dragons and gold hiding in rocks and spray, I’d have forgotten the tide, too.” He smoothed her palm against his beard, then kissed the pulse beating in her wrist swiftly, hungrily. “Thank you for sharing your world with me, Cat. It’s so much like you, pure and brilliant, radiating life even in its darkest shadows.”

  Cat realized she was crying when she felt the hot tears spill over her cheekbones, tears salty on her mouth. She put her arms around Travis and held on until she ached. She had missed him more than she had admitted or even known until now. She had missed him since she was born.

  Travis held her, rocking slowly, letting his warmth seep into her, kissing her temples and eyelids, her eyelashes, murmuring her name. The warmth he gave her returned redoubled, filling him and giving ease to an emptiness that had been part of him for so long that he hadn’t even known it was there until she had filled it.

  And then he had left her and measured the loss.

  He had learned something from the five empty days. This time he wouldn’t let his sexual hunger for her blind him to the need to put their relationship on a rational footing. He had money. She needed it.

  They were made for each other.

  All he had to do was get her to set the price. Once she did, there would be no more empty days, no more aching nights. Everything would be understandable, reliable, predictable. Safe.

  Yet even as Travis thought about the necessity of finding out Cat’s price, something bitter came to the back of his mouth. A part of him that he thought had died with his unborn child didn’t want a price tag on Cat’s company.

  And that scared him more than anything else.

  We’ll sort it out soon, he vowed silently. Tonight.

  FOURTEEN

  TRAVIS TURNED off the light table and pulled Cat close.

  “Pack an overnight bag,” he said, kissing her lips slowly. “We’re going on board the Wind Warrior. Tonight. No arguments, witch. I’m the boss now, just like Ashcroft.”

  Startled, she lifted her head and stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Simple. You’re doing the photos for my book. No arguments about that, either. So bring your cameras. Bring whatever you need.” Travis bent until his lips were just touching Cat’s. “Bring your warmth. Bring your fire. It’s been so damned cold without you.”

  Cat couldn’t say no. She didn’t want to. She packed in a daze, fitting her few personal things into a bag no bigger than a purse. Her camera equipment was another matter. Not only did it take longer to pack up, it took a lot more room.

  Travis shook his head in rueful amusement when he saw the five bulky cases that Cat carried over her shoulders on straps or in her hands like suitcases.

  “An overnight bag that would fit in a bread box and enough camera gear to fill a truck,” he said dryly. “Here. Give that lot to me. It’s a wonder you can stand up under all that stuff.”

  “I could use a bearer,” she admitted. “Are you looking for work?”

  Instead of answering, he bent swiftly and lifted her in his arms.

  “Not me,” Cat said, laughing. “The cameras.”

  “You carry them. I’ll carry you.”

  He started for the door.

  “Wait,” Cat said. “I forgot to put on the answering machine. Harrington will—”

  “Yeah,” Travis interrupted, putting her down. “I know. He’s forever chewing on me for being out of reach. Serve him right if I just grabbed you and sailed to the ends of the earth, leaving no number at all.”

  She hesitated for a dreamy instant while his words kindled her imagination—freedom and Travis and the sea. Then she sighed and went to turn on the answering machine. Running away was a child’s freedom. She wasn’t a child anymore.

  Travis picked up the camera gear and followed Cat out the front door, waiting while she locked it. Then he started across the patch of hardy plants that was her front yard and toward the steps that led to the street.

  “Can we take my car?” she asked.

  He turned and looked at her, surprised. “This will all fit in mine.”

  “I have more gear in my car trunk. It’s stuff I don’t always use but never know when I’ll need it. Specialized equipment. Reflectors and tripods, extra flashes and a change of clothes, hiking boots and the like.”

  Cat laughed at the expression on Travis’s face. “You guessed it. I keep my magic broom there, too.”

  “I was wondering where you hid it,” he said mildly. He lifted the heavy, bulky garage door. “Back out. I’ll lock up for you.”

  With the ease of much practice, she maneuvered the little Toyota out of the narrow garage and into the street. He lowered the door, snapped shut the padlock, and walked toward her with long strides, illuminated only by moonlight.

  Cat watched Travis with open appreciation, planning how to take a picture that would capture both his animal grace and his intense intelligence. Sidelight, surely. Or perhaps illumination from below as she panned her camera with his movements, freezing him against a blurred background.

  “Wake up,” he said, opening the passenger door and piling stuff in the backseat. “Or do you want me to drive?”

  “I’m awake,” she said vaguely, balancing angles and lighting in her mind.

  “Convince me.”

  “I was wondering whether to shoot you in sidelight or up from below, to freeze you against a blurred background or to do a close-up.”

  “What did you decide?” Travis asked as he slid into the passenger seat.

  A slow smile curved Cat’s lips.
“To shoot you and then have you stuffed.”

  He snickered. “Sounds painful.”

  “Nope. I know a great taxidermist.”

  Travis waited until Cat drove the car onto the Pacific Coast Highway and turned right, heading toward Dana Point. Only then did he begin talking quietly.

  “I didn’t mean to be gone so long. Wind Warrior’s rigging is new, not only the lines but the sails as well. I’m doing some experiments with high-tech cloth, stealing some ideas from parachute designers.”

  Cat didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything at all.

  He glanced sideways. “Don’t worry, I won’t give you a pop quiz. I’ll just say I’m trying out a few new sail designs, and a few new ways of controlling those sails. I had to get used to the rigging under various conditions of wind and sea. It took longer than I thought it would, and there are still some problems I need to work on.”

  She nodded and concentrated on driving for the simple reason that she didn’t like talking about those long days when she hadn’t known if Travis would ever come back to Dana Point.

  To her.

  “If it helps,” Travis added almost reluctantly, “I was surprised I’d only been gone five days. It felt more like five weeks. I missed you like hell.”

  Cat said nothing. Instead of looking at him, she concentrated on the highway winding between small shops and beach cottages.

  “Still mad?” Travis asked neutrally.

  She blew out a swift breath between her lips. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she knew they had to or she would find herself waking up alone again and wondering what she had done wrong this time.

  “Suppose I’d made love to you as though I could never get enough of you,” Cat said, her voice as neutral as his had been. “Then I left you when you were asleep, and you woke up and found a note that said: ‘Gone to take pictures somewhere on the ocean. Wish you had come with me.’ ”

  Travis’s breath came in with a rough sound.