Eden Burning

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “On the mountain,” he said with false calm.

  He hated the way she flinched from him. After nearly five days of stalking her, only to have her slide like fire through his fingers, his temper was more than a little raw. The fact that it was his own fault that she was running away didn’t make him feel any better. It simply put an edge on his temper.

  He hadn’t known just how sharply memories could haunt, both the bad memories and the good.

  Nicole haunted him.

  And ran from him.

  “Illustrations, remember?” he prodded. “Or have you decided to back out of the Islands of Life project?”

  “No.”

  Her voice, like her face, was strained. Right now she was wishing she had resigned from the project no matter how much she needed the work. She hadn’t realized how painful it would be to finally see Chase up close. It had been bad enough turning around time and again to find him watching her with his bleak gray eyes and then to know that sooner or later she wouldn’t be able to escape.

  Like tonight. She was trapped, forced to trade empty social words with Chase while humiliation twisted her heart and her stomach. And she had to endure it all under the very interested eyes of her co-workers.

  They knew. All of them. She might as well have hung signs from every one of the Kipuka Club’s ceiling beams.

  “In that case, let’s get going,” Chase said neutrally. “I’ve made a provisional list of places, starting with the fire pit and going all the way to the sea. I figure it will take at least two weeks, more likely four, just to visit each area and select the various microenvironments that should be dealt with in detail.”

  Nicole nodded stiffly.

  “With luck, we’ll find everything we need on Kilauea,” he continued. “Otherwise we’ll have to shift to Mauna Loa. That would mean overnight camping.” His eyes narrowed at the appalled look that came to Nicole’s face.

  “I thought you’d feel like that,” he said, leaning toward her, his voice so soft that only she could hear. “Don’t you know that the last thing I’d do is touch you again?”

  Her eyelids flinched with helpless pain. She hadn’t guessed that he would be so cruel as to bring up her sexual shortcomings again, and in such a public place.

  When Chase saw her lips go pale, he heard the echo of his own words and realized that she had taken them wrong. Afraid that she would flee again, he put his hand on her arm and fought to keep his voice too low for anyone to overhear.

  “I didn’t mean— Damn it, there’s nothing wrong with you as a woman,” he said. “All I meant was—”

  She turned away, cutting off his words.

  “Nicole.”

  When she stopped and turned around slowly, Chase felt the curious stares of the people in the club like bugs crawling on his skin. It had been the same since Monday—people acting as though he and Nicole were living on center stage acting out their lives to a standing-room-only crowd.

  What really bothered him was that Nicole was suffering the most from the scrutiny. Before their one-night affair she had joked with the people she met and turned aside any man who didn’t get the hint with a quip and a smile. From her friends—men and women alike—she had received welcoming smiles, a friendly pat, even a quick hug if she hadn’t seen the person for a while.

  It was different now.

  Every man who had been to the Kipuka Club last Sunday seemed to know that Nicole had joined the pool of sexually available women. To most men it made little difference beyond a certain speculative quality to their look, as if they were rearranging their mental landscape, putting her in a new category, and then forgetting about it.

  Some men didn’t forget. They acted like she had been stripped naked and thrown into an invisible sexual arena. Because they expected to be successful eventually, they pursued her more openly and relentlessly than they ever had before.

  Chase understood exactly what had happened, and why. As long as the prowling males were sure that Nicole wasn’t sleeping with any man, they took her rejection with reasonably good humor, especially when she made a witty joke of their attempts. But that had changed. Now the men sensed that she had been in bed with Chase Wilcox.

  Chastity and humor had been Nicole’s shield and weapon against the most persistent men. Though Chase hadn’t meant to, Sunday night he had stripped those defenses from her. Now she was exposed. Vulnerable. What had once been humorous advances were now anything but a joke.

  Knowing it made Chase furious, but there was nothing he could do about the men, no way he could protect Nicole. Not when she ran from him at every opportunity.

  He couldn’t decide which made him feel most like a piece of shit—her running, the men who pursued her like greyhounds going after a bleeding rabbit, or the male friends whose touch she now avoided.

  For Nicole there were no more friendly pats on the arm, no small talk, no sense of being a friend among friends. Dane had mentioned her withdrawal to Chase more than once. Other people certainly must have noticed.

  Chase didn’t know whether she simply couldn’t bear being touched anymore or if she was afraid of appearing to invite more than friendship from the men around her. The cause didn’t really matter because the result was the same. She had cut herself off from the very people who might have reined in the more predatory men.

  Nothing in the situation made Chase feel better about himself. The more he knew about Nicole, the more he understood how completely, and how cruelly, he had misjudged her.

  This running away had to stop. It wasn’t doing either of them any good.

  “We need to decide on the drawings,” he said.

  “Make a list of plants you want illustrated and in which stages of development,” she said tonelessly. “Tell me when and where you need me. I’ll be there.”

  “Here. Now. We have to talk. This can’t go on any longer.”

  For the first time Nicole met Chase’s eyes. They were cold, metallic, like hammered silver. Her stomach twisted as she understood that there was no place left for her to run.

  “Hey, my little jalapeño,” Fred called cheerfully from a few tables away. He came up behind Nicole and slid an arm around her rib cage, just beneath her breasts. Just barely. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  She tried to step beyond Fred’s reach.

  His arm tightened, crowding her closer to him. He bumped his hip rapidly against her. “When are you going to teach me how to dance sexy?”

  “On the thirtieth of February, just like I promised,” she said, hoping that she was the only one who heard the strain in her voice.

  Once Fred would have let go of her with a laugh and a shake of his head. Now he simply nudged intimately against her again.

  She tried to pry his arm off without making a scene. He didn’t budge, except to give her the hip shot again.

  “Jalapeño, the moves I’ve got in me can’t wait that long,” he said. “Know what I mean?”

  She sensed the savage tension in Chase’s body as though her nerves were connected to his. She felt trapped, half wild. She couldn’t bear being touched by the overconfident, overeager scientist one second longer.

  “Joke’s over,” she said between her teeth. “Let go of me.”

  “Do I look crazy? The fun’s just beginning.” Fred trailed his hand from her ribs to her waist and back up again. “I’m going to teach you a few horizontal moves that will blow your hot little—”

  Chase’s hand shot out.

  Fred’s words stopped in a gasp of surprise and pain.

  Chase yanked the man’s hand off Nicole with a ruthless twisting motion that stopped just short of breaking bones.

  Instantly she backed out of reach.

  With a cold smile Chase closed his hand around Fred’s and squeezed until the man’s face was as pale as Nicole’s had been.

  “You know,” Chase said casually, watching Fred with frankly lethal intent, “in the last few days I’ve had a bellyful of your blue comedy routine. Clean up
your act or I’ll put it on the hospital charity circuit.”

  Fred’s breath came out in a rush when Chase released his fingers. Warily Fred flexed his hand and looked from Chase to Nicole and back.

  “I thought you were through with her,” Fred muttered.

  “You thought wrong,” Chase said softly, his voice vibrating with anger. “Any man who wants to touch her better wait for an engraved invitation. From her. Pass the word, pal, or there’s going to be a rash of broken hands on the mountain.”

  Fred hesitated, flexed his hand again, and shrugged. “February thirtieth it is,” he said, glancing at Nicole.

  “Sure,” she said, her voice faint.

  When Fred turned away, she shuddered, unable to control her emotions any longer.

  “Are you all right?” Chase asked in a low voice.

  “I’m fine,” she said, the words too quick, too brittle. Then she whispered helplessly, “Oh, God, I hate being a thing!”

  Chase remembered what she had said about marriage, about being a man’s thing. It made him sick and angry at the same time. For two cents he would have cut loose and trashed the club, just for the bitter physical joy of it. But the club hadn’t earned his anger any more than Nicole had.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, his mouth grim. “You look like you could use some air.”

  Nicole stumbled as she turned toward the door. Her normal grace had deserted her.

  “I’m going to take your arm,” Chase warned, his voice low.

  “I—” She stumbled again.

  As he caught her to support her, he saw Dr. Vic close in from across the room.

  “Nicole?” Dr. Vic asked earnestly. “Are you all right?”

  She forced a smile onto her face. “Just a little tired.”

  The scientist gave Chase a hard look.

  Chase gave it right back, too angry to be politic with the elderly professor. “Excuse us, sir. I thought some fresh air would help Nicole. The club is a little close tonight.”

  “Umm, yes. Fred is one of our best and brightest scientists, but he can be a little, er, cloying. I’ll speak to him about it. I can put a stop to this sort of thing at work, but . . .”

  “Bobby and I will take care of the club,” Chase said flatly. “You just pass the word to the crotch hounds at the lab that sexual harassment is still a crime.”

  “Who else besides Fred?” Dr. Vic asked, looking unhappily at Nicole.

  “Oh, you’ll recognize them,” Chase said with a narrow smile. “They’ll be the ones in body casts.”

  Despite the danger that fairly radiated from Chase, his grip on Nicole’s arm was gentle as he led her toward the club’s side door. Gentle but unbreakable. He had waited as long as he was going to wait before they talked.

  Running wasn’t helping her, and it sure as hell wasn’t doing him any good either.

  In darkness and silence Nicole and Chase stood just beyond the partially open side door of the club. They were in a small fenced yard that ended at the alley. There was very little chance that anyone would bother them. The side door was the service entrance to the club, and everyone who worked inside was already there.

  A curtain of mist lowered from the clouds and swept across the tiny yard. Nicole felt the rain as through glass, a coolness more sensed than experienced. Now that the running was over, she was oddly relieved, almost light-headed. She felt no need to go back inside out of the rain. She preferred wet privacy to a dry, crowded, avidly curious club.

  Chase unzipped the windbreaker he was wearing and slipped it over her shoulders. She looked at him, surprise showing clearly in her pale brown eyes.

  “That’s not necessary,” she said quietly. “I’m used to the rain. Hawaiian rains are like sunshine. Warm.”

  “Wear it.”

  He heard the anger seething just beneath the surface of his voice. With a quiet curse he ran a hand through his hair. Now that he had her alone, he didn’t know where to begin.

  How do you ask a woman politely, subtly, why the hell she slept with you?

  No brilliant insight came to him.

  Fuck subtle.

  “Why did you sleep with me?” he asked.

  Nicole turned her face up to the rain, accepting it just as she accepted that she had run as far as she could without leaving behind everything she loved. She wouldn’t do that. No man was worth that. Not even Chase Wilcox.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Her mouth turned down in a bittersweet smile at her own expense.

  “That’s no answer.”

  “Why do you care? It’s not going to happen again. Is that what’s worrying you? That I might expect something from you? I don’t. All I want is to be left alone.”

  “That’s not—”

  “No,” she said, cutting across his words. “You thought I was after Dane. I wasn’t. You apologized. I accepted. That’s the end of it.”

  Slowly Chase shook his head. “But it hasn’t ended,” he said, his voice dark, strained. “I hurt you badly. You’re still hurting. I want to . . . heal you.”

  Nicole closed her golden eyes and tried to think of nothing at all. “That isn’t possible. You can’t heal a corpse.”

  “What?” Chase asked, shaken.

  “You’re the one who pointed out that I was like a corpse in bed. You don’t heal a corpse. You bury it and walk away.” She fixed him with eyes that were like tarnished gold. “So walk away, Dr. Wilcox. The autopsy is over, the dirge has been sung, the grave is sealed, the—”

  “Stop it,” he interrupted harshly.

  With an effort she bit back the scalding flow of words. After a moment she took a deep, ragged breath and wrapped her arms around herself as though she was cold.

  Chase watched her with haunted, quicksilver eyes, hearing her words echo, trying to make them fit with the hesitant lover who had thanked him for not hurting her.

  “What the hell happened to you before you came to Hawaii?” he whispered hoarsely.

  Closing her eyes, she said nothing.

  Very gently he put his hands on her shoulders. Beneath his palms her whole body radiated rejection and refusal.

  “You haven’t dated anyone, you weren’t after Dane, and you were more frightened than passionate with me.” Chase’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “Why did you do it, Nicole? Why did you sleep with me?”

  “Chalk it up to loose morals. I’m a slut.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Her eyes opened. They were clear and hard. “But that’s what you saw when you looked at me. That’s what I proved when I went to bed with a man I hadn’t known more than three days. As you said to Dane, what ‘paragon of virtue’ would—”

  “Don’t do it,” Chase interrupted, his voice low, warning.

  “What?”

  “Use my words like knives against yourself.”

  “But they work so well. Truth is like that. A knife.”

  He closed his eyes, disgusted and angry at everyone and everything, but most of all at himself. “Then use it on me. I made the mistake, not you. You’re the furthest thing from a slut I’ve ever met.”

  “You thought I was as hot as my hair,” she said. Her mouth turned down again as she remembered another man’s words, another man’s knives slicing her.

  The only thing hot about you is your hair.

  “I believed you were after Dane,” Chase said, his voice both gritty and patient as he tried to make Nicole understand that it had been his fault, not hers. There was no need for her to look so drawn, so fearful, a woman waiting to be hurt again.

  “I wasn’t after Dane,” she said dully. “I wasn’t after anyone. Until you.”

  “I believe you, Nicole.” He saw the surprise on her face as his words finally sank in.

  “I— All right,” she said. “Good. That’s something.”

  “I’ve watched you since we—since that morning. I’ve seen how it really is for you.”

  Numbly Nicole turned her face up to the rain and w
aited to be told again about her failures as a woman.

  “At the observatory you ignore the single men,” Chase said, “or you top their sexy innuendos, and you don’t give an inch otherwise. But you used to allow the married men to touch you. A hug here, a pat on the arm there, a slap on the shoulder and a smile. Why? Why them and not the other men?”

  “You said it yourself. They’re married. Safe.”

  Chase thought of Bobby Kamehameha and smiled thinly. “Not always, Nicole. Not always.”

  “They are to me! I would never—” Her voice broke beneath the tension that made her flesh like carved stone.

  The need to flee was so great that it was like craving oxygen after spending too long holding her breath. She knew what Chase was heading toward. He was going to make her admit that she had wanted him. Then the depth of her failure as a woman would be even more humiliating.

  She didn’t know if she could endure hearing about it from his lips all over again.

  And then she knew that she couldn’t bear it.

  Yet she couldn’t get away. His hands had slid from her shoulders to her wrists, and he was gently unwrapping her arms from their defensive position around her waist. If she tried to move away from him, the strong fingers would close, holding her in place.

  No way out.

  Trapped.

  Carefully Chase took a breath and thought about what Nicole had said. He had to be certain he understood what she was telling him, what the words actually meant. He had learned how much pain it caused when he misunderstood her. He didn’t want to hurt her again. He didn’t think she could take that.

  He knew he couldn’t.

  “And the single men?” he asked softly. “You avoid them because they aren’t safe?”

  Her shrug was jerky, harsh. Adrenaline flooded through her, yet she couldn’t run, couldn’t hide. Almost frantically she cast about in her mind for weapons, reasons, something, anything that would make him leave her alone.

  Suddenly it came to her. Words were weapons. And the most lethal weapon of all was truth.

  She should know. The truth of her own failure as a woman had destroyed her like a river of molten rock, burning alive everything in its path, covering the ashes with a thick layer of stone.