Death is Forever (11 page)

“No more,” Cole said finally.

Erin saw the pale blaze of his eyes as they opened and automatically stepped back. He didn’t release her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I thought you liked it.”

“That’s the problem. I like it way too much.” He looked at her, making no effort to disguise the elemental hunger he felt. “I wanted you the first time I saw you. Nothing that’s happened since has changed my mind. But I’ve never kissed a woman without having her, even when I was fourteen, and—”

“Fourteen?” Erin interrupted. Then, as realization hit,
“Never?”

“She was nineteen and she knew exactly what she was doing. So did I, after she was through.” Cole smiled and put his finger under Erin’s chin, closing her parted lips. “Don’t look so shocked, honey. Where I came from, I was a slow starter, but I caught on real quick. I didn’t want to marry so I didn’t go looking for the kind of girl who kissed and said no. The girls I went out with didn’t know the word no. Dinner, a movie, and the backseat of a car.”

“The movie, no doubt, was optional?”

Cole smiled crookedly and flexed his hand again, rubbing his palm over Erin’s, drawing her closer to him without meaning to. “Most of the time, so was the dinner,” he admitted.

“Are you bragging or complaining?”

“Neither,” he said, bringing Erin’s hand up to his lips once more. Very gently he caught her index finger between his teeth, tasted her, and released her quickly. “I’m trying to explain that in some ways I’m as new to this kind of playing as you are. Or did you see a lot of bad drive-in movies through steamy windows when you were a teenager?”

She tried to laugh, but her breath was too thick in her throat. “No. I was thirteen until I turned nineteen. Gawky and shy and plain. Phil, my brother, didn’t help. I had a terrible crush on a boy who was three years older, a senior. When he asked me out, Phil called the guy and told him that if he so much as kissed me he’d be history. Saturday came and the guy didn’t show up. I found out later that he had a thing for virgins. Kept a regular scorecard.”

“Funny how different men are. I never was interested in a virgin until you.”

Erin closed her eyes. “Not so funny after all. I’m not a virgin.”

“You’ve never given yourself to a man,” Cole said matter-of-factly. “That makes you a virgin in my book.” He released her hand. “Stay put while I make sure it’s safe to take a ride.”

Cole drove erratically, first slow, then too fast. It was deliberate. He studied traffic in mirrors, looking for cars that matched his speed.

“Well?” Erin asked when she couldn’t stand it any more.

“Nobody yet.”

They turned off the highway and cruised several empty parking lots. No one took the bait. Finally he decided it was safe and parked at Will Rogers State Beach.

Eager to be outside, she reached for the car door. Then she stopped and looked over at Cole. He was still studying the rear and sideview mirrors. Despite her impatience to be out on the beach with nothing in front of her but seven thousand miles of water, she didn’t open the door.

“You’re a fast learner,” he said approvingly.

“Pain is a great teacher.”

“I’m sorry. I tried not to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” she said quickly. “That was why I stopped fighting. I expected to be hurt and I wasn’t. You’re damned heavy, though.”

He smiled slightly. “Next time I’ll let you be on top.”

She gave him a startled sideways look and then the kind of almost-shy smile that told him the thought intrigued her.

“Two choices, honey,” he said. “Go for a walk or take a remedial course in window steaming.”

She smiled sadly and looked away. “Don’t tempt me.”

“Why not?”

For a moment the car was silent. She turned around to face the man who had taught her more about sensual pleasure in a few minutes than she’d learned in her entire life. More importantly, he’d taught her the nature of the restlessness that had driven her from the arctic. The discovery of her own sexuality was as unexpected as Cole’s gentleness had been.

“I’m interested in what you’re offering,” she said, “but I don’t know how much and I won’t until it happens. Or doesn’t happen. That’s not fair to you.”

“If life was fair, someone would have gutted Hans before he had his first wet dream.”

Erin stared. Though Cole’s tone was casual, his eyes were like hammered silver.

“But life isn’t fair,” he said. “Only damned unexpected. Back in that hotel room you taught me something new about pleasure, and I would have sworn that was impossible. We could die before we take our next breath, or we could live to teach each other something else new about ourselves. So I’ll take what comes and not worry too much about what doesn’t. How about you?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Think about it. And while you do, think about this. A man who can’t control himself belongs to anyone who can. I don’t belong to anyone but myself. We could be dead naked and you could be all over me like a hot rain, but if you changed your mind, I’d get up and get dressed and that would be the end of it.” Cole’s ice-pale glance went from mirror to mirror as he spoke. “While you think about that, let’s walk. We’ve both been caged up more than we’re used to.”

Erin waited until he came around and opened her car door. Caution, not old-fashioned etiquette. When he laced his fingers through hers once more, she found herself smiling. He saw the pale gleam of her teeth in the moonlight and smiled in return.

“You really like being outside, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes, but that’s not why I’m smiling. I feel about sixteen again, holding hands beneath the cool moonlight.” She gave him a sideways look. “I suppose you were about six when you started walking out with girls.”

He laughed softly. “Enjoy it. When we get to Australia, you won’t even want to stand close to another person, moon or no moon.”

“Why?”

“Too bloody hot. The Kimberley is in the upper part of the continent. The tropical part.”

“Tropical? The pictures I’ve seen of the Kimberley look more like desert.”

“Oh, it’s dry all right. Most of the year. Then the buildup begins, and great rivers of clouds pour in from the Indian Ocean. You sweat and the sweat just stays on your skin, making you hotter than ever, because sweat can’t evaporate into air that’s already saturated. The body can’t cool itself, and the sunlight is a razor slicing into your skin. The temperature goes way over a hundred, and the humidity gets right up to the point of rain and then it sticks there and sticks there until men literally crack up and go berserk.”

She made a sound of disbelief.

“It’s true, honey. The Aussies even have a name for that kind of madness. They call it going troppo. I’ve come close a few times myself. It taught me something. I avoid the buildup now.”

“You make it sound irresistible.”

“Oh, that’s not the worst of it,” he said, taking a deep breath of the cool, brine-scented air. “When the wet finally comes, the country is swamp. For months at a time you can’t travel except by plane.”

“What about four-wheel-drive?”

“Not unless it floats.”

“No bridges?”

“Only on the one major highway,” Cole said. “When the wet is really on, those bridges are under water a lot of the time. They’re built low and with removable railings so that trash doesn’t get caught and create a dam. Even so, they wash out a lot.” He looked over at Erin. “That’s what ConMin is trying to do by offering to fly you all over the world to photograph diamond mines. ConMin knows that if you don’t get into Crazy Abe’s claim in the next few weeks, you’ll have a hell of a time getting in at all until summer dries things out. I should be in the Kimberley right now, prospecting before the temperature goes to a hundred and twenty and the air is too wet to breathe.”

“Then we shouldn’t go to London at all.”

“It will keep Faulkner and van Luik off our backs while Wing sets up things on the other end.”

“Wing?”

“My partner.”

“Oh. That’s right. BlackWing. Dad said something about that.”

“Yeah, I’ll just bet he did.” Cole looked down at Erin. “Don’t worry, honey. If your mine can be found, I’ll find it for you.”

“Yes. Dad said that too.”

Cole walked in silence for a time before he stopped and very gently pulled Erin toward him. When there was no resistance on her part, he bent and brushed his lips over hers.

“Don’t go to Australia. You’ll be safer with your father. He may have gray hair, but he’s one tough bastard.”

She started to object, only to be distracted by the gliding caress of Cole’s tongue over her lips and the warmth of his breath as he spoke urgently.

“The climate and the land have killed men who were much stronger and more experienced than you are,” Cole said simply. “The Kimberley Plateau is no place for a white woman.”

“People told me the same thing about the arctic.” Curious, she tasted his chin as she’d once tasted the green diamond. “Salty. Male. Warm. You taste good, Cole.”

His breath came in with a ripping sound. Swiftly he caged her face between his hands. “Woman, you do love to take risks, don’t you?”

“Risks?” She looked up at him with eyes made dark and mysterious by moonlight. “How so?”

“I could make you stay home. I could crowd you sexually until you turned and ran for cover.”

Erin went very still, searching the hot silver gleam of Cole’s eyes. Then she sighed and smiled almost sadly. “Yesterday you could have, when I didn’t know you. But not today. Today I found out that you’re a hard man but not a cruel one. You’re not at all like Hans.”

“There’s a world full of people who would disagree with you,” Cole said flatly.

“I’m not one of them. I’m the woman you had laid out like a lamb for slaughter, but all you did was stroke my hair while I cried, and then you kissed me so gently I felt like crying all over again. I was certain I’d never trust a man after Hans. I was wrong.” She touched Cole’s mouth with her fingertips. “It’s too late to make me afraid of you. I’m going to Australia, and I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”

Cole told himself that he was sorry he couldn’t intimidate Erin, sorry that she stood so trustingly in his arms, leaning against him, her breath a warmth rushing over his skin.

He told himself, but he didn’t believe any of it.

For a long time he simply held her, listening to the surf and wishing he’d exaggerated the difficulty of living and working in the Kimberley.

But he hadn’t exaggerated. The buildup was a corrosive time, fraying men’s tempers to the point of violence and beyond. The wet wasn’t much better. When the wet arrived, it would wash the land right back into the Stone Age, where the most simple things were difficult. Even survival.

Especially survival.

“I’ve been attending funerals.” Chen Wing’s voice was thinned by more than the satellite relay joining him to Cole. “They have an unsettling effect.”

Cole smiled grimly. “You didn’t expect to make war on ConMin without suffering a few casualties, did you?”

Wing didn’t reply for a moment. Then he changed the subject. “Have you made any progress?”

“Directly, none.”

Wing muttered a quiet curse in Cantonese.

“Relax,” Cole said. “At this stage, that’s the best news you could hope for. I’ve spent most of the last three days examining maps from the BlackWing files.”

“And?”

“Nothing. That’s good news. If I could find Windsor’s jewel box in a few hours using existing maps, so could any other geologist, including the ones on your staff. You told me they reported finding nothing, correct?”

“Yes.”

“They probably weren’t lying, because the maps told them nothing. The other possibility is that the maps told the story but your geologists withheld it to sell it to someone else. If so, I didn’t find what they were selling.”

“If you haven’t found it, they didn’t. You’re the best. You always have been. Lucky in mines, unlucky in love.”

“Number one, that isn’t how the saying goes,” Cole said. “Number two, my love life is none of your damned business.”

There was a brief silence, followed by a sigh. “I’m sorry,” Wing said, his tone soft, almost whispering. “Funerals have an unfortunate effect on my common sense. One of those funerals was that of my second cousin and brother-in-law, Chen Zeong-Li.”

Images flooded through Cole’s memory, images of the passionate black-eyed woman who was Wing’s sister, the woman who in the end had loved her family and power more than she had loved any man, including Cole Blackburn.

“Zeong was a decent man,” Cole said finally. “I’m sorry to hear he’s dead.”

“Are you? There was a time when you would have killed Zeong and danced on his grave.”

Cole didn’t say anything.

“If you choose to resume the relationship with Chen Lai,” Wing continued, “this time the Chen family would not intervene.”

This time.

The words echoed in Cole’s mind, reminding him of things he would rather have forgotten. Shortly after he’d signed the original BlackWing agreement, Lai had dumped him because the family of Chen disapproved of a non-Chinese husband. A secret lover was tolerated while Cole advanced the Chen family’s mineral business, but when it came to marriage and children it was more important to consolidate blood and business ties in Kowloon.

Now Zeong-Li was dead, Lai was widowed, and the family of Chen was offering Cole the very woman they once had forbidden him.

“No, thanks,” Cole said calmly. “A smart man only wipes his ass with poison ivy once.”

From the other end of the line came a charged silence, followed by the sound of harsh, humorless laughter. “You haven’t changed.”

“Hard to harder, half smart to half smarter. That’s a change, Wing. It’s the only change that matters. I’ve survived.”

“What will you need at Abe’s station?”

Without a pause Cole accepted the change of subject. “I’ll need a helicopter to do photo, radar, magnetic, and scintillometric studies of Abe’s claims. Ideally the information from the last two should be recorded on separate transparencies, laid over the first two, and then integrated with information that I’m putting on the topo and geological maps, but I won’t have time to handle all the integration and programming myself.”

“We have a mainframe here,” Wing said.

“I don’t like that. It increases the chances of a leak.”

Wing said nothing.

Cole shrugged and accepted what wasn’t going to change. “Can you set up a ground station at Windsor’s place—modem, satellite link, and graphic printers to handle the output from your end?”

There was a pause. “I’ll need several days.”

“You’ll get it. What about the inputting on your end?”

“I’ll do it myself.”

“Then I’ll transmit data as fast as I get it. Set up a secure file in BlackWing’s main computer, code access ‘chunder.’”

“Chunder,” Wing repeated. “Within an hour you can have a printout under that name from any Chen business computer anywhere in the world.”

“Good,” Cole said. “What about the rest of the transparencies I’ll need? Who will do them?”

“My people.”

“Be damn sure you trust them.”

“They are of the family of Chen, and they won’t know the location of the scraps of land they’re working on. They will have only a grid to work from. I am the only one who knows the latitudes and longitudes.”

Cole laughed quietly. He understood Wing’s kind of trust, the kind that was weighed and measured. “That leaves us with just one problem—the helicopter. I put the names of nearby mining exploration outfits through the computer.”

“I saw the printout.”

“Then you know all of them are tied to ConMin in one way or another. The only way we’ll have a chance against the cartel is if we keep them off balance, wondering what’s going to happen next. That means working fast and as quietly as possible. If we have to go to New South Wales or the Nullarbor for the chopper, the logistics of fuel supply will be impossible. If we get one closer to home, ConMin will have a direct pipeline into our operation. Take your pick, Wing.”

“I did. I reran data and selected the five companies that are least indebted to ConMin. Several of those are also indebted to Pacific Enterprises, Inc., Pan-Asian Resources Ltd., or Pacific Rim Development and Resources Ltd.”

Cole recognized all three firms. They were powerful forces in trade among the countries that circled the Pacific Ocean. Apparently all were under control of the Chen family to a greater or lesser degree. “What’s your best pick? Pan-Asian Resources?” he said.

“We have enjoyed amicable relations with them for years, yes,” Wing admitted.

“Which of the Australian firms do they control?”

“Control? None. We are simply in an advisory capacity.”

“Yeah. ConMin does a lot of that too.”

Wing ignored him. “Metalworks and Mines Ltd. is my first choice for a helicopter, with Western Australia Iron and Gold Surveyors second. I will make inquiries immediately.”

“What if neither one comes through for you?”

“I can say with great certainty that Metalworks will have a helicopter available for short-term lease. Do you need a pilot?”

“I’ll fly it myself. What about that list of survey equipment I faxed you?”

“Everything you need will be at the station when you get there,” Wing said.

“Someone to set it up and guard it would be nice. I’m a miner, not an electronics expert, and I’ll be away from the buildings most of the time.”

“Noted. Anything else?”

“Maybe some of the amenities of life. Abe’s idea of furniture was a dirt floor.”

“Noted. Will you require a single bed or a double?”

Cole broke the link without answering. Immediately he put in Matthew Windsor’s number.

It was time to find out what Erin’s father was willing to do for his daughter.