Eden Burning (4 page)

Chase felt like leaning over, grabbing his brother’s shirt, and yelling,
Listen to me, damn you! You’re going to screw up a wonderful marriage and never know it until way too late.

Even as Chase wanted to pound on his brother’s stubborn head, he knew that there wasn’t much hope of words getting through. When their crotch was on alert, men were exceptionally vulnerable. Stupid, even. Shortsighted, certainly.

Except for Jan, Chase had never known Dane to react to a woman the way he did to Nicole. Open affection, pleasure, admiration. Full-on arousal couldn’t be far behind.

If Chase had thought that shouting at his brother—or hammering sense into his thick head—would get through the testosterone blindness, he would already be shouting and hammering. But those direct approaches had never worked with Dane. Chase’s charming brother did things his own way, in his own time, and to hell with the rest of the world.

Words wouldn’t get through to Dane. Action would. A very special kind of action. The kind that would prove to Dane that he didn’t know Nicole very well at all.

“Does Nicole do anything but dance?” Chase asked after a moment.

“Like what?”

“Work for a living.”

“There speaks a man who’s never tried Tahitian dancing,” Dane said. “If that isn’t work, what is? Didn’t you see Sam Chu Lin? He was sweating like ice in a sauna, and it wasn’t because he’s out of shape. Hell, if I had his muscles, I’d burn mine.”

Chase made a sound that could have meant anything or nothing. His wintry glance roved the room restlessly, searching for a flash of fire and grace and supple female strength.

Pele. Nicole. By either name, by any name, she was a woman to match the burning mountain.

“Nicole is an artist,” Dane said.

Hardly able to believe what he had just heard, Chase gave his brother a sidelong look. “Oh, yeah, right. That’s what all the exotic dancers say.”

Dane fought a smile. “Could be, but I’ll bet they don’t strut their art in a bona fide gallery.”

The arch of Chase’s left eyebrow rose in a silent question.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Dane grinned. “Nicole does line drawings and watercolors that are accurate enough to illustrate scientific texts and original enough to be sold as art throughout the islands.”

Chase signaled a passing server, pointed at the two empty beer bottles on the table, and returned his attention to Dane.

“But don’t take my word for it,” Dane said dryly. “You’ll see for yourself. She’ll be working with you on your
Islands of Life
project.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You asked me to find an illustrator. I did. Nicole.”

“She’s really capable of scientific illustration?” Chase asked in disbelief. Since the perfection of the thirty-five-millimeter camera, not to mention the newest digital models, few artists had the desire, the ability, or the control required for painstaking re-creations of nature such as Audubon had made famous.

“Did you see the Volcano Portfolio the national park put out a year ago?” Dane asked.

Chase nodded.

“The illustrations were all Nicole’s.”

“She’s
that
N. Ballard?” Chase asked before he could stop himself. The last thing he wanted to be was impressed.

But he was.

The amount of talent, drive, and discipline that were required for someone to perfect both a gift for drawing and the more physically challenging gift of dance was impressive. He remembered the drawings for the Volcano Portfolio. He had been struck by the artist’s ability to capture both the scientific facts of an erupting volcano and the more elusive emotional truth of a volcano’s awesome reality.

A chill slowly condensed in Chase as he measured the clear pride and appreciation in his brother’s blue eyes while he talked about Nicole’s accomplishments. He sounded like a doting parent—or a man falling in love.

Christ,
Chase thought wearily.
What chance does Jan stand against a woman like Nicole? Intelligence, artistry, and the kind of fire that burns a man to his soul.

Pele incarnate.

Hoping that he was wrong, afraid that he wasn’t, Chase began to question his brother in earnest about Nicole Ballard. Everything he heard made the chill inside him deepen.

“She’s great with kids,” Dane said warmly, glad to see that his brother was finally really listening. “Takes them on long hikes nearly every weekend, back up to the kipukas on Kilauea’s slopes where nobody else goes.”

“How did she find the kipukas? Or are you telling me that she’s an explorer and volcano crawler along with all the rest?”

Dane laughed. “Nope. Bobby’s kid showed her a batch of kipukas, and it was love at first sight. Same goes for the kids and Nicole. Love at first sight. Lisa follows her around like a gray-eyed shadow. Nicole is teaching her how to draw.” The flow of words became a groan. “Oh, hell, that was supposed to be a surprise. Forget I said anything.”

Great with kids, huh? Yeah, right. Lynette made a lot of noises about motherhood, too. You’ve picked a real winner, Dane. Just like your butt-stupid older brother.

The anger that had corded Chase’s throat while he listened to Dane run on and on about the poor, sexy dancer who had just happened to catch the eye of one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii made it difficult for him to talk. He had to swallow some beer before he could trust himself to say, “So Nicole hula dances and paints nature.”

“You make it sound so . . . ordinary.”

Chase shrugged. He had to find a way to convince Dane that his redheaded saint had feet of wet, sticky clay. Otherwise Dane was about to make the worst mistake of his life.

Like Chase had when he believed Lynette’s lies about love and family and marriage.

“Sounds like a hand-to-mouth way to make a living, dancing and drawing here and there,” Chase said.

“She wasn’t born lucky, like we were.”

“Lucky? As in rich?”

Dane nodded. “I’d guess that Nicole pays her bills and not much more.”

“Too bad. That’s a hard life.”

“She’s not losing any sleep over it. She likes her life the way it is.”

Chase bit back blistering words.
Don’t you believe it, little brother. She’s setting you up to clean your pockets right down to the lint in the seams.

But, hell, that’s just money. There’s a lot where it came from.

Self-respect is harder to replace. I don’t want you to have to look in the mirror and see just how many kinds of fool you were, to hate yourself every time you think about how an innocent child paid the price of your stupidity.

That was the part Chase couldn’t forget, couldn’t forgive: Lisa had paid for her father’s bad taste in women.

“Well,” he said with false calm, “I suppose Pele’s lovers take up the financial slack from time to time.”

The server approached with two frosty beers before Dane could reply. Chase pulled out a ten-dollar bill, threw it on the tray, and picked up one beer.

“Nope,” Dane said, grabbing the other bottle for himself. “No lovers, no live-ins, no ‘friends,’ no nothing. Everybody’s sister and nobody’s woman.”

“Bullshit,” Chase said, forgetting caution.

“Same to you, buddy.” Dane saluted his brother with the beer bottle. “I’m the one who knows her, remember? And I say she’s alone.”

Chase closed his eyes, concealing the rage he knew would show.
Alone? Never.
Without a man to share her fire, Nicole would burn herself to ash.

But she really had Dane fooled.

“How long have you known her?” Chase asked, sipping beer.

“Long enough. She’s as unattached as they come, and it isn’t for lack of offers.”

“I’ll bet. I’ll also bet that if she’s turning men down, it’s because they aren’t rich enough. Scientists and university types aren’t noted for the money rolling out of their pockets. A woman like her is expensive.”

“You’re way off base.” There was an edge to Dane’s voice that hadn’t been there before.

“Bet I’m not. Bet I can get your perfect Ms. Ballard in bed before the end of the month.”

“No way. Not even you, Chase. She hasn’t dated since I’ve known her.”

“How many rich men have tried her?”

There was a long, tight silence. Then Dane’s hands relaxed from the fists they had formed. Almost curiously, he looked at his hard-faced older brother.

“None that I know of,” Dane said. “Why?”

“Like I said, there aren’t that many rich men around Hilo.”

Dane took a slow breath—long enough to count to ten and remind himself of the special hell his brother had been put through by a woman who was as cunning as she was beautiful.

“Every woman isn’t like Lynette,” Dane said finally, “out for money and willing to do anything, hurt anyone, to get it.”

Chase shrugged and sipped again. “The proof is in the pudding, little brother. You got lucky with Jan. A lifetime of luck. All you have to do is not screw it up.” Then, before his surprised brother could say anything, Chase pinned him with a pale, crystalline glance. “What are you so pissed off about? If your Nicole is such a bloody perfect saint, then I’ll be the first to apologize to you. And if not . . .” He smiled savagely. “Well, live and learn, right?”

Dane’s lips stretched into a smile that was almost as hard as the one on his brother’s mouth. “You’re on.”

Chase held out his right hand. Dane shook it.

Then Dane laughed triumphantly.
Gotcha!
“Jan is going to love this. She’s been wanting to go on a vacation without the kids. I’ll set it up for July first, because you’ll be paying off your lost bet with two weeks of baby-sitting!”

So Jan wants a second honeymoon, does she?
Chase thought. More likely she just wanted to get Dane away from that red-hot sex machine for a while.

“Win or lose, I’ll take Sandi and Mark for two weeks this summer,” Chase said. “Jan could use the break. She’s looking tired.”

Or like a woman worried about keeping her thick-headed husband from making a fatal mistake.

“Oh, you’ll lose,” Dane said, confident as a cat closing in on a mouse. “Nicole’s not like Lynette. You’ll see.”

Chase simply leaned back and smiled. Nicole Ballard, alias Pele, was exactly like Lynette.

And he would prove it.

Early the next afternoon Nicole rode the bus from Hilo to the national-park visitors center. She was accustomed to the bus trip, because she didn’t have a reliable car—it was being worked on right now—and most of her part-time jobs were up on the volcano itself.

But it was no hardship to take a bus up a road where orchids grew in the ditches and giant fern trees arched protectively over the warm, damp ground. She enjoyed the changing vegetation as the bus climbed the gentle, lava-ravaged slope of the volcano. From Hilo’s tropical rain forest at sea level, the bus climbed through croplands, then through native ohia and koa forests and lava flows, and finally to the top of the crater of the volcano itself, where there was little but bare black rock and steam vents.

While she watched all the changing shades of green, she ran through a mental list of what she had to do today. Not laundry, thank God. She had taken care of that first thing this morning, along with some gardening, housekeeping, and grocery shopping for Grandmother Kamehameha.

As for her own little cottage, it was as clean as it was going to get for a few more days. She needed to do some preliminary sketches for Grandmother’s birthday more than she needed to dust. Bobby’s mother had asked for a sketch of Benny, the youngest of her grandchildren. Nicole would make sure she got a good one.

She should also check with Jan again and set aside some time to go over sketches that might be useful to include with the written proposal for “Eden in Shades of Green.” Then there was teaching; she had three classes of dance students, but not today. Usually on the days she didn’t teach, she would put in four or five hours as a research assistant at the Volcano Observatory.

Actually, “research assistant” was too glorified a title for her work, but it kept the bureaucratic pigeonholers off the scientists’ backs. What she did for them defied a single label. She handled logistics on projects for those scientists who couldn’t organize their own wallets, much less something as complex as getting men and materials to the same place at the same time with the right equipment for some of the elaborate experiments being conducted on the volcanoes.

Sometimes she poured coffee and watered plants. Sometimes she filed papers. Sometimes she typed field notes into a computer. Often she put reports into English rather than the obscure technical language of experts, which sounded more like a chemistry textbook than human speech.

And sometimes she went with scientists to new lava flows and sketched them as they scooped scalding vapors into containers for later analysis. Once she had gotten so close that her sketch pad curled and her feet blistered despite her asbestos-lined boots.

No matter what she was doing, she absorbed the good-natured arguments around her, and she asked questions of the more patient scientists. She wanted to get some feel for the inner workings of the volcanic island that called to her as no other place ever had. Not only did the knowledge itself please her, she had discovered that the more she knew about the mysterious, majestic volcanoes seething beneath her feet, the more depth she brought to her drawings.

She loved that part of her work the best, the drawings, but the project she had been working on was finished. There was no point in starting another one until Dane’s brother got up and running on his kipuka study. Then she would have some idea of how much time to budget, and when, for the kipuka project.

Until then she was on her own. While that was hard on the bank account, it was great for everything else. She had been wanting to finish her series of sketches on the Volcano House Hotel, which was perched on the rim of the volcano’s huge mouth, overlooking what once had been a lake of heaving, molten stone.

The old frame building was newly painted a shade of dark brick red that contrasted with the black lava of the volcano rim and the thick growth of ohia and ferns that crowded right up to the edge of the cliff—and sometimes spilled over. She had already sketched the pathway along the rim beneath the Volcano House’s big windows, the ragged cracks and deep holes where the old road had been abandoned to the restless volcano, and the tourists who ranged from nervous to bored to awed in the presence of the living volcano. Now she wanted a view of the hotel from the caldera floor, where cracks in the rock steamed with the volcano’s hot breath.

The path down to the caldera floor was well marked. The many paths across the lava weren’t. The floor of the caldera was made of molten stone that had cooled until it became a shiny black lid over the raging forces beneath. The type of lava she walked on now was called pahoehoe. It was slick, smooth, and hard, and once had been about the consistency of syrup.

Pahoehoe could be as thin as a fingernail where large bubbles had formed and cooled without breaking. There was no way to tell how solid the lava was except by walking on it. Since no one wanted to get sliced to the bone by breaking through a crust of sharp lava, the safe routes over the caldera were marked by occasional piles of stone. If there was any doubt as to what was a safe trail and what wasn’t, all Nicole had to do was follow the dull ribbon left where many feet had worn off the original glossy finish of the lava.

Unfortunately, the view she wanted wasn’t on the normal routes. She left the path and scrambled across a patch of much rougher aa lava. While this kind of lava was safer because it didn’t form big blisters, it was like walking on knives. Every time she felt the sharp edges gnaw on her shoes, she remembered the first time the Hawaiian names for various kinds of lava had been explained to her. Pahoehoe had the same easy flowing, liquid sound to it as the lava itself had when fresh: pah-hoy-hoy. Aa lava, on the other hand, was rough and thick and sharp and thus had made its own name when the early Hawaiians walked barefoot over it, saying “Ah-ah!”

Nicole doubted that was how the lava had really been named, but she loved the story. And she was grateful for the tough hiking shoes she wore. They went well with her sturdy khaki shorts but looked odd with her flowered silk halter, which was part of an old dance costume and very comfortable. But all resemblance to Pele ended at the halter. Her hair was braided and pinned securely on top of her head. Loose hair was a nuisance when she was hiking or sketching.

After a few minutes she found the place where she had sat and sketched before. Here the aa gave way to a sinuous tongue of pahoehoe that was as black and shiny as the day it had cooled after its fiery birth. Once the stone had been thin and quick-flowing. Now it was a motionless mound curved into billows and swirls, as hard and nearly as bright as a mirror.

Bracing her sketch pad on her knees, she began a study of the old frame building that brooded over the frozen lava lake. She had been meaning to complete her series on the Volcano House Hotel for months, but something else always came up. Now that Dane’s brother had arrived in Hawaii to lend his name and expertise to the
Islands of Life
project, she wouldn’t have much time to work on sketches just for her own pleasure. But until Dr. Wilcox was ready to begin working on the project, she was free.

Not that she wasn’t anxious to work on
Islands of Life.
She definitely was. The endurance and beauty of life in the face of overwhelming odds had always fascinated her. She felt a kind of sisterhood with the kipukas, survivors of past volcanic eruptions, past devastation.

She felt the same about the gradual return of life to barely cooled lava slopes. The grace and stubbornness of life made awe prickle through her, and with it a feeling of strength at being part of that resilient force. She was eager to work with and learn from Dr. Wilcox, a man who had made the study of volcanoes and returning life his specialty.

Her hand hesitated over the sketch pad for a moment. She wondered if Dr. Wilcox would be as funny and friendly and easygoing as his brother, Dane. She hoped so, because she would be spending a lot of time with Dr. Wilcox. But as long as he wasn’t an octopus in drag, she wouldn’t complain about his personality. She would rather spend her time in stony silence than deal with a man who thought he was God’s gift to the inferior half of the human race.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t handle herself if Dr. Wilcox was as bad as Fred, the horny vulcanologist who acted like every female was dying to lie down for him. She handled Fred. She could handle anyone.

But she would have to spend a lot of time out in some very isolated kipukas with Dr. Wilcox. If he
was
an octopus in drag, the hours would be tiresome until he got the message and gave up. And he would give up. All the men did, sooner or later. She just kept smiling and wisecracking and saying no. Even good old Fred had given up.

Eventually. Sort of.

A shadow fell over her paper, blocking out not only the light but her view of what she had been sketching.

She looked up, blinked, and decided that thinking of the devil worked just as well as speaking of him. All six feet two inches of God’s gift to Hawaiian skirts stood in front of her. About two inches away from her nose, to be precise.

“Hello, Fred,” she said absently, returning to her sketch again.

And wondering for the hundredth time what women saw in “Dr. Fred.” His broad shoulders, muscular legs, sun-streaked brown hair, and wide blue eyes didn’t raise a quiver in her. She took that as just one more sign of her own frigidity, the kind of feminine coldness that even a volcano couldn’t warm. Fred Warren had set more women’s hearts pounding than anything on the island except a massive eruption.

“Hi, my little jalapeño. Saw you drawing. You looked lonely.”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully. Then she changed the subject in a way guaranteed to distract a scientist. She asked about his work. “She singing in harmony yet?”

Fred knew that she was asking about Kilauea’s record of having harmonic tremors before most eruptions. “Getting there. Quakes are coming in swarms, but they’re not really lined up in a row yet. She’s working on it, though. Getting hotter and readier by the second.”

“Must have heard you were back from vacation.”

“So you missed me, huh?” He showed Nicole a double row of perfect white teeth.

“I died for you. Didn’t you get the funeral invitation?” She leaned to one side so that she could see around him. Frowning, she measured the real Volcano House against the one she had sketched. A little more shadow along the edge of the building . . . yes, that would do it.

“You don’t look dead.” He glanced over the curves filling out her hiking clothes and all but licked his lips.

“Miracle drugs. You survive, it’s a miracle.” She put her fist on his knee and pushed. Hard. “You’re gorgeous, but you aren’t a historic monument yet. Move it. You’re in my way.”

“This better?” He crowded right against her knees, giving her a close-up view of his brief hiking shorts and muscular thighs.

“Yuck. You ever think of shaving your legs?”

Fred laughed and backed up, shaking his head. “You dancing at the club tonight?”

She nodded.

“When are you going to do a solo in my bed?”

“Same as always—just as soon as you can dance or drum me right off the Kipuka Club’s stage.”

He grumbled and said, “No fair. Even Bobby can’t do that, and he’s as strong as a bull.”

“Takes more than strength.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Stamina. Finesse. Determination.” She looked up at Fred suddenly. “And red hair.”

“I’ll dye it.”

“A few pounds off wouldn’t hurt,” she agreed innocently.

Fred groaned at the pun and gave up. “See you tonight, beautiful.”

“Yeah, but I won’t see you.”

“Why not?”

“Spotlights blind me.”

“Ever heard of Braille?” he asked with a sideways leer.

“On your perfect body?” Dramatically she flung the back of her hand across her eyes as though she was about to faint. “Be still my beating heart.” She lowered her hand and changed the subject again. “Marcie wants to know if the hotshot pool for this month is closed.”

“Marcie?”

“The new haole from Washington State. Ph.D. Seismologist. She’s sure she can predict eruptions from the quake patterns better than anyone else.”

“Marcie.” Frowning, Fred tried to place her. Every summer there was a flood of new people ranging from visiting VIPs to graduate-student gofers.