Books by Elizabeth Lowell
Eden Burning (1986)
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Eden Burning (1986)
AKA Fires of Eden
For everyone who ever dreamed of falling in love in Paradise
PROLOGUE
“You’ve never seen anyone like her. That picture we sent doesn’t begin to do her justice. No picture could.”
Sitting in Oregon—on the bed, because the motel room chairs were piled with reports—Chase Wilcox frowned at the phone and the eager affection in his younger brother, Dane’s, voice. His married younger brother. The younger brother who had a lovely wife and two wonderful children. The younger brother who couldn’t stop talking about some glorified shimmy dancer who was giving his daughter hula lessons.
Hula, for God’s sake.
Not that Chase objected to his niece, Sandi, learning the dance. From the little he had seen of hula dancing, it looked like good exercise. The problem was Sandi’s daddy. He was much too enthusiastic about the instructor for Chase’s comfort.
And that instructor was sexy enough to set fire to stone.
Almost reluctantly he touched the facedown photo that had come with his brother’s latest letter from Hawaii. Slowly he turned it over, hoping it wasn’t as bad as he had first feared.
It was worse.
Lust hit him hard and low and hot, the kind of heat even his very beautiful, very skillful, sexually manipulative ex-wife hadn’t been able to generate in him.
The woman in the snapshot apparently had been caught just as she finished turning in a swift circle with Chase’s little daughter in her arms. Lisa was laughing with a freedom he had been afraid would never come again after her mother’s casual cruelty. He owed Dane’s wife, Jan, for helping Lisa. Jan had a gentle patience and welcoming love that came to her as naturally as breathing.
Chase owed the dancer “Pele” something entirely different. She of the hip-length, flame-red hair and luminous gold cat eyes. Pele, who radiated sexuality like fire radiated heat. He couldn’t see what kind of body she had beneath the seething curtain of hair, but he was certain it was showgirl caliber. Women who strutted their stuff onstage for the benefit of cheering, leering men generally had something to strut.
“Hey, bro, you there or are you trimming your mustache?” Dane asked.
“Yeah, I’m here, yawning and listening to you run over like a plugged toilet about some exotic dancer who isn’t your wife.”
In Hawaii, Dane laughed despite the frown that came from his brother’s sour view of humanity in general and women and particular—except for Jan, his sister-in-law. For her, Chase had a well of tenderness as great as he had for his own daughter. That was what gave Dane hope that his brother was coming out of the bitterness that had followed losing custody of his daughter.
“Hey, don’t worry. Jan is the first to sing Nicole’s praises,” Dane said. “She’s good with kids and has real talent as an artist. In fact, wait until you see the drawings she does. You’ll see why we wanted her to do the illustrations for . . .”
While his brother ran on and on about Pele/Nicole’s skill as both an artist and a scientific illustrator, Chase drummed callused fingers silently on the desk in the generic motel room that was presently his “home.” Outside the window, invisible beneath the Pacific Northwest’s customary lid of clouds, the shattered cone of Mount Saint Helens steamed, brooded, and waited for the energy to blow its top again.
Chase wouldn’t have to wait as long for his own personal eruption. He was fed up to the teeth with hearing his brother rave on and on about the paragon of womanhood who just happened to be a shimmy dancer. If Jan was too gentle and good to see the danger to her own marriage, Chase sure as hell wasn’t. Having once been married to a gorgeous home wrecker, he had no problem recognizing one when she started swinging her hips around his little brother.
Abruptly Chase decided he couldn’t wait any longer. His life’s work was studying the return of life to volcano-scarred slopes; he didn’t want to have to help his brother survive devastation of the kind the dancer Pele would bring. Chase knew too much about that kind of personal agony—the numbing self-doubts, the despair, the cold blaze of hatred. He wouldn’t let it happen to Dane, to his wife, or to his children.
With the ruthlessness of an older brother, Chase cut Dane off in mid-word. “I got the go-ahead to study kipukas. I’m coming out to Hawaii as soon as I wrap up a few more details here.”
“Really?” Dane said instantly. “Lisa will be over the moon. She misses you.”
“Not as much as I miss her.”
His voice was rough. He hadn’t known how deeply he loved his little daughter until he had stood in court two years ago and silently raged against the judge who had been too dazzled by Lynette’s angelic beauty to see through it to the absolute selfishness beneath. Lisa—tender, shy, intelligent Lisa, a little girl who had just turned five—had been given over to the sole care of a woman who shouldn’t have been trusted with custody of a gravel pit.
Chase’s hand closed into a fist against the pain of being separated from his daughter. He ached to hold her, to feel her small fingers patting his “tickle fur” while she giggled with delight and he blew “furry bubbles” against her cheek. He needed to reassure her of his love and to reassure himself that the sins of her parents hadn’t scarred the little girl’s self-confidence beyond healing.
“You did the right thing to leave her with us after that bitch dropped her on your doorstep,” Dane said quickly. “Having Lisa crawling around with you on Mount Saint Helens or your pet South American volcanoes just wasn’t possible, especially with her recovering from pneumonia. And even if you had found a wonderful nurse/nanny . . . well, it’s just not the same as family.”
“I know.” Chase’s voice was tired and angry. He was tired and angry.
It seemed like he had spent a lot of time that way since the final custody hearing. He certainly had spent the past few weeks living with too much work and anger. He had put in eighteen-hour days in order to turn over enough of his old projects so that he could take a week or so in Hawaii, set up the new project, and sort out his blissfully stupid younger brother’s life. Then, finally, Chase would be able to settle with Lisa on the Big Island for at least a decade of studying Hawaii’s fascinating balance of destruction, creation, and the stubborn ability of life to survive no matter what the odds.
“After Lynette, Lisa needed the security of a loving family, of a woman like Jan,” Chase said, trying to keep the old bitterness out of his voice. “Lisa needed to love and be loved by a mother. From the smile on her face in the pictures you sent, I owe you and Jan more than I can ever repay.”
“Our pleasure. And don’t forget Nicole. She’s really good with kids. She and Lisa—”
“Oh, I won’t forget Nicole,” Chase interrupted. “That’s a promise. Give Jan a big hug for me.” And give yourself a big kick in the butt for being so gullible, he added silently.
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He hung up and stared down at the photos of Lisa and Dane, Lisa and her cousins, Lisa and Jan, Lisa dwarfed by one of Hilo’s giant tree ferns, Lisa smiling shyly up at a dark-haired, tanned Hawaiian boy whose facial bones gave promise of future strength and beauty. Like Lisa’s face; even at seven she had a loveliness that made people stare.
Like her mother, she was too beautiful to be real.
But unlike Lynette, Lisa was vulnerable to human emotions. For her sake, and for Dane’s, the hip-swinging, hula-dancing home wrecker had to go.
Chase only hoped that his little brother wouldn’t screw things up hopelessly in the week before he could get to Hawaii.
1
“You’ll see,” Dane said, giving his older brother an arch look. “I’m really going to enjoy saying ‘I told you so.’ There is nothing else like Nicole when she dances.”
Chase bit back what he wanted to say about hormones and stupid men. It helped that he was ignoring his brother. If he looked at Dane, he would probably take a swing at that smug smile.
In the Kipuka Club’s dim light, Dane watched Chase’s face, hoping to see hidden enthusiasm or at least interest on the subject of Nicole. He saw nothing but hard angles, the pale flash of gray eyes, the inky black of his brother’s short hair and mustache. If Chase felt anything more than fatigue and boredom, he wasn’t giving it away to anyone, not even his younger brother.
Frowning slightly, Dane looked away, remembering another time, almost another man, a younger one who laughed at jokes and smiled at the sight of a puppy chasing a ball. But that had been BTB: Before the Bitch. After Lynette, Chase hadn’t smiled much and had laughed even less. While Dane sympathized—no one liked being taken to the cleaners by a pretty gold digger—he thought it was past time for his older brother to get over his mistake and get back to enjoying life. After all, Chase was hardly the first man to screw up in the marriage department.
Dane and Jan had spent a lot of time worrying about his older brother after he lost the custody battle. They were still worried. That was why they had decided that Hawaii was just the place for Chase to heal.
And Nicole Ballard was just the woman to teach him that Jan wasn’t the only generous, gentle, loving woman ever born.
Chase drank from his beer glass and waited for the red-hot shimmy dancer to take the stage and have her body admired. The anger that seethed in his gut no more showed on the outside than a mainland volcano showed the molten stone that was its living core. He was a man who had learned the hard way that emotions were treacherous, particularly when beautiful women were involved.
Tonight there was most definitely a beautiful woman involved.
Though it had been seven days since Chase had seen Nicole Ballard in that snapshot, the image still burned in his mind. And his crotch. The woman in the picture was all sex and grace and energy, with long, golden-red hair streaming out as she spun around with a laughing child in her arms.
Once he finally had gotten past the sheer sexuality of the snapshot’s impact, he had been caught by the combination of intelligence and vivid life in Nicole’s face. Then with the next breath he would be punched all over again by the sensuous, fiery cloud of her hair and the delight of his own daughter at being whirled around in the heart of fire. Pele, woman of fire.
The picture haunted Chase.
It wasn’t a pleasant haunting. Every time he looked at the photo, he thought of how easily Lynette had fooled him and of how vulnerable Dane was. Any man would be. Jan was no match for the red-haired temptress who was worming her way into the family’s daily life.
No woman was a match for Nicole.
Every time he looked at the blurred snapshot, it was like a fist in the heart, sending a shock wave through his body. Each time it happened, his anger burned higher, hotter. Dane couldn’t stand against such temptation for long.
No man could.
That was why Chase was sitting in a private Hilo nightclub, his body jet-lagged and his mind churning with what he had left behind professionally and what he had in front of him both professionally and personally. He had come to Hawaii sooner than he should have. He was still fielding faxes and e-mails and disbelieving phone calls from the vulcanologists he had been overseeing on two continents.
Worse, he hadn’t even been allowed to unpack or shower before Dane had dragged him to the Kipuka Club to see Pele dance.
At the moment Chase was tired, angry, and in general feeling savage enough to eat his meat raw. All things considered, it was the perfect mood for confronting an ambitious shimmy dancer. Unfortunately Jan, Lisa, and Sandi were running around backstage, so nothing useful could happen tonight.
He knew he should be grateful for the delay. He was in no shape to wage the kind of cold-blooded warfare it would take to defeat another Lynette.
But he wasn’t grateful. He just wanted the whole nasty business behind him so he could concentrate on his daughter and Hawaii’s famous volcanoes.
With a hidden, sideways look from ice-pale eyes, he studied his younger brother. It didn’t take a mind reader to see that Dane was all but dancing with impatience for Pele to appear. Not for the first time, Chase wondered how deeply the red-haired predator had sunk her claws into his trusting brother. Not as deeply as she wanted them, obviously, or Dane would be asking for a divorce.
Well, Pele was shit out of luck, Chase told himself grimly. She didn’t know it, but her little shimmy show was over. She would just have to take her home-wrecking act on the road and find another rich, trusting fool.
Unconsciously Chase shifted his big body as though he was shouting numbers behind the line of scrimmage, waiting for the football to smack into his hands. He wanted to get on with the game, to get close enough to Pele to turn her greed against her. Then he would hammer in a wedge and break her wide open, ending the threat to his brother’s marriage.
Until then, all he could do was wait, muscles clenched with the effort of holding back his disgust. He was careful to keep his feelings well hidden. He knew that Dane believed the woman to be virtuous, intelligent, warm, loving, kind, and all the other lies and lures females used to attract gullible males.
Chase wasn’t gullible anymore. Lynette had well and truly cured him. Any lingering delusions he might have had about the true nature of the female character had vanished when Lynette called him six weeks ago and announced that she was tired of his sickly daughter, her new boyfriend hated whiny children, so Chase could just take her back. For good. She never wanted to see the little wretch again.
It was typical of Lynette that Lisa had been standing nearby listening while her mother dumped her.
Just the memory of Lynette’s casual cruelty made Chase’s whole body tense with rage. He had married because he wanted a child and thought Lynette did, too. It soon became clear that she hadn’t wanted Lisa at all; she could barely be bothered to hold the baby. He had thought it just needed time, that not all women were natural mothers.
Wrong.
Nothing had changed, except to get worse. By the time Lisa was four, Lynette had been through a series of gigolos. When Chase had asked her to go to a marriage counselor or a psychiatrist, she laughed and said she didn’t need anything but a bigger allowance from him; she was bored, so she picked up men.
Chase had refused to give Lynette more money. The next thing he knew, she hit him with divorce papers and demanded sole custody of Lisa, claiming that a daughter needed her mother and that Chase was always away. What she had really wanted was an open pipeline to the Wilcox family’s wealth.
The judge had been taken in by Lynette’s tiny, heart-shaped face and soft-voiced lies about the joys of motherhood. Chase had been left with no wife, no child except for minimal visitation rights, and no illusions about what women really wanted from men.
Motherhood, his ass. Lynette had held on to Lisa just long enough to find another wealthy fool to marry.
Chase was grateful to have his daughter back, in spite of the fact that it couldn’t have come at a w
orse time for him professionally. When Lynette called, he had been in Mexico overseeing the work of three people on an emergency basis. The emergency had come about when the leader of the expedition got a lungful of El Chichón’s poisonous fumes. A month in a sea-level hospital had been ordered. Chase had volunteered to supervise the work rather than lose the project halfway through the study.
If that wasn’t enough, Mount Saint Helens had been swelling and rumbling with promises of new eruptions, and Chase had been within three months of finishing up the first phase of a long-term study of the return of life to the volcano’s devastated slopes.
Neither El Chichón nor Mount Saint Helens was any place for a thin, shy seven-year-old who was recovering from pneumonia.
Chase had been sitting down to write a letter of resignation from the Saint Helens study when Jan called and asked if it would be all right for Lisa to stay in Hawaii with them for the summer. It had been typical of Jan that she acted as if he was doing her a favor when he agreed to let Lisa go.
Bloody idiot, thought Chase angrily, looking at his brother’s dark, handsome profile. Didn’t Dane know what an incredibly rare treasure he had in Jan? She was the shining exception to the bitter truth that women were whores selling out to the highest bidder.
So what in hell’s name was Dane doing panting after a glorified stripper?
Hands fisted beneath the table, Chase wished that he was on Hawaii solely as a professional vulcanologist and not as an unwanted marriage counselor. To him, Hawaii wasn’t the Big Island, it was Volcano Island, the burning Eden that was the home of the world’s biggest and most active volcanoes. He belonged up on the mountain’s clean slopes, not in a dim club on a Thursday night waiting to meet the slut his younger brother was making a fool of himself over.
“. . . is my brother, Dr. Chase Wilcox,” Dane said, giving his brother an unsubtle nudge under the table.
Automatically Chase turned his attention away from the bitter thoughts churning in his mind. He curved his lips into a polite smile and shoved back from the table to be introduced to yet another volcano-observatory scientist, university ethnologist, or Hilo native. The Kipuka was a members-only supper club supported by a mixture of university types, volcano crawlers, national-park scientists and volunteers, and native Hawaiians such as Bobby Kamehameha, the club’s owner and the drummer for the dancers.