Eden Burning (16 page)

There was a moment of charged silence between the two brothers.

“You don’t think—” Chase began, shocked.

“No,” Dane cut in impatiently, “I don’t. I know both of you too well. I know Nicole in the same way. Yes, I care for Nicole a great deal, just as you care for Jan. Nicole is a very appealing woman, and not just physically. I’d have to be blind and a liar to say otherwise. But if I’d been so butt-stupid as to make a pass at Nicole, she would have ducked. She’s not like the females you’ve had since your divorce. And she most definitely isn’t another home wrecker like Lynette, out for what she can get from men and to hell with anything else.”

“Christ,” Chase said, disgusted. “Nicole really has you going, doesn’t she? If she’s such a snow-white saint, why did she have sex with me after we’d known each other only a few days? Hardly the act of a virtuous paragon of womanhood, is it?”

“If she went to bed with you—”

“She did,” Chase cut in impatiently. “Don’t kid yourself about that.”

“Then it happened because she wanted you enough to overcome—”

The rest of Dane’s words were buried beneath Chase’s sardonic laughter. Nicole’s lack of real passion still grated on his pride. He had been so hot, nearly wild for her, and she had been controlled down to the last breath.

“She’s cold to the core,” Chase said. “She doesn’t know the meaning of the word
passion.”

A wave of nausea hit Nicole. Icy sweat broke out and a salty taste filled her mouth. No longer caring if she made any noise, she shoved away from the chair’s support and bolted for the downstairs bathroom.

She barely reached it in time. She was blindly, wrenchingly sick, as though the convulsions of her body could somehow wipe out the last terrible minutes when she had overheard herself being dissected as a woman and coldly dismissed by the very man she had trusted herself to, believing he was so right for her.

“What the hell?” Dane said, turning toward the sounds.

Chase turned and headed out of the kitchen at a run. “One of the kids must be sick.”

He beat Dane to the bathroom. As he reached the closed door, he heard the toilet flush and the sound of water running in the sink. He yanked the door open, expecting to find one of the children.

What he saw shocked him.

Nicole was pale as salt, her eyes closed, and her forearms were supporting her on the sink. Her hands were shaking so hard that the water she was trying to splash on her face was pouring down the front of her bright blue muumuu. Thin cloth stuck to her body in great dark welts of color.

Chase reached past her for a washcloth. He wet it and began to wipe her face as though she was a child.

When the cloth touched Nicole’s skin, her eyes opened. Slowly she focused on Chase. With a broken cry she pushed away from him so violently that her back slammed against the shower door. The glass shivered but didn’t break.

He caught her, steadying her. When she felt his hands close around her arms, she shuddered convulsively. With a low, ragged sound, she did the only thing she had the strength left to do. She turned her face away from the sight of him.

“Are you all right?” Chase felt her begin to sag in his arms. Her head rolled loosely. “Nicole!”

Weakly, futilely, she fought against being touched by him. She whispered “No,” again and again as though it would make a difference.

If she could have died, she would have.

“Leave her alone,” Dane said harshly.

“She needs help,” Chase said. He supported her with one hand and controlled her weakly flailing hands with the other. “She’s so sick with the flu that she can hardly stand.”

Dane muttered a searing obscenity. “Something made her sick, all right, but it wasn’t the flu. Let go of her. Can’t you see? She doesn’t want you to touch her.”

The bleakness of his brother’s voice startled Chase. Then he realized what Dane was trying to say. The unease that had stalked him since he left Nicole last night congealed in his stomach, making it turn over. He took a harsh breath through his teeth and turned Nicole’s chin so that she had to face him.

“How long were you in the living room?” he asked.

She closed her eyes before she could see him.

“Look at me,” Chase said hoarsely. “How much did you hear?”

Her eyes opened, but she didn’t see him. She looked through him, seeing nothing, wishing she could feel nothing as well. She would have sold her soul to be able to vanish.

“Let go of me.” Her voice was thready, a stranger’s voice. “I’m fine. Don’t touch me. Don’t. Please. Let go of me. Don’t. I’m fine.”

His breath came in with a rough sound. He looked from Nicole’s pale face to the helpless pain on Dane’s.

“What the hell is going on?” Chase asked.

“You won the bet,” Dane said wearily, “but you lost, brother. You lost big. But not as much as Nicole did.
Shit.
” He closed his eyes for a moment, not able to bear looking at her agony. “Let go of her before you make her sick all over again. As a matter of fact, I’m feeling more than a little sick myself.”

Chase didn’t want to believe what was on Dane’s face, in his voice, in the sag of his shoulders.

“Nicole?” he whispered, turning back to her.

She closed her eyes.

He looked at the pale, trembling woman he was supporting and felt bile rise in his throat in a burning wave. He didn’t want to believe that he had let his distrust of women warp his judgment to the point that he had hurt someone whose only fault lay in trusting him. Wanting him.

There’s a better explanation. There has to be. Flu and eavesdropping. That was it. It had to be.

When Nicole overheard the conversation, she realized that Dane was out of reach. A disappointment, to be sure, but hardly enough to literally sicken her. Women who made their living off men were tougher than that.

Or should be.

“Nicole.” Chase’s voice was gentle and very firm. “I’m sorry, but it had to be done. I couldn’t stand by and let you break up my brother’s marriage.”

She had thought she couldn’t be hurt any more. Big mistake. She could.

A ragged shudder went the full length of her body. The idea that people thought she was pursuing Dane was as terrible a blow as Chase’s summation of her as a woman.

“If it’s money you need, I’ll—” Chase began.

“Shut up,” Dane said coldly, cutting off his brother. “Christ Jesus, Chase, what’s happened with you and women? Can’t you see that Nicole didn’t want me as anything but a friend? But she wanted you, and I’ll bet she didn’t put any conditions on an affair or ask for any guarantees or money up front, did she?”

Chase closed his eyes, praying that his brother was wrong.

And afraid, very afraid, that he was right.

She didn’t ask me for one damn thing. And then she thanked me. Not for the pleasure I gave her, but for the simple lack of pain.

He swallowed against the acid coffee that kept trying to creep back up his throat. When he looked at Nicole again, her eyes were wide, fixed, and the skin around them looked bruised.

My God, what have I done to her?

“Nicole?” Chase asked gently, stroking her cheek with his fingertips.

With a small cry she flinched and swallowed convulsively, answering questions Chase hadn’t even asked. She had overheard enough. Too much. It had hurt her in a way that he could barely comprehend.

There was one thing he knew without any doubt. She might have wanted him last night, but she couldn’t bear his touch this morning. It literally sickened her.

Slowly, very slowly, Chase released Nicole and stepped aside.

“Nicole,” Dane said, reaching out to give her a comforting hug, the way he would have his own children if they were hurt. “It will be all right, honey.”

“No. Oh, no.” Nicole backed away as far as she could from both men in the small bathroom.

“Nicole?” Dane asked, lowering his arms. “You know I won’t hurt you.”

“Yes. I know. Don’t touch me. Please.” Her voice was a raw whisper. “Don’t anyone touch me. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow. Yes. I’ll be fine tomorrow. But don’t touch me now. Please.”

For a long, long moment there was no sound but Nicole’s ragged breathing as she fought to bring herself under control.

Watching her, cold waves of certainty broke over Chase. He had been wrong about her from the beginning. All the way wrong. Brutally wrong. Nicole hadn’t been after Dane.

If she had been hesitant in the lovemaking last night, it came from something else. Fear. Simple fear.

She had been afraid.

What was she afraid of?
Chase asked himself silently.
My size? That doesn’t make sense. If she was afraid of big men, why was she attracted to me in the first place?

“Nicole, I didn’t mean to—” he began.

“That’s all right,” she said quickly, cutting across Chase’s words, staring through him with a ghastly social smile. “I understand. Really I do. You wanted to protect. Your brother.” Her eyes focused on Dane. Her laughter made both men flinch in sympathetic pain. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t laugh. It’s not at you. It’s just—the idea.”

“The idea?” Dane asked softly. “Of what, honey?”

“Of marriage. Of marrying anyone. Even you, Dane. Being a man’s
thing
again. Legally. Morally. All day. Every day. And the nights.” Revulsion racked Nicole.

Chase had played football long enough to know how to control the nausea caused by pain. It was the only thing that kept him from being as sick as she had been. He finally understood the meaning of her whispered good-bye:
Thank you for not hurting me.

She had been afraid to come to him because she was afraid of sex.

Yet she had come to him anyway.

“Nicole—” Chase’s voice was raw with emotion, but she kept on talking, hearing only her own words, her unfocused eyes seeing things that made his stomach test the limits of his willpower.

He didn’t know which was worse, hearing Nicole’s shattered voice or hearing the voice in his own mind telling him that he had just made a hideous mistake—and someone else was paying for it, someone who couldn’t afford the cost.

Thank you for not hurting me.

Chase began to swear softly, terribly, hating himself and the whole situation with an intensity that bordered on violence.

Nicole didn’t even look at him. She didn’t trust herself to. She focused on Dane and held her voice very carefully. She had to sound calm, normal, like nothing had happened.

“I’m going home. Tell Lisa . . .” Nicole’s voice frayed into silence. When she could speak again, it was only a whisper. “Tell her I’ll call.”

“I’ll drive you home,” Chase said tightly. “You’re in no shape to handle a car.”

“I’m fine.”

“Like fucking hell you are!”

“I’ll drive her,” Dane said. He put a warning hand on Chase when he would have stopped Nicole from edging past him on the way out of the bathroom. “You can follow and bring me home.”

Chase started to object, then realized it was useless.
“Shit.”
The savage word echoed as he stepped out of Nicole’s way. Much more gently, he said, “We’ll talk later, when you feel better.”

“No.” Her voice was very soft, very final.

“Yes.” He held out his hand to her, only to have her flinch away again. He ran the hand through his hair in a gesture of barely restrained frustration. “I’m sorry, Nicole. God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand. I really believed you were trying to break up Dane’s marriage. Suddenly every conversation and letter was filled with Nicole this and Nicole that, and all Dane had to say about Jan was that she was busy on this or that project. I just assumed that you and he—”

“I understand,” Nicole interrupted quickly, her mind working at frantic speed, focused on a single truth.
I can’t hang on much longer. I have to get out of here before I fly apart.
Realizing that she had been holding herself frozen too long, she took a sawing breath. “You’re right. Dane is funny, warm, intelligent. Gentle.” Her voice caught on the edge of breaking. “So gentle. Any woman would want him.”

“You left out rich,” Dane said, giving his older brother a slicing sideways glance.

“Rich,” she repeated obediently. “Excuse me. I really have to go now.”