More Than Paradise (18 page)

Her mind retaliated with a lurid vision of Ash between her legs, giving her what she needed. Deep inside, her womb answered with a small implosion that made her stomach muscles clench. HorriÞ ed, Charlotte unzipped her sleeping bag and ß apped it to relieve the heat of her frantic arousal.

Ash must have noticed this desperate measure because she said,

“Don’t worry. It’ll be cooler in the uplands.”

“I thought this was meant to be winter,” Charlotte snapped.

She could feel an orgasm stalking her, just waiting for a moment of weakness. This could
not
be her body.

“No, not exactly. We don’t have four seasons in New Guinea.

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There’s the wet season and the dry season. You guys are here just before the start of the wet season.”

“It feels hotter than Pom.”

“That’s the humidity. It’s a hundred percent up here.”

“Great.” Charlotte could only imagine what it was going to be like Þ ghting her way through the vegetation tomorrow, everything chaÞ ng. And more so because she was abnormally swollen. It had to be hormonal, perhaps a reaction to the climate. Delayed jet lag and homesickness. “I hope we’re hauling plenty of water,” she muttered.

“Yeah, we thought about that.”

“I don’t know how you live here all year round.”

“I take breaks.”

“Oh, that’s right. You go back home and have threesomes.”

Ash was silent. Charlotte thought she detected a slow sigh. She could kick herself for her comment. What did it matter to her what Ash did? Her annoyance wasn’t about Tamsin. The damage to that relationship had happened long before Ash went home with Dani and her new girlfriend. No, Charlotte was peeved that Ash would sleep with a piece of work like Dani but walk away from her. Talk about lousy taste in women.

“Not that it’s any of my business,” she said, hoping she sounded nonchalant. “I just hope you get checked for herpes.”

“What?” Ash sounded incredulous.

“Well, I have a right to be concerned,” Charlotte said coldly. “It gets passed on by kissing, and if you’re going to have sex with sluts like Dani Bush, who knows what STDs you might have.”

A long, pregnant silence ensued, then Ash said, “Why do I get the feeling this is not just a health issue with you?”

“Because you can’t imagine anyone taking responsibility for their sexual conduct?” Charlotte replied sweetly.

“Give me strength,” Ash muttered. “Okay. For the record, I get tested and I make sure my partners do the same.”

“Oh, right. You interview them before you jump into bed?”

“Actually, yes.”

“How romantic.”

“Romance is not a factor.”

“Big surprise.”

“Jesus.” It sounded like Ash had thrown off her covers. Charlotte

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JENNIFER FULTON

could hear metallic noises and she could make out a change in the deep shadows. Ash had sat up. “What the fuck is eating you?”

Her voice held a warning quality that made Charlotte’s spine prickle. “Nothing. Other then the fact that I’m forced to share this sauna of a tent with a woman who was in my best friend’s bedroom, having sex with her trashy ex
plus
the woman she’s been cheating with. It doesn’t speak well of you.”

“God forbid I have consensual sex with whomever I like without asking her entire life history. Are you always so moralistic and judgmental?”

“We’re not talking about
me
.”

“Sure we are. You’re the one who’s pissed off. What exactly is the problem? Are you angry because I didn’t sleep with you back in Pom?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

A hand snapped around her wrist. “Wrong answer. Try the truth.”

Charlotte’s stomach lurched and a hot shock of awareness seared every nerve ending where Ash’s Þ ngers dug in. She locked her knees together to counter the quiver that stiffened her clit. “Let go of me. I’ll scream.”

“And this entire camp will think you just found a giant millipede in your bra.”

“Oh, God.” Charlotte shuddered, distracted from her peaking arousal by that hideous image. She tugged her arm, trying to free herself. Breathing unevenly, she threatened, “I’ll get you sacked.”

“Be my guest.” The hold relaxed just enough to catch Charlotte off guard, then Ash exerted a completely different kind of force, hauling her off her narrow cot and dragging her across the strip of canvas that separated them.

“How dare you,” Charlotte gasped. “What do you think you’re doing?”

She couldn’t see six inches in front of her and her legs were tangled in the sleeping bag liner, but she swatted where she thought Ash’s face might be and her free hand connected vaguely with bare skin before it, too, was ruthlessly captured. Squirming, she found herself drawn back to lean against Ash, both hands clamped together in front of her.

A voice in her ear, ordered, “Stop Þ ghting me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Warm breath spread sensation over Charlotte’s face and down

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her neck. She tried to turn her head away but only ended up with her tingling cheek ß attened against Ash’s chest.

Forced to listen to the steady beat of Ash’s heart, she said, “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I’m not one of your dumb blondes.”

Ash laughed softly. “Can’t argue with that.”

Then Charlotte found her hands released, but the arms that encircled her were so unyielding she couldn’t get away. Ash had to notice how hard her nipples were, she thought miserably.

Her insolent captor said, “Now listen carefully. We’re only going to have this conversation once.”

Charlotte contemplated yelling for help, but somehow she couldn’t summon the will. Instead she stopped struggling and wilted. There was something comforting about being held so tightly and maybe she was an idiot, but she believed Ash wouldn’t hurt her. Stifß y, she said, “I’m listening.”

Ash seemed lost in thought for a moment and Charlotte felt a tremor pass through the hard body pressed to her back. “I just lost the one person in my life I really loved.” Ash’s voice was leaden with grief.

“The last thing I want to be doing right now is babysitting you and your nerdy pals. If there hadn’t been a woman on your team, my boss could have replaced me. But no such luck.”

As she spoke, her arms relaxed by degrees. If she moved fast, she could break away, Charlotte thought. But she did nothing. In fact, she sagged back into the body behind her own, listening despite herself.

“You’ve gone out of your way to be a bitch to me all day,” Ash said. “And maybe I deserve it. But I really don’t give a damn what you think of me personally. I have to be on my game for the next week and it’s hard enough already without you on my case. So I’m asking you to show me some basic respect. Does that seem unreasonable?”

Ash was no longer restraining her, and Charlotte wasn’t sure when that had changed, but she still had no desire to leave the sheltering embrace. She waited to feel anger in response to Ash’s words. The trouble was, she just felt ashamed of herself. Ash was right. She had been a bitch. Petty, self-righteous, and controlling. She’d barely spared a thought for what Ash must be going through, having suffered the loss of her sister. She was too busy being angry.

Why? She wasn’t normally like this. Something about Ash pushed her buttons. Yet again the memory of their kiss troubled her. She hadn’t felt like herself since then. She’d been on edge. Prickly. Restive. And

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JENNIFER FULTON

endlessly Þ xated on images of Ash in bed with her, of them having sex. It was like a sickness. All she wanted was to stop feeling this way.

She’d been so exhausted by the end of the Kokoda trek, her fantasies had Þ nally lost their immediacy and she could see an end to her strange Þ xation with the woman she’d thought was a man.

Then Ash had walked back into her life and ruined everything.

That was why she’d been so angry back at the hanger. She had just been congratulating herself on getting a grip when her nemesis returned to destroy her peace of mind.

Charlotte sighed. “It’s not unreasonable,” she conceded in answer to Ash’s question. “Please accept my apologies. I am truly sorry about your sister.”

“We can make this easy or hard,” Ash said. “I did exactly what you asked of me earlier, but it doesn’t seem to be working for you. Is there something else I can do that would help?”

Kiss me again, right now.
Charlotte shook her head emphatically.

“No. Nothing.”

“Okay. So are we good?”

“Yes.” It didn’t sound very convincing. Charlotte tried again.

“We’re Þ ne.”

She felt so stiff, Ash thought. And her voice was as brittle as glass.

She let her arms drop, indicating that Charlotte was free to move back to her cot. Charlotte stayed where she was. Ash drew a deep breath. She could tell Charlotte was holding hers.

“I’m sorry I manhandled you,” she said, and meant it.

She seldom lost her temper. It usually didn’t pay off. Her approach was to watch and listen, and to roll with the punches unless there was no choice but to take action. In which case, she made her move swiftly and effectively.

She had planned to say a couple of things to Charlotte before lights out, such as:
What the hell is wrong with you?
Or that timeless reproach:
Grow up
. As it turned out, she was ready to throttle her over the camp bed, but the comments about sexually transmitted diseases and lack of responsibility had been the Þ nal straw. Ash could not believe she had Þ nally made it to the tent, hanging out for some desperately needed sleep, and instead had some uptight prude telling her how to live her life.

Ms. Holier-Than-Thou was now hunkered against her chest like she was afraid to move, her tension palpable. Apparently she hadn’t

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noticed that she was no longer being held against her wishes. Ash wondered what to say.
You can go to bed now.
Too parental?

She gave Charlotte’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, hoping she would read this as an invitation to do them both a favor and quietly relinquish Ash’s lap. Instead she ß inched as if she’d been struck and her whole body stiffened. Shit. Ash wondered if she’d inadvertently probed an injury. The attitudinal biologist had hiked the Kokoda. It was possible she’d suffered some physical damage but was toughing it out because she didn’t want to slow the expedition down. Ash wondered if she should speak to Miles, off the record. It wouldn’t do any harm to rest up an extra day in Kwerba. She could do with the time out herself.

Maybe she could chopper the real zealots up to the dry lake bed, their landing zone on the western slopes of the Fojas, tomorrow. They could get settled and start catching beetles or whatever, and she would ferry the rest of them up the following day. Not a bad idea. Of course, Miles would never wear it. The guy was completely single-minded.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to catch some z’s,” Ash said.

Charlotte lifted her head and twisted slightly, leaning away to stare up at Ash. “Let’s start fresh,” she said with bedroom huskiness.

Ash wasn’t sure what starting fresh meant in this context but she was too tired to ask for clariÞ cation. Some people made their interactions with others way too complicated. That wasn’t her style. All she wanted right now was for her head to hit that micro-pillow.

“Works for me,” she said, which seemed to go over okay.

Whispering an ardent thank-you, Charlotte moved away a little more, her hands glancing past Ash’s thighs as she groped for the ß oor to orient herself. Ash resisted an urge to guide her.

“Everything okay?” she asked when she heard the creak of the cot frame.

“Yes, I’m Þ ne. I’m sorry about…earlier.”

Ash stretched out on her own pad. “It’s done. No need to apologize any more. And don’t lie awake thinking about it.” That was the problem with brainy chicks. They took everything too seriously.

“I won’t,” Charlotte said. “Good night, Ash.”

Ash said good night and stared into the pitch-black void of the low tent ceiling. Under normal circumstances, she might have been tempted to take Charlotte to bed regardless of the austere comforts of their lodgings. Charlotte’s fast-crumbling resistance to being held, and

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JENNIFER FULTON

her hesitance in moving away once she was freed, had been at odds with her protests. Ash could read an opportunity between those lines.

Yet that innocent shoulder squeeze had evoked an instinctive and emphatic
don’t hurt me
response, and Ash never ignored those. Women often sent mixed signals and she was adept at second-guessing what they really wanted. But certain body language was crystal clear and she knew it well enough to recognize it instantly. She wondered who had stolen Charlotte’s trust away through violence. A parent? A lover?

Ash got angry just thinking about it. There was never an excuse.

Any time she heard that a colleague or one of her workers in Madang was hitting their wife or child, she did something to stop it. She knew a thing or two about bullies. She’d spent her Þ rst eighteen years living with one. Cartwright Evans had not beaten her or Emma severely, although he routinely terriÞ ed both of them with the possibility. But they knew what their mother’s black eyes and stiff posture meant.

Ash could never understand why there was no divorce. As soon as she’d found out that parents sometimes separated and children lived with one or the other, she’d begged her mother to leave and take them with her. But Denise Evans was an old-fashioned woman who believed marriage was for good or bad. With the beneÞ t of hindsight, Ash had concluded her mother was afraid Cartwright would hunt them down and kill her children. She was simply trying to protect them. Remaining in the marriage was the only way she thought she could.

Ash had been Cartwright’s favorite, and that had created a wedge between her and Emma, despite Ash’s efforts to support her younger sister. Emma lacked conÞ dence and she’d never been able to stand up for herself against their father. When they were kids Ash used to push her to be more outgoing and to do the things that could win his approval. But Cartwright was capricious and cunning. He would reward one sibling and punish the other for the same thing, and Ash was always the one on the winning side of that equation.