More Than Paradise (31 page)

“When did you see him?” Charlotte demanded.

“It doesn’t matter.” Ash wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to make anything up as she went along. She wanted to hear the unvarnished truth.

Charlotte sighed. “I was trying to Þ nd him yesterday when…it happened. It’s a long story, but you know that night when I didn’t come back and you were angry?”

How could she forget? “Yes.”

“I was with him. He took me to see something.”

She sounded so uneasy Ash assumed Bruce had mentioned the price on his head. “You can trust me,” she said, wishing she didn’t need to assert that to the woman she loved. But she had to be real.

Charlotte knew enough now to wonder about anyone who worked for Tubby Nagle. “If I wanted to kill Bruce, I’ve had the opportunity. Last time I saw him, he was Þ ne.”

“Well, I know you probably won’t believe me, but he’s made maybe the most important discovery of this century.”

“Bigger than your Þ g plant?”

“Huge,” Charlotte said. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would just think he was crazy, and that’s what the scientiÞ c community would think, too, if he tried to tell them. That’s why he told me.”

Her teeth were chattering and Ash could tell from her rapid, shallow breaths that talking was hard for her. “Slow down, baby,” she said. “Just tell me what he’s found.”

Charlotte scrunched her face like she could hardly bear to give up the information. “He found little people who keep themselves young with an elixir of life from an orchid species unknown to science.”

It was a movie. Ash hardly knew what to say. “Dwarfs?”

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“No. A primitive species of human.”

“Like the hobbit?” Concussion, she thought. It had to be.

“Yes, in fact, they are probably the same species, only living. Can you imagine?”

Strangely, Ash could, despite her immediate disbelief. She had heard stories about “little people” but had assumed they were simply the stuff of legends, like leprechauns in Ireland. But West Papua was perhaps the last place on earth where a tribe of people could exist, unknown to the outside world.

“So Bruce has contact with these people?”

“He took me to see them.”

“Oh, God.”

“I know.” Charlotte placed her hand to Ash’s face. “I was frightened to say anything. I’m so afraid of what could happen to them.”

Ash could understand that. She wasn’t sure what she would do with such knowledge either. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I should have trusted you,” Charlotte said. “I’m sorry.”

“You did what you thought you had to. We all have to make decisions like that. I promise you something. Once we get out of here, I’ll do anything I can to help. Okay?”

Charlotte made a small sound of relief. “I wish I knew exactly what to do about it. I mean, I have no proof, but Bruce expects me to get a huge company to do all kinds of things to protect the Fojas. They’re not going to unless they think it’s worth their while.”

Ash smiled, Þ nally clear about the Roo’s gift. “Good news. Bruce has a plant for you.”

“The orchid of life,” Charlotte whispered in awe.

“He seems to think you’ll know where to meet him so he can hand it over.”

Charlotte nodded. “At my Þ g tree. I can take you there.”

“Good. We’re meeting him tomorrow morning.”

When Charlotte was silent for a long time, Ash got worried and shifted a little so she could see her face more clearly. “Are you okay, baby?”

Charlotte clasped her hands behind Ash’s neck. “I know I’m sick and it means you’ll get my germs, but please kiss me.”

“How can I say no to an offer like that?”

Laughing, Ash rested her lips against Charlotte’s, then kissed her softly, content to feel the slow burn of desire and not act on it. There

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would be better times. Right now, she was thankful beyond measure.

That she was here. Alive. And, most astoundingly, loved. After they made it off the mountain, she didn’t plan on letting Charlotte out of her sight for a while.

“I want you,” Charlotte murmured. “But I think I’d probably pass out.”

“I want you, too.” Ash kissed her again, this time making sure she would know how much she was desired.

When they drew back breathlessly, Charlotte said, “When I thought I’d lost you, I couldn’t imagine living my life without you.

I want us to be together, Ash.” She worked her way more tightly into Ash’s arms, until their bodies were fully entwined. “Will you take me home with you? After this.”

There was nothing Ash yearned for more. She longed for Charlotte to be with her, in her home. To wake in the morning and Þ nd Charlotte in her bed. To share herself as she’d never shared herself with anyone.

She knew it could not be permanent. Charlotte had a life far away and she would have to go back to it, but until then, Ash could have her all to herself.

Happier than she had ever been in her life, she said, “I’d love to take you home.”

Charlotte gazed into her eyes, blinking away tears. “I love you.”

“You’ve no idea what it means to me to hear you say that.” Ash wished she had words for the feelings that washed over her. “One day soon, when we are not in a bug-infested tent and when you don’t have a fever, I’ll show you.”

A tiny ß icker of mischief entered her lover’s expression. “Give me a clue.”

Ash rolled her onto her back and let her weight descend just enough to make her squirm. “It’s paradise,” she said, planting small, urgent kisses over Charlotte’s face and throat. “And loving you the way I do, feeling what I feel…that’s more than paradise. It’s a whole new way to live.”

“Oh.”

Ash couldn’t resist that perfect mouth. Claiming it once more, she let herself imagine everything. Love. Marriage. A whole life together.

She could see it all and, for once, she trusted.

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Ash’s aging houseboy, Ramon, padded across the wood boards toward Charlotte, carrying a tray. He set this down on the coffee table next to her and inquired in Tok Pisin, “
Kaikai long nait
, Charlotte?”

She smiled as she always did over the local pidgin for the late-night supper snack served without fail in this part of the world. It didn’t seem to matter what crazy hours she kept, if she rose from her bed and went out onto the balcony, Ramon was always at her side within minutes, serving hot chocolate and some kind of dessert. This evening, he’d prepared the treat that had become a favorite of hers during the week she had been at the plantation, a warm black rice pudding made with coconut milk.

After she thanked him, he said in the careful English he used most of the time with her, “Ash will come this night.”

“You think so?” She glanced back into her room to the mantel clock. It was eleven. The sun had set a long while ago and the Bismarck Sea was now inky black. Ash would not be driving her Land Rover along the unlit dirt roads to reach her home at this hour.

“We are waiting,” Ramon said, as if this were reason enough for her to make the hazardous twelve-hour journey from deep in the highlands.

For the past few days she’d been in Goroka, meeting with a group of coffee growers. Her plan was to join a small consortium and obtain some additional supervision for her plantation during her long absences. She’d hired a manager who worked for several of the local

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owners, but she wanted to make sure the place didn’t fall apart every time she left the country.

Charlotte sipped her hot chocolate and stared along the balcony to the French doors that led into Ash’s bedroom, as yet unshared by her.

It hadn’t been their intention, but Charlotte’s fever had kept them apart and she was still weak from her ß u when Ash left for the meeting. But tonight, for the Þ rst time since they’d left the Fojas, she felt her strength returning, and with it, a need so powerful she had no idea how she was going to get through another night alone. She was therefore putting off bedtime, waiting for her head to droop and her body to sleep no matter what.

On an impulse, she moved inside once more and cracked open the door that joined her bedroom to Ash’s. The rooms were halves of a master suite built by the German aristocrat who had once owned the plantation. Like many gentlemen of his era, he had not expected to share his wife’s bed more than a few times a year. It was obvious from the design of the home that they’d lived separate lives. The front parlor was a room intended for needlework and pianoforte, and the library smelled faintly of cigars and whiskey. Its walls were crammed with books and tribal art.

Charlotte’s bedroom was a pale, airy space trimmed with light-colored woods. The furnishings were too busy and ß owery for her taste, the art on the walls insipid and the bed, a brass four-poster draped with heavy mosquito nets, rather a cliché. By contrast the room next door was darker and simpler in its décor. Ash had assembled a collection of unique handcrafted furniture, mostly in Australian timbers, and the paintings on her walls were innately sensuous. Nudes. Voluptuous orchids. Undulating modern landscapes. One innocent exception stood out, the portrait of a sweet-faced girl with ß axen braids and Ash’s piercing cobalt eyes.

Charlotte stepped farther into the room and stared at the painting for a few minutes. She’d seen the same face in the library, in photographs on the desk and mantel. Emma, Ash’s sister. They’d never spoken about her, except for brief allusions to her death. Like most aspects of Ash’s life, family seemed to be off-limits. Charlotte hoped that would change sometime soon. She wanted to know who her enigmatic lover was, not just who she appeared to be.

With a weary yawn, she wandered over to the bed and parted the nets so she could sit on the edge. The cover was linen, in a pale coffee

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tone, the bedding ivory. She liked the clean simplicity of it. Everything in this room was unpretentious and practical. The choices said a lot about the owner. Charlotte ran her hand across the Þ ne, cool cotton sheeting, then looked up with a start as the door swung open.

Ramon walked in carrying her robe and her house slippers. With a note of approval, he said, “You sleep here now.”

“No.” Charlotte shook her head. “I was just looking around.”

He draped her robe over a small triangular chair in one corner of the room and indicated a tall, narrow dresser. “Tomorrow I will bring your clothes.”

Charlotte had no idea what to say. She was still getting used to the idea of domestic staff. In the seedy decadence of this postcolonial nation, she knew it was taken for granted that those who could provide such employment did so. But she certainly didn’t want a grown man running around after her like she needed to be waited on.

Ramon must have detected her unease because he said, “If you like, tomorrow I will bring
meri
for you. Wash clothes. Make hair very nice.”

“That’s a kind offer,” Charlotte said. “But no, thank you. I don’t need a lady’s maid. I prefer to do those things for myself.”

“
Oke.
” He placed the slippers next to the bed, but on the other side. “
Gut nait
, Charlotte.”

She bade him good night in pidgin and slid resignedly beneath the covers, shifting across the bed to sleep on the side Ramon had designated. Ash’s presence was tangible in the room and it comforted her. She smiled drowsily as Ramon moved around the bed, Þ xing the nets, then extinguished the lamps. The darkness here was intense, no city lights haloing the sky, no pinprick ß ickers in the distance. There was no road from Pom to Madang. You had to ß y in, and the drive north along the coast to the plantation was on an unsealed road.

Charlotte could see why Ash had made her home here. It was beautiful, tranquil, and very hard to Þ nd.

v

In the salmon tint of dawn, Ash stumbled in the front door and dropped her car keys on the hall table. She was dead on her feet. Ramon immediately rushed out of his room and tried to press hot tea on her, but she patted his shoulder and told him to go back to bed.

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JENNIFER FULTON

She showered quickly in the bathroom downstairs so the creaking harmonics of the upstairs plumbing would not disturb Charlotte. The hot water didn’t do much for her tension, but she felt human again with the grime and sweat and layers of DEET scrubbed off. As she dried herself, she was foggily aware of her muscles twitching and her stomach churning. She’d grappled with this jumpy anticipation all the way home, trying not to be distracted as she drove along hair-raising roads through jungles full of dark, watchful eyes. There were places between here and Goroka where she wouldn’t want to get a ß at.

Although they made it a challenge to concentrate, she reveled in her feelings. She loved the thought of coming home to Charlotte. She loved knowing that she was only hours away from possessing her physically.

Most of all she loved the sense of belonging, the unshakable certainty that her world would never be the same again, because Charlotte would now be a part of it.

Ash had no idea how they were going to manage the practicalities, and the truth was she didn’t care. She planned on making it easy. No guilt. No pressure. She would let Charlotte make the rules. If Charlotte needed space and time, Ash would give it to her.

As for the here and now, Charlotte was upstairs, just a breath away. Ash’s heart assaulted the walls of her chest. She dragged on a toweling robe and took the stairs two by two, intoxicated with a mix of exhaustion and helpless passion. As silently as she could, she opened Charlotte’s door and peered into her room, seeking out the shadow of a dark head on the white pillows. The bed was empty.

Ash swung the door wide and stalked across the ß oor, trembling with the force of her emotions. In sheer panic, she wrenched the mosquito nets aside. The bed hadn’t been slept in.

“Charlotte?” The cry escaped from her.

She strode to the antique wardrobe in the opposite corner and almost took the door off its hinges. As she plunged a hand into the void, she heard the bedroom tone she’d played over and over in her mind since the Þ rst time Charlotte spoke her name.