Dragon's Eden (22 page)

“You’ll have some money coming from the
bounty,” he said, “enough to keep you going for a few months, give
you some time to figure out what you want.”

“I don’t want bounty money.”

She might as well have said she didn’t want
blood money. He stopped with the muffin halfway to his plate. His
eyes narrowed. “Don’t judge me.”

Sugar inwardly flinched at the coldness in
his voice. Nothing was the same since they’d left Cocorico.
Whatever closeness they’d achieved had been artificially induced by
captivity, nothing else. She felt more alone with him now than
she’d ever felt on her island.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stumbling around for
the right words. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” And she
knew it had sounded very holier-than-thou. “I don’t deserve the
bounty money. You and Jen saved us.”

His gaze dropped to his plate. “You did your
part. You’ll get your share.”

Silence descended with all the awkwardness
possible between two people. She poked at her food and sneaked
glances at him as he attacked his. Everything was wrong. The
rhythms she lived by on Cocorico didn’t exist off her island. She
didn’t fit in, couldn’t even make conversation without being
misunderstood. She felt alien, vulnerable—and so very guilty.

Cocorico had been more than her sanctuary,
it had been her penance. And she was still unforgiven in her own
heart.

The telephone rang in Jackson’s room, and
when he got up to answer it, Sugar gave up the fight. There was one
place for her to go, one place she had to go.

* * *

Jackson knew she was gone the moment he
stepped back out onto the balcony. He checked the garden, but saw
nothing, so he ran back into his room and checked the street
through his front window. He was in time to see a small figure
ducking around the corner, blond hair gleaming by the light of a
street lamp.

The rational part of him told him to let her
go, but his heart wasn’t listening.

Sugar climbed the familiar road heading
north out of town and into the hills. The island was beginning to
stir, making ready to greet the sun on its daily rise out of the
eastern ocean.

She turned off the road onto a leeward lane
and followed it to a high stone wall covered with patches of green
moss. Vines wound their way across the wall, and small flowering
plants nestled in the nooks between mortar and stone. Moisture from
the night’s rain dripped from the trees, making shallow puddles
beneath her feet and reflecting the brightening dawn’s light
through the protective grove.

Nothing had changed. The place smelled so
much like home. She knelt by a wrought-iron gate and jiggled free a
loose stone. Inside the exposed cranny, she found the key, her key,
hidden low in the wall for a child to reach.

She let herself in and walked around to the
ocean side of the house. The house sat up high on a promontory, and
the view from the back porch went on forever. On a clear day, a
person might even imagine she could see Cocorico on the horizon,
floating on the waves of the Caribbean Sea.

It was too early to disturb anyone, so she
settled into a big wicker rocking chair under the porch eaves and
draped herself with the soft cotton throw folded neatly over its
back. The pastel-striped blanket brought back memories of another
life full of love and boundless affection, of cuddling up to
another warm body to watch the sunset, of being touched and
soothed.

Jackson had touched her, deep down inside
where the caress would never fade. He’d been a trial and a joy, and
he would be missed, never forgotten. But it was best to let him go.
She wished they had made love, though. After knowing him, after
sharing his kiss, she didn’t think she would ever want another
man.

He was fine, and strong, and true, and for a
while he could have been hers. She should have taken the
chance.

As if her thoughts could bring him to her,
he appeared at the edge of the porch. She stiffened in the chair,
feeling the failure of her escape. He had followed her.

“You shouldn’t have come here.” She rose to
her feet, ready to argue him away. Before she could say anything
more, though, another voice entered the moment, one as gentle as
the dawn’s light, as sweet as the name upon its lips.

“Sugar? Darlin’, is that you?”

Sugar turned toward the door, her heart
pounding. “Mamma.”

Jackson’s gaze followed Sugar’s to a lady
dressed in a white linen jumper over a white cotton T-shirt. The
style was plain and simplistically lovely. The woman was stunningly
beautiful, like an angel, like Sugar. Her hair was the same pale
blond, but longer, a riotous tumble of curls pulled into order with
a pair of ivory-colored combs. Her eyes were blue, where Sugar’s
were a silvery gray—and her body was broken, where Sugar’s was
whole.

The woman leaned heavily on a cane, limping
forward to her daughter. She caught the younger woman to her and
together they sank into the old rocking chair, crying and holding
each other.

Jackson knew that for all practical
purposes, he had disappeared off the face of the earth. He also
knew he was intruding on a very intimate reconciliation, but he
couldn’t force himself to back away. The rightness of seeing them
together held him where he stood, within hearing distance of all
they had to say.

“You’re home, Sugar, honey. You’re home.”
The woman’s voice broke with emotion. Her hands never stopped
clutching at the grown child in her arms. Long blond curls melded
with short ones where their heads were bent close together.

“Oh, Momma. I’m sorry.”

This was what he’d missed for so many years,
missed with an ache that he’d only begun to fill with adulthood —a
mother’s love. Sugar was being drenched in it, washed clean with
the tears they shed.

Innocent people were
hurt, crippled, people I love
. Her mother had been there the
morning Baolian’s henchmen had blown up the car, and she’d been
crippled by the act of vengeance.

“I’ve missed you so much,” the woman
crooned. “You didn’t have to stay away because of me. I wrote you a
thousan’ times, and you still didn’t come.”

Sugar only shook her head. Jackson
understood. If he had brought that kind of destruction down on
somebody he loved, he would have exiled himself, too, and there was
a good chance it would have taken more than three years for him to
get up enough courage to come back.

He watched and waited as the two women held
each other and rocked, whispering their words of pain and
forgiveness. The sun had completely burned away the night before
the creaking of the old chair stopped.

Sugar’s mother looked up, directly at him,
proving she’d known he was there all along. “Mr. Daniels?”

He nodded, more than a little taken aback by
her clear-eyed gaze and the authority in her voice. He now knew
where Sugar had gotten her courage.

“My daughter is sleepin’. Will you help me
get her in to bed?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Not even the thought of a grin
crossed his mind, no matter that he’d been trying to get Sugar into
bed since the first time they’d met.

“You may call me Arabella.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He stepped forward and first
helped Arabella get to her feet and find her balance with the cane.
Then he lifted Sugar into his arms.

Arabella led him into the airy bungalow and
to a suite of bedrooms with a connecting bath. Sugar never made a
sound as her mother removed her shoes and pulled a light sheet over
her. The room was warm without being uncomfortable, with a slight
trade-wind breeze ruffling the curtains.

“You mus’ be exhausted yourself, Mr.
Daniels,” Arabella said, giving him a thorough looking over. Her
voice was hushed, with just a hint of patois.

“Yes, ma’am, I am. It’s been a hel—it’s been
a long night.”

“I would be much obliged if you would ‘cept
my hospitality. You’re welcome to the other room.” She said it all
with a smile that was both warm and welcoming, impossible to resist
even if he had been inclined to resist—which he wasn’t.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Arabella,” she insisted.

“Arabella.”

“Mr. Daniels—”

“Jackson, please.”

“Jackson,” she agreed with another smile,
then became more serious. “May I be frank?”

The idea made him a little uneasy, but he
nodded.

She took a deep breath, as if to steel
herself. “I have been unable to help my daughter through her
troubles. Travelin’ is so painful, and until today, she has refused
to come home. She blames herself too much for what happened,
‘specially on my account.” A small grin teased her mouth. “I’m sure
whatever wildness she has she gets from me and not her father.”

She looked over at the sleeping Sugar and
her face softened. “I love her very much, Jackson, and I’d be much
obliged if you would do whatever you can to keep her from goin’
back to that island. She deserves a full life, a family, children
of her own. I would consider it a blessin’ if you could help
her”—the small smile returned, at once full of mystery and
benevolence, and her blue-eyed gaze lifted to meet his—“in whatever
capacity you might be comfortable with.”

For pure shock ability, Jackson decided,
Arabella Caine took the cake, hands down.

With another gracious smile, she left,
moving steadily but awkwardly down the hall. Jackson closed the
door after her and crawled into bed with Sugar, pulling her close
to keep her safe, and wandering if her mother could have possibly
meant everything he’d thought he’d heard in her request.

* * *

Jackson didn’t know how long he’d been
asleep when he heard the door open. Before he could work up his
defenses, they were made unnecessary by a woman’s voice.

“So, Carolina, is that your dragon boy?”

“I s’pose,” another woman answered. “I ain’t
never seen him with his clothes on.”

A moment of knowing silence fell, then it
was broken by a double fit of bubbling laughter. The door closed,
but Jackson could still hear them laughing and talking.

“I jus’ knew he was gonna be trouble, him
and that ol’ Chinee.”

“He brought her home, Carolina. I think I
can handle his kind of trouble for a long time.”

Their voices faded away, but he’d be damned
if he wasn’t blushing again.

When next Jackson woke, late-afternoon
sunlight slanted obliquely across the room through the ocean-side
window. Sugar was sweetly tousled by his side, still sound asleep,
her T-shirt riding up almost to her breasts.

He sighed and gently, so as not to disturb
her, levered himself to a sitting position. Beside the bed was a
tray of food: bread, cheese, fruit, vegetables, juice, and what he
hoped was a carafe of coffee.

There were two cups, which made sense given
Arabella’s blessing, but he was still shocked. The other mothers
he’d known wouldn’t have fed a man they had found in bed with their
daughter. In his experience, they were more likely to scream first
and ask questions later. Maybe he had fallen into another strange
paradise.

His gaze drifted over the tray of food, and
he thought longingly of the double order of crisp bacon he’d left
uneaten at the inn. None of these women seemed to require meat in
their diets, whereas he was to the point of fantasizing about
roasting wild boar over an open fire, preferably with a gallon of
barbecue sauce handy.

Utterly barbaric. Utterly divine.

He helped himself to a cup of coffee. At
least the java, rich and smooth, had a kick to it, and the piece of
bread he tasted was more like cake, moist with the flavor of
bananas. The cheese was creamy and slightly sweet, and everything
was fresher and better than he would have imagined. He chose
another piece of bread and was rewarded with the tangy citrus taste
of oranges.

Wishing for barbecued pork began to seem
misguided when he compared it with the array of delights spread out
before him. He picked up a slice of greenish-yellow fruit and bit
into it.

A smooth sweetness filled his mouth,
instantly reminding him of Sugar’s kiss. Warmth flooded his body.
He savored the taste, wondering what it would take to have her,
what it would take to keep her. If Sher Chang had not shown up,
would she have already been his lover?

He finished the first piece of fruit and
took another, enjoying it while he looked the tray over to see what
delicacy he would try next. He’d slept so peacefully in her arms.
He was rested. All he needed was food—and Sugar. Always Sugar. He’d
waited so long, much longer it seemed than he’d even known her.

The tray was beautiful, hand-carved wood
inlaid with a design he couldn’t quite make out for all the food on
top of it. He did recognize the flowers carved and painted on the
intricately wrought handles. Their real-life counterparts decorated
two of the corners of the tray—large, showy white blooms with
reddish centers and a crown of white-and-purple filaments. The
fragrant flowers were still attached to their vines, the leaves
adding to the beauty of the presentation, the tendrils winding
through the fruits and vegetables to tie the whole thing together
the way the lianas tied together the forest on Cocorico.

Damn. He’d forgotten about Cocorico. He
needed to call the inn and leave a message for Cooper. He picked up
another slice of the fruit to take with him to the phone, but
before he could move, Sugar stirred.

He looked over his shoulder to find her eyes
just opening. She looked dreamy and content curled into the
pillows, her hair haloed around her face, soft color blushing her
cheeks. Her gaze met his and held, and when she smiled, his heart
dropped into the pit of his stomach. All thoughts of Cocorico and
Cooper fled in the wake of that shy smile.

“Hi.” He turned sideways on the bed, facing
her, hoping to hell he didn’t sound overly eager for whatever
attention she might give him. He was a fool for her, and he liked
it far too much to pretend otherwise. For her, he was an open book.
Any trace of artifice would have been too much. He was ready,
willing, and able to give her the truth in his heart.