Home to Eden Read Free Page A

rushing about and the excitement of appearing on the show.” How could she possibly say she thought she’d seen someone long dead?
    â€œI imagine you haven’t taken time off to eat,” Carol scolded gently. “Never mind. I’ve got all your favorite things. There now, your color is back,” she exclaimed in relief. “Howard, be a darling and fetch us both a glass of champagne.”
    â€œOf course.” He hurried off.
    Steady, Nicole thought. Steady. She took a calming breath, aware that a silence had fallen over the huge living room. She ran the point of her tongue over her lips. Her mouth was bone dry. A reaction to what she thought she’d seen, no doubt. But Carol and Howard were so very kind, she knew she’d be able to get through the evening.
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    I N THE EARLY HOURS of the morning the phone woke her, shrilling her out of the tormented dreams that had ceased to plague her for many long months but had returned suddenly in full force. The brain had an extraordinary power to relive the past just as it chose to throw up impenetrable walls. Though she returned to Eden only twice a year—for a short visit at Christmas and for her grandmother’s birthday in June—she couldn’t drive out its demons. They walked with her, talked with her, slept with her, appeared in her paintings, but never, ever would they reveal their secrets.
    Moaning softly, her head muzzy, mouth parched, she rolled to the right-hand side of the bed, picking up the receiver without bothering to turn on the bedside lamp. All these years she’d been unable to sleep in complete darkness, so it was her practice to leave a light on somewhere in the loft. The digital readout on the clock radio said 3:24 a.m. She could think of nothing but trouble.
    She spoke into the mouthpiece, straining ineffectually at the top sheet that wrapped her like a mummy. “Hello?”
    â€œNicole?”
    Her heart spasmed. She tried to focus on one of her paintings that hung on the opposite wall. A painting of the ruined tower on Eden. It was where her mother and her lover used to go. Hadn’t she followed them as a child, already tuned in to tragedy?
    â€œNicole, are you there?” Aunt Sigrid spoke across thousands of miles of underwater cable as though she were no more than a block away.
    â€œSiggy, I was asleep. Do you know what time it ishere?” She glanced again at the luminous dial of the clock.
    â€œTo hell with that!” Siggy, being Siggy, replied. “It’s the early hours, but I had no option.”
    Knowing her aunt so well, Nicole snapped together, throwing off the nightmare that clung to her like a shroud. “Bad news?” Why ask when cold certainty assailed her?
    â€œIt’s not your grandmother,” Sigrid said, obviously following her niece’s line of thinking. “She’s fine. But you have to come home. Your father has found his way back to Eden.”
    â€œFather? What father?” She felt it like an electrical jolt, kicking out wildly to free herself from the clinging sheet. That wicked man she’d once called Daddy? Never!
    â€œYour father, Heath,” Sigrid reminded her curtly.
    â€œI don’t know him as my father.” Nicole could hear the coldness in her voice.
    â€œHe’s your father, Nicole, much as you’ve disowned him.”
    â€œOh, that’s good!” Finally she was able to sit up, absolutely astounded by the way her aunt kept pulling the rug out from beneath her feet, championing Heath Cavanagh at the most inappropriate times. “I was raised to believe he was my father. That all changed the day they found my mother.” She lost control, finding herself shouting into the phone. “Your sister, Siggy.”
    â€œDon’t try to rattle my cage, girl,” Siggy warned. “You’d feel sorry for this creature if you saw him. He’s come to Eden to die, Nicole. He’s got nowhereelse to