by Maren Smith
“So,” Takura said. “Did I stop too soon?”
Levina couldn’t look away. She trembled, her involuntary gasp barely more than a hitch of air that made her shoulders jerk as something deep inside her cracked, and then splintered, and then finally broke apart. She began to cry all over again. Shaking her head, she threw her arms around his shoulders. “No. You didn’t.”
As much as she had tried to break away from him only seconds ago, she was now fighting to burrow into his embrace. She curled against his chest, heedless of the wincing flares of pain and heat that laved through her wounded flesh as she shifted upon his thigh.
“I’m sorry,” she wept. “I’m so sorry!”
His arms tightened around her. “For what, specifically?”
“For everything. For getting you thrown in jail.”
“You didn’t. Prin—” With a soft puff of air, Takura caught himself. “That was Parnell’s fault, not yours.”
She clutched at his neck, letting his shirt soak up her tears. “You lost your boat because of me.”
“And you’re going to buy me another one. Problem solved.”
“I stabbed you with a machete.”
“It was only a cut, and I should have told you the handle was coming loose. It was an accident. Accidents happen to everyone.”
“But I almost got you killed! Caimans and jaguars and piranha, bullets, mudslides, headhunters, twenty-foot falls off rocky waterfalls—”
“More like forty,” he gently corrected.
“That’s not better!” she wailed. “And for what? I lost the flower!”
“Then we’ll go get another one.”
She groaned, shaking her head against his shoulder before pushing back to plead with him. “I don’t want to get another one. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then don’t leave.”
Levina struggled to blink back a fresh wave of burning tears. Her throat choked her, making it hard to speak. “I can’t stay. I don’t belong here.”
“A man’s home is wherever his wife resides, and a woman belongs beside her husband—not the one who wants to control her, but the one she loves.” Takura touched her face, the caress of his fingertips wiping away the last of her tears. “And who loves her back.” One corner of his mouth twitched, twisting upward in a small smile. “Don’t ask me when that happened. I don’t know. But I do know, as much as I don’t want to call Boston home, Parnell’s going to have one hell of a time trying to explain why I followed you back there.”
Her chest tightened. The angry burning in her backside had begun to mute. It still throbbed though, seeming to pulse in time with the beating of his heart. She could feel it, just under her hand where it against his chest. “We don’t have to go to Boston,” she finally said. “I just…I don’t know where we could go. What we’re going to do; how we’re going to live.”
Takura’s lopsided smile evened out. He chuckled first, and then he laughed. “Levina, you came all this way to prove to that jackass that you’re the best damned botanist he’s ever known. Do you like what you do?”
She looked a little startled. “Very much, yes, when no one’s getting hurt. And I’m good at it. I’m very good at it.”
“You’re also married to one of the best damned riverboat captains on the Amazon. I know parts of this jungle no white man’s ever seen. We went all that way for a flower you don’t have anymore. What do you say we go find another one? And then when we’re done with that, we’ll go find some other flower your silly Society’s never heard of before. And then a different one after that, for as long as you want to do it and I’ve got a boat fit to take you.”
Levina blinked at him, a small smile tugging at the corners of her timid mouth. “Really?” she breathed.
By now, the pounding at the double doors had ceased. It was replaced a moment later by a vigorous shake and Parnell’s voice demanding, “Levina! Levina, open this door this very instant!”
She tensed, glancing back at them over her shoulder and then over her other where the open balcony stood waiting. The curtains billowed gently, admitting a subtle evening breeze. She looked at Takura again. “We can’t just leave without telling him. I owe him that much, at least.”
Takura grunted, obviously thinking otherwise. “Get your clothes on. I’ll write him a note.”
He patted her hip, nudging her from his lap, but Levina hesitated. “Please be nice.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waited until her back was almost turned before rolling his eyes. “I’ll be nice.”
The only clothes she had in the room were the ones she’d borrowed from the porter. With no other option, she crawled back into them. Funny, how she could spend a day running through the jungle dressed in nothing but a twist of beads and yet feel more self-conscious now, with her bottom and legs outlined in a pair of gentlemen’s trousers and her unbound breasts thrusting out the front of a button-down shirt.
When she turned around, Takura was just placing his finished note on the foot of the bed for Parnell to find. He looked at her, his gaze travelling to her hips.
“I could get used to that,” was all he said, and Levina relaxed in spite of herself. When he held out his hand, she went to take it, pausing only long enough to read his carefully penned note.
Dear Parny, it read. Get stuffed. Love, The Takols.
Behind them, a heavy whump announced Parnell’s decision to pit the strength of his shoulder against the solidity of the double doors. On the second collision, there was an ominous crack as some part of the doors began to give way.
There was simply no time to rewrite the note. Frankly, Levina wasn’t sure she wanted to. It pretty much said everything it needed to.
“Come on.” Takura ran with her out onto the balcony. He looked from left to right, eyeing each neighboring room, before he dropped his gaze to the dark city streets below. There was still music playing in the restaurant across the street. People were still laughing, talking, heading out to whatever destinations awaited and paying absolutely no attention at all to them.
Life was, in short, going on.
“Do you see that ledge?” Takura pointed straight down the outer hotel wall.
Levina followed the direction of his arm. “Yes.”
“I’m going to lower you to it. Do you think you can climb down from there?”
Behind them, dual whumps preceded another loud splintering crack as another man joined Parnell in his effort to beat the door down.
In the last week, she had done a lot of things she never would have thought herself capable of. That ledge only looked to be a man’s height off the street. She had jumped from the top of a waterfall into a rock-studded pool. What was six or so feet, after something like that?
“Yes,” Levina said, her budding confidence growing.
“That’s my girl.” Helping her over the side of the banister, Takura gripped her wrists. “Hold onto me.”
“I will.” She looked up as he began to lower her down, and their eyes met. “I do.”
They both smiled.
EPILOGUE
“Coal cart’ll be here in about an hour,” Takura called, as he came up the gangplank and stepped onto the deck. “If we’re not too far down on the refuel list, we might actually get out of the harbor tonight. With any luck, we’ll reach the Basin and be halfway back again before the rains hit and flood out the whole region.”
He stopped by the wheelhouse long enough to drop one of the two satchels he carried inside, and then he turned to bring the other to the rear of the boat where Levina sat in cushioned comfort, her swollen stomach tucked under the small writing table where she was working. The legs of the trousers she’d taken to wearing almost daily were rolled up past her sun-tanned knees, and wisps of copper-red curls had escaped from under the floppy white hat she wore to shield her thoroughly freckled face and neck from the sun. She had an assortment of plants around her; some dried and pressed into the journal that had, over the past six months, become a near-constant compan
ion, and other fresher samples waiting their turn to be added into the well-thumbed pages of the sketchbook she was hunched over. Her charcoal pencil was busily scratching away.
“Did you hear me?” he asked, dropping the second satchel on the bench beside her.
“Yes.” She looked up with a smile, tipping back her head for the kiss he dropped onto her lips. He squeezed himself in to sit between her and the wall, pulling her back to lean against his chest. “Did you find any?”
“They had two sketchbooks left,” Takura told her as he dug into the satchel. “I bought them both. And that’s not all. I’ve brought you a surprise. Two, in fact.”
Tipping her head back, she gave him a curious look. “What sort of surprise?”
Dropping his hand back into the satchel, Takura pulled out a folded magazine. He unfurled it slowly, showing her the cover.
“Congratulations,” he said, over her erupting squeal of unbridled excitement. “Phalaenopsis levinae, otherwise known as Jinxie’s Orchid, has just officially been published.”
Snatching the horticultural magazine from his fingers, Levina squealed again. Falling back against his shoulder, she hugged it to her chest and drummed her bare feet against the deck under the table. “This is wonderful!”
He dropped a kiss on the side of her neck and waited until all her bouncing, squealing and squeaking dissolved to happy giggles. “Are you ready for surprise number two?”
Looking up at him, she bit her bottom lip and then nodded.
Pulling a letter from the now empty satchel, Takura held it up for her to see.
Levina stopped smiling. Dropping the magazine on the table, she sat fully upright and took the letter in both hands. She bit her bottom lip again. Slowly, her shoulders began to droop.
“They’re your parents.” Wrapping his arms around her, Takura propped his chin upon her shoulder. “What’s the worst that they could say?”
“Dear Jinxie,” she guessed, already depressed. “Get stuffed. Love, The Wainwrights.”
He gave her a Look, arching one eyebrow and tipping his head to one side. “Levina. Open it.”
She stroked her thumb over the neatly penned return address. Stifling a small, unhappy sigh, she slipped her finger under the seal and reluctantly separated the letter from its envelope. She unfolded the letter, and Takura knew the precise moment when she began to read because that was also when she began to cry.
“They love me,” she wept, twisting to throw her arms around his neck.
Holding her close, Takura smiled. “I know.”
The End
Table of Contents
Jinxie’s Orchids
Also by Maren Smith:
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
