A Wedding at Leopard Tree Lodge

by Liz Fielding

  Professionals who didn’t patronise the bride…

  ‘I’ve promised Crystal the wedding of her dreams, Josie.’

  Her dreams? Maybe.

  It had no doubt started out that way, but Josie wondered how Crystal was feeling about it now. Giddy with excitement, thrilled to be marrying the man she loved in the biggest, most lavish ceremony she, or rather Serafina March, could imagine?

  Or was she frazzled with nerves and desperately wishing she and Tal had run away to Las Vegas to say their vows in private?

  Most brides went through that at some point in the run-up to their wedding, usually when they were driven to distraction by family interference. Few of them had to cope with the additional strain of a media circus on their back.

  ‘We can’t let her down,’ Marji persisted, anxious as she sensed her lack of enthusiasm. ‘To be honest, she’s somewhat fragile. Last minute nerves. I don’t have to tell you how important this is and I believe that Crystal would be comfortable with you.’

  Oh, right. Now they were both being patronised. Tarred with the same ‘not one of us’ brush, and for a moment she was tempted to tell Marji exactly what she could do with her wedding and to hell with the consequences.

  Instead, she said, ‘You’ll run a piece in the next issue of the magazine mentioning that I’m taking over?’

  ‘It’s Serafina’s design,’ she protested.

  ‘Of course. Let’s hope she’s fit enough to travel tomorrow—’

  ‘But we will be happy to add our thanks to you for stepping in at the last moment, Josie,’ she added hurriedly.

  It was a non-committal promise at best and she recognised as much, but everyone would know, which was all that mattered. And in the end this wasn’t about her, or Marji, or even the wedding queen herself.

  If Sylvie had taught her anything, it was that no bride, especially a bride whose wedding was going to be featured in full colour for all the world to see, should be left without someone who was totally, one hundred per cent, there for her on the big day. Josie let out a long, slow breath.

  ‘Courier the files to my office, Marji. I’ll email you a contract.’

  Her hand was shaking as she replaced the receiver and looked up. ‘Email a standard contract to Marji Hayes at Celebrity, Emma.’

  ‘Celebrity!’

  ‘Standard hourly rate, with a minimum of sixty hours, plus travel time,’ she continued, with every outward appearance of calm. ‘All expenses to their account. We’ve picked up the Tal Newman/Crystal Blaize wedding.’

  As Emma tossed notebook and pen in the air, whooping with excitement, her irritation at Marji’s attitude quite suddenly melted away.

  ‘Where?’ she demanded. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I could tell you,’ she replied, a broad grin spreading across her face. ‘But then I’d have to kill you.’

  ‘Dumela, Rra. O tsogile?’

  ‘Dumela, Francis. Ke tsogile.’

  Gideon McGrath replied to the greeting on automatic. He’d risen. Whether he’d risen well was another matter.

  This visit to Leopard Tree Lodge had taken him well out of his way, a day and night stolen from a packed schedule that had already taken him to a Red Sea diving resort, then on down the Gulf to check on the progress of the new dhow he’d commissioned for coastal cruising from the traditional boat-builders in Ramal Hamrah.

  While he was there, he’d joined one of the desert safaris he’d set up in partnership with Sheikh Zahir, spending the night with travellers who wanted a true desert experience rather than the belly-dancer-and-dune-surfing breaks on offer elsewhere.

  He was usually renewed by the experience but when he’d woken on a cold desert morning, faced with yet another airport, the endless security checks and long waits, he’d wondered why anyone would do this for pleasure.

  For a man whose life was totally invested in the travel business, who’d made a fortune from selling excitement, adventure, the dream of Shangri-La to people who wanted the real thing, it was a bad feeling.

  A bad feeling that had seemed to settle low in his back with a non-specific ache that he couldn’t seem to shake off. One that had been creeping up on him almost unnoticed for the best part of a year.

  Ever since he’d decided to sell Leopard Tree Lodge.

  Connie, his doctor, having X-rayed him up hill and down dale, had ruled out any physical reason.

  ‘What’s bothering you, Gideon?’ she asked when he returned for the results.

  ‘Nothing,’ he lied. ‘I’m on top of the world.’

  It was true. He’d just closed the deal on a ranch in Patagonia that was going to be his next big venture. She shook her head as he told her about it, offered her a holiday riding with the gauchos.

  ‘You’re the one who needs a holiday, Gideon. You’re running on empty.’

  Empty?

  ‘You need to slow down. Get a life.’

  ‘I’ve got all the life I can handle. Just fix me up with another of those muscle relaxing injections for now,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a plane to catch.’

  She sighed. ‘It’s a temporary measure, Gideon. Sooner or later you’re going to have to stop running and face whatever is causing this or your back will make the decision for you. At least take a break.’

  ‘I’ve got it sorted.’

  Maybe a night spent wrapped in a cloak on the desert sand hadn’t been his best idea, he’d decided as he’d set out for the airport and the pain had returned with a vengeance. Now, after half a dozen meetings and four more flights, the light aircraft had touched down on the dirt airstrip he’d carved out of the bush with such a light heart just over ten years ago.

  It had been a struggle to climb out of the aircraft, almost as if his body was refusing to do what his brain was telling it.

  His mistake had been to try.

  The minute he’d realised he was in trouble, he should have told the pilot to fly him straight back to Gabarone, where a doctor who didn’t know him would have patched him up without question so that he could fly on to South America.

  Stupidly, he’d believed a handful of painkillers, a hot shower and a night in a good bed would sort him out. Now he was at the mercy of the medic he retained for his staff and guests and who, having conferred with his own doctor in London, had resolutely refused to give him the get-out-of-jail-free injection.

  All he’d got was a load of New Age claptrap about his body demanding that he become still, that he needed to relax so that it could heal itself. That it would let him know when it was ready to move on.

  With no estimate of how long that might be.

  Connie had put it rather more bluntly with her ‘…stop running’.

  Well, that was why he was here. To stop running. He’d had offers for the Lodge in the past—offers that his board had urged him to take so that they could invest in newer, growing markets. He’d resisted the pressure. It had been his first capital investment. A symbol. An everlasting ache…

  ‘Are there any messages, Francis?’ he asked.

  ‘Just one, Rra.’ He set down the breakfast tray on the low table beside him, took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and, with his left hand supporting his right wrist, he offered it to him with traditional politeness. ‘It is a reply from your office.’ Before he could read it, he said, ‘It says that Mr Matt Benson has flown to Argentina in your place so you have no need to worry. Just do exactly what the doctor has told you and rest.’ He beamed happily. ‘It says that you must take as long as you need.’

  Gideon bit back an expletive. Francis didn’t understand. No one understood.

  Matt was a good man but he hadn’t spent every minute of the last fifteen years building a global empire out of the untapped market for challenging, high risk adventure holidays for the active and daring of all ages.

  Developing small, exclusive retreats off the beaten track that offered privacy, luxury, the unusual for those who could afford to pay for it.

  Matt, like all his staff, was keen, d
edicated, but at the end of the day he went home to his real life. His wife. His children. His dog.

  There was nothing for him to go home for.

  For him, this company, the empire he’d built from the ruins of the failing family business, was all he had. It was his life.

  ‘Can I get you anything else, Rra?’

  ‘Out of here?’ he said as he followed the path of a small aircraft that was banking over the river, watched it turn and head south. It had been a mistake to come here and he wanted to be on board that plane. Moving.

  The thought intensified the pain in his lower back.

  After a second night, fuming at the inactivity, he’d swallowed enough painkillers to get him to the shower, determined to leave even if he had to crawl on his hands and knees to Reception and summon the local air taxi to pick him up.

  He’d made it as far as the steps down to the tree bridge. Francis, arriving with an early morning tray, had found him hanging onto the guard rail, on his feet but unable to move up or down.

  Given the choice of being taken by helicopter to the local hospital for bed rest, or remaining in the comfort and shade at Leopard Tree Lodge where he was at least notionally in control, had been a no-brainer.

  Maybe the quack was right. He had been pushing it very hard for the last couple of years. He could spare a couple of days.

  ‘Is that someone arriving or leaving?’ he asked.

  ‘Arriving,’ Francis said, clearly relieved to change the subject. ‘It is the wedding lady. She will be your neighbour. She is from London, too, Rra. Maybe you will know her?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he agreed. Francis came from a very small town where he knew everyone and Gideon had long ago learned that it was pointless trying to explain how many people lived in London. Then, ‘Wedding lady?’ He frowned. ‘What wedding?’

  ‘It is a great secret but Mr Tal Newman, the world’s greatest footballer, is marrying his beautiful girlfriend, Miss Crystal Blaize, here at Leopard Tree Lodge, Rra. Many famous people are coming. The pictures are going to be in a magazine.’

  As shock overcame inertia and he peeled himself off the lounger, pain scythed through him, taking his breath away. Francis made an anxious move to help him but he waved him away as he fell back. That was a mistake too, but whether the word that finally escaped him as he collapsed against the backrest was in response to the pain or a comment on whoever had permitted this travesty of everything his company stood for was a moot point.

  ‘Shall I pour your tea, Rra?’ Francis asked anxiously.

  ‘I wanted coffee,’ he snapped.

  ‘The doctor said that you must not have…’

  ‘I know what he said!’

  No caffeine, no stress.

  Pity he wasn’t here right now.

  He encouraged his staff to think laterally when it came to promoting his resorts but the Lodge was supposed to be a haven of peace and tranquillity for those who could afford to enjoy the wilderness experience in comfort.

  The very last thing his guests would expect, or want, was the jamboree of a celebrity wedding scaring away the wildlife.

  The last thing he wanted. Not here…

  If that damn quack could see just how much stress even the thought of a wedding was causing him he’d ban that too, but having prescribed total rest and restricted his diet to the bland and boring he’d retired to the safety of Maun.

  ‘Tell David that I want to see him.’

  ‘Yes, Rra.’

  ‘And see if you can find me a newspaper.’ He was going out of his mind with boredom.

  ‘The latest edition of the Mmegi should have arrived on the plane. I will go and fetch it for you.’

  He’d been hoping for an abandoned copy of the Financial Times brought by a visitor, but that had probably been banned too and while it was possible that by this evening he would be desperate enough for anything, he hadn’t got to that point yet.

  ‘There’s no hurry.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Luxurious surroundings will add to the bride and groom’s enjoyment of their special day.

  —The Perfect Wedding by Serafina March

  JOSIE, despite her many misgivings, was impressed.

  Leopard Tree Lodge had been all but invisible from the air as the small aircraft had circled over the river, skimming the trees to announce their arrival.

  And the dirt runway on which they’d landed, leaving a plume of dust behind them, hadn’t exactly inspired confidence either. By the time they’d taxied to a halt, however, a muscular four-wheel drive was waiting to pick up both her and the cartons of wedding paraphernalia she’d brought with her. ‘Just a few extras…’ Marji had assured her. All the linens and paper goods had been sent on by Serafina before she had been taken ill.

  The manager was waiting to greet her at the impressive main building. Circular, thatched, open-sided, it contained a lounge with a central fireplace that overlooked the river on one side. On the other, a lavish buffet where guests—kitted uniformly in safari gear and hung with cameras—helped themselves to breakfast that they carried out onto a shady, flower-decked terrace set above a swimming pool.

  ‘David Kebalakile, Miss Fowler. Welcome to Leopard Tree Lodge. I hope you had a good journey.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Kebalakile.’

  It had felt endless, and she was exhausted, but she’d arrived in one piece. In her book that was as good as twenty-four hours and three planes, the last with only four seats and one engine, was going to get.

  ‘David, please. Let’s get these boxes into the office,’ he said, summoning a couple of staff members to deal with all the excess baggage that Marji had dumped on her, ‘and then I’ll show you to your tree house.’

  Tree house?

  Was that better than a tent? Or worse?

  If you fell out of a tent at least you were at ground level, she thought, trying not to look down as she followed him across a sturdy timber walkway that wound through the trees a good ten feet from the ground.

  Worse…

  ‘We’ve never held a wedding at the Lodge before,’ he said, ‘so this is a very special new venture for us. And we’re all very excited at the prospect of meeting Tal Newman. We love our football in Botswana.’

  Oh, terrific.

  This wasn’t the slick and well practised routine for the staff that it would have been in most places and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it was the groom, rather than the bride, who was going to be the centre of attention.

  The fact that the colour scheme for the wedding had been taken from the orange and pale blue strip of his football club should have warned her.

  Presumably Crystal was used to it, but this was her big day and Josie vowed she’d be the star of this particular show even if it killed her.

  ‘Here we are,’ David said, stopping at a set of steps that led to a deck built among the tree tops, inviting her to go ahead of him.

  Wow.

  Double wow.

  The deck was perched high above the promised oxbow lake but the only thing her substantial tree house—with its thatched roof and wide double doors—had in common with the tent she’d been dreading were canvas sidings which, as David enthusiastically demonstrated, could be looped up so that you could lie in the huge, romantically gauze-draped four-poster bed and watch the sun rising. If you were into that sort of thing.

  ‘Early mornings and evenings are the best times to watch the animals,’ he said. ‘They come to drink then, although there’s usually something to see whatever time of day or night it is.’ He crossed the deck and looked down. ‘There are still a few elephants, a family of warthogs.’

  He turned, clearly expecting her to join him and exclaim with delight.

  ‘How lovely,’ she said, doing her best to be enthusiastic when all she really wanted to look at was the plumbing.

  ‘There are always birds. They are…’ He stopped. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve had a long journey and you must be very tired.’

  It seemed that she was
going to have to work on that one.

  ‘I’ll be fine when I’ve had a wake-up shower,’ she assured him. ‘Something to eat.’

  ‘Of course. I do hope you will find time to go out in a canoe, though. Or on one of our guided bush walks?’ He just couldn’t keep his enthusiasm in check.

  ‘I hope so, too,’ she said politely. Not.

  She was a city girl. Dressing up in a silly hat and a jacket with every spare inch covered with pockets to go toddling off into the bush, where goodness knew what creepy-crawlies were lurking held absolutely no appeal.

  ‘Right, well, breakfast is being served in the dining area at the moment, or I can have something brought to you on a tray if you prefer? Our visitors usually choose to relax, soak up the peace, after such a long journey.’

  ‘A tray would be perfect, thank you.’

  The peace would have to wait. She needed to take a close look at the facilities, see how they measured up to the plans in the file and check that everything on Serafina’s very long list of linens and accessories of every kind had arrived safely. But not before she’d sluiced twenty-four hours of travel out of her hair.

  ‘Just coffee and toast,’ she said, ‘and then, if you could spare me some time, I’d like to take a look around. Familiarise myself with the layout.’

  ‘Of course. I’m at your command. Come to the desk when you’re ready and if I’m not in my office someone will find me. In the meantime, just ring if you need anything.’

  The minute he was gone, she took a closer look at her surroundings.

  So far, they’d done more than live up to Marji’s billing. The bed was a huge wooden-framed super king with two individual mattresses, presumably for comfort in the heat. It still left plenty of room for a sofa, coffee tables and the desk on which she laid her briefcase beside a folder that no doubt contained all the details of what was on offer.

  Those bush walks and canoe trips.

  No, thanks.

  Outside, there was the promised plunge pool with a couple of sturdy wooden deck loungers and a small thatched gazebo shading a day bed big enough for two. Somewhere to lie down when the excitement got too much? Or maybe make your own excitement when the peace needed shaking up—that was if you had someone to get excited with.