Instantly, Reid’s good feelings were deluged in icy panic. It was as if he were waiting for chastisement from Casey, a report card on what he lacked emotionally as a man. Now that time was here, he realized with a horrible, sinking feeling.
Reaching out, Casey allowed her fingers to rest on his darkly haired hand. “No, you don’t. Don’t you dare crawl back into your cave, Neanderthal Man.”
Her teasing steadied him momentarily. The unexpected warmth, the touch of Casey’s hand convinced him that she wasn’t going to cut him to pieces like Janet had. When her fingers closed confidently over his, his mouth curved ruefully.
“What brought on that statement? Was I acting like one of late? More than usual? Or is this the thirty-day report card on the cad I am?”
Her heart bled as she saw the pain banked in his dark, troubled eyes. Casey began to realize the extent of damage Janet had caused in Reid. He was hurting and vulnerable. As gently as she knew how, Casey whispered, “In my heart, you get an A, Captain Hunter. You’ve been wonderful. No one could have asked more of you than you’ve given.”
“Oh? The proverbial servant doing bwana’s bidding?”
Laughing, Casey said, “No, you don’t, Hunter. I’m not letting you wriggle out of this one.”
“Was I wriggling?” He met her warm, drowsy green eyes with a tentative smile. It was so easy to open up to Casey. How often he’d wanted to, but Reid was always cautious about it. Maybe his nightly stories of his years growing up in Colorado made Casey feel more relaxed with him. He enjoyed her freedom to express herself with him, her childlike innocence. Never had he seen anyone enjoy life more than she did. When a butterfly would wing its way through their science camp, she’d shout, point and get so excited about it. Her enthusiasm was infectious in the best of ways for Reid. Living with Casey was like living with an effervescent sunbeam in love with life to the fullest every possible moment.
“You know you were!” she chortled. Taking a bold risk, Casey eased her fingers up Reid’s arm to his elbow and allowed them to slide back down to his hand. He caught her fingers and squeezed them very gently. She saw the panic recede from his eyes. In some ways, he reminded her of a child who had been terribly traumatized by one single event and was looking for it to be repeated again and again, no matter how old he was. Her intuition told her it had to do with the trauma of Janet standing him up at the altar.
“About this idea you’re heartless?” she said firmly.
Frowning, Reid couldn’t hold her bold look. “Yes?”
She heard the frisson of fear in his deep tone. “It’s for the birds, Reid.”
He digested her statement.
“Did you hear me?”
Looking up into her deeply shadowed face, he clung to her warm, vulnerable gaze. “Yeah, I heard… .”
Her brows drew down. “You don’t believe me? You think I’m lying to you?”
“One thing I’d never accuse you of is lying to me,” he told her seriously as he laced his fingers through hers. This was the first time she’d ever reached out to him. The moment was shocking and beautiful to him, a dream come true. A dream he’d never thought would ever leave the realm of his imagination, and yet here it was. Casey had reached out to him, touched him, and was touching him on a much deeper level, grazing his hurting heart, which longed so much for her.
Matching his seriousness, Casey whispered, “No one should have ever accused you of being heartless, Reid. I’ve seen you with the children. They love you. You play tag with them. You laugh with them. They laugh with you. A man without a heart wouldn’t do that. When you’re with the children… ” She sighed and closed her eyes while absorbing the strength of his fingers. “I love to watch you together. You turn into a kid before my very eyes, Reid. Gone is the marine. Enter the little boy. You become one with them and they know it. And you can never fool a child, you know?” She opened her eyes and stared straight into his hooded ones. “A child always knows if an adult likes them or not. If you were truly heartless, these kids would avoid you like the proverbial plague.”
“That’s a good pun.”
“Oh, suffer through it, will you? And don’t avoid what I’m saying. You know what I mean, Reid, so admit it! Go on. Admit it. You’re not heartless.”
If he didn’t release Casey’s hand, he was going to do the unthinkable: follow the urge of his blind and foolish heart. Hating himself, Reid released her hand. He rolled over on his back and laced his fingers together, placing them behind his head once more. He stared up at the mosquito netting, the silence pleasant between them.
“Okay, I’m not heartless. Not totally, at least… “
“You’re a tough customer when you want to be,” Casey growled. She sat up, crossed her legs and arranged the nightgown over her knees. Folding her hands in her lap, she stared at him. How virile and strong Reid looked to her. He was like a sensual male lion at rest, and yet the threat of his power, his danger as a male, beckoned her. For once she had to stop this and think clearly. When she was around Reid, that was difficult to do, because her feminine side had other feelings and desires she would rather follow up on.
Chortling, he aimed a look up at her petulant expression. “I’m not being evasive, good doctor.”
“Yeah, right.” She wagged her finger at him. “You’re into avoidance patterns, Hunter. Let me put it more bluntly.”
“Oh,” he drawled, “here we go. Bluntness as in honesty, right?”
“What do you know? Neanderthal Man is fighting back. Well, too little too late. Suffer my consequences with good grace, will you?”
His grin widened considerably. With her hair tousled, he ached to reach out, slide his fingers up the clean line of her jaw and take that silky red mass in his hands and kiss her senseless. That would take away that know-it-all smile lurking on her full lips once and for all. The thought was hot. Melting. Reid gently tabled it, however. He tapped the mat beneath them. “I get the feeling that strat and tack is needed here.”
“Ha!” Casey cried out. “See!”
“See what?” he demanded darkly. She looked absolutely triumphant.
“My point exactly, Hunter!”
He scowl deepened. “I missed the hell out of it. Want to point it out to me?”
She preened.
“Don’t gloat so much. Just explain to me what I just missed.”
Casey sighed and sank her elbows into her thighs, leaning forward. “You just proved what I was saying beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
Reid had a tough time keeping his eyes level with hers. In his peripheral vision he could see the shadowed cleft of her breasts beneath the delicate pink lace of her nightgown as she leaned forward. He was sure she wasn’t aware of what she’d done, caught up in the fervor of another of their verbal sparring matches. Swallowing against the dryness in his mouth, he rasped, “Be kind to this dumb Neanderthal, will you? Spell it out for him and his kind?”
“You said feeling a moment ago, Reid,” she said fiercely. Again she jabbed her finger toward him. “If you didn’t have a heart, if you were truly cut off from yourself emotionally, you’d never have used that word. Don’t you see?” Casey sat up, supremely pleased with herself and her insight into him.
Reid sighed. “Dumb as a brick.”
“Well, you’re not a total loss for a Neanderthal,” she added more gently. “In my eyes, you have a heart and a soul. And more than anything, you show it here with me, with the kids, all the time. I see it and so do they. Why don’t you?”
Glumly, he shrugged and stared back up at the netting. “I think it’s you. I think you’ve infected me with a new strain of virus called feeling.”
“What?” Casey’s voice rose in stridency. “Hunter, what on earth are you muttering about now? What do you mean, I’ve ‘infected’ you? Are you accusing me of making you feel? Or that because we have to work together, I’m making you feel more?”
It was his turn to grin like a wolf salivating over its prey. “Yes.”
&nbs
p; “Pshaw.”
“Pshaw?”
“Yes, that’s a word.”
“Is that anything like ‘go to hell’ in disguise?”
Laughing softly, Casey wanted badly to simply lean forward and press her long body against Reid’s. He was like a little boy in that moment, open, vulnerable and trusting. The moment was molten. Charged with possibility. “Well, something like that. Remember, my mother washed my mouth out with soap every time I used a cuss word, so I learned to develop another vocabulary that avoided the soap but still got my point across. You know, you’re pretty good at translation.”
“For a Neanderthal?”
Her smile became dazzling. “Especially because you are a Neanderthal.”
Raising his eyes, he said dramatically, “Goodness gracious, you mean there’s hope for us hopeless caveman types, after all?”
Reaching out, Casey touched the side of his cheek. As she drew her fingertips down across his darkly shadowed face, which looked so dangerous and alluring to her, she felt the sandpapery stubble of his beard beneath her sensitive fingertips. The sudden, surprised look in his eyes stunned her. She froze momentarily, and then she jerked her fingers away. The contact had been casual, as if she were his lover. But she wasn’t. And more and more, she wanted to be. The heated look in his suddenly hooded expression made her go shaky and warm inside.
“I—yes, there’s always hope,” she said raggedly, her voice sounding wispy and terribly soft even to her ears. Trying to gather her strewn thoughts, Casey added, “And you have a heart. Please believe me if you believe nothing else I ever say, Reid. You are not heartless.”
He lay there for a long time afterward, replaying their conversation, recalling her tender, fervent expression as she’d said those words that had changed his life in every way. It was a gift even though Casey didn’t realize it. A beautiful, wonderful gift that she’d bestowed unknowingly upon him. Closing his eyes, Reid wondered what the second month would bring. And he worried, too. For one thing had not changed about Africa—danger was everywhere.
“She has gone, young lion.”
Reid whirled around at the commanding baritone voice. His eyes widened as he saw Henri leaning heavily on his cane, gauging him steadily. The chieftain’s mouth curved faintly.
“Your lioness left early this morning,” he said, gesturing toward the savanna.
Hunter’s heart pounded hard in his chest. “Where did she go?” He demanded, his voice dark and tinged with worry. He had to protect her! Casey should have awakened him. She knew better. Black Dawn was still probably sniffing around for their whereabouts, watching their activities. Reid was about to remind Henri of the danger Casey might be in, but he stopped at the last second.
Chuckling indulgently, Henri said, “Yesterday, I told her of several small caves on the northern edge of the savanna, just inside the jungle. She said she was going to capture and look at bats there to see if they carry Ebola.”
Relief sheeted through Reid. “Then… she didn’t really leave?” For some crazy reason, Reid thought Casey had run away. Hadn’t Janet? Why not Casey, too? He tried to get ahold of his unraveling emotions. His reaction wasn’t warranted, he realized. Last night had been wonderful, heady and incredibly tender. Casey had reached out and touched him of her own accord. The moment was stamped like a brand in his heart.
Henri was studying him intently, and Reid felt as if the old chieftain could look straight through him and know what lay in his heart and mind. It was a disconcerting sensation, for Reid wasn’t used to such incisiveness on another person’s part. Somehow, he felt Henri would understand, because he saw compassion in the old man’s eyes after he’d blurted out the question.
“You know,” Henri said in a rumbling tone, “when a young lion finds his mate, he worries that she won’t accept him.” He motioned toward the rolling green plain near the village. “I see it all the time. A young lion claims his territory. The next thing he looks for is a mate with whom he will live out his lifetime. And lionesses have minds of their own, you know? They don’t just passively accept anyone. No, they are equally as strong, smart and wise as that young male.” His mouth puckered. “Some lionesses are scarred from their past. Sometimes they run because they are in pain. It is not the fault of the young lion, but he must understand that and be patient.” Pointing his finger at Reid, Henri added, “In my years of living, and having ten wives, I can tell you that they have taught me patience. Great patience. This morning, my adopted daughter was very scared.” He tapped his chest. “And if I didn’t know better, I would say that her heart is open and bleeding.”
Reid nodded. “Yes, it is… .” But he had no idea over what. He knew it wasn’t him. Or maybe it was. Could their growing intimacy, their sharing with one another, have made her feel such pain? The thought was pulverizing to Reid, because the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Casey. He’d suffered enough from Janet’s words to him on their wedding day. He had no desire to ever inflict that kind of pain on anyone else, much less courageous Casey Morrow.
Henri limped forward and reached out, wrapping his thin, arthritic fingers around Reid’s upper arm. “Come, my youngest wife has just gotten eggs from our hens. There is fresh, warm goat’s milk. You will eat with me and we will talk further. Do not worry about your lioness, my friend. She is fine—and safe.”
Reid almost resisted. But something in the chieftain’s demanding stare told him to acquiesce. “I’m just worried for her safety.”
“Yes, yes, I know, but I sent three of my best warriors with her this morning. They are showing her where these caves are located. These men have all stalked and killed lions with their spears—and lived to tell about it. They guard her right now.” Chuckling as he slowly turned around, Henri said, “YoU have time to dine with me, no?”
Graciousness was not to be denied, Reid thought. He managed a curt nod of his head. “I do. Thank you.”
“Good, good,” Henri murmured, pleased. He limped slowly toward the center of the village, his hand on Reid’s arm to help his balance. “We shall talk more of your lioness as we enjoy the hens’ eggs and the goat’s milk, eh?”
Reid hadn’t been prepared for scrambled eggs, fried goat steak and warm goat’s milk for breakfast. As he sat near the cooking tripod in front of Henri’s hut, a number of the old man’s wives attending them along with their babies and older children, he began to relax a little. The babies climbed into Henri’s lap as he sat on a chair. His deep chuckles of pleasure as he played with his children made Reid smile. A number of the children also climbed eagerly into Reid’s lap. He found it very easy to hold them, squeeze them and rock them in his arms.
There was incredible love everywhere Reid looked around here. The village was alive with people, animals, comings and goings. It throbbed with life, with a joy that seemed almost palpable. As he sipped the bowl of goat’s milk, a little two-year-old boy in the crook of his left arm, Reid began to understand on a much deeper level why Casey loved being here and why she had looked forward to returning to this magical place out of time.
Henri called his wives to take the children away, saying that the men must talk in private. Within moments, the women had gathered up all the children and left Reid with Henri. The fire beneath the blackened iron kettle was mere coals, a wisp of white smoke twisting languidly in the cool morning air. Placing the empty bowl aside, Reid wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Thank you,” he told Henri. “I never expected this.” And he hadn’t.
“Because you love my adopted daughter, you are accorded our family generosity,” Henri rumbled. He took his lion-headed cane, placed it between his feet and draped his hands upon it.
Reid’s heart pounded once, hard, in his chest, to underscore Henri’s gently spoken words. He slitted a glance at the old chieftain. The glimmer in Henri’s eyes told him the old man knew the deepest desire that lay in his heart. Opening his hands, Reid remained silent, since he didn’t know what to say. In America, men didn�
�t talk of such things—at least, not in casual conversation like this. He could taste the fear that Casey wouldn’t or couldn’t love him like he did her.
“The young lion is frightened, no?”
Reid studied his clasped hands in his lap. “There’s a lot in life to be afraid of,” he muttered quietly.
With a sigh, Henri nodded as he gazed proudly across his village. “I remember all the times, as a young boy growing up here and the son of a mighty and powerful chieftain, when I was fearful, too. I worried that 1 would not be a good leader for my people when my father died. I worried that I would not find a woman who would love me as all my father’s wives loved him. I worried that other tribes would slaughter our people and kill me.” Henri’s eyes crinkled. “All my worry was put to an end when I met my first wife, Desiree. She was like your young lioness— proud, capable, brave and strong. My father chose her from among all the young women of our many villages. He told me that the dowry had been set, and that I, sixteen, would marry this beautiful, beautiful child-woman who scared me to death!”
Henri chuckled indulgently. “Oh, yes, I was far more frightened of Desiree than of anything else before that! She was tall and supple like a palm tree. She had the heart of a lioness. When she danced, it was as if the wind was moving through and with her. And when she laughed, it was rain falling upon the parched land that I was, feeding me, giving me life. And most of all, she was a fighter for the rights of the women and children. How fierce she was! The look in her eyes made my knees quake. She challenged me, my manhood, on every level of my being. Why, I would rather have faced a lion without a spear than marry her! I told my father, finally, and he laughed so hard he fell off his throne while he held his belly. When he got up, wiping the tears from his eyes, he told me that facing a lion with a spear is nothing compared to facing a young lioness in a woman’s body. There, he told me, was a man’s greatest fear and desire come to life.
“A strong woman makes a man feel weak in many ways,” Henri continued with laughter in his voice. “Men such as we are, used to the company of other men. We know how to gauge another man’s strengths and weaknesses. But a woman’s? Aiyee! A woman will lift her chin, jut it out, and her eyes will flash like the lightning thrown by the gods from the sky. She will stand tall and proud. She challenges us on our softer side, that side of us we don’t know at all. She will pull our heart from our chest and play with it. She knows the power of how to get to us and control us. Of course, men see this as something terrible.” Henri laughed heartily and slapped his knee. “Men are brave and courageous, but they are stupid when it comes to matters of the heart. That is a woman’s territory. That is what she knows best—feelings and instincts, like those of any lioness.”
Heart of the Hunter Page 15
