Proud Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 2)

by Phoenix Sullivan

  Truth was, what I wanted to do would likely wind up bearing no relation to what I would actually do. At least for the next few years. Or at least till I found that one mythical woman who could make a man stop talking about settling down and do it.

  By the time we stopped to set up the cameras I had resolved to limit any further soul-baring to the memoir I’d begun writing in my tent at night. Abstinence had one benefit—extra time to be more productive. At the moment, I couldn’t think of any others.

  The lions were still drowsing from yesterday’s gorging, and it didn’t look like they intended on moving today.

  “We’ll get some perspective shots of you with them,” Reena decided.

  Those were the kind we’d done yesterday while the lions were eating. Getting me in only close enough for safety, then faking the distance between me and them with camera angle and a bit of chicanery. In the finished video, it would appear almost as though I was a part of the pride, close enough to touch.

  As long as my fans got the illusion of courage that was all the studio needed. Not that being out here didn’t hold some risk—these were real lions, after all—but where we could better fake the risk, we did, through tricky camera work and skillful editing.

  The bull elephant that had charged me in the “Living With…Elephants” episode? Never happened. Oh, the old bull had flapped his ears and challenged me, but he never got closer than 50 feet. When he did run up a few yards in a mock charge, a skillful zoom made it appear he was coming in right on top of me. Hell, even I got a nervous rush seeing that footage for the first time.

  So today I would walk among lions without the walking and without actually being “among” them. Meanwhile, I contented myself by peering through the binoculars at Dee who half-climbed into the back of the Range Rover to retrieve her tripod. Through the zoom lenses I admired the long, smooth length of her legs while wishing her khaki shorts were a little shorter and a little snugger.

  My imagination was enjoying itself as I adjusted the binoculars to better—

  Reena screamed.

  I whipped around, expecting to see a charging lion. Two of the lionesses were anxiously gaining their feet and the cubs were staring our way. But nothing threatened from that direction. If it wasn’t the lions…

  Dee was jogging toward Reena, her .38 drawn.

  Reena—

  Reena was on the ground, her tripod tipped beside her.

  “It bit me!” she cried.

  “What?”

  “Snake!”

  “Damn.” Dee’s eyes snapped down as I made a cautious run toward them. “Find it!” That last was directed at me and an absent Gary.

  “Gary, get your scrawny butt over here!” I yelled to where he was sitting in the Range Rover ready to slam the doors shut and roll up the windows.

  He didn’t move, may not have even heard me over the distance, but I couldn’t worry about that right then. Something tan slithered through the grass. “Here!” I shouted.

  Hunting on the other side of Reena, Dee ran over, gun still in hand.

  For being so short and fat, the snake was remarkably quick. I kept up with it as it angled for a thicket of brush. If it disappeared before Dee got to it…

  It didn’t.

  “Oh, damn,” was all Dee said when she caught enough sight of it to identify. Her gun arm dropped.

  “Aren’t you going to shoot it?”

  “Don’t have to.” She was already on the run back to Reena. “I know what it is. And we don’t want to scare the lions more than we already have.”

  She dropped next to Reena while I hovered over them. The bite on Reena’s lower calf was already bruising and swelling. This hadn’t been some innocent grass snake that had gotten her.

  “Give me your shirt.”

  I stripped out of it and put it in Dee’s waiting hand. She wrapped it high around Reena’s thigh.

  “Keep your leg straight and don’t try to move it,” Dee instructed Reena.

  “I can’t anyway.” There was fear in Reena’s dark, expressive eyes.

  “What is it?” I wondered if I looked as frightened as Reena.

  “Puff adder.” Dee struggled to keep her voice calm for Reena’s sake, but I could hear the underlying panic.

  “Wha—what does that mean?” Reena was panting now, as much from fear as pain, I guessed.

  “It means we’re taking you to the hospital right now.” Dee threw the keys to the SUV at me.

  Since Gary was finally stalking over, watching the ground carefully as he came, I threw the keys to him. “Bring the Rover as close as you can without grounding it on the rocks. Move!”

  He scrambled back to the vehicle. I knew he couldn’t get it much closer, but trying would keep him focused and give us room to work without his added drama.

  “Am I going to die?”

  I was certain those words needed a more panicked inflection in them. How was Reena’s voice remaining as calm as it was?

  Dee looked Reena straight in the eye. “It’s gonna hurt like hell, but you won’t die. It’ll mess up your leg for a while, but the doctors can treat that.” She turned to me. “Can you carry her?”

  I nodded. Those morning workouts weren’t all for show.

  Reena gasped with the pain as Dee helped lift her into my arms.

  To Gary’s credit, he’d cleared out the Rover’s cargo bay so Reena had room to lie while I sat cross-legged beside her, holding her hand.

  With Dee driving, we sped off for the nearest town. Back to Zambezi, probably.

  At Reena’s insistence, Gary, in the backseat, picked up one of the handhelds to film us.

  The attending in the same white lab coat worn by doctors worldwide joined us in the waiting room of Zambezi’s only clinic—well, they called it a hospital—after about half an hour. “You are the husband?” he asked me in surprisingly decent English with just a hint of British inflection—surprising, until I remembered English was actually the official language of Zambia.

  When I shook my head, he turned to Gary, who shook his head even more emphatically.

  “Not a chance, honey.”

  “We work together,” Dee explained.

  “Alone? In the bush?”

  “Filming lions, yes.”

  “But there is a husband?”

  “Not for any of us, no,” I said. “But we’re as close as family as Reena’s got out here.”

  The doctor looked at Gary and me. “One of you is her boss?”

  I didn’t think hysterical laughter would be the appropriate response, and it wasn’t looking good for us getting information about her otherwise, so I caved. “Sure, that’s me.”

  Dee frowned, but held her tongue. Reena mattered more than what any outsider might think of our relationships with one another. We could all battle chauvinism another day.

  “What’s going on with her?” I asked.

  Gary had turned the camera over to Dee, who was now dutifully capturing the attending doctor’s self-conscious struggle to ignore the camera as he made his report. I put down his next words to nervousness rather than a clumsy bedside manner.

  Reena apparently knew her snakes. “Puff adder,” the doctor concurred. “It is Africa’s most deadly of snakes. More deadly even than the mamba, or the cobra that you may know.”

  I checked the chill that froze my gut and stabbed an accusing glare at Dee. “You told her she wasn’t going to die.”

  Beside me, Gary’s face went to ash as the blood drained out of it.

  “No, no, she is not to die!” the doctor hurriedly corrected us. “The adder is deadliest because it kills more, not because it is most venomous.”

  That wasn’t helping to clarify things.

  He tried once more. “It is percentages. More Africans die because more are bitten by these adders. But more live too. Percentages. If ten villagers get bitten by ten mambas, then 100 villagers will be bitten by adders. Eight may die from the mamba bite—80%. Twenty may die from the adder bite—only 2
0%. But 20 dying is more than eight. The mamba is more deadly, but the adder kills more. See? Percentages.”

  “And Reena’s in the 80% who don’t die?”

  The doctor nodded enthusiastically, happy my poor Western brain had caught on at last. “I think so. She is responding well to the antivenin. But she will be in pain and weak for many days. And as many until walking will be possible again.”

  “It’s not possible now?”

  The doctor pursed his lips and shook his head. “Oh no. Not possible at all.”

  “How many days in all?”

  “Twenty. Maybe thirty.”

  I whistled low. “Can she fly before then?”

  “Could she fly before?” The doctor grinned at the camera, obviously pleased with the joke. “If you mean by airplane to the States, we can send her in three to four days with enough codeine for the flight, but she must keep the leg elevated for the duration. Is that possible?”

  “With enough money, probably. Gary, find out what the airlines can do. If she’s not going to be well enough in time to rejoin us before we leave, then let’s get her home as soon as possible. Capiche?”

  Gary nodded.

  “And I want you with her until she leaves.”

  It took a moment for my meaning to register, but when it did, Gary’s eyes went comically wide. “Stay here? In town?”

  “Come back to camp, pick up her things, then, yeah, find a room here in town. Keep her company, find her a flight. The cameras, though, stay with us. The ones that belong to the studio at least.”

  “You’re not flying back too?”

  “Not until we have enough footage for a finished episode.”

  “And how,” Dee asked from her chair by the wall, “do you intend to get that?”

  “C’mon, you’re filming anyway. Might as well get paid a little more for it. Just amend your contract to include principal photography. Reena can tell you what a fair rate is per finished minute or second or however it’s figured so the studio doesn’t screw with you.” I flashed my trademark grin that seemed to win my way with everyone but her. “Bonus is more lens time with moi.”

  Dee’s lips quirked into a too-sugary smile. “There’d need to be a lot of bonus to put up with that.”

  I waggled my brows. “I’m all about the bonus, baby.”

  “I’m talking cash—or are you having to pay for it these days…baby?”

  “Zing!”

  I scowled at Gary’s retort, but Dee’s half-suppressed smile was even more dangerous. Especially coupled with the conspiratorial look she and Gary exchanged. If those two allied forces against me…

  Still, Dee didn’t say no outright.

  We crowded into one of the three semi-private rooms in the small hospital, happy to see the second bed was unoccupied for now. How was it narrow hospital beds could always make occupants seem so much smaller than even a king-size bed could make them seem? That frail appearance, however, didn’t come from Reena’s surroundings. Fever, pain and the war between venom and antivenin all waging inside her did that. For the moment, at least, the narcotics and antivenin seemed to be winning. Her still-beautiful dark brown eyes were open, and she knew we were there.

  “Bears, sharks and lions.” I shook my head. “And it’s a little snake that takes you down.”

  “I didn’t even see it.”

  “Maybe that’s the excuse Eve should have led with.”

  “I mean I didn’t get it on film. How stupid is that?”

  “Unlucky,” Dee said. “Not stupid.”

  “So what now?” Reena asked.

  “Unlike the rest of us,” I said, “You’re going home.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Gary’s going to get you a flight out in a few days. The studio picks up all the bills, you go rest up on workman’s comp, and Dee finishes the filming.”

  “I haven’t agreed—”

  “After she finds out from you how much more Hollywood tends to pay.”

  Reena frowned. “She’s not union.”

  Damn. “There’s bound to be some emergency contingency loophole thing. Tell her what you’re pulling in.”

  Reena motioned Dee close and whispered in her ear. Dee’s beautiful green eyes widened, and she did a double-take Reena’s way. Reena nodded. “Remember, that’s union. But something to baseline with.”

  “So, you’re okay with her taking it from here?” I asked.

  “She could use more experience with my equipment and the fancier creative stuff, but she’s got a good eye. Under the circumstances, you could do a lot worse.”

  “You are still talking about working the camera, right?” I winked.

  Reena rolled her eyes.

  Taking her hand, I confessed, “I’m glad you’re not dying.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad you’re not really a jerk.”

  “That’s not to ever leave this room, understand?”

  Except for those magnificent eyes of hers, there was nothing outwardly attractive about Reena right now, puffy and sweating like she was, and dressed in one of those ubiquitous, shapeless blue hospital gowns. So why was there a tug at my heart when I looked at her and realized she’d be leaving? I’d watched any number of women walk out of my life and couldn’t even remember most of them.

  Why was Reena different?

  Or was it that I was different?

  Was it possible what I felt toward Reena had nothing to do with sex and all to do with simple, uncomplicated friendship? That I responded to her the same way I responded to Gary?

  If I’d meant what I confessed to Dee about moving past my playboy stage, that meant developing friendships with women not based on the degree of probability I could get into their pants.

  I could look to Reena as my first success.

  With a satisfied smile, I dropped a chaste kiss on Reena’s forehead.

  Through her pain, she smiled back.

  On the long drive back to camp, I had a lot to think about. Now that I had accepted Reena as a friend, where did that leave Dee?

  Because when I faced up to it, I wasn’t pushing Dee so hard to take over Reena’s job simply because I wanted to get this episode in the can.

  It was because I wanted a reason to stay here in Africa.

  A reason to be near her.

  CHAPTER 11

  Dee

  Already I missed Reena, driving back to camp with Chris and Gary. Not just for the balance of estrogen she provided, even emotionally distant as she mostly was, but because I’d looked forward to picking up more tips from her about videography.

  “You’re worried?” Chris asked.

  “Shouldn’t I be? Even if your producers give me the go-ahead, the types of work Reena and I do don’t compare. I’m filming for subtleties of behavior, how the pride interacts with one another and with their environment. I get excited seeing Caesar assert his independence by sleeping a few feet out of sight of his mom and sister. Your show is about, well, you, and danger, faked or otherwise. Framing that kind of film is very different from framing my kind. How to insert you seamlessly is a challenge.”

  “Depends where and how you want me inserted.”

  Really? “I doubt that’s as big a challenge as you might think.”

  “I’m up for proving it any time.”

  Like a jealous puppy, Gary pushed his head and shoulders between the front seats. “Oh, it is an impressive challenge,” he assured me. “Ask me how I know.”

  Two could play at his smug game. “I would like to know—about the second time.”

  “Bitch.”

  His head and shoulders disappeared into a hurt huddle in the backseat.

  Not that I wasn’t curious about that first time or about the size of Chris’ challenge. In fact, if Gary didn’t think of me as a rival, it would have been fun dishing with him about Chris. Not that I’d done much dishing in college or in the handful of years after, but having a friend to open up with was the one thing I did miss at times out here.

&nbs
p; And Gary likely had a lot of dishable stories to share.

  No doubt Chris had even more, but I was sure stories from his perspective wouldn’t be nearly as fun, much less ones I would want to hear.

  Still, I was going to be stuck alone with Chris for a few days, as Gary driving away from the camp in the rental packed with his things and Reena’s so concretely attested.

  By then, all I had energy left for was to retrieve the cameras abandoned near the escarpment, fire up the generator, and review what footage had already been shot. We also had a few minutes of satellite time to communicate since there were no cell towers out here for phone or internet. With Chris’ help, I composed a letter of amendment for my contract and sent it off to the production team in California. We both knew it was a formality only. I had cameras to play with, and no matter what the studio agreed to or not regarding compensation, I was going to play.

  Thank god for our tablets and the generator to keep our batteries charged; otherwise, Chris and I would have to talk to one another once the sun set. As it was, we did sit by the camp stove to have dinner together.

  “You do realize how many women fantasize about being marooned with me, right?” Chris winked over his ready meal that claimed it was Swedish meatballs.

  “I realize how many of those women are likely underage jailbait.” While that was true, I was simply teasing him right back. As to what he’d said, there was truth to it as well. Chris Corsair, the Hollywood star, really was the stuff of dreams—and not just to hyper-hormonal teens peer-pressured into squealing over that rugged face with its startle of blue eyes and tousle of brown-blond hair so reminiscent of a Robert Redford or Paul Newman type from an earlier era.

  The YouTube videos I’d seen testified as to how much the camera could love him. Yet even someone as skilled as Reena couldn’t capture the true beauty of the man. And a natural beauty too. No makeup, no hair gels, no padding or taping or catching him from his good side only needed. Just a raw and organic look where genes had conspired to create a Jungian icon that met our cultural ideal of virility. It was impossible not to respond to him. At least on that primal, visceral level that craved mating with the most perfect specimen possible for the betterment of future generations.