by Susan Lewis
‘Well, will you?’ he said.
‘Will I what?’
‘Come and live with me here?’
The shock was so great that her mouth simply fell open.
‘No rush. Think it over,’ he said and turning on his heel he walked out of the room.
Doug was on the point of taking a beer from the fridge when his hand suddenly stopped in mid-air and he turned back to look at his brother, not at all sure he had heard right. ‘Are you serious?’ he said, letting the fridge door swing closed. ‘You asked her to come and live here? What did she say, for Christ’s sake?’
Andy shrugged. ‘I didn’t give her time to answer. Just told her to think it over and left.’
Doug was still gaping at him. ‘What are you going to do if she says yes?’ he said.
‘What do you mean, what am I going to do? What do you think I’m going to do?’
‘I don’t know, mate, that’s why I’m asking.’
Andy nodded towards the refrigerator, reminding Doug about the beers. Still looking at him Doug reached inside, took out a couple of cans and tossed one over.
‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’ he said finally. ‘You want her to come.’
Andy shrugged and tilted the beer to his mouth.
Doug was shaking his head, still not quite believing this. ‘You’ve only known the woman twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘Christ, Andy, she’s just another punter. She let both of us poke her last night and she’d let us again tonight . . .’
‘Forget it,’ Andy cut across him. ‘It’s not going to happen again.’
Doug blinked. ‘I don’t get this,’ he said, combing his fingers through his hair. ‘Are you telling me you’ve fallen for the woman? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘It might be.’
‘But how, for Christ’s sake? When did it happen? I mean you couldn’t have felt that way last night.’ He waited, expecting Andy to respond. ‘Maybe you did feel that way last night,’ he prompted.
‘Maybe I did,’ Andy replied.
Again Doug was shaking his head. ‘No, you wouldn’t have let me in on the act if you . . .’
‘Why don’t we try to forget you were ever in on the act,’ Andy interrupted. ‘I know we’ve shared a lot of women over the years, but this time it was a mistake. Just like Leandra was a mistake.’
Doug’s face instantly hardened. ‘That was a long time ago, mate,’ he said.
‘That’s right, and I’ve never mentioned it again ’til now,’ Andy reminded him. ‘That’s the way I want it with Lizzy – if she decides to come.’
Doug was right on the point of telling him what a bloody jackass he was making of himself when instinct told him to let it ride for the moment. He took a long pull of his beer, watching his brother all the while. ‘What happened?’ he said finally. ‘I mean, when did you decide all this, because the last I recall you were going over there to tell her you didn’t much appreciate her remark about baboons or something. What was that, by the way?’
Andy laughed. ‘I’d forgotten about that,’ he said. ‘I thought she was going to do a hatchet job on us because of the way I treated her this morning, that’s why I went over there.’ He laughed again. ‘Can you believe it?’ he said. ‘I go over there to tell her I’m sorry if I insulted her and not only do I end up insulting her again, I realize half-way through that . . .’
‘Yes?’ Doug encouraged.
‘Well, that I’m in this a bit deeper than I knew.’
Using a mannerism that was typical to them both, Doug pursed his mouth at the corner and narrowed his eyes. ‘And you seriously think you’re going to talk a woman as sophisticated as that into staying here, in the back of beyond, with you?’ he said bluntly.
Andy merely looked at him.
‘Jesus, Andy!’ he cried, slamming his beer on the table. ‘No woman in her right mind’s going to give up a life like she’s got to come and play Jane to your Tarzan, especially not a woman like her.’
Andy’s only response was to get up and walk slowly over to the window. They were in the kitchen of the sprawling thatch-roofed bungalow the brothers shared at the edge of the camp and as Andy turned to look around at the somewhat primitive facilities, he had to concede that perhaps his brother had a point. But Lizzy Fortnum didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who got turned on by kitchens and even if she were he had the money to get her any damned kitchen she wanted.
Frowning down at his beer, he turned his mind back again to those few minutes he had been at her chalet this afternoon. He certainly hadn’t gone over there with the intention of asking her to come and live with him – shit, as a firmly anchored bachelor that had been the last thing on his mind! No, if the truth be known he’d gone over there with the intention of making another score between the posts. Of course, he hadn’t been expecting her to give in right away, not after the way he’d given her the brush-off this morning, but he’d been pretty certain he could win her round – after all, his maxim of treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen had never let him down before. But something had changed course somewhere and he still wasn’t sure he knew where. What he did know, however, was that if he’d sounded as much of a jerk as he now feared he had, he wouldn’t mind going out and shooting himself in the head right now. On the other hand, if she said she wouldn’t mind coming here to live with him . . . Shit, what was he going to do if she said yes? But no, Doug was right, a woman like her wouldn’t even consider the idea, was probably married anyway, or living with someone else and just out for a bit on the side, the same as most of the sheilas who came out here. He used them, they used him and everyone was happy. Except Lizzy Fortnum wasn’t happy, anyone could see that – at least he could and he didn’t consider himself the sort of bloke who generally picked up on that sort of thing.
‘Tell you what,’ Doug said, lifting his feet on to the table and crossing his ankles, ‘spend the night with her tonight, alone, the two of you, then see how you feel in the morning. You’ll have probably worked it through your system by then.’
Grinning, Andy took another mouthful of beer and walking back to the table mirrored his brother’s position. ‘Can’t you do better with the advice than that?’ he challenged.
‘No, I don’t reckon I can,’ Doug replied after a moment’s deliberation. ‘In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if you seriously believe she’ll come here to live then you’re a couple of shingles short, mate.’
Laughing, Andy swung his feet back to the floor. ‘A thousand rands says she accepts my offer,’ he said, pitching his empty can into the bin.
Doug spluttered with shock. ‘You’re on, mate,’ he said. ‘And another thousand says you don’t get her in the sack ag—’
‘Excuse me,’ Lizzy interrupted, knocking on the door as she pushed it open. ‘I hope I haven’t chosen a bad time,’ she said, looking from Doug’s stunned expression to Andy’s vaguely embarrassed one.
‘No, no, not at all,’ Doug assured her. ‘Come on in. What can we do for you?’
‘Well, actually,’ she said, desperately wishing she didn’t feel so awkward confronting them both together like this, ‘I’ve just come to . . .’ She turned to Andy and smiled. ‘I’ve come to say thank you for the flowers,’ she said. ‘I found them on the veranda after you’d gone. They’re lovely.’
Doug’s eyes almost burst from his head as he turned to his brother. ‘Flowers?’ he mouthed.
Ignoring him, Andy said, ‘I’m glad you liked them.’ Then to Doug he said, ‘Isn’t there something you need to be getting on with?’
‘No,’ Doug answered.
‘I’m pretty sure there is,’ Andy insisted.
‘No, honest, mate, I’m free,’ Doug assured him.
Rolling his eyes, Andy looked at Lizzy and saw she was laughing. ‘Doug, get the hell out of here, will you?’ he said, keeping his eyes on Lizzy’s.
‘Oh, you want me to go,’ Doug cried. ‘Well, you just had to say, mate.’
When the doo
r had closed behind him Lizzy turned back to Andy. They were standing either side of the table and it was debatable which of them looked the most self-concious until, quite spontaneously, they started to laugh.
‘I’m not going to ask if you meant what you said,’ Lizzy told him, ‘because I’m not sure I want to know. I just wanted to tell you that . . .’ She stopped and felt her cheeks burn with colour as her courage suddenly failed her. ‘I loved the flowers,’ she finished quietly.
Walking around the table Andy pulled her into his arms and kissed her gently on the mouth. ‘Shall we start again?’ he whispered, wondering if she could feel the way his heart was thudding.
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Let’s do that.’
Chapter 4
THE ATTACK HAPPENED with no warning. One minute they were watching the zebras grazing, laughing quietly as they created outlandish reasons for the stripes, the next the entire herd was in flight and a lioness was thundering from the brush, every muscle in her body rippling as she sprang with deadly grace on to a young stallion’s back. Its hindquarters buckled, scudding across the earth, as the lethal claws ripped into its flesh. The rest of the herd vanished into the trees and the young stallion, not seeming to understand its plight, tried to struggle to its feet and follow. But the lioness’s weight was too much and baring her teeth she sank them savagely into its neck. The zebra bleated, terror glazing its eyes, the hopeless instinct for survival prolonging its fight as its flesh was torn apart and bloodied teeth gouged right through to its bones. Dust billowed around them as their bodies thumped into the earth. The stallion struggled on, straining its neck upwards, flailing its hooves, its petrified eyes rolling in their sockets as the lioness’s talons scored the blood from its veins and the great jaws clamped like a vice around its throat.
The awful snap of the spinal cord brought an abrupt end to the fray and the dying zebra slumped helplessly on to its side, gore oozing from its wounds as its lifeblood pumped over the coarse black-and-white hide.
The lioness stood over her prey, barely panting from the effort it had taken to kill, as her tail systematically swiped at the flies on her back and dark, ruby blood dripped from her open mouth. The fervid panic of bird life, the settling dust, the circling vultures, the ambient terror, the dying heart beating beneath her all lent a painful pathos to the primeval savagery of the kill. The air, already turning black with flies, was stained by the bitter stench of her breath as she raised her head and growled deep in her throat. Then sinking on to her haunches, she buried her muzzle in the ragged hole she had gouged in the zebra’s throat. The zebra’s eyes were closed, but there was a last flicker of life as the flesh was dragged from its skull and its torn and quivering body finally yielded to death.
Knowing this was no longer a wise place to be, for the males were likely to descend at any moment, Andy started up the jeep and backed discreetly away. It wasn’t the first time he had witnessed a kill, and it was unlikely to be the last, but no matter how many times he saw it he knew he would never cease to be affected by it. Beside him, Lizzy, who had taken over Melanie’s place in the front, sat quietly in her seat, a hand bunched at her mouth as she gazed sightlessly ahead.
In the seat behind, Rhiannon turned to Oliver. His face was sombre as he pulled her head on to his shoulder. From the silence in the jeep Rhiannon guessed that the others had experienced the same horror she had, for the zebra’s terror and pain had shown a facet of bush life none of them had given much thought to before, and its pitiful impotence in the face of such power was so moving that she could almost feel her own skin being torn from her bones by those merciless jaws.
Jack and Hugh sat mutely in the rear seat, the sound and camera equipment lying motionlessly in their laps. They had captured the kill, now they needed time to assimilate their thoughts and try somehow to absorb the mind-numbing shock of how close they had come to the brutal reality of nature.
In the end it was Hugh who broke the silence. ‘What happened to the American woman?’ he said.
Andy glanced at his watch. ‘She’ll be on her way back to Jo’burg by now,’ he answered.
Oliver frowned and looked at Rhiannon.
‘She came on a drive with us this morning,’ she explained.
‘I thought she was leaving at the same time as us,’ Lizzy remarked.
Andy shrugged. ‘She was, but something came up, she said, that meant she had to leave right away,’ and circling an arm around Lizzy he pulled her head on to his shoulder.
Rhiannon glanced up at Oliver and they both smiled. Neither of them had any idea what had happened between Andy and Lizzy during the early part of the afternoon, but obviously something had and, for Rhiannon at least, it was a relief to see that they had put the awkwardness of the morning behind them. She just hoped that Lizzy wasn’t going to get too involved, for her loneliness since Richard’s death and recent almost panicked determination to get over it, had made her extremely vulnerable and perhaps not as circumspect as she might otherwise be.
But really it was absurd to be worrying about the depth of their involvement when they’d barely known each other five minutes and when even Lizzy, as starved of romance as she was, wouldn’t be crazy enough to throw herself into a relationship with the first man she’d slept with since Richard – especially not a man whose accessibility had even more problems than his savoirefaire.
‘OK?’ Oliver said as she made herself more comfortable.
‘Mmm, fine,’ she answered, her thoughts returning to the disturbing vision of the kill. She wondered how it must feel in those seconds before the lion struck, when the belief in escape was paramount to survival, but when death was inevitable. She shivered. Of all the ways to die she couldn’t imagine one more horrible than being mauled by a wild animal.
Then quite suddenly she was laughing as, with typically untimely wit, Hugh called out, ‘So what’s on the menu tonight then, Andy?’
Outside, the darkness was alive with the needle sharp buzz of insect life, the falsetto howl of hyenas, the warbling croak of frogs, the bellow of bull elephants, the snarl and scream of killer cats, the high-pitched whine of bats. All around them nature was fretting and fidgeting, while the exotic scent of the bush drifted in through the woven silk mesh at the windows. Oliver rolled on to his back, his fingers splayed over the taut flesh of Rhiannon’s buttocks, holding their bodies together.
‘I love you,’ he whispered, reaching up to squeeze her breasts together.
Looking down at him she started to smile, her soft, pliant mouth glistening in the half-light, her coppery hair tumbling over her shoulders in a wild unruly mass. He was big and solid inside her, filling her with the promise of an as yet unleashed passion as his thumbs teased her nipples and swelling tremors of lust eddied between them.
Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door and as his face tightened with annoyance Rhiannon’s eyes closed in exasperation.
‘Oliver! Are you there, mate?’ Doug shouted. ‘Phone for you.’
‘Oh no,’ Rhiannon protested.
‘Tell them I’ll call back,’ Oliver shouted, grabbing her waist as she made to pull away.
‘They’re saying it’s urgent,’ Doug told him.
‘I’ll call back,’ Oliver shouted, driving himself hard and fast into Rhiannon and watching her breasts bounce over her ribs. ‘Shit, I’m going to come,’ he whispered.
‘What’ll I do if . . . ?’ Doug started.
‘Doug, this isn’t a good time,’ Rhiannon interrupted breathlessly.
Oliver started to grin, but his face suddenly contorted. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he gasped as she clamped her muscles around him, squeezing him painfully tight. ‘How do you do that? Oh, fuck, Rhiannon,’ he cried, thrashing around beneath her.
‘Let it go,’ she whispered. ‘Just let it go.’
‘Oh yes,’ he cried, his back arching as the seed began to gush out of him. ‘Keep doing that,’ he panted, as she clenched his hardness again and again and rotated her hips wildly. ‘Oh, Ch
rist yes!’ he gasped, digging his fingers hard into her flesh as the thrust of his climax exploded.
Finally, as she felt the tension begin to drain from his body, Rhiannon eased the pressure of her muscles and looking down at his strained, exhausted face she could feel love spreading heat into every part of her.
‘I love you,’ he murmured, his body giving a delayed shudder in the receding force of his climax.
‘Do you?’ she smiled.
He smiled too as he sank a hand into her hair and rested his palm on her cheek. ‘Yes, I do,’ he told her. ‘And you didn’t come.’
‘I wanted to watch you.’
He laughed softly and brought her other hand to his mouth. ‘Then it’s my turn to watch you,’ he said.
‘Hadn’t you better go and find out who was on the phone?’ she said as he eased her on to her back.
‘This is more important.’
‘But Doug said it was urgent . . .’
‘Sssh,’ he said, kissing her again, ‘whatever it is, it can wait.’
Randy Theakston was at the Carlton Hotel in down town Johannesburg. She had just got off the phone with Theo Straussen, and was now waiting for further instructions to come via the fax machine she’d set up on the desk. So far her assignment had been simple; Edwardes was an easy subject to observe and the photographs Straussen had requested were already on their way to New York. Even the shots of Edwardes and Maguire by the pool had been easy to come by, though whether they were the kind of thing Straussen wanted Randy had yet to find out.
She was sitting in an armchair, studying a street map of Cape Town which she already knew to be her next destination, when the fax finally came through. It was a single page, which she tore off the machine, scanned quickly, then sat down to read more thoroughly. She was surprised by what she was being asked to do and not a little perplexed. But if this was what Straussen wanted, then this was what Straussen would get – and his reasons for wanting it weren’t something Randy was about to waste her time speculating on.
