Harlequin Heartwarming May 2016 Box Set: Through the StormHome for KeepsThe Firefighter's RefrainTo Catch a Wife

by Rula Sinara

  Worse yet, Mac caught himself wondering if the guy really did miss her. If he really did love her. Because how could he not?

  He needed to pass the message on to Ben. He pressed the button to boot up his system, then brushed past the cloth strips and went to his bed. He sat on the edge and considered the space. It had always been enough. He’d never needed more. Never noticed how dark and cramped it was...and lonely. Only days ago, he’d relished that feeling. It was enough. It had to be. It always had been.

  Then why was he wishing he was at Camp Jamba with Tessa and Nick? Why did he feel like he was missing out on hanging around with both of them...and Mugi and Kesi. Missing out on family time. Missing home.

  He scrubbed his calloused hands up and down his face, then took a deep breath. Family? Home? Was he kidding himself? Nick was his only blood relation and he didn’t even know how he was going to handle having him in his daily life. Only now, he wanted to figure it out. He wanted to raise Nick. Really raise him. Teach him to be a man of honor. Not a man like Brice.

  Mugi and Kesi had told Mac he was family and that if he ever decided that he could handle the logistics of making Jamba his home base instead of Hodari, they would welcome him. It wasn’t the first time they’d mentioned it. But Mac didn’t want to invade their privacy to that extent. And he liked his own, back here in his small cave. Plus, Jamba didn’t have customers tracking through all day long. If he didn’t have an office here in Hodari’s lobby, Air Walker Safaris would definitely go under. Leaving this place would be like trying to set up a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere and wondering why there were no customers. And the lodge had a better area for him to keep his helicopter, especially during rainy season.

  Besides, inviting him to stay at Jamba was different than inviting him and Nick. It wasn’t Mugi and Kesi’s responsibility to help him raise his nephew. Good a kid as he was, he was a handful. He’d proved that yesterday. Still, it’d be like growing up with grandparents around. Mugi and Kesi would be there when Mac had to work. If, after all was said and done, and Tessa decided to leave Nick with him, just as she’d planned, he couldn’t think of anyone else who could watch Nick while he was out on flights. Tessa’s future was up to Tessa, not him. But every time he tried thinking about how he could make things work, he came up against a rhino’s butt.

  Mac slapped his thighs and got up. He’d momentarily forgotten about the issue of schooling. See? A real parent wouldn’t have forgotten about that. He remembered being Nick’s age. How important having peers was. Even if he asked Mugi and Kesi for help, school would be an issue. Mac had told Tessa that there was no way he’d isolate the kid, and he meant it.

  Everything came back to the same problems. It simply wasn’t doable. Abandoning his business and moving to the city just so his nephew could attend school wasn’t an option. He had to make a living and Air Walker was his life. People—wildlife—depended on his volunteer work. And even if whatever scheme Brice was caught up in got busted, there’d still be poachers out there and victims to rescue. He grabbed his bottle of Scotch, took one swig and put it back in the drawer.

  He picked up the card he’d tossed on his desk. Amboseli Luxury Tours, Inc. He typed it into the search bar. Just great. That was one professional web presence. Clicking on a few of their links and pages made it clear just how big they were. It happened all over the world in every town. Big chain comes in and kills small, local business...or buys them out. Mac had never buddied up to the owner of Hodari Lodge. Sure, Mac was a fellow businessman. But the owner wore a suit. Mac wore khakis. And he wasn’t into schmoozing. He did his own thing. Now he was wishing he’d gotten to know the owner a little better. He raked his hair back.

  The luxury lodge wanted luxury tours.

  Maybe the propellers were already spinning. And here he was, spending less time at work because of the Brice ivory investigation. That couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

  He shot Ben a quick email update, then grabbed his mail and flipped through. Bills...more bills...a letter from the lodge owner. He cranked his neck, inhaled, then opened it. You’ve got to be kidding me. Reading between the lines, they were strongly encouraging him to sell out and cut his losses. He tore the letter in half. He didn’t care how impossible things seemed. If anyone thought Mac Walker was going to crumble under pressure and sell out, they didn’t know him.

  He lived for the impossible.

  * * *

  TESSA KICKED OFF her sneakers and pulled her feet up, crisscross-style, as she sat on the chair outside her tent. She didn’t know what had triggered it, but the words were flowing endlessly. It didn’t matter that she’d forgotten her tablet charger back in South Africa and had no access to the documents she’d stored on it. She didn’t need her fashion research or list of article ideas for the paper she was never going back to. Katia would figure out soon enough that whoever she got to cover the column this week was going to have to be a permanent hire. She didn’t even need her copy of the article she’d written that Katia had refused to print. The one about her ivory trade suspicions. Nothing mattered but the glide of her ballpoint pen against her journal pages and the high she was enjoying as her thoughts bled out with the ink.

  After all she’d experienced out here in Kenya’s wilderness, visiting Busara and living alongside the very elephants she’d written about, that earlier article sounded hollow even to herself. As much as it would have stirred public curiosity and put pressure on people to act, it had been missing something. Something that was flowing onto the page now. Emotion. Insight.

  She paused briefly to take in the chatter of primates she knew were spying on her from the branches of the fig and elephant pepper trees. She couldn’t see them and it didn’t matter that she couldn’t identify them. All that mattered were the sounds.

  It hit her that no dictionaries or universal translators were needed. If she let go and listened...really listened...she could understand every click, chatter, grunt and whistle that filled the air. They were the sounds of contentedness and belonging. They were the bustling sounds she imagined would fill a family’s home during a reunion or holiday.

  They were the sounds of life being lived.

  Here, she wasn’t standing safely behind a window looking out on the natural world. Here, she was in it. A part of it. And though she still felt like an outsider, something about being here felt right and whole and more beautiful than any part of the designer—and safely designed—life she’d been living. She finally understood why Mac loved it here. He didn’t fear life...he embraced it in a way that was enviable. She now realized that all the times he’d teased her and tried to get her to take a plunge, he’d been trying to get her to love life. To feel free. He was trying to share a bit of joy with her and she’d refused. And now...oh, God...now she wished he were sharing this very moment with her. He’d understand what she was feeling and experiencing without her having to put it into words. For the first time, emotions she’d always held back flooded her.

  Mac was a good man. He was everything she admired and respected and he knew her...her faults, weaknesses and strengths. And still, he was sticking by her side and Nick’s. She could be herself around Mac. She’d never hated him. She’d hated being afraid that something would happen to him. She’d cared too much. She more than cared now.

  A splash sounded and she peered across the camp toward the river. A young hippo had found relief from the sun’s heat. She smiled. This place was amazing. Inspiring. She felt like Karen Blixen writing Out of Africa. Out here, she didn’t have to care about gaining anyone’s approval to write what she wanted. She was writing for herself and because she had to. She needed the release. She felt the urge to put her life to paper before—like Karen, who’d left her plantation home in Kenya—she’d have to leave Kenya, too. She wanted to write down everything that had happened and all the signs she’d overlooked with the very man she’d been living with. She had
to express every emotion that had choked her during Ben’s interrogation. If things turned out badly...if in the end she had to go into hiding...or if something worse happened to her...she wanted her experiences to get out there. Words were eternal. If the true story she was putting to paper ever made it out into the world, then at least she would have made a difference.

  “Hey, Aunt Tessa! Look at this!”

  Nick came running over, his hair swept out of his face by a spare AWS cap worn in reverse, and held out, of all things, an egg. Tessa raised her brows.

  “What laid it?”

  Nick stared at her like she was nuts.

  “A chicken. What else?”

  “Okaaaay...” Not some exotic Serengeti bird or snake or something? He was ecstatic over a chicken egg?

  “I was helping fix this pen made out of these really thorny branches from the acacia trees—Mugi said it’s called an enkang and it’s how the Masai people make pens to keep their livestock in because the thorns discourage predators—and while I was helping, one of the hens laid this. I actually watched it come out of her.”

  Ah. Now it made sense. The cool part.

  “You should have seen it, Aunt T. Her vag...”

  “Hey! Watch it,” Tessa said, holding out her palm to stop him. “That’s not what it’s called on a hen.”

  “Whatever. Her rear got all pink and stretchy and...”

  “Gross. Stop or you’ll ruin me for eggs,” Tessa said. His enthusiasm was so unexpected. Seeing him light up like this was truly wonderful, amusingly ironic as it was: Nick traveling deep into the wild Serengeti to see something as ordinary as a chicken laying an egg. She really didn’t want to hear the details, though. Nick didn’t care. He kept going.

  “It was all wet and she just squatted there until it dried. It’s still warm. Here. Touch it.”

  “I’ll pass,” Tessa said. She was appreciating “experience” but she did have her limits.

  “I’m going to eat it. Kesi said she’d scramble it up for me. Talk about fresh.” He winked and Tessa was floored. Mac had himself a clone.

  “Mugi...”

  “Mr. Lagat. It’s more polite,” Tessa said.

  “He told me to call him Mugi. Anyway, he said that if you and Uncle Mac are okay with it, he could teach me to shoot a rifle and drive the jeep.”

  Now that was pushing it. Tessa set her pen and notebook down.

  “You’re thirteen,” she said as she slipped her sneakers back on. “Isn’t that illegal or something?”

  “He’s a lawyer, Aunt T. I think he’d know. We’re in the middle of nowhere and the gun wouldn’t be for hunting. I told him you guys would lose your heads over that. It’d just be for emergency protection. Even Uncle Mac keeps one. Wild animals—pythons, hyenas...”

  “For the record, I scared that hyena off without a gun.”

  “Aunt T...remember, you want what’s best for me, right?” He gave her a smug grin. “And it’s not like driving a jeep would land me in jail. There aren’t any police or traffic rules out here. Plus, I have great hand-eye coordination from all the console games I play and practicing driving here would be safer—no one to hit—so when we go back and I really learn to drive, I’ll be better at it. More expert,” he said, shaking a finger at her. Tessa sighed.

  “I’m beginning to wonder what you have more of—Mac’s thirst for adventure or Mugi’s knack for arguing a court case.”

  “If I have both, does that make me twice the man?” He took off sniggering with the warm egg before she could comment.

  That boy was something else. Bringing him out here was the best decision she’d ever made. The only right one, too.

  She started down the path toward the cottage, but remembered her journal was sitting out. She doubled back, put it inside and headed back. The aroma floating on the air told her that Kesi had already started cooking and Tessa had promised to help out in exchange for lessons on how to make some of the dishes. She’d lost track of time while writing. Kesi appeared on their porch and waved.

  “I’m sorry I forgot. I’m ready to learn,” Tessa called out. Kesi shook her head.

  “Mac called to make arrangements for a family that was looking for an overnight excursion. He’s bringing them back with him. I could use your help.”

  Her help. She was needed. Valuable. No longer an outsider. It felt wonderful. She smiled and picked up her pace.

  “Consider it done.”

  * * *

  TESSA DUSTED OFF the bistro-size table and chairs in the tent that stood about five yards from hers. Kesi was spreading fresh linens on one of the beds. These tent accommodations were a little larger than hers. Large enough for two beds instead of one, so that families with younger children could stay together.

  “Are you really looking for snakes?” Tessa asked as Kesi took a quick peek under the bed.

  “I really am. We’ve never had an issue, but you never know. One can’t be too careful.”

  Tessa had seen a copy of the release forms Mugi had guests sign. Apparently, he’d drawn up the ones that Mac used for his business, too. They were fairly comprehensive and had plenty of warnings about risk, potential injury...death. Not that different than what some of the ladies back home had talked about signing just to get their noses fixed.

  “Brave parents, they are, coming out here for five days with twin nine-year-olds. I’m not sure I could do it, but I suppose it would depend on the children,” Tessa said.

  “It’s not so bad. You visited Busara. You should have seen it years ago, when Anna first came out here. She was pregnant at the time. She got through her pregnancy and raised Pippa while living in conditions that make these look like a five-star hotel in the city. And the entire time she put her veterinary skills to good use. When we first moved here, I thought we’d made a mistake, but after a while...and after the cottage was built...it really became home. I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”

  Tessa started on the second bed, then stopped and checked underneath. No snakes. Thank goodness.

  “You’ve definitely made Camp Jamba a home. It’s incredible. Nick is loving it. He really gets along well with Mugi and he’s in heaven with your cooking.”

  “He’s a great kid. He’ll be all right,” Kesi said. “What about you?”

  “Me?” She thought for a minute, remembering how she and Nick had felt their first day here. Things had really changed. “You know, I’m truly enjoying my time here and there’s something fulfilling and exciting about helping you get ready for visitors. Thank you for letting me help,” Tessa said. She was being sincere. There was joy in being here and in anticipating getting to share the wonders of the place with others, especially the younger generation. Nick might have some fun with the visitors, as well.

  Kesi fluffed the last pillow.

  “I meant, will you be okay?”

  Tessa stopped smoothing the bedding.

  “I’ll be okay. It’s just that I get these moments where I feel guilty for everything going through my head. Everything I’m doing. When I got married, I vowed ‘until death do us part.’ I made a commitment and for most of that time, even if things between us weren’t perfect, they were good. He was good. People make mistakes, right? People make wrong choices. Who decides when someone deserves a second chance and when they don’t?” Tessa was so confused she wasn’t even sure if she was wondering about Brice or herself. She sat down on the chair near the bed.

  “My dear, only you can answer that for yourself. No one knows your life and what goes on inside you as well as you do. Don’t feel judged or guilty. It’s hard to share a life when you don’t share the same morals and values. It makes it even harder to raise a family or to get through the bumps. There can be a false sense of security and comfort in the familiar. Change is hard and stressful and can even seem impossible. It’s
not until you’re surrounded by people who share your beliefs, values and morals that you realize you’ve been in the wrong place or with the wrong person. That you’re not where you’re supposed to be in life.”

  “How do you know this for sure? You and Mugi look so happy and so perfect together. I can’t imagine you ever suspecting him of criminal activity and having your life here destroyed.”

  “I’m thankful that’s not the case. But life is unpredictable. Even we don’t know what’s in store for us in the future. Not with one hundred percent certainty, even if that’s what we feel in our hearts.” She leaned back against the dresser and looked pointedly at Tessa. “Once upon a time, I was engaged to another man. Then I met Mugi and I felt as if I’d been swept away in a flood. It took me time to get the courage to make a different choice, but with Mugi, I knew I’d met the man I would drop everything for and move to the ends of the earth with, and I knew he’d do the same for me...and here we are. Is that how you feel?”

  “I’m not sure.” If she had felt that way when she met Brice, wouldn’t she remember? “Brice and I just happened. He was introduced to me at an animal cruelty prevention event—a fund-raiser—and he kept calling me and taking me out after that. He made me feel special.”

  “I didn’t mean him.”

  Tessa looked up from where she was tracing the engraving on the chair’s arm with her finger. Her pulse tripped in her chest. Was Kesi implying that something was going on between her and Mac? That she had feelings for him, the kind Kesi had had for Mugi? Tessa’s face heated and she licked her lips. Did Mac make her feel like she’d drop everything and move to the ends of the world with him? The answer swirling in her head scared her.