Taken By The Heart (4 Contemporary Romance Novellas)

by Sierra Rose

  The smell of damp wood, earth, and fish wafted past. Somewhere to my right, the sound of trickling water echoed in my ears. I craned my neck around and caught a glimpse of the river sparkling in the bright light. Along the water’s edge were giant nests of dead grass, hanging from gnarled tree limbs. The shrill sound of squawking birds filled the air all around us, and the elephant started to stomp into the muddy water.

  “It’s okay,” our tour guide said. “We’re crossing the river to get to the other side. She’s very familiar with carrying passengers across. You shouldn’t have any problems.”

  Drops of water splashed on my face, arms, and legs. I wiped the moisture across my burning skin, enjoying the cooling sensation.

  Weee-ah, hyo-hyo, heee-ah, heeah-heeah.

  I gazed up at the large raptor making the loud, evocative, and haunting cry. It was perched on branches overlooking the water. The majestic bird had a brown body with large, powerful, black wings. The head, breast, and tail were snow white. I snapped a few glorious shots with my camera.

  “That’s an African Fish-Eagle. It’s the spirit or essence of Africa. Its distinctive call has earned it the name ‘the voice of Africa’.”

  I smiled as the magnificent bird swooped down to catch a fish.

  Suddenly, the elephant stopped.

  I laughed. “I think she’s taking a break.”

  Slurping filled the air, as the elephant sucked up water through her trunk like a straw. She lifted her long gray protrusion high in the air, and a huge plume of spray shot skyward, only to stream down on us like rain.

  I couldn’t help but giggle. “I know she’s hot, but has she forgotten we’re up here, too?” I blinked and wiped my soaking-wet hair out of my eyes.

  We all laughed.

  Jake’s wet hair hung just over his collar, and I admired his hairstyle all over again. It was longer than it was when we had dated, but I loved it. It made him look so sexy that I was half-tempted to run my hand through those gorgeous locks.

  The elephant took a few more steps and slowly submerged below the surface of the water. From the shore, the river had seemed wide and shallow, and now I wondered how deep the river was, since the elephant seemed to barely reach the bottom. A log swept past and grazed my legs. When I glanced down, I saw more logs, as well as debris and branches, floating past us. Water seeped into my socks and tennis shoes. First my knees sank in, then my stomach. A shiver ran down my spine. With a splash, the elephant’s entire head plopped just a few inches under the surface of the water. I was sure we were sinking like a big, giant rock, and I clung to the saddle as water swirled past my hips.

  “No worries. Elephants are excellent swimmers,” Anto said. “We’ll be across the river in no time.”

  In India, I’d seen elephants swim in deep water with trainers on their backs, so I wasn’t too nervous about it, but my soaked clothes clung to my body, dragging me down. I shivered as the cold water bit into my skin, and I clasped my arms around Jake to hold him close, resting my chin on his shoulder; he was emanating heat like an oven. I noticed hundreds of bubbles rising to the surface, and a second later, the elephant’s trunk popped up. Using it as a snorkel, she swam, dog-paddling underwater, submerged like a big, gray submarine, raising her trunk up like a periscope.

  A sudden flash of light caught my eye. I squeezed my eyes against the blinding sun, trying to get a better look, because something seemed odd about the long, bumpy piece of driftwood that was coming our way. Not only was it covered in scales, but it also opened big, yellow eyes, and I found myself staring intently at golden irises around slit pupils. The cold eyes just stared right back at me.

  My mouth gaped open, and the breath caught in my throat. “That’s definitely not a log,” I whispered nervously in Jake’s ear. It looked like a cold-blooded creature I’d once seen in Florida, with long, tapering jaws and yellow reptilian eyes peeking out of the river. Two teeth jutted out of the reptile’s bottom jaw. “It’s an alligator! Right there, blending in with all those logs.” With shaking, fingers I gripped the saddle so hard my knuckles turned white.

  “That’s no alligator. That’s a croc,” Anto said calmly.

  As far as I was concerned, the specifics didn’t matter. Either species would happily make a meal out of us, and flashbacks of all the movies and nature shows I’d seen about death rolls and giant reptilians terrorizing people bombarded my mind. I peered at the water and gulped. The marine predator emerged, exposing its entire armored body. I wondered how many buffalos, zebras, hippos, and even humans it had been snacking on, because it was huge. The rigid, brown, horn-like scales on its back and along its tail glistened under the sun.

  I wiped the sweat off my brow, and my heart began to pound fiercely. “Let’s swim to shore!”

  “No, that would not be wise,” Anto advised from his place atop the other elephant. “It’s only curious right now. If you swim off in a hurry, you’ll be inviting it to have a taste. It’d snap you in two before you could even set one foot on land. Just stay calm. We’ll be out of the water any minute, and a croc can’t outrun one of these big beauties.” He patted his elephant’s side, trying to downplay the situation so I wouldn’t do anything stupid, like make a mad dash to shore.

  He had a point. There was no need to panic, at least not yet. I took a deep breath to calm my racing heart. The croc swam a little further away, then stopped, as if to watch us from a distance, but I still didn’t feel much safer knowing that we were sharing the river with that thing and probably several of its terrifying and hungry relatives.

  Jake pointed, his voice calm, as if he was trying to put my mind at ease. “We can’t let our guard down, but look! It’s over there, minding its own business.”

  “Or it’s stalking us!” I retorted.

  Of course Jake was smart enough to know that; he just didn’t want to freak me out.

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll be out of the water any minute,” he said.

  A splash and a blur of brown caught my attention. Ripples shot across the slow current as the croc slithered through in the water, slowly swimming past us until it was only about fifteen feet away. My stomach clenched when the creature’s long snout and eyes barely broke the surface of the river. It was so close to us that I could see the thin membrane slide over its eyes as it blinked. When the thing slowly disappeared into the river again, it was beyond creepy.

  A few moments later, Jake pointed at more huge ripples in the river, and I gulped as the croc’s body slightly rose out of the water. “It’s getting closer!”

  Finally, the ground began to level out, and I felt a glimmer of hope. With each step the elephant took, we rose higher out of the treacherous water. I scanned the surface as the water receded to my waist, then my knees, and finally my ankles. Relief swept through me. I’d come face to face with a croc and lived to tell about it.

  I scanned the water one last time. “It’s gone.”

  We all seemed calmer as we moved closer to the riverbank, assuming that if the croc had really wanted to make a meal out of us, he’d already be picking what was left of us out of his nasty old teeth.

  As my elephant walked, the water behind her began to churn. A crashing splash erupted, and streams of water rose into the air and slapped against us. The croc leapt out, snapping its bone-crushing jaws together and missing Anto’s elephant by mere inches.

  Too frightened to even scream, I held on tightly as the elephant reared up. Digging my feet into the animal’s sides, my hair swayed around me, whipping into my face, while I clung to the saddle like a cowboy atop a wild bull in a rodeo. My hands slipped around Jake again, and I held on to him tightly as the creature bucked again. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion, and we were all catapulted into the air, finally landing with a giant splash.

  Groaning, I scrambled up, spitting out dirty water as my heartbeat spiked. I was in the river up to my waist—the same river where the crocodile was swimming around. The elephant continued to buck like a spooked horse, an
d I moved back, knowing that getting turned into a pancake by an elephant wasn’t going to help me one bit.

  I looked for our guide. When I saw him, I hurried over and found him dazed but alive, and I started pulling him toward the shore. “C’mon, Anto!” I said. I glanced over my shoulder. I pushed my wet hair out of my eyes and blinked as I wiped the water from my lashes. “Get to the riverbank, Jake!” I yelled. I knew if we could just get out of the water, it would increase our odds of survival; in the water, the croc had home-field advantage. I craned my neck to peer behind me, just in time to see the croc gliding in the water next to my elephant, its eyes open wide and fixing on me, its cruel jaws snapping in my direction. I gasped and yelled, “RUN!”

  “It’s coming! We can’t all make it to shore in time!” Jake yelled. “Get outta here. I’ll hold it off.”

  I yanked his arm. “No, Jake! Get your butt on land!”

  “Just get him out of the water!” he yelled, pointing at the barely conscious Anto.

  “I’m not going without you!” I demanded. “Now come on!”

  “Get to safety!” Jake glanced over his shoulder, and his lips pressed into grim lines. “I promise I’ll be right behind you. Now go!”

  “No! I’m not leaving you.” As much as I despised what Jake had done for me, I couldn’t just let him get eaten alive. He had always been there for me—well, except when he’d deserted me at the altar—and I couldn’t just abandon him to die in an African river.

  The croc lunged at Jake, snapping its hungry jaws. Its dinosaur-like powerful tail whipped around in the air, sending thousands of droplets spraying everywhere. For a second, all I could do was hold my breath and watch in horror. Jake grunted and lurched backward. Sure, he resembled Superman with that dark hair and blue eyes of his, but there was no way he could take on thousands of pounds of pure muscle and bad attitude.

  “Jake, get outta there!” I desperately yelled.

  He took a step back, but in the process, he accidentally lodged his foot on something. I couldn’t see whether it was a rock or a fallen tree in the river bottom. I only hoped another animal hadn’t grabbed his foot under the water. Whatever it was, it caused him to lose his footing and fall backward with a splash. As if the dinner bell had been rung, the croc powered toward him with its mouth slightly open, practically smiling, ready to move in to kill its prey.

  Think fast, I told myself. What can I do? Hit it with a branch? Right. It’ll probably feel like a feather on that thing’s thick skin. Maybe I can hit it with a rock. Nope. That’ll feel like nothing more than a pesky fly. And then I saw it. Mud! Maybe I can blind it somehow!

  Before I could change my mind, I grabbed a giant handful of muddy sand and flicked it at the croc’s eyes. My heart pounded as I watched the creature’s reaction. Water splashed everywhere as it threw a tantrum, blinking its yellow eyes over and over again. The croc went for Jake’s throat and missed only by inches as he twisted to the left like lightning. Then, rearing up, the elephant smashed its feet like a hammer right down on the croc’s head.

  The reptile lay motionless, seeming disoriented from the heavy blow. I flinched as the armored beast suddenly moved, gliding slowly toward the deeper part of the river. It slipped silently into the glittering water and sank like a submarine. Bubbles rose to the surface, and then all was still.

  I clutched my chest while I caught my breath. Tears welled, threatening to spill down my cheeks. Jake was safe, and I was glad for that. Still holding my breath, I quickly scoped out the area. I waited a moment before I dared to start breathing again. Then I grabbed Jake’s and Anto’s hands and pulled them eagerly to shore. I sloshed through the water, mud, and sand until my feet reached dry land, and a wave of relief swept through me. Water dripped from my hair and poured from my clothes.

  I glanced over at Jake. There was no way I was going to let him off scot-free after he’d tried to play action hero. Hugging and punching him at the same time, I cried, “What were you thinking?”

  He leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees as he breathed heavily in and out. “I only planned on stalling it for a second to give you two a head start. Trust me, I woulda been right behind you, but if worse came to worst, I had a trick up my sleeve.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re carrying around some croc repellant in that bag of yours,” I snapped.

  “No, but there’s a pouch in the croc’s throat that keeps it from drowning. I knew if I stuck my arm down there and punched it, the thing would have no other choice but to let go or drown.”

  “Yeah, if its teeth didn’t tear you to shreds first.” I touched his face. Tears were sliding down my cheeks, but I almost hoped he’d just think it was river water. “Thanks for saving my life, but please, no more stunts like that.”

  He wiped one of my tears away and gazed into my eyes. “When it comes to protecting you, Ashly, there’s no length I won’t go to.”

  His words truly touched my heart. From the tone in his voice, I believed every word. I rested my head against his strong chest, and he softly stroked my hair. “Thanks, Jake. I feel the same way. I’m sorry I got so upset, but the thought of losing you to that thing….well, I was scared to death.”

  He held me close. Jake had risked his life to save mine, the kind of thing that only happened in books and mushy movies. Or maybe in dreams too, I thought with a smile and a sniffle.

  After our croc escapade, our camping trip was over, and we headed back to the Royal Malewane. The staff was so friendly and greeted us with glasses of champagne and cool towels.

  * * *

  The next day, I woke up early and smiled when I saw that I’d caught another beautiful sunrise. I wrapped a robe around me and walked out onto the deck to take in the pink and orange swirls that had painted the African horizon.

  “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Jake said from behind me.

  I spun to face him “Yes, just breathtaking.”

  He grinned.

  “Thank you for all of your bravery back there with that croc,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  “You’re very brave. I just want you to know that.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “Aw. Does it hurt?” I said, laughing.

  “Very funny,” he said, smiling back at me. “Anyway, I know things aren’t the best between us, but I’m more than willing to work on our friendship. We can start out as friends and see what happens.”

  I bit my lip hard as I pondered. “That’s great, Jake, but you need to know that it won’t make up for the past.”

  “I made mistakes, and I’m sorry, but you said yourself that we need to leave the past in the past. Is there any way we can both forget about that and concentrate on what’s right here in front of us? I think we could have something really good.”

  I shook my head. “You can’t just come back and suddenly jump in where you left off.”

  “I really think we still have something very special,” he said.

  I stared into his eyes, then purposely drifted my gaze to the sunrise. “We’ll always be…friends.”

  “Maybe I want more.”

  “Jake, I—”

  “Only you can decide if I’m worthy of a second chance. Just because things went horribly wrong the first time around doesn’t mean we should never try again. Let’s start out slow, as friends, and see what happens. It can’t hurt to try.”

  “You’re an ex for a reason, Jake. I won’t deny that part of me wants to jump into those familiar arms. I mean, maybe the timing was off between us. We were both so young and naïve. Then again, I see no reason why I should get back together with an old flame who shattered my heart and humiliated me the way you did.”

  “I thought you were a huge believer in giving people second chances.”

  “Excluding my love life, yes.”

  “You might be throwing away a good thing here, Ashly. Won’t you always wonder what could have happened if you just—”

  I
cut him off and turned to leave. “I’m gonna have breakfast on the patio by the watering hole. I’m anxious to see what animals are out.”

  He paused. “I remember that about you too.”

  “What? That I like to eat breakfast?”

  “No. I remember that you always dodge uncomfortable questions by changing the subject.”

  “See ya later, Jake,” I said.

  * * *

  Almost all day, I relaxed on the deck, haunted by Jake’s words. Am I throwing away a good thing? Would I regret it later? I set my apple down and went back inside to get my bottled water, but when I returned, the apple was gone, as if it had vanished into thin air. I glanced around and quickly spotted the culprit, a monkey who was noisily chomping away on his bright red prize. I laughed, then watched my new entertainment, a tree full of monkeys and baboons who seemed just as curious about me as I was about them.

  Still fascinated by the wildlife, even after our near-croc experience, Jake had gone to look for elephants and lions with our tracker, so I decided to take a dip. I sat in the little private pool on the deck that overlooked the bush. As I sipped on my bottled water, I thought a lot about Jake. I couldn’t get him out of my head. I was still so attracted to him, even more so after he’d risked his life to try and save me from the croc. I also thought about our dreadful wedding day. Jake was supposed to be more than my hero; he was supposed to be my husband, but he wasn’t. My mind raced through a tumult of emotions. I was still mad at him, and that was what had kept us from moving forward as friends. I just wasn’t sure if I was ready to give up that anger, an emotion I had every right to feel after the despicable thing he’d done to me.

  To Be Continued…

  Book 2 is available now! (see cover on next page)

  BOOK TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ8m9f7JDzk

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