by Cat Schield
* * *
Ashton didn’t know what to make of her answer. Two nights earlier they’d enjoyed a playful evening of food and wine. Last night they’d made love. She’d never once made mention of an upcoming trip much less one to Africa. Maybe he wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.
The elevator doors opened, and Harper stepped forward with purpose and energy. Ashton followed. Since they were both heading to the airport, he’d have a good twenty minutes to get to the core of what was going on.
He eyed her suitcase. It was the size he’d expect a woman to take for a long weekend. “How long are you planning to be gone?”
“I don’t know. A week. Maybe two. It depends.” She trailed off.
Not normally one to pick up on the nuances of other people’s emotional states, Ashton found that when it came to Harper, he’d become hyperaware of her moods. Something was up and he wasn’t going to let her go until he knew what it was.
“I didn’t realize Fontaine had expanded into Africa.”
“It hasn’t.”
“Then you’re scouting locations?”
“No.”
Her short answers were creating more confusion than understanding. Harper was many things. Goal oriented, resourceful, outspoken. Never evasive.
Ashton used his height and weight advantage to herd her away from the line of taxis. She was not escaping from him until he was satisfied he knew the whole story. “I have a car waiting.”
“I can take a cab.”
“You can also accept a ride.”
“Thank you.” But there was very little gratitude in her tone. She wanted to go her own way. It made him all that much more determined to not let her.
After giving instructions to the driver where to drop Harper off, he waited until their luggage was stowed in the trunk and the town car was navigating East Flamingo Road before he continued his interrogation. “Is this trip business or pleasure?”
“Why are you so curious?”
“Because I would think with Batouri set to open in less than two weeks you might have mentioned an impending trip out of the country.”
“It came up rather fast.”
“How fast?”
“This afternoon.”
The traffic was flowing more smoothly than usual down Paradise Road. The short ride to the airport, which usually took twenty minutes, was going to take closer to ten. Ashton was running out of time to get the answers he wanted.
“What the hell is going on with you, Harper? This isn’t like you at all.”
Her brown eyes were fierce as she met his gaze. “I’m not sure that’s true.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Since I was eleven I’ve had a plan for how my life was going to go. I set goals and achieved them, all with one target in mind.”
“Running Fontaine Hotels and Resorts.”
She nodded. “But what no one knows is how often I’ve wondered what it would be like to give it all up and run away. To pack a bag and see the world, not from the back of a taxi, but on the back of a motorcycle or in an open jeep or even on a camel.”
Passion drenched her tone. Her longing made his heart contract. He recognized what it felt like to yearn, even though he’d long ago come to terms with the futility of craving what could never be. He’d promised himself to never be that weak again, but his developing connection with Harper sparked a long-buried emotion. Hope.
“What does all this have to do with your trip to South Africa?”
“I realize it’s all been in vain.”
Harper’s hand had been hovering near the door handle since the car had entered the airport limits. As soon as the vehicle came to a complete stop, she was out the door. The driver popped the trunk, and Harper had her bag on the curb before Ashton even exited the car. Despite her haste, he moved quickly enough to block her path into the terminal.
“My flight leaves in ninety minutes. I have to get through security.”
“Then you don’t have a lot of time to waste. Why are you going to Africa?”
“I have something I need to take care of.”
“Such as?” He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her as if he had all the time in the world to wait for her answer.
She blew out a breath. “Some complicated family business.”
“Hotel business?”
“Personal business.”
“And you don’t feel like sharing?”
“Maybe when I get back.”
“Talk to me, Harper.” Ashton was more than a little disturbed to feel her slipping away from him. “I told you things no one else knows.”
Her gaze pleaded with him to let her go, but he held firm and at last she caved. “Fine. I’m going to find a man who might be my father.”
“I thought your father was dead.”
She paused a beat before answering. “The man I thought was my father is dead. I think my real father is a wildlife photographer who leads photography safaris throughout Africa.” She sounded completely composed as if this was old news, but the tension around her mouth betrayed that all was not well.
It all came together in a heartbeat. “So you’re not a Fontaine?”
“It appears I’m not.”
“And finding this out has led to the questions you’ve been having about the decisions you’ve made in your career?”
“I’m not a Fontaine.” Agony fractured her voice. “I have no right to be CEO.”
“You have worked toward this all your life.”
“My grandfather wants one of his granddaughters to take over the company.”
“And you think he will reject you after twenty-nine years because you’re not biologically related? Could anyone be that heartless?”
“You don’t understand how important family is to my grandfather. After my father...” She grimaced. “After my father died and Grandfather discovered he had other granddaughters, he came up with his contest to determine who was best qualified to run the company.” She dashed away a tear from the corner of her eye and rushed on. “It was my birthright. My dream. I’d dedicated my life to proving I deserved to be CEO one day, and he expected me to prove it all over again.”
Horns honked behind him as cars jockeyed for space at the curb. Departing passengers hurried past. A police officer, directing traffic, blew his whistle. The chaos pressed against Ashton’s back, but he braced himself and focused completely on Harper.
Four words summed up everything he felt for her. “How can I help?”
He put out a hand, offering comfort and support, but she backed away.
“You can’t.” She gave her head a vehement shake.
Despite being stung by her rejection, he persisted. “Where in South Africa are you heading?”
“Pretoria.”
“Where are you staying?”
“I haven’t decided.” It wasn’t like her to be so unprepared.
“I have a friend at the Pretoria Capital Hotel. Ask for Giles Dumas. He’s the executive chef for their restaurant.”
“Thank you.” Gratitude softened her lips into a smile for a second. “I have to go. I can’t miss my flight.”
Staying put and letting her walk away from him was the hardest thing he’d done in a long time. When she disappeared through the sliding glass doors of the terminal, Ashton slid into the back of the town car and focused his attention on the traffic visible through the windshield.
She had her path to follow. He had his. If only he could shake his thoughts free of her. He had his own problems to worry about. The network folks would expect him to make a strong showing during his taping. He needed to be completely focused to impress them.
Eight
With the first and shortest leg of her long journ
ey behind her, Harper fastened her seat belt and stared out the window with dry, scratchy eyes. By flying business class, she’d saved eight thousand dollars on her ticket, but she’d found herself incapable of sleeping sitting up during the nearly ten-hour flight to London. Nor had she been able to nod off during her five-hour layover. Pair that with her sleepless night the previous evening and Harper estimated she’d been awake around forty-eight hours.
At least on the leg between London and Johannesburg she wasn’t stuck in a middle seat. She propped a pillow between her head and the wall of the cabin and let out a huge breath as a wave of exhaustion flowed over her. She fell asleep not long after the plane stopped climbing.
The popping of her ears woke her as the plane reduced altitude. She checked the seat back monitor that kept track of the distance traveled and saw that they were a little over an hour from touching down in South Africa. Her pulse jumped. She was about to land in a foreign country and go in search of a man she hadn’t known existed two days earlier. The town where he lived was a forty-five minute drive from Johannesburg and she had yet to receive a response to her email requesting information on the seven-day safari he was leading the day after she arrived.
She thought it might be a good idea to get to know him a little before announcing that she’d traveled halfway around the world to see if she was his daughter.
From his bio she knew that he’d never been married. Dedicating his life to his passion for Africa, he’d won several prestigious awards and had his work published in more than two dozen magazines. For the past day and a half she’d tried to find herself in this man she shared genes with. They shared a focus on their work and a determination to achieve greatness, but when it came to their careers, Greg LeDay had more in common with Ashton than her.
Both men were creative geniuses. LeDay’s photography was brilliant in the same way Ashton’s culinary masterpieces won him notoriety.
By comparison, what had she done? She’d worked hard and had nothing she was proud to display as her body of work. Her passion involved planning, organizing and making things happen. She was good at telling people what to do, being ruthless. How many of her employees called her a bitch behind her back?
Harper wasn’t feeling all that organized or ruthless at the moment. She was drifting on a sea of uncertainty. Impatient with herself, she pulled out her phone and logged on to the plane’s Wi-Fi network. It was time to reconnect with her organized self. She hadn’t yet planned her trip beyond booking her flight to Johannesburg. She needed to figure out how she was going to get to Pretoria and where she was going to stay once she got there.
To her delight, the two cities were linked by a high-speed train line that she could pick up at the airport. She would have to change trains, but after doing so she would arrive in Pretoria in less than half an hour. Harper then turned her attention to finding the hotel Ashton had suggested and booked a room for two nights. By the time the plane’s doors opened to allow the passengers to disembark, she was feeling completely in charge once more.
Finding the train was easy. She’d exchanged dollars for rand along the way and arrived at the platform just as the train was pulling in. As adventures went, this trip was feeling awfully mundane. She stepped onto the train, secured her bag and settled into a clean, comfortable seat by the window. Despite getting sleep on the plane, the train’s rocking motion made it difficult to keep her eyes open. She fought the pull. The distance between the stations wasn’t great and she could miss her exchange if she wasn’t careful.
As it was, she wasn’t fully awake when the train pulled into Marlboro station. Yawning wearily, she got to her feet and waited for an opening in the crowd of exiting passengers so she could step into the aisle and collect her bag. Something hard clipped her temple, knocking her sideways. Stunned by the blow, on the verge of losing consciousness, she didn’t fight the hands that shoved her into the seat and stripped away the bag that held her cash and passport.
Before her head cleared, her assailant was long gone and the last of the passengers had disembarked. Harper staggered to her feet, but before she could reach her luggage, the door closed and the train moved forward. The pain in her head made Harper’s thoughts thick and sluggish. She dropped into the closest empty seat and closed her eyes. What was she supposed to do now?
* * *
Ashton stepped out of a cab on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street in Chelsea and saw his old friend Craig Turner waiting for him by the curb. Since the Lifestyle people weren’t expecting him until two that afternoon, Ashton had decided to check in with his old mentor and wasn’t surprised to learn that Craig was still volunteering at Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen.
“Ashton, good to see you.” The sixty-five-year-old restaurateur wrapped Ashton in a tight bear hug. “You’re looking wonderful. Television suits you.”
“It has its moments.”
When Ashton had first come to New York before landing his first television series, he’d spent two years in Craig’s kitchen learning everything there was to know about what it took to run a successful restaurant. He’d gleaned a lot. And yet, with four restaurants under his belt, Ashton knew he still had plenty of Craig’s wisdom left to absorb.
“And now you’re stepping into the big time with a show here in New York.”
It shouldn’t have astonished him that Craig knew this; little happened in New York having to do with food that Craig missed. “We’ll see. Nothing’s finalized yet.”
“And your restaurant in Las Vegas. That’s set to open next week. Things going okay?”
“I’ll tell you in a couple weeks.”
Craig laughed heartily. “I’m glad you could meet me here.”
“No problem.”
“Once a week I come down to volunteer. For two hours every day they serve a hot meal to over a thousand people. Makes me feel good to give back.”
“Of course.” Ashton smiled, but as soon as he entered the busy church, he felt his muscles tense as long-forgotten memories of the dinners his parents had organized for the locals resurfaced.
As a kid he’d resented the hours of free time he’d lost helping his mother fix and serve the meals while his father practiced his ministry on the captive audience. Now, as he put on an apron and rolled up his sleeves, he recalled the day when his outlook had changed—when a loathsome chore had become an opportunity to create something amazing in the kitchen. But for a long time after he’d left home and joined up with Chapman’s gang, he’d equated his love for cooking with surrendering to his parents’ insistence that he become more like them.
He fell into the rhythm of serving as if twenty years hadn’t passed. Looking back on those days, he could recall his resentment and frustration, but lacked empathy for his younger self. Seeing the gratitude in the eyes of those who moved past him now, Ashton recalled how many people his parents had been able to help.
So maybe he’d been too hard on his mother and father all these years. But he still wasn’t able to excuse his father’s insistence that everyone should believe the same things he did. His disregard for any opinion that wasn’t his had put father and son at odds too many times. If his father had listened to him once or twice, maybe Ashton would have felt valued and wouldn’t have left. He’d never know.
Several hours later, Ashton waved off the thanks from the volunteer leaders and followed Craig outside. It might not have been how he’d chosen to spend the morning, but it had given him some fodder for thought.
“Thanks for the help. Can I drop you somewhere?”
Ashton shook his head. “I’m going to walk a bit.”
“It was good seeing you. Perhaps when your new series gets rolling you can come have dinner with me.”
“I’d like that.”
The two men parted ways and Ashton strode down the street as if he had someplace to be, when in truth, he was ju
st trying to escape the pressure inside himself.
He’d not yet heard anything from Giles. Given that Harper’s flight time was a little over twenty-six hours and the time difference between New York and Johannesburg was seven hours, he imagined she should be arriving in Pretoria around one in the morning New York time, depending on her stops and layovers. Being out of touch with her bothered him. He craved the sound of her voice and longed to share with her his revelations while serving at the soup kitchen.
Something about her invited him to confide his secrets. He wasn’t sure why he’d told her about his parents or how he’d left home. Disclosing his past wasn’t something he did. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t want anyone to know that he was the son of missionaries or that he’d left home at an early age. Maybe it was the mess he’d been involved in when he left home that he was ashamed of. What he’d been forced to do. The darkness he’d faced in his soul.
He reflected on his decision to keep those things hidden. Who was he really protecting? If Harper had an inkling of what he held back, she would dig until she unearthed the truth. Would she turn away in disgust or understand? She’d grown up in a cocoon of wealth and polite society. Instinct told him she’d be appalled to learn what he’d done while living with Chapman’s gang.
They were so different. She, all bossy businesswoman, planning every little thing to death. He, the go-getter, leaping before looking because what fun was life without a little danger? She conquered. He explored. Very different philosophies.
That they’d been able to work together these past nine months without driving each other mad continued to baffle him. Maybe it worked because they were good for each other. He needed her planning capabilities to keep him in check. And he knew his adventurous side had rubbed off on her. Why else would she have hopped on a plane to South Africa?
* * *
Harper gripped the armrest as the train sped through the flat landscape dotted with buildings. She was traveling in the wrong direction. How far out of her way had she gone? Almost as soon as the question surfaced, the train began to slow down. She was on her feet, her luggage in her hand by the time the doors opened.
