African Assignment

by Carol Gregor

  'What, then?'

  She tossed her head. Pain. Emptiness. Loss. 'It doesn't matter.'

  'Wait there!' He vanished into the night, leaving her alone on the dark street. Then he was striding back, a brown paper packet in his hand.

  'I want you to have this. It's a picture. From the exhibition.'

  'If it's that picture of me, you can keep it! I'm trying to forget all that ever happened.'

  'It isn't,' he said simply, pushing it into her arms. 'You can open it when you get home.'

  She looked at him doubtfully, eyes wide, and he stepped towards her, taking her shoulders and saying intently, 'I don't suppose you'll believe me, but I've thought about you so much, wondered where you were, what you were doing, whether you were happy --'

  'Happy,' she scorned. She had not been truly happy since the last night she had spent with Cal. 'No,' she said rawly, 'I haven't been happy. How about you? Have you been happy—with Tania?'

  'Tania --' He dismissed her with a cut of his hand. Darkness crossed his face. 'Frankie—what happened— it had to be. Believe me.'

  'I don't.'

  'It couldn't go on like that, don't you see?'

  'No, I don't see. I didn't see then, and I don't see now! All I see is an unbelievably arrogant man who casts off one woman for another, and then has the temerity to hang us side by side in a public exhibition like game trophies in a baronial hall!'

  'I put those photographs there because they are two of my favourite pictures,' he bit out. 'It would have been less than honest to leave them out.'

  'Honest! I don't suppose for a moment you thought what we might feel like --'

  'I didn't expect you to come within a million miles of this gallery. I assumed after you left Mombasa you'd never want to see me again. When I saw you here tonight I could scarcely believe my eyes!'

  'You mean, that's what you hoped: a pleasant little dalliance, and then a nice clean break!'

  'Don't demean yourself, or me. It wasn't like that, and you know it. I'll remind you that there was only one of us that tried to put a brake on what was happening, and it wasn't you.'

  Frankie flushed fiercely in the darkness. 'Oh, I threw myself at you! Is that it? Is that your excuse? You didn't stand a chance against my feminine wiles! You were seduced against your will.' Her voice rose, hysterical and bitter with pain.

  Cal grabbed her wrist hard. 'I don't need any excuse. What happened between us was one of the best things that ever happened in my life.' Her eyes opened in shock. 'It just couldn't last. Frankie --' Behind them the door of the gallery opened in a flood of light and laughter, and he looked back distractedly. 'Damn! I'll have to go. I'm supposed to be giving a speech --' His eyes went back to hers. 'We can't talk here, like this. Come back with me. We'll have dinner afterwards.'

  Her whole being yearned towards him. She almost accepted. But then she forced herself to remember the cold and ruthless man who had turned to her, that last morning in Mombasa, and told her that her time was up. She hesitated for a long moment, but her voice when it came was steady.

  'No,' she said. 'I don't think so. In fact I don't think I'd have dinner with you if you were the last person on earth!' And she stalked away into the darkness, leaving him staring at her retreating back.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Frankie stalked home through the dark streets with rain and tears mingling on her cheeks, and anger raging round her heart. Why on earth had she been so foolish as to go to that exhibition in the first place?

  Without stopping to take off her coat, she ran through to the bedroom and snatched up the photograph that stood by her bed. Cal looked out at her, tanned and smiling, a glint in his eye that was all for her.

  But it was a lie! That whole episode had been nothing but a sordid little affair, over almost before it started. Only her lurid imagination had built it up into anything more! While she had mooned, lovesick, in London, Cal had been out in the African wilds with Tania, turning to a new woman just as soon as the memory of the last one began to fade.

  She hesitated, holding the frame, looking at the picture. She had told herself that this was the real Cal, the warm, true human being beneath the cynical, womanising mask that he wore for the outside world. Yet she had been deluded.

  She wrenched the back off the frame and pulled out the photograph. Well, it was really over now. Finished and over forever. And with decisive strength she ripped the glossy print into halves, then quarters, then eighths.

  An impatient burst of the doorbell stopped her in her tracks. She threw the scraps of paper across the bed, and flung open the door.

  'Yes?'

  Cal shouldered his way in.

  'What about your speech?'

  'To hell with the speech!'

  'What do you think you're doing?'

  'Coming in. I don't think there's much point in waiting to be invited.'

  'You're right—I want you to go! Right now!'

  'When I've said what I've come to say.'

  His hair was soaked with rain, and his chest heaved as if he had been running. Carelessly he shrugged off his jacket and threw it across a chair.

  Frankie marched across and picked it up again.

  'I can't think you've got anything to say that I want to hear!'

  She held it out, but he dashed it to the floor with a brutal curse.

  'God dammit, Frankie, what's got into you --?'

  'Got into me! I'll tell you what's got into me! Tania, for one thing, and the way you hung us both up there in your exhibition like prize trophies! I don't know why you don't go the whole hog and have a wall full of women! And even that wouldn't be all of them, would it? Not with your reputation.'

  'My reputation bears very little relationship to the truth,' Cal said crisply, 'and even if it did, I've never tried to hide anything from you! Never pretended to be anything other than I am!'

  'I know, I know! I've heard it all before!' She flung her hands up to her ears in exasperation. 'Just like you never pretended we were anything other than a passing affair --'

  'That's certainly what it was supposed to be!' he cut in savagely.

  'That's what it was! And Tania was the next one.'

  'Who told you that?'

  She laughed bitterly. 'An impeccable source. The woman herself.'

  He cursed again, and turned from her, dashing his fingers through his hair. It was beginning to dry, and she had an absurd, tearing desire to touch her mouth to his neck where it curled damply. In one searing moment she remembered the smell of him, the shape of him, and how his warm skin would feel under her soft lips. Need tore at her guts like a wild animal, but she swamped it with anger.

  'I can't say I blame you, or her,' she said bitingly. 'After all, I know what it's like out there—those romantic, moonlit evenings in the bush. I just find it rather hard to take how quickly you moved on --'

  Cal snorted harshly. 'As a point of fact there were no romantic, moonlit evenings. We had a rotten trip. Tania got a stomach-bug and was too ill to drive half the time, my shoulder packed up again, and we damn nearly lost sight of the poachers completely. It was only thanks to a stroke of luck, and the tracking skills of one of our rangers, that we managed to pick up their scent again, and even then the whole thing got bungled in the end. No one was supposed to get hurt, but one of our guys turned out to be rather too trigger-happy for my taste. In the end the bullets were flying so fast it was a wonder any of us got out alive.'

  Frankie's stomach clenched with deep, instinctive fear for his safety, but she forced herself to push the feeling away.

  'Even so, I dare say it was all worth it in the end!'

  'To stop the gang. And to show the world just what poaching really looks like. Yes.' His eyes glinted. 'In fact I've just heard there's to be international action on the issue, thanks to our story.'

  'Oh, you're the best. You and Tania, both. Doug told me.' Her voice twisted sarcastically. 'He said you make a great team.'

  'We do. When we're working.'
>
  'And when you're not—if that glamour-picture in the exhibition is anything to go by.'

  'It isn't. If you must know, that was taken after a week of rest and recuperation back at the coast. I was desperate to get out of there, but Tania was in no hurry to leave the beach. She claimed she was too ill to travel. I was practically climbing the walls, snapping everything and anything in sight to pass the time.'

  'You could have left without her.'

  He snorted. 'You think I didn't think of that? But by then the foreign desk was determined to wring the most out of having us out in Africa together, so they'd ordered us on up to Sudan for a week.'

  'How cosy!'

  He glinted her a savage glance. 'You've clearly never been to Juba, or you wouldn't say that.'

  'At least you were together—without any stomach-bug to get in the way this time.'

  'Together—and practically at each other's throats!'

  'Yet you still hung her in your exhibition.'

  His eyes stripped over hers. 'Yes, I did. To counterpoint that picture of you. Don't you see the point?

  Tania so posturing, trying to be sexy, and you, so utterly free and natural, yet totally sensual in yourself --'

  He stepped towards her. She held her breath at his nearness.

  'I don't know what story Tania fed you with tonight, but I'm telling you the truth, Frankie. Nothing happened between us on that trip. Nothing but arguments and irritations!'

  Her eyes met his doubtfully.

  'Look,' he said in a tone that brooked no interruption, 'Tania and I go back a long way. She's a fine writer and a good colleague. Once, years ago now, we had the briefest of flings. It meant nothing. But what I hadn't realised was that she's always hankered after starting another affair, and she saw this Africa assignment as a perfect opportunity to do so. Until she got ill she tried every which way, and when I wouldn't, as it were, play ball --' his lips quirked a little '—she turned nasty on me. I dare say whatever she said to you tonight was a product of that same bitterness. A woman scorned, and all that.'

  Still Frankie looked at him hesitantly.

  'What the hell did she say, anyway?'

  'Well, to paraphrase her bluntly, she said you were a bit slow to get started, and she realised now it must have been because you'd been getting your oats the week before with me.'

  'Slow—oh, my God! There wasn't a woman in the world who could have aroused my ardour after you left! I scarcely felt alive, I missed you so badly!'

  'You missed me?' She could hardly believe it.

  'More than you'll ever know.'

  'Oh, I know all right!'

  'I thought about you all the time—where you were, what you were doing, what you were thinking. I worried that you might be pregnant. . .'

  She grimaced. 'Not without reason. There was a very long five days when I might have been.' When she remembered those endless days and nights, the agony of her uncertainty and the confusion of her mixed hopes and fears, anger spurted in her again. 'There are telephones, you know.'

  'Yes, and I spent a lot of time finding them and starting to dial your number, and then putting the phone back again.'

  'But why?'

  'I knew how angry you were when you left me. And anyway, I knew I had to let you go.'

  Suddenly Frankie felt immensely tired. She sank down wearily on a chair. Cal's astonishing declaration had sparked a flowering joy in her, but now his words doused the brief flare.

  'Then why are you here now?'

  He came and crouched before her. 'Because when I saw you tonight I knew I had to. Seeing you there, looking so beautiful, so utterly yourself, I knew I couldn't bear to let you go again.'

  She raised her head to meet his look, and her heart lurched at the sight of him.

  'Frankie --' He reached for her hands and began to draw her to him, but he stopped when he saw tears brimming in her eyes.

  She tried to gulp them back, but it was too late. Sobs were starting to rack her frame. 'No! I don't want it! I can't do it,' she cried. 'I can't bear the pain of it again.'

  His hands moved to her arms, holding her as she shook and cried, and suddenly her words were spilling out without restraint. 'You were right all along. We should never have got involved! I wasn't thinking straight. I just wanted you so badly, I don't know what I thought. I think part of me even believed I could make you love me, make you stay. The other half thought I could cope when it was over, but I couldn't --' Cal still held her, waiting for her breathing to steady, but, with a firmness of spirit that amazed her, she pushed his hands away, stood up, and walked away.

  'I don't know why you're here now, Cal, but I do know one thing, and that's that you won't be here tomorrow. You'll be in Afghanistan, or Argentina, or Australia. You certainly won't be here. You've told me often enough what your life is like, and I've finally learned my lesson—the hard way. I don't want another brief affair! And I don't want you walking in and out of my life whenever the fancy takes you!' She whirled and faced him, the tears still coursing down her face. 'And since that seems to be why you're here, you'd better go!'

  He met her gaze, dark and level.

  'That isn't why I'm here. It's how things should have been, how I intended them to be. But you were different, I knew it right from the first day we met.' He stood up, facing her squarely. 'That's why I was so tough on you, so determined to keep you at arm's length. Then, when I took you to bed, I told myself it was because you were so utterly irresistible and my defences were down. But it wasn't like that at all. I found myself wanting and needing you so much it terrified me --' His eyes met hers. 'Do you understand? I didn't want to feel like that. I didn't want to be tied down to anyone. It had never been part of my plans. So when that telegram came it seemed a good way of saving both our skins.'

  'What --?' Frankie's brain turned wildly.

  Cal strode over to her and gripped her elbows, almost shaking her. 'Don't you see? I'd always been a loner. I felt there was no place in my life for anything or anybody that threatened to be permanent! And on top of that you were so young, and so vulnerable—I felt it was my duty to push you away before you got too hurt by what had happened. When Tania's telegram came I had only two things on my mind. The first was how to get you out of there as quickly as possible— I knew it was an ugly story they'd put me on, and my priority was to get you well clear of any danger. The second was how I could send you away thinking the worst of me, and that telegram seemed too good a chance to miss.'

  Her eyes went to his.

  'I know you meant me to read it. That's why you left if lying around, isn't it?'

  He shrugged. 'I don't think it was quite that conscious. But I could see you were falling in love with me, and I suppose I wanted to stop the process in its tracks.'

  She shook her head. 'Nothing could do that. After I left I missed you so badly I really thought I could die!'

  Pain and love snagged in their gazes.

  She searched his look. 'Is this what you came to tell me?' she asked him.

  'No. I didn't mean to say any of this. At least not --' He stopped. 'I've come to talk about something much more difficult. About a picture. That picture I gave you tonight.'

  She looked around, then remembered it was in the bedroom where she had dropped it on the bed in her earlier blind rage. 'I'll get it.'

  He followed her, and his eyes went to the scattered fragments of photograph that lay beside the parcel on her bed. Frankie flushed at the evidence of her earlier violence. He looked at her greyly.

  'Is that what you think of me?'

  'I was so upset at seeing you again.'

  She bent to gather them up, but he said curtly, 'Leave them. In a few moments you may feel just the same. Sit down. This is serious.'

  She sat on the bed and undid the wrapping. Mike's face leapt up at her from the photograph, full of life and joy. She smiled into his smile. Cal watched her.

  'That picture was taken the night Mike died.'

  'Oh!' Her ey
es widened in shock.

  He began slowly. 'We'd all been out together, celebrating one of the journalists' birthdays. After the meal was over, I said I was going to mooch about a bit, and take some photos. It was a warm night, in a safe part of the city, and I didn't feel much like sleeping. Mike said he wanted to come with me, so we strolled around, and had another drink or two, and then, as we were walking home, I spotted some children playing down a side-street in some bombed-out buildings.'

  Frankie flashed a glance to him, and saw how dark his eyes had grown as he followed his memories.

  He went on, 'I told Mike to wait while I went down this narrow alley and took some shots, but he followed me down and stood leaning on a car while I worked. When I finished I went across to him and leaned against the car next to his, and then ‑' his eyes went to hers, holding her look '—I don't fully remember what happened next. All I remember is Mike shouting and pushing me violently backwards so that I fell across the street. Then there was a great roaring sound, and flames and smoke everywhere, and Mike and the car were gone.'

  'Oh!' Frankie forgot to breathe as she followed the awfulness of his tale.

  'People came running to tend me,' he said. 'I kept shouting at them to help Mike, and I couldn't understand why they wouldn't. Then F realised there was nothing they could do.'

  She swallowed.

  'To this day I don't know whether Mike saw something, or heard something, or what, but I know he saved my life—and that it cost him his own.'

  There was a deep silence in the room. He said rawly, 'Frankie, your father would have been alive today if it wasn't for me. He was only there, in that spot, on that night, because of me. And even then, if he hadn't thought about my life, he might have saved his own.'

  She looked at the carpet, lost in thought.

  'I loved Mike,' he said hoarsely, 'and I respected him, and he was just gone.'

  'It wasn't your fault ‑' she burst out, but he stopped her with a raised hand.

  'Don't. I've rehearsed all the arguments a million times over. About how it could have happened anywhere, and how I didn't put the bomb in that car, and all the rest of it. But all I'm left with at the end of the day is how I feel—and how I feel about it is ‑' He stopped, wordlessly shaking his head.