A Touch of Betrayal (30 page)

“Stop trying to make me stay here.”

“Stop running away.”

“You don’t believe I’m trying to escape the Maasai. You think I’m running from
you
.”

“Are you?”

She looked away. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“You’re the scientist. Surely you can see that the two of us don’t compute.”

“Alexandra.” He lifted a hand and ran his finger down the side of her neck. “What’s your
heart
telling you?”

She clamped her hand over his. “Grant,” she whispered, “please stop using my words against me.”

“You told me to listen to my heart, and it’s been getting louder and clearer by the minute. I’m waking up to ideas I’ve never thought before. Emotions I never knew I could feel. Dreams I didn’t know existed inside my head.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“You think
you’re
scared?” He drew her close. “Alexandra, last night I couldn’t sleep thinking about this thing that’s happening between us. I’m going up the mountain with you tomorrow.”

“Grant, you can’t leave your work again.” She shook her head as he pulled her against him. “I’ll be with a group. I’ll be safe. Safer without you . . . because I can’t . . . shouldn’t . . .”

Against her intent, she rose into his kiss. Warm, pliant, his lips covered hers, seeking out her response. She slipped her arms around him and drifted in the magic of the moment. His strength enfolded her, a promise of protection. His tenderness seeped through her, a budding blossom of honor. As his fingers slid into her hair and his mouth moved across her ear, she could do nothing but hold him tighter still.

Lord, don’t make me leave this man!
The prayer escaped her breaking heart.
Take my money. Take my goals and aspirations. Take everything but him. Oh, Father, please allow me this love . . . this gentle, beckoning love.

A tear squeezed from the corner of her eye and started down her cheek. His kisses found it, moving from her temple to her eyelid and again to her lips. “Don’t cry,” he murmured. “Alexandra, I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know,” she said. “But it hurts. It all hurts.”

“Yeah, it hurts.” Holding her close, he let out a deep breath. Then he gave a low chuckle. “That word makes me think of Mama Hannah. When I was a kid and I had a cut or a scrape, she’d say, ‘If you are hurt, you should pray,
toto
. God will take your hurt, and he will bear it for you.’”

Alexandra dabbed her eye, wishing she could hold back the emotion that had lodged in her throat and tangled her tongue. “I can’t pray,” she managed. “Can’t even talk.”

Grant was silent a moment. “I can,” he said. “I’ll pray.” When he began again, his voice was strong, firm, assured. “God, it’s me, Grant. I’m talking to you again—and that’s something. So, here’s the thing. Alexandra and I . . . we could use a little help here. How about it? Could you work this out somehow? We think you can, or we wouldn’t ask. That’s it.”

Alexandra buried her head against his shoulder. “Amen,” she whispered.

F
IFTEEN

“This is not going to be a leisurely stroll, you know,” Grant said as he and Alexandra set off up the gravel road with her tour group just after dawn the next day. He felt more than a small measure of concern for his traveling companion’s well-being. “The altitude is over nineteen thousand feet at the top of that thing.”

“That thing,” she retorted with playful disgust, “is called Mount Kilimanjaro, and I know how high it is. I signed up for this tour, didn’t I? I read all the brochures, and I’ve been using my treadmill and thigh toner faithfully in preparation for this climb.”

Thigh toner.
Grant grinned to himself as he tried to imagine any exercise contraption that could prepare a person for a hike up Mount Kilimanjaro. Sure, Alexandra had prepared the paperwork details of the climb. In fact, she and Grant had spent the previous afternoon in Oloitokitok meeting her tour leader, arranging visas to cross into Tanzania, paying necessary fees, and obtaining permits to scale the mountain.

But Grant had made the ascent of Kilimanjaro three times in his life, and he knew it was a grueling trek that could challenge even the fittest athlete. The first day required a climb of two thousand vertical feet to an altitude of nine thousand feet. The second day would take the climbers to thirteen thousand feet. But it was the climb from that point on that had defeated many an intrepid mountaineer.

Grant didn’t have high hopes for the success of the group of gawking tourists that made up Alexandra’s expedition. One of the three men chain-smoked his way through the tropical forest, dropping cigarette butts onto the path. Another appeared to be at least ten years into retirement. Though he was fragile, his white-haired wife plunged ahead with all the enthusiasm of a teenager. Her friend, a plump lady with platinum hair, snapped photographs of everything from Grant’s Land Rover to a warthog that trotted across the road.

Alexandra was the youngest and fittest of the group, and her energy buoyed the others. In the time he’d known her, Grant had never seen her so elated. He knew part of her confidence came from the certainty that if Jones still lurked, he could never make it through the border crossing into Tanzania without capture. The guards were on the alert, carefully checking every passport and visa. So she was free— truly free.

Swinging her arms, Alexandra strode up the thickly forested incline. Just ahead of Grant on the narrowing path, she pointed out bright birds, monkeys, and trees overgrown with vines. Every time she spotted the volcanic peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, she exclaimed in delight. “There it is! Look, Grant! There it is!”

Grant preferred the view closer at hand. Alexandra’s blonde hair swung at her neckline, bouncing in time with her jaunty walk. Her waist narrowed into the belt of her khaki shorts, and her long, tanned legs were bare except for the thick socks bunched at her ankles. She had traded her tire sandals for a pair of sturdy hiking boots, but they did little to detract from the overall portrait.

“Lunchtime!” Alexandra sang out as the tour leader headed the group off the main path and up a trail to an icy stream. As they emerged into a clearing, Alexandra linked her arm through Grant’s. “You know what?” she said. “This is the best thing I’ve done since I came to Africa.”

“Lunch?”

She swatted him. “No, this climb. I feel like I’m back on track now. This is where I was supposed to be, what I had planned to do all along. Jones is like a bad dream.”

“Oh yeah? Then what am I?”

Her blue eyes sparkled. “A good dream.”

Unsure of the correct response to that comment, Grant seated himself on a fallen log and opened the box lunch provided by the tour. Alexandra dug out a boiled egg and began peeling. He studied her slender fingers as he bit into his chicken sandwich. Chewing, he pondered her words.

“I don’t want to be a dream,” he said finally. “Dreams vanish.”

She leaned against his shoulder and nibbled on her egg. “I think my money was a dream, and I have the oddest intuition that it’s all gone now. Somehow James Cooper has managed to sell off Daddy’s stocks. Either that or someone else has invaded the portfolio. I think I’m broke. But you know what’s really weird? I feel free.”

He wished he could share in her elation. “I still don’t like being lumped in with the dream of Jones and your vanished money.”

“Don’t you get it? I’ve surrendered, Grant. That money was such a weight, such a responsibility. In a way, it hung around my neck like a millstone. I felt like I had to find some means of honoring my father’s memory by investing his legacy in the best possible manner. Now I can honor him with the way I live my life—with the choices I make.”

Grant downed the last of his bread crust. What choices would Alexandra make? If she had surrendered her money, had she also given up her goal of founding a big design firm? Did that freedom she felt include the independence to make a new life in a different land? And could she ever commit herself to a man she considered an illusion, a temporary mirage?

He didn’t get his answers. The tour guide roused the sleepy group, and they set off again. Almost immediately the groans began. “I can’t breathe,” the smoker complained.

“Can we slow down a little?” the portly lady puffed. And it went on. “My legs hurt.” “I have a headache.” “Are we nearly there?” “How much longer?”

Grant’s lungs felt as if they were bursting from the strain of breathing the thin air. His calves complained, and the soles of his feet ached. Alexandra stopped swinging her arms. Her hair no longer bounced. She sucked in deep breaths, pausing gratefully with the rest of the group every few hundred feet.

When the expedition reached the first camp—a simple stone building at the edge of the rain forest—everyone collapsed to the ground gasping. Grant tried to cover his amusement as he helped the tour guide and porters carry sleeping bags and backpacks into the hut. After a supper of hot soup, which the hikers devoured like ravenous hyenas, the whole group crawled gratefully into separate bunks.

Grant lay awake listening to the snores. Even in their sleep, these folks couldn’t breathe worth a flip. He doubted the chain-smoker would last through the next day. Alexandra slept in a lower bunk across the room. He studied her profile lit by the single gas lantern, and he fell asleep wondering how it would feel to lie beside such a woman every night of his life.

The next day everyone rose with the sun, ate quickly, and began the trek up a narrow, slippery path through dense forest. The four-thousand-vertical-foot hike demanded caution and vigilance. Grant pushed himself upward, occasionally using branches and vines for leverage. Sucking in deep breaths, Alexandra fell completely silent as she made her way over roots that stuck out into the muddy path.

When a cold, misty rain began to fall, the whole group turned somber. Anoraks and sweaters grew wet and heavy. Mud clung to boots, weighing everyone down and making the climb even more tedious. The few glimpses of the peak the thick forest had allowed vanished as a wreath of gray clouds enveloped the mountain.

Just when Grant was sure a mutiny was about to break out in the ranks, the forest ended. The timberline looked as if it had been drawn with a ruler. As the sodden group stumbled out onto a wide-open grassland traversed by crystalline streams, the sun peeped through the clouds and began to burn off the steam.

The tired travelers found a new spurt of energy. But in the oxygen-deprived atmosphere, their enthusiasm didn’t last long. When they stopped for lunch, Alexandra flopped out on a rock and shut her eyes.

“The terrain is alpine at this stage,” Grant said, hunkering down beside her and popping open a can of sausages. “That’s the amazing thing about East Africa. You can go from sea level to savanna to rainforest in a matter of miles. On the mountains, you can experience alpine terrain, and there’s tundra up ahead. When we get to the stony scree near the summit, you’ll think you’re on the moon.”

Her eyes slid open. “Wonderful.”

He grinned. “Air up there’s almost as thin as the moon’s. Everyone will be throwing up. You’ll think you’re going to die—or wish you were already dead. But, hey, why am I telling you all this? You read the brochure.”

She groaned and curled into a ball. “Shut up, Grant.”

“Weenie?” he asked, offering his fork. When she squeezed her eyes tight and shook her head, he chuckled. “Alexandra, you’re amazing. And you know what I’ve been thinking?”

“What?” she mumbled.

“I’ve been thinking about that prayer of mine. Maybe there’s been a plan for us all along. Look how things have worked out. You’ve realized you don’t need your money, and you’ve given it up. I’ve admitted science doesn’t have all the answers, and I’ve come to believe there really is a God. We’ve discovered a sort of compromise, a happy meeting place. And up here on Mount Kilimanjaro, we’re finding the real treasure we’ve both been looking for all our lives. Each other.”

Drinking in a breath, Alexandra pushed herself up into a sitting position. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she regarded him with sapphire eyes. “Grant,” she said, and her voice sounded too much like a teacher’s to make him comfortable about what was to follow. “Grant, admitting there’s a God isn’t enough.”

“Why not?” That had been a monumental step for him to take. What more could she want? “I said I believe, Alexandra. I
believe
.”

“Even the demons believe there’s a God . . . and they tremble in terror.” She stretched out her legs and rested her forehead on her bent knees. “Oh, Grant, you have to go a step beyond belief. You have to surrender.”