Drowning (6 page)

The water might as well have been air or fire… I was no longer aware of it. I was aware only of the incredible, erotic dialogue of our lips and tongues. The hungriness with which he was kissing me—his actions so sensitive, surprisingly gentle and yet utterly masterful. It was as if he could read every thought I’d ever had about how I wanted to be touched. I could sense he was holding nothing back, and it was stoking a need deep inside me; an aching want begging to be fulfilled.

“Erin,” he whispered, as we broke the kiss, both breathing roughly, my own astonishment at the intensity of what had just happened reflected in his eyes. “Jesus, Erin…”

He stared down at me, his lips parted.

Enough now. Enough—no more. I should say no, but I could not, as we were magnetically drawn toward each other again.

And then a rather deliberate throat-clearing caused us both to freeze, and to jerk our heads guiltily round in the direction of the sound.

Joshua stood a few yards away from the swimming pool, his hands behind his back and his gaze fixed on a small, white-blossomed bush that was nowhere near the pool at all.

“Er—Mr. Nicholas, the car is loaded up.”

“Thanks, Joshua. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

He turned back to me. His gaze devoured me. Holding me tightly, he paced slowly back into the shallow water before releasing me.

“Come with me,” he said, and looking at the urgent need in his eyes, I knew this was not a question, but a command.

I snapped off my
phone before hurrying back to my room to change into dry clothes. As I did so, I noticed that Vince had already called again twice. I didn’t know what to make of any of this. My head was throbbing with confusion, but other parts of me were throbbing for entirely different reasons.

That single, forbidden kiss… I had never experienced anything so electric, so erotic, in my life.

But what I had done was wrong, so very wrong. I had no way of justifying my behavior, other than that, in a moment of frustration and tired of defending myself from my husband’s unfounded accusations, I had deliberately chosen to give in to temptation.

I was a weaker person than I’d thought, and I knew that I’d soon be paying for my actions with the heavy coin of guilt. I hoped that the drive with Nicholas would allow me to straighten things out between us. I just wished I wasn’t feeling such breathless anticipation at the thought of being in his presence again.

My only set of underwear was now dripping wet, so I hung it up in the bathroom. Wherever we were going, I’d have to do without. I chose a close-fitting, lined tank top that would allow me to go braless and pulled a looser cotton shirt with elbow-length sleeves over it. My skin was cool and my small but well-formed breasts felt tight and aroused, my nipples responding instantly to the slightest touch.

I pulled on the other pair of shorts. I felt undressed without panties on. I wasn’t used to going commando. I wasn’t used to waking up in unfamiliar guest lodges after having nearly drowned, with none of my clothes or possessions with me. This situation was disorienting. The sooner I could get out of here the better.

It was only one kiss. Just one—and I had been unreasonably provoked by my husband’s paranoid behavior. One, surely, could be excused… as long as it did not happen again. It could not happen again.

“You’ve had your fun,” I told myself sternly in the mirror, noting how flushed my face looked compared to its usual paleness. It had been a long time since I’d seen such color in my cheeks and lips and I thought it made me look lustful and wanton.

I took a deep breath.

“Pull yourself together, Erin,” I warned my reflection. “When you climb into that car, you’re going to explain to your host how this was all a mistake, and you’re not going to play his games anymore.”

The pool water had turned my long, dark hair from wavy to tangled. There was no time to comb it out properly, so I could do nothing more than rake my fingers painfully through it. My pupils were dilated and my mouth felt swollen with desire.

Telling myself that this impression was simply the product of a fevered imagination, I left the room and walked briskly through the lodge and outside, to where Nicholas was already waiting in the Land Cruiser, with the passenger door—on the left-hand side in South Africa—open for me.

“We’re going down to my neighbors on this side of the river,” Nicholas explained. “They called an hour ago to say they’re running short of diesel for their generators. Which, for them, is critical because they own a game butchery and have five freezers full of meat right now.”

I loved the deepness of his voice. The way he spoke—his accent. Those clipped British words with the hint of a South African flavor. I could have listened to him speak all day.

What surprised me, though, was his choice of subject matter. I’d expected him to be as unsettled as I was. But here he was, at ease in my company once again, conversing in a relaxed way about matters of interest.

“We’ll definitely see some animals on the way,” he said, as the mowed lawn transitioned to scrubby
bushveld
. “The zebra like to hang out on the borders of the forest at this time of the year.

“How many zebra do you have?”

“In this secure area, ten. Oh, make that eleven. There was a foal born last week. In fact, if we’re lucky, we might… Yes. Look there. On the right. There’s the herd, and there’s the foal. A colt, Joshua thinks.”

I peered in the direction he was pointing, narrowing my eyes against the bright sunshine, and suddenly the criss-crossed shade of the bushes translated itself into a dazzle of vivid stripes. The herd was walking quietly through the shadows, tails flicking, while the tiny new arrival capered, with surprising grace, at the heels of his mother.

“Oh, they’re beautiful!”

I saw Nicholas smiling at my obvious delight.

“What are those animals beyond the zebra herd?” I peered through the scrubby bush.

“You’ve got sharp eyes. Those are two of our wildebeest, the animal that is the gnu. They’ve got nothing much going for them in terms of looks, as you can see. They’re big and ugly and brown and hammer-headed.” His voice was laced with humor.

“They’re cute!” I protested.

“If you think so, then the term ‘cute’ coming from you is a terrible insult. I’ll have to watch where you use it.” He grinned at me. The expression was infectious and I found myself grinning back at him. Damn it all… I shouldn’t be laughing with him now. I should be coldly ordering him not to flirt with me. How had he managed to disarm my defenses so completely?

Heading downhill, the vehicle jounced over a series of steep bumps in the road. Glancing up, I saw that the intense heat had already formed a series of cumulus clouds which bulked on the horizon, grey and threatening.

“We’ve got an hour, maybe two, before it rains again,” he said. “Let’s deliver this diesel. I’ll show you the bridge on the way back.”

When we arrived at the neighboring farm, I was introduced to the owners—Thandiwe, an elegantly dressed black woman, and her blonde-haired, German husband, Berndt.

“Thank you so much,” Thandiwe said, as Berndt and Nicholas hefted the containers from the back of the truck and carried them into the garage. “We were planning to go into town as soon as the storm had passed. Bad luck about the bridge.”

“Look on the bright side. At least you weren’t stuck in town when it collapsed.”

Nicholas’s words were interrupted by a loud wailing. A chubby boy with enormous brown eyes and a halo of frizzy dark brown hair came running into the garage, blood spurting from a gash on his chin. He was followed closely by an anxious-faced girl a few years older.

“Mom!” she cried. “David fell and hurt himself in the garden.”

Picking the boy up with concern in her eyes, Thandiwe turned—not to Berndt, but to Nicholas.

“Doctor,” she said anxiously, “thank goodness you’re here. It’s all happening at once today. Would you mind taking a look?”

Nicholas examined the bleeding cut carefully.

“It should heal fine, but it’ll need a stitch or two.”

“Do you have your kit with you?”

“Always, Thandiwe.”

I watched in surprise as he jogged back to the car, returning a minute later with a large plastic trunk. He pulled on gloves before removing the equipment he needed from the stock of supplies inside.

Berndt held the child on his knee while Thandiwe and I watched from a safe distance. The child’s sobs abated as Nicholas spoke to him gently before injecting tiny amounts of what I supposed was a pain killer. Then, with precision and care, he closed the wound with three small stitches.

“I didn’t know he was a doctor,” I said to Thandiwe.

“Oh, he’s not actually a doctor. We just call him that. He’s a paramedic who’s done years of work overseas. Or so he tells us.” She smiled, looking at me with some curiosity. “He doesn’t tell us much, actually. Are you—er—how do you know him?”

“He pulled me out of the river when my car washed away,” I said. “I’m staying until the bridge is rebuilt.”

Thandiwe clapped her hands over her mouth.

“No! You’re the woman who almost died? Berndt took his tractor down to the river to help Nicholas reach you. He said it was the most frightening experience—a race against time with the car being washed downstream in that raging water. He came back and said Nicholas had told him your heart had stopped and he didn’t know if you were going to make it.”

“Well, so far, so good,” I told her. “I’m very grateful to Nicholas. He’s given me my life back.” I added quickly, in a firm voice, “All the same, I can’t wait to be home with my husband.”

To my surprise, Thandiwe gave me a big hug. “I’m so glad you are okay.”

With the stitching finished, Nicholas removed his gloves and packed his first aid kit away before washing his hands thoroughly in the farmhouse kitchen. Five minutes after that we were ready to go home. Before we left, Thandiwe thrust a large, heavy cooler bag into my hands.

“Here you go,” she said, smiling. “As a thank-you.”

“It’s packed with meat, I’m sure,” Nicholas said. “You didn’t need to, Thandiwe. But it will be very welcome.”

When we got into the car again, he asked me, “Do you want to go and see where the bridge was? It’s just a little further down the road.”

The early afternoon had become grey and cool, with threatening clouds bulking overhead.

“As long as you don’t think we’ll get washed away again,” I said, looking nervously at the sky.

“No chance of that. It’ll take a few hours of sustained downpour to cause another flood.”

He started the car and we headed down the muddy sand road in the direction of the river.

“I don’t remember much about the drive,” I said. “The rain was so heavy. All I know is that we were definitely going the wrong way.” I’d been scared, claustrophobic in that hammering downpour, and I’d had other things on my mind.

I could hear the rushing noise of the river before I saw it. We rounded a bend and there it was: a deep, fast-moving, brown-grey stream with occasional crests of white. It must have been thirty yards across. Looking at it made me feel strange, and very small, and as if I shouldn’t have been alive now. How had either Bulewi or I survived being swept downstream in those torrential waters?

I was acutely aware of Nicholas’s presence beside me and thought he might have been observing me as I stared at the water. I did not dare to look back. Instead, I decided to take a photo of the river to send to Vince as proof. I took out my phone and turned it on. Immediately it beeped, signaling I had a message, and my hands began to tremble. I didn’t have just one message. I had six of them from Vince.

I didn’t want to listen to them. Couldn’t. Instead I navigated to the camera facility on the phone and took a few pictures. In the poor light and with such basic photographic equipment, they were not great, but at least the road leading to the river could be clearly seen, and the road leading away on its other side was distinguishable.

Then I hurriedly switched off the phone, worried that Vince would call me yet again because I felt incapable of speaking to him now. I needed some time alone first, to process what had happened. To work out exactly why I’d allowed that forbidden kiss.

I knew now that I must confront Nicholas on the drive back to the lodge and explain where I stood. Apologize, and tell him that despite all the evidence to the contrary, I really wasn’t interested in taking him up on his audacious offer.

Lightning flickered in the clouds and I flinched as a huge clap of thunder split the air.

“You okay?” Nicholas asked, his voice like a caress, and I knew he wasn’t only referring to the sudden noise.

“I’m fine,” I replied. Aware that my voice had sounded sharp, I added, “Thank you.”

“We’d better get back. Storm’s coming,” he said.

He turned the car around and headed away from the surging waters.

The wheels skidded on the steep uphill road, spinning in a section of deep, slippery mud. I caught my breath, picturing vividly what might happen if we were trapped here in the rain while the river rose again.

Completely focused on the treacherous path ahead, Nicholas engaged four wheel drive and carefully eased the big vehicle sideways, then forward again. The tires bit into the soft going, suddenly finding the grip they needed as he coaxed it patiently through the sticky patch.

“Nothing to worry about,” he reassured me as we drove onto firmer ground. “This vehicle can handle far worse terrain.”

I wanted to tell him that it was as much the driver’s skill as the car’s capability that had taken us so smoothly through the danger. But my words were silenced as Nicholas placed his hand on my leg.

It rested there, just above my knee, warm and firm, while the car jounced over a large bump in the road and my stomach jolted just as hard, though for different reasons. I could not suppress the flood of lust I felt at his caress. It was as if that light touch was sending a message—a subtle signal with sex as its underscore—to every cell in my body.

Staring down, I noticed again the beautiful squareness of his tanned hand, with long, strong fingers that looked as if they might equally belong to an artist or an engineer.

“You’re an interesting woman, Erin,” he observed. Now those fingers were lightly stroking over the thin beige fabric of the borrowed shorts I wore. The action was having the most unprecedented effect on my body. My skin was tingling at his touch, my jaw was dropping open, while my heart was hammering with excitement.

“Trust me, I don’t often get no for an answer, but when I do, I respect it,” he continued. “But you’re sending me mixed messages. It would be wrong of me not to try to figure them out. To explore the limits of your permissiveness.”