Moonflower (18 page)

As they
heard the trucks begin to rumble in the distance, Sophie grew
silent and eventually the conversation between Rolf and the two
rangers died away. While all other eyes strained for a first
glimpse of the enormous vehicles, Reuben’s never left
Sophie.

High
colour had flushed her cheeks to summer peach, and her hair, which
although tamed in a tight knot, had broken free in tendrils and
wisps of burnished copper that blew around her face in the light
breeze. Her lips had parted a little and her breathing was
steady.

As the
trucks came into view she squeezed his hand, turned to look at him,
and the excitement in the green eyes and the lovely smile made him
helpless to do anything but revel in her obvious joy. Then he was
forgotten as the trucks came to a halt.

Sophie
strode to the first vehicle that had backed into the orientation
pen that would hold the giraffe for a few days while they got their
bearings. She had a brief conversation with the vet, who had
travelled in the convoy, then waited at the back door while Dr
Steyn administered a sedative to the male. At his signal, Sipho and
Isaac quickly lowered the door while Sophie scrambled in and
scooted past the prone giraffe’s back to secure a blindfold around
the animal’s head. The vet monitored the young male’s vitals while
Sophie worked quickly to secure ropes around the neck. At her
signal, the rangers dragged the giraffe on padded tarpaulin down
the ramp and the vet administered the reversal drug.

Reuben
watched helplessly as Sophie and Rolf hung onto one set of ropes on
the left, with the rangers on the right as the one thousand
kilogram animal staggered to his feet.

Suddenly,
he dipped and swung his head, his long neck connecting with
Sophie’s side, sending her flying to the ground.

By the
time Reuben had reached her, she was on her feet again, covered in
dust, the rope still in her hand. In a well-choreographed move,
Rolf dropped one rope and Sipho the other to guide the giraffe
further into the pen with a rope strung out behind the
hindquarters. Reuben had taken the rope dropped by Rolf and hung on
next to Sophie.

Dr Steyn
removed the blindfold, the ropes were loosened and fell to the
ground, and the animal cantered away towards the cover of acacia
trees.

‘
Are you okay?’ Reuben asked when the others were briefly out
of earshot.

‘
Fine,’ Sophie said, curtly. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
She strode away.

After a
short breather, they released the two young females, then withdrew
from the orientation pen to give the animals some peace in which to
recover.

Reuben
had already made up his mind. It was one thing to watch animals of
this size from a luxury game viewing vehicle, but Sophie had been
just a foot or two away from a one thousand kilogram animal’s
thrashing feet, and he’d heard the sound that huge neck had made
when it connected with her. The African bush was not a safe place
and he intended to do whatever it took to get her out of
it.

‘
You could have been seriously hurt,’ he said, once they’d
offloaded the equipment at the garages and Sophie had set off in
the direction of the cottage to change her clothes.

‘
It’s my job,’ she said irritably, not bothering to look behind
to where he followed her along the stone path.

‘
Risking your life has nothing to do with your job.’

‘
You’re overreacting,’ she told him, unlocking the cottage
door.

‘
No, I’m not,’ he stated, closing the door behind
him.

‘
The odd knock comes with the territory, Reuben. I’ve had far
worse.’ She bent to pull off her boots and socks.

Reuben
caught her arm, turned her to face him. He undid the buttons of her
shirt. Sophie watched him with narrowed eyes.

‘
I heard it, Sophie,’ he said, spreading her shirt open.
Already a large bruise had begun to spread across her stomach and
right side. He touched it with gentle fingertips. Sophie drew in a
breath and Reuben sank to his knees. ‘Any harder and you could have
had serious internal damage,’ he said, fiercely. ‘You mustn’t put
yourself in danger like this!’

He
grabbed her hands in his. Could she really be this blasé about such
a dangerous event, or was she trying to hide her fear from
him?

‘
I got a thwack, Reuben, that’s all. It’s a bruise. A little
bit of Arnica oil and there’ll be no sign of it in a week or
two.’

Reuben
shook his head. ‘How can I ever get something like that out of my
mind?’

He
touched his lips to the bruise, kissed her gently; followed the
first kiss with a trail across her stomach, down to her smooth
abdomen.

Sophie’s
fingers slipped into his hair. Encouraged, he unbuttoned her
trousers and moved his tongue along the path of fine golden hair
that disappeared beneath her knickers. ‘I don’t want you to put
yourself at risk again like that,’ he murmured against her skin,
fingers massaging the tender flesh of her buttocks.

‘
Did I tell you, once I almost got run over by a buffalo?’ He
heard the smile in her voice, but he thought it was no laughing
matter.

He
quickly scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the shower.
With a twist of the wrist he turned on the cold tap and stood her
under it.

Sophie
shrieked as the freezing water hit her and quickly reached for the
hot tap. ‘You’ve wet my clothes,’ she said, standing under the
torrent of water and scowling playfully at him. ‘Now you’d better
get them off.’

‘
At your service, Ms Kyle,’ he said, already pulling at his own
clothes.

They
sipped celebratory sundowners that evening on Reuben’s patio before
dinner.

Sophie
chatted away happily about her hopes for successfully breeding the
South African giraffe—there were fewer than twelve thousand left in
the wild.

‘
You seem preoccupied tonight,’ she cut in when he failed to
respond to her banter. ‘You aren’t still mad about this morning,
are you?’

Reuben
sighed. ‘No. And I wasn’t mad; just understandably
concerned.’

It was
far more than the events of this morning that concerned him now. An
e-mail had popped up on his laptop after lunch from Dr Benjamin
Duval, the highly respected conservationist and Sophie’s former
boss on the African Wild Dog Project.

Dear Mr Manning,

In light of Sophie Kyle’s exceptional dedication and research
excellence, along with the unique opportunity your game farm
presents, my wife, Caro, and I, would like to propose a research
project to be carried out on your farm over a four-year period and
managed by Sophie.

The focus of research would be the reintroduction of species
that have for some time been extinct in that particular Western
Cape region. The findings of the research could prove to be
invaluable to the conservation fraternity, not to mention a boost
for Sophie’s career, which she so greatly deserves.

We would of course provide funding for the project and offer
our advice and expertise, but we have every confidence that Sophie
has the intelligence, training and passion to make such a project a
success.

As the owner of Labour’s End and Sophie’s employer, we felt it
best to run this by you first. Should you decide to make use of
this opportunity, I would leave it up to you to inform Sophie of
our proposal…

The
proposal had definitely thrown a complication into his plans for
Sophie. He had been thinking about it for a while but, after this
morning’s dangerous incident, his mind was set on convincing Sophie
to return with him to London. He could arrange for her to be
appointed to a conservation project in the UK where the bigger
animals she encountered would be in a far more controlled
environment. If he couldn’t use his money and influence for his own
ends every now and then, what use were they to him?

Now this,
damn it!

If he was
a less scrupulous man, he would not mention the e-mail and, by the
time Dr Duval contacted either of them again, he’d have a project
for her in the UK and her decision to return with him. He could, of
course, come up with a reason why they couldn’t use his farm for
the research, but Sophie would not be so easily fooled.

Reuben
just wasn’t a dishonest person, and he certainly could not have
looked Sophie in the eye and lied to her.

‘
I need to run something by you,’ he told her.

Sophie
lazily moved her head against the back of the seat to look up at
him. She frowned at the seriousness of his tone. ‘Okay.’

Reuben
took the e-mail print out from his pocket and handed it to
her.

He
watched her face change as she read it: curiosity, then a smile,
and eventually the sparkle of absolute joy in her eyes. Then a
sudden frown.

‘
Have you agreed yet, Reuben?’ she asked cautiously, and for a
moment he hoped.

‘
Would you be interested?’

‘
Interested?’ She flapped the page in the air. ‘This is like…
This is a dream come true. Of course I’d be interested. And
ecstatic. And… And just over the moon. This is the sort of thing
some conservationists wait for all their lives and never get. It
fills me with curiosity and interest and I can’t even think what it
would do for my career.’

In her
excitement, she’d come to sit at his feet, her hand on his knee,
the page lying in her lap, looking up at him with eyes filled with
the possibility of a lifetime of adventure.

Her joy
squeezed Reuben’s heart unmercifully. ‘You’d be tied to the farm
for four years, Sophie.’

Her
expression clouded. ‘Would that be a problem for you?’

Reuben
took a deep breath and shrugged. ‘I’m okay with it if you
are.’

Sophie
suddenly stood up and moved away from him, hurt plain on her face.
‘If you don’t want me on your farm for four years then I’ll finish
my present contract and leave.’

‘
That’s not what I meant. All I’m saying is that four years is
a long time for a person of your age to commit to.’

Sophie’s
chin tilted towards the canopy of stars above her head. ‘I’ve
always known my own mind, Reuben. And I’m exactly where I want to
be.’

‘
Very well,’ Reuben said against the tightness in his throat.
‘I’ll let Dr Duval know in the morning and we can begin to talk
through the details of the project.’

‘
I appreciate the opportunity,’ Sophie said stiffly. She turned
her back and began to climb down the stairs from the
patio.

Reuben
watched her go and said nothing, because the wrenching feeling in
his gut told him that he’d just watched her take the first steps
out of his life.

Sophie
didn’t think she could eat supper just yet, after her conversation
with Reuben, so in the kitchen she loaded up a basket of bread,
cheese, stew and preserves and strode off to visit Mr Solomon. She
had discovered that he lived in a small white cottage surrounded by
yellow clivias and a carpet of purple plectranthus in a copse of
hard pear trees. Sophie was a little worried; she hadn’t seen him
for almost a week now.

And she
needed to clear her head. She was still deeply hurt by the
conversation she’d had with Reuben about the research proposal for
the farm.

Instead
of being happy for her, his first concern had been about the amount
of time she’d spend on the farm. Did the thought of having her here
for the next four years fill him with misgivings? Did he feel tied
down by the arrangement? Maybe he wanted to be free to bring other
women to Labour’s End. If he found someone more suited to his
jet-setting lifestyle and wanted to marry her, he would not be able
to visit the farm with his new wife so long as Sophie was rattling
around the place. The thought was like a spear tip through her
heart.

‘
Mr Solomon!’ Sophie called, knocking loudly at the old oak
door to the cottage.

‘
Who is it?’ came a voice filled with suspicion. The enquiry
was followed by a fit of coughing.

‘
It’s Sophie, Mr Solomon. From the garden. You always give
me—’

The door
flew open. ‘I know who you are, girl,’ he said irritably. ‘What are
you doing here?’ He had a heavy blanket drawn around his stooped
shoulders.

‘
Come to see if you’re okay, and by the looks of things, you’re
not.’

Sophie
stepped inside and found the kitchen just off to her left. Apart
from fridge, stove and microwave, the room looked as if it hadn’t
changed in two hundred years. It was neat as a new pin.

She went
to the scrubbed wooden table and began to unpack the
food.

‘
What do you think you’re doing?’ Mr Solomon asked, but there
was more curiosity than irritation in his voice.

‘
I’ve got supper for you. Come and sit down.’

To
Sophie’s surprise he did as she asked while she warmed the
stew.

She
talked to Mr Solomon about his flowers as they ate, then she made
him a toddy, filled a hot water bottle and settled him in a
wingback chair in front of the television. She kissed the top of
his head, said goodnight and turned to leave.