Noble Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 3) (12 page)

I couldn’t help but remember the feel of Kayla’s exquisite body beneath my hands as she led the way to the shower. Not that I could join her unless I wanted to redo all the bandaging work, but I could enjoy watching her strip out of the shirt and shorts barely hanging on her to begin with, then step naked behind the translucent shower doors as she let the water run over her pixelated body.

Her promise of
later
looped like a video on permanent replay through my head. Far from getting my jollies once and moving on after that taste of her, my body craved more. In fact, watching her shower, I had to slap down that craving more than once. And again when she stepped out, toweling herself briskly with a brightly colored square of terrycloth.

I’m sure she saw—how could she missed seeing—my naked response to her, from the shape of her to the warm color of her skin to the bright smile she threw my way.

She nodded toward the pair of shorts I held forgotten in my hands. “Will you be dressing for breakfast?”

“Huh? Oh.”

We slid back into our clothes together. I had the idea of buttoning her up, but she had the idea of turning a coy shoulder to me when I approached and doing it herself.

“What happened to the fun Kayla?” I gave her my best mock pout.

“You mean the Kayla who doesn’t have
watoto
to feed and men to meet and a plantation to run?”

“Right, that would be the one.”

“She’ll be back. Later.”

There was that promise again. The one I was determined to hold her to. The one I desperately hoped she wanted to be held to.

In the kitchen, I warmed milk on half the stove while Kayla fried eggs and wild boar ham on the other half. She pointed to three tins lined up against the wall. “That’s what turns cows’ milk into okapi, rhino and gorilla milk. Different powdered cocktails for each. Protein, brown sugar, molasses, vitamins, enzymes. One scoop each for Nyota and Jengo, two of the bigger scoops for Tamu. The blue bottle top is for Jengo and the red is for Nyota.”

I hadn’t noticed the supplements before and was impressed by her diligence. Nor had I realized she was color-coding which bottles to feed the okapi and gorilla from once we were out with them. Each tin, labeled with the animal’s name, held its own scoop, and it was the work of only a moment to add the right amount of powder to each bottle. If I could prescribe and juggle ten or more drugs in a therapy regimen for some of my patients, I was pretty confident I could match the right amount of the right mixes to the right bottles, but I felt Kayla’s watchful eyes on me while I did.

While it was a bit of a personal insult, I wasn’t such an ass that I didn’t recognize her concerns came a mother’s heart. Oversight around every detail of her orphans’ lives came as naturally to her as it had been drilled into me for my own patients’ care. And it wasn’t as though I hadn’t watched how she’d cared for my wound with equal concern. It was how we protected ourselves and those we loved in a world filled with more than enough accidents and negligence beyond our control.

She left the plating of our breakfast to me while she opened a large can of dog food and spooned it into Gus’s dish. “None of that nasty dry stuff this morning,” she crooned to him as his tail thumped the floor. “You’re my hero today. And all heroes deserve a reward.”

“Is that what this morning was between us?” I asked. “My reward?”

“And if it was?”

“Then tell me what I need to do to earn another.”

She laughed. “Fight off a leopard with your bare hands?” She crossed to the table where I was setting down the first plate. “Or just keep doing what you’re doing—helping out, making me laugh, making me forget, making me feel. I don’t need more of a hero than that.”

The gorilla put his feet against the edge of the table and rocked it to get attention. He got it all right, in the form of a stern frown from Kayla. Abashed, he lowered his feet and covered his eyes.

“
Asante
,” Kayla told him. It was one of the words I knew:
thank you
—gentle reinforcement for his better behavior. I brought the second plate to the table while Kayla took one of Jengo’s prefilled juice bottles from the fridge and handed it and a bowl of dry cereal to him. The little O’s of oats kind, with minimal processing and no sugar, I noted.

Kayla’s phone rang just as she sat down. “You got my list?” she asked into it after exchanging pleasantries with Mosi, then, “You’re leaving when?… No, keep the Jeep and the pickup. Just bring the van back for now… How’s Lisha?” She listened a moment, her face falling with whatever news it was. “
Nguvu.
Be strong. I’ll see you soon.”

When she hung up, she picked at her breakfast.

“Lisha?” I asked.

“She’s not responding. They think she’ll be in a coma soon.”

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t surprised, though. She’d been a naturally thin woman with no reserves from what look I’d had of her before she left. Tribal genetics tended to the tall and lean even when food was abundant and the lifestyle neither overstressed nor overworked. The advantage to such a muscle mass distribution and low fat ratio was clear given the environment. The downside, however, was when some extreme was introduced—such as drought or disease—it was harder for that body type to adapt and cope.

I caught myself. That was me being analytical again, distancing myself from the patient and her family and friends. At this stage, no one close to her cared what genetic predispositions she had. All they cared about was her chance of recovery and her comfort.

Taking Kayla’s free hand in mine, I squeezed it in shared concern. Only when I had caught her eye did I repeat myself, slower and more emphatically this time. “I
am
sorry. But sometimes a coma can be a blessing. No more pain.”

Kayla nodded. “For her, yes, it’s likely for the best. For the rest of us, well, that doesn’t ease
our
pain.”

“No,” I agreed. “That’s a pain no doctor can ease. Only love and time and each other can do that.”

Again she nodded, sniffing once, as close to tears as I’d seen her come. “The men’ll be back around noon. They’re picking up the list of supplies I texted them last night.”

“So you’re still staying?”

“Do I have a choice?”

I took a breath. “And if I went into Hasa with you?”

“You already laid out the reasons you can’t do that. And I agree with them.”

“But if I did?” I insisted. “Would you go then?”

She gave me a blank, uncomprehending look, then shook her head. “Of course not.”

“But—”

“I’m not leaving my babies or my home.” It was a quiet statement, but I didn’t doubt the resolve behind it.

“Nothing’s to that point anyway,” I agreed. “I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t the reason you’re not following the other families into the city.”

“Apologies to your ego, but you’re not.”

“This isn’t about my ego.”

The sneer she threw me said she thought otherwise.

The twelve-year-old in me gathered himself to retort before the adult in me acknowledged that maybe I was out of line, and that this moment was about her pain, not my circumstances.

“I’m really glad to have your company,” I told her. “And since neither of us is going anywhere, I want to help out here. I may not be up for plowing a field or chopping down trees just yet, but I’m not an invalid either.”

Her expression softened, and her tone teased when she asked, “Ever milk a cow?”

I shook my head.

“Can you tell the difference between an eggplant seedling and an African tulip?”

Again I shook my head.

“Then you won’t be much good with the cows or in the gardens. The arabica trees won’t be ready for harvesting for a few weeks and it looks like we’re heading into a week of rain, so no irrigation needed. You can help unload the van when it gets here. Otherwise, you can help cook and clean and feed the babies, and keep me… entertained.”

“That sounds remarkably like you just asked me to play at being a house husband.”

I couldn’t read her dark eyes as her head crooked into a thoughtful tilt.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s exactly what it sounds like.”

I thought about that as we moved the breakfast dishes to the sink, scooped warm milk into the bottles, and went out to feed the babies—
watoto
, as she called them in Swahili.

Husband duties, it turned out, felt comfortable. And while I was especially looking forward to fulfilling my…entertainment…duty
later
, the rest of the duties weren’t work at all. They were, in fact, privileges and pleasures.

Why had I never thought about marriage like that before?

And why was I thinking about it like that now?

I had to admit, having Mark around these last few days—and for the next few, too, I highly suspected—was a welcome distraction from the building tension and anxiety.

I had to admit, too, I missed my father’s presence most acutely as the storms gathered and families fled, leaving me to face Zahur’s future alone.

I was quick to examine my relationship with Mark, to assure myself I wasn’t simply seeing my father in the stranger from the West. But no, I looked to Mark for a different kind of grounding and strength from what Baba had supplied. I had looked up to my father—who enjoyed the Swahili term
Baba
I used for him as much as he enjoyed my using the Swahili
Mama
for my mother—for his leadership and knowledge. I looked to Mark as a peer, leaning on him to support not lead.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t lead or wasn’t knowledgeable, just that he was the one not in his element here. Anything to do with medicine I was happy to defer to him. Anything to do with the plantation or Ushindi—that is where I excelled. I had seen too many of my female classmates, even women right here on Zahur, roll over in submission the moment a man entered the room. Any man. Any room. I was determined to respond to a man solely on his merits and what respect he earned by more virtue than the simple possession of a penis.

Right now, though, I was vulnerable, missing my father—his dry wit, his capacity to face any problem head-on, his great yet gentle strength upon which so many had relied, and his unflagging desire and ability to care for those he loved. His willingness, especially, to sacrifice his very self in an effort to save my mother from cervical cancer, an enemy he could neither fight nor defeat.

Perhaps I idolized my father too much, and set too high a pedestal for any other man to achieve.

It was an interesting combination, my vulnerable self searching for the impossibly perfect man. I was confident that man wasn’t Mark, and that I wasn’t looking to Mark as a father-replacement.

Of that I was certain.

Wasn’t I?

The hyenas were gone from the paddock, and Tamu and Nyota raced up, bleating and squealing, when they saw us. It would have been nice to believe it was because they recognized Mark for saving them earlier, but the truth was more likely that we were late with their bottles.

“Nyota could easily be force-weaned right now and survive,” I told Mark. “But where would that put her mental state if suddenly Tamu was getting all the attention?”

“Are you sure it isn’t the mental state
you’ll
be in when you finally wean these girls and set them free that worries you?”

I looked sharply at Mark, not because I thought he’d overstepped, but because I knew he hadn’t.

I also knew when Tamu and Nyota pressed close to us as we walked into the forest that they stayed so close, not because they were hungry, but because they were still frightened by the hyena attack. My
watoto
were nowhere near ready to be on their own.

When they were fed and we heard the distant growl of engines making their way up the mountain, I told Gus to watch the babies so they’d feel safe out in the forest alone. It was easy work for Gus, and he could nap in the shade while he recovered from his bite wound. I fed him a last treat, then gathered up the empties, while Jengo glommed onto Mark’s hand, clearly smitten now with the doctor.

Mark reached out his free hand. I could either hand him the bottle bag or…

We walked back hand-in-hand to greet the men who had returned.

Their body language conveyed so much more than their quick texts had of the rising tensions on all fronts. I knew these men—Mosi, Chiku and Adhama— they were strong, steady men grounded in common sense. They were a-political for the most part, with only one agenda—to keep their families safe. Seeing their agitation was a clear marker as to how far the effects of the
Subs
on one front and the unrest on the other had spread
spread
.

“There are weapons in the city,
jumbe
,” Mosi said as we unloaded several boxes of supplies from the van and carried them into the house. “Many rifles, and gunfire,
pop-pop-pop
, through the night and all this morning.”

“Your families are safe?” I asked.

“For now. Except for Adhama’s cousin, who was arrested two days ago for making public speeches against the incumbents. The family doesn’t leave their houses for fear of being arrested too.”

“Do they need money to bond him out?”

“There is no bond for political crimes.”

I stared at Mosi. “When did that happen?”

He shrugged. “Who can keep up? The rules change so often now, there are no rules. And
jumbe
”—his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper—“there is talk on the streets and in the market that the elections will be stopped.”

A chill shuddered through me. “Who would stop them?”

“Who wouldn’t? It is guns, I think, not votes, that will decide who sits in office next week.”

The incumbents who wouldn’t be challenged versus the opposition determined to be the take-all winners—there was no hint of democracy in Ushindi any longer.

“The rich have all gone on holiday. There is a steady stream of cars out of Hasa. But for those of us who have nowhere else to go or no money to build a new life there is no choice… Although, even the Congo now seems a safer home than Ushindi will be soon no matter which party takes power.”

I let that sink in. What a mockery today’s radicals were making of yesterday’s separatists who had won Ushindi out from under the rule of the oppressive DRC. Ushindi—whose very name meant victory, whose very existence meant freedom. Or at least something more akin to freedom than what the Congo provided.

“The rich are fleeing to Tanzania, Botswana and South Africa. Perhaps…perhaps,
jumbe
, you should, too.”

My headshake was automatic. I knew it was denial more than logic or common sense. But we each had our line in the sand and Zahur was mine. Zahur and my wild orphans. My parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had fought too hard to make this plantation the success it was. I wouldn’t abandon their dreams now. “Not until the mountain is burning.”

“You think it cannot happen?” Mosi said. “I never went to university, but I know African history is all about mountains that could never burn but did.”

“I won’t second-guess the future.”

He nodded in understanding. “At least be prepared for it,
jumbe
.”

That was what those workers who’d gone were doing now in the city. Preparing.

His eyes slid to Mark who was unpacking insect repellent and fresh first-aid supplies. “It looks like you have a future worth preparing for.”

“Mark? No, he’s—” What was he? More than a one-night stand, less than a boyfriend. Someone who would be gone while the rest of Ushindi rose or fell beneath its political pressures. “He’s just a
now
.”

Mosi grinned. “I remember when my wife was just a
now
. Twelve years and four children ago.”

“He’ll be heading back to the States soon.” I tried to ignore the pressure in my chest when I said that.

“He will have to find a way there first. Not just through the air, but through his heart.”

Heart? No, of course not. Mosi was making this into something it clearly wasn’t. Mark and I barely had a relationship. The only reason he was staying now was because he was grounded here with no flights out. Once the airfield was back in operation, he’d be gone.

Wouldn’t he?

After all, that was the day my world currently revolved around. The day he’d fly away.

Going to live.

Going to love.

Not staying to do either.

I didn’t share any of that with Mosi, of course. I simply said a soft “
Hapana
,”
no
, yet Mosi’s silent smile in return made me believe he knew something that 12 years and four kids had taught him that maybe I had yet to learn.

In any case, he was going too. Along with Chiku and Adhama. I would have cooked lunch for them, but the two couples who’d stayed behind to caretake the plantation showed up, the women with fresh-fried chapatti flatbread and a pot of bean curry to dip it in, and the men with kebab skewers of grilled chunks of veggies from the garden and the last of the ham from the wild boar.

We sat sharing lunch on the shaded veranda until the clouds gathering to the east over the Mountains of the Moon forced our goodbyes. Storms over the rainforest were rarely short, and the roads in Ushindi were often flooded. The men took the older pickup with them when they left. They would pass the pickup around as needed and help each other and their families out until the political tensions blew over. After that…well, it depended on where the
Subs
mosquitoes were migrating and how rapidly the virus was spreading as to what would happen next. No one knew—no one could know—where things would be in a week, two weeks, or a month, so waiting was all any of us could do. Wait—and help each other wait.

As the pickup rumbled off, Mark
tied
eyed the coming clouds. “More rain will mean more mosquitoes.”

They wouldn’t all be the
Culex
-type mosquitoes, of course, but any population increase only increased the risk to the human population.

Possibly the primate populations as well, given how fast the
Subs
virus had mutated. Already-endangered gorillas could yet be facing another threat.

So much to worry about. Two weeks ago, my only concern was how many migrants I’d need to hire on for the coming harvest and how much and what I’d need to stock ahead of time in the way of staples and clothing and supplies for the two bunk houses we held vacant and ready for the temporary workers.

What I wouldn’t have given to have my father’s steadying hand and practical advice right now. I felt confident with the typical challenges he had taught me to face. But would even he have known what to do in the face of disease and political uprising? Or would he have taken it day-by-day, even as I was doing now?
Was
there any way to better prepare for a future we couldn’t know?

I felt myself slipping, starting to lose myself in the despair that gathered close. Then strong fingers twined through mine, bolstering me with courage and resolve. Whatever else might come, I wasn’t going to have to face the next few days alone.

Somehow, the simple thought that I was not alone made all the difference.