Proud Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 2) (21 page)

The jangle of the phone was a physical pain inside my head as it jarred me awake. Slitting my eyes open in the thankfully darkened room, I found the digital clock—4:00 by the lighted display. A truly ungodly hour when you were as hungover as I was, but the exact time Chris had asked the front desk for a wake-up call. I buried my head under the covers when he flipped a light on in the living room and answered the extension by the sofa where he’d been sleeping.

A knock on the open doorframe told me he was up. “Are you coming with us to the airport?”

“No. Close the door.”

Fifteen minutes later there was a knock at the closed bedroom door. “What?” Head and stomach both protested my being awake.

Chris entered with an electric carafe that he plugged in on the nightstand next to me. He disappeared for a minute, and I heard the clink of ice when he returned. Peeking out from under the covers, I saw him set a glass beside the coffee maker, along with a couple of medicine packets.

“Room service sent aspirin and bicarb. I should be back around seven. We can talk then.”

He didn’t wait for my mumbled and incoherent response. I heard the click of the outside door, and he was gone.

Fumbling at the aspirin bottle, I swallowed two, considered the state of my hangover, then downed two more and fell back asleep.

The phone jangled again at 6:00. The voice on the other end was entirely too cheerful. “Your wake-up call, ma’am. Is there anything else you need this morning?”

“A porter for our bags. But not for another 45 minutes.”

The coffee maker cut on, and almost immediately the smell of brewing coffee wafted over me.

Damn Chris for thinking to program it for me and to set up my wake-up call and to make sure I had hangover drugs, of which I downed more before crawling out of bed and heading for the bathroom. His bag, I noticed as I passed through the living room, was packed and waiting by the door.

I splashed cold water on my red and puffy face, grateful that I hadn’t thrown up last night or, so far, this morning. The coffee and bicarb helped, as did another two aspirin. Enough that I managed to have everything of mine thrown into a duffel bag by the time the porter came, carrying Chris’ freshly pressed white suit. He had the Range Rover packed and my keys back to me and was only just leaving when Chris showed up.

He ran a final sweep through the room, then asked, “Hungry?”

My glare was answer enough.

Taking the keys to the SUV, he led the way outside, pausing at the front desk only long enough to sign off on the final bill. It felt weird to be in the passenger seat of the Rover as we drove off, but the low-grade nausea and persistent pressure behind my eyes convinced me it was the best place to be.

My biggest regret so far this morning was that Chris was caretaking me, one step ahead of my every need. Those needs had been pretty routine, but he’d put himself out there to think ahead and cater to them without a harsh word after what I’d done to him last night.

How disgusting was that?

Now, trapped in the confines of the SUV, I waited for him to make good on his threat to talk.

We stopped for gas, and for groceries, with Chris doing ten minutes of shopping while I nursed my stomach in the Rover.

I was still waiting for “the talk” five hours later when we turned off the roadway and headed home through the charred veldtland.

Another helicopter speeding low over the ground buzzed us, dipping down to check us out. Or maybe it was the same one from yesterday. Both were fairly nondescript. Maybe the numbers on the side were different, but I hadn’t bothered to check the first one. It tracked us only a moment anyway before veering off to continue whatever work it was doing. I only hoped it hadn’t been close enough to camp to scare the lions.

A concern that, before today, I would have voiced to Chris. As it was, we still hadn’t spoken when we rolled back into camp.

“Holy mother.” As the first words to break the silence, Chris’ seemed appropriate.

It looked like the kids had partied hard while the parents were away. The camp wasn’t as totally trashed as things first seemed, but I was glad the cameras and electronics had all been packed in the Rover. Clothing and bedrolls had been pulled from the tents and some of the ready meals were scattered, although most of the boxes were still intact.

“Stupid lions.” Chris glared their way.

“I don’t think it was them. Monkeys maybe. Or…”

“Or?” Chris prompted.

At the stream’s edge, the pride seemed agitated. They were all up and standing, even Caesar. Brutus roared, which if I didn’t have my camera phone out recording the condition of the camp, I would have missed capturing.

“It’s not us he’s miffed at,” I told Chris, forgetting for the moment that we weren’t speaking. “None of them are looking our way.”

“So you think the monkeys or whatever are still around?”

The unease that settled in the pit of my stomach had nothing to do with the fading hangover. “I think something’s out there. Just not whatever it was that partied here.”

“Something that can intimidate a pack of lions, huh?”

“Something that can maybe intimidate us.”

Us
? I would have thought Dee was having a go at me if she weren’t still too hungover to joke. I presumed there’d be plenty of repercussions from last night—and some sort of retaliation, deserved or not, wasn’t out of the question, either—but playing fright night? That was high school hijinks. I expected more sophistication, even more directness, from Dee.

So, if her concern was real, what beastie out there could intimidate like that? “Rhinoceros?”

“Helicopter.”

“But that was a ranger or game warden, wasn’t it?” Or had I simply assumed it had to be someone official who belonged out here?

Dee was righting the camp stove by the generator when she froze. “You think so?”

“Why?” I hurried next to her and looked where she was looking. “Damn!” Two round holes stared back from the top of the generator. I flipped the
on
switch, and we waited for that first deep growl at startup before the unit would settle into its gasoline-powered hum. It was as silent as Dee had been in the Rover on our way back. I shoved it, shook it, kicked it—nothing.

Either someone had stood right next to it and shot straight down into the casing risking ricochet or explosion or a lion attack, or it had been shot at distance from above with a high-powered rifle. The acacia we were under provided plenty of shade, but it carried a thin, high umbrella of limbs and leaves, easily seen through and providing plenty of slots of opportunity for any half-way skilled marksman.

“They’re not playing around, are they? Who takes out a generator out here? That’s like a heart shot. Maybe they saw the camp being raided and fired to scare off the monkeys.”

“One bullet hole, accident. Two, deliberate. A third in our satellite receiver and they don’t want us calling back to the mothership.” Dee pointed to the small dish array where a single bullet had shattered through the concave dish, mount and cabling, rendering the complex array useless. That shot was either lucky or well beyond the ability of a
half
-way skilled marksman.

Whipping out my phone, I thumbed past Gary and Reena to Mike, my agent, and brought up the text-message interface. The display flashed a disheartening NO SIGNAL across its face. From Dee’s hollow expression, it was clear her phone was telling her the same. We were too far out in the bush without a signal boost from any of the towers or solar kiosks that linked even some of the smallest villages here in Africa with the rest of the world.

“Who the hell would do this?”

“Why would they do it?” Dee countered. “They would know we have equipment because of the generator, but not what kind. We had it all with us. They wouldn’t know what we have of value. Except…”

Her eyes widened with a fear they hadn’t shown even on discovery of the ruined generator and satellite array. “The lions. Brutus.”

“Hunters?”

“If the lions won’t scare off with rifle shots because they’re used to people, how easy would it be to track and kill one? All the hunter has to do is scare us off instead. They saw us returning. They know we’re here. They’ll be watching when we leave to find help.”

“But isn’t it legal to hunt lions here?”

“Legal doesn’t mean easy. And everyone wants things easy nowadays. Scopes, nightvision goggles, helicopters. They’ll be sending in drones and hunting online next like they already do in the States. But I’ll be damned if they get Brutus.”

“What if it isn’t Brutus they want? Maybe they’re…I dunno, sex slave traffickers.”

“Or they want to shanghai someone to work their diamond mine. Of the three scenarios—you, me or Brutus—which is more likely out here in the middle of the bush?”

“If I wasn’t looking at our shot-up camp, I’d say none of them. How desperate does someone have to be? And why wouldn’t they just shoot Brutus, like they did the generator? He’d be just as easy a target.”

“Because hunting from helicopters still isn’t legal in Zambia.”

“And shooting up campsites is?”

“And because they’d have to kill the rest of the pride or scare them far enough away in order to land. It’s not just the kill. They’ll want their memento. If they can’t drag all of him back in the ‘copter, they’ll at least want to take his head with them.”

With a look of dark determination, Dee pulled her tripod and handheld out of the Rover and strapped on her .38. “Go get help.”

“Like hell.”

“Go.”

“Not. Happening. If they’re waiting for the Rover to leave, they’ll be in here fast, before we can get back with the police, if they even think we’re coming back. And I’m not leaving you here with nothing but a toy pistol when they have a rifle that can pierce generator casing like cardboard from a few hundred yards.”

“And what do we have if you stay?”

“A dart gun. Numbers. We’ll at least look more menacing than we are. Illusion. Play-acting. Just like in the movies. Only with, you know, real terror.”

She cracked a smile. I saw it clearly before she shut it down again.

“Or else I stay and you go,” I said.

“No!”

“Don’t you trust me to protect our pride?”

Damn her honesty, she actually had to think about that. Then again, she was honest enough to acknowledge, “You called them
ours
. I do, in fact, trust you to protect what’s yours.”

“So why do think I don’t need to stay here and protect you too?”

She blinked. “I’m not yours.” The way she said it wasn’t with feminist defiance, but with a mix of anger and sadness.

I was prepared to fight her on the feminist front, but against that kind of disappointment I had little defense except the truth. “How can such a bright, bull-headed woman have it so backwards? None of those other women were ever mine.”

“Then they have more sense than I gave them credit for.”

“Do you want to know why?”

“No. I don’t need any more of your pretty lies.”

“You have a
gun
. And a temper. Do you really think I’m going to lie to you?”

“Wait.” She thumbed on the handheld and pointed it my way. “OK. Talk.”

“Because I was
their
fantasy. They weren’t
mine
. I didn’t even know I had a fantasy until I deplaned at Zambezi. And there it was, all tight-lipped and angry on the tarmac. I’ve never called any woman mine. I’ve never called much of anything mine. And whether you do or don’t want to hear me call you mine doesn’t much matter. Because my heart says you’re mine. And that anything you love is mine as well, and my responsibility.”

She shook her head. “You don’t mean it.” But there was no fire behind her protest this time.

“No? Do you know what Gary’s doing on his flight back? He’s cancelling an appearance on
The Late Show
with Colbert and rebooking my return flight another week out.” I took the camera from her and held it directly in front of my face, as public a confession as possible. “Because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you so soon after finding you. Even if you did act like an ass last night. And I will do whatever it takes to make you believe me when I say I will scrap this entire episode and every bit of it we’ve shot and pay you whatever funding amount you lose because of it, if you think for one minute my only purpose here is to exploit you and goose my ratings. As a matter of fact, you’re the one who’s exploited
me
and goosed me in ways I thought I could never be goosed. So yeah, if you stay, I stay. Because I
want
to protect what’s mine.”

I handed the camera back to her. “What do
you
want?”