Boxed Set: Books & Billionaires

by Nikki Steele

  Well then maybe I’d just charter a plane to go home. With what Clara? The overdrawn credit card, or the wallet you stupidly left on the boat?

  I didn’t care—I’d find a way. The important thing was that I was off the boat and never had to see him again.

  The thought hit me harder than I could have ever thought possible. Never feel his warm embrace. Never giggle at the tickle of his breath on my neck. Never snuggle into his arms after a night of passionate sex.

  Why did he have to be like this? Why couldn’t he just be happy with me?

  I looked down at myself, barefoot in the sand. At the dimples in my legs and the short stubby toes…

  No. I couldn’t think like that. This was Booker’s fault, not mine. I stood, and began to walk down the beach, away from this life and toward another.

  * * *

  I was two coves along when I stopped walking; far enough away from the boat that I could no longer see it. The tears had started and gone again, and now I was just walking, feet in the sand, with nowhere in particular to go. Maybe I’d have to go back to the boat, I didn’t know. But for now it was good just to be away from everything, to be completely surrounded by nature.

  I’d opened my bag earlier, thinking that a book might help me escape for a while. No such luck—I had children’s books, a used car guide and a dictionary, but not a romance in sight. I really should have looked at what I was packing.

  I was thirsty now. Probably should have packed some water, too. I moved to the shade of a palm tree. Funny thing about a deserted island—I hadn’t stopped to think that ‘deserted’ also meant no vending machines.

  I thought for a moment. What would that guy, Bear Grylls, do on that survival show? Hmm—I wasn’t desperate enough to drink my own urine quite yet. Perhaps there was a creek nearby? All these trees must get their water somehow.

  Tentatively, I left the beach, walking inland. There was an animal track of some kind. They usually led to water, right?

  The jungle was cool after the heat of the beach. A different kind of quiet—no longer the gentle lapping of waves, but the chirps of birds and creak of trees instead. Soon it got cool enough that I began to shiver. I pulled a shawl over my shoulders.

  A noise in the distance made my head turn. A branch falling, perhaps. Actually, it was kind of spooky here in the deep gloom of the jungle.

  I stopped. There was that sound again—but closer. Something skittered from the path ahead.

  I’d never been camping. Not really. Roughing it for me was a cabin with an outhouse and two ply toilet paper.

  What the fudge was I doing out here? I suddenly thought about where I was. A deserted island with leopards, and monkeys. Monkeys could be vicious—what if they weren’t like Curious George at all, but rather big savage beasts that were all bloodshot eyes and sharp teeth? Chimpanzees were the worst, I’d heard—they ripped apart intruders with their bare hands!

  Then I had another thought. There was a tribe on this island. Savages—headhunters, for all I knew. And they didn’t like strangers. How easy it could be for me to be speared or eaten or even just break a bone and never, ever be found again.

  Maybe I should head back to the shore…

  Yes. Good idea. Before that overactive imagination of mine started scaring the fudge out of me. I turned to set off back down the path I had just walked…

  …And there, blocking the path with spear in hand, was one of the savages.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Booker found me late that afternoon, a look of panic on his face and a pistol on his hip.

  I looked up from the book I was reading, several small children in my lap. “You’re not welcome here.”

  He looked at me, relief washing across his features. “Thank God I’ve found you.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  More than fine, actually. After a standoff where I think my scream frightened them more than they frightened me, one of the villagers had said something to me in a language that I didn’t understand. I’d shaken my head, moving to walk away, to which the villagers had leveled their spears at me. I’d remained frozen to the spot until a young child arrived who could speak English. The child’s name was Ford, which he proudly explained was after a car he had never seen, and then in an oddly British accent he had told me that outsiders weren’t allowed on this island, and that I’d have to leave.

  I’d promptly burst into tears, saying I wished I could, leaving the adults with confused expressions on their faces. After a moment, Ford had crossed the path between us to give me a hug. Then he’d said something to the Elders, and after a brief discussion I’d ended up here—drinking some sort of herbal tea and reading books to an ever growing gaggle of children.

  “If you don’t mind Booker, I have to get back to reading Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s rather harder than you’d imagine when these children have never seen a train before. You can see yourself out.”

  Booker shook his head. “Clara, what’s going on? I found the note on the fridge, and then… what did I do?”

  The book shut with a clap, prompting several young cries of outrage. “Seriously?” I asked. “You have to ask me that? You tell me things will be different, that you’re getting divorced, and then the first moment you get, you go behind my back and kiss another woman?”

  “Clara, I never-”

  “Don’t even try, Booker. I saw you on the beach with that woman. Who is she? Your other lover? Some random holiday fling because you got bored with me so quickly?” I was trying so hard to keep my voice level in front of the children that the words came out between gritted teeth. “Do you really care so little about me that you would do that?”

  Booker’s hand went to the back of his neck. “Actually, it’s because I care about you that I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “You were just going to keep her a secret?”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not like that at all. I have a confession Clara. We didn’t just come here for a holiday. I didn’t want to tell you, but…”

  I looked at him. One of the children reached up to wipe at a tear as it trickled down my cheek.

  He sighed, then motioned to the forest line some 30 paces distant. A shadow detached itself and a woman walked toward me. The woman I had seen from the boat.

  “Booker. What’s she doing here?”

  The woman strode across the distance between us; camouflage paint crisscrossing the parts of her body that khaki pants and black singlet failed to cover. Her long dark hair was caught in a battered baseball cap. Across one arm rested a long, blackened automatic weapon.

  Gently, I lifted the children off my lap, motioning them behind me.

  “Booker…”

  I tried to hold the children back, but suddenly they ran to the woman. She laughed, scooping them up to ruffle their hair.

  “Clara, I’d like you to meet Leena.”

  * * *

  Leena offered me her hand. “How do you do?” she said in a British accent. “It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you—not often I get to talk in the Queen’s language anymore.”

  What I had previously thought was paint on her arms were actually tattoos. Long, intricate whorls that wound from her wrist all the way up her arms to the side of her neck, stopping at her jawline. Her face was the only part of her actually painted. She had full lips and dark, piercing eyes that reminded me of a panther’s—beautiful, but dangerous even to look at, lest she notice and return your stare.

  “Um…” The children hopped down to run rings around us as I got to my feet and shook a hand that felt like it could break me. “Hi?”

  “I met Lenz several years ago,” Booker said. “She was ex-SAS, fed up with doing the government’s dirty work and looking to get off the grid for a while. I had a solution which I thought she might be interested in. We’ve been good friends ever since.”

  “That solution. It involved…” I looked between the two of them.

  Leena got it
first. She burst out laughing. “Sorry—no offence, but I never mix business with that kind of pleasure.”

  “Then what was the kiss on the beach?” I asked hotly. I didn’t care whether she could crush me like a twig—I knew what I’d seen. “And why all the secrecy?”

  “The kiss?” asked Booker, confused. Then his eyes cleared. “You must mean the present I brought her—Leena has a weakness for cigars.” He walked toward me, but I pulled away.

  “And why would you be giving her cigars? Is her last name Lewinsky?”

  Booker coughed. “Lenz does work for me. But not like that.”

  Leena looked to Booker. “I still don’t think this is a good idea Boss.”

  Booker turned to her and shook his head. “The alternative is worse. Without Clara, none of this matters.” Then he turned to me. “Clara, I said that my wife had been to this island twice. Once, just after I bought it for her, when we visited together.”

  He paused. “The second time, she came alone. To… to hunt.”

  “To what?”

  “My wife… well, unlimited wealth and unlimited time did something to her. Her mind began to twist. It started with small things—ordering people around, dropping a bottle just to make the maids clean up after her. But it grew. She began to buy fur coats. And then ivory, for no other reason than the fact that other people with less money couldn’t. I blew my top when I found out.”

  He went silent for a moment. “Then she started taking the holidays,” he continued.

  “Without you?”

  “I was busy—my own fault, not hers. Too much time with my head in the books, one of the reasons I grew away from them for so long. So I was happy to let her have her little vacations, always just a few days, always to find her in a better mood when she returned.”

  His fists clenched. “Happy, until I found out where she was going. Canada, Spain, Africa. Clara,” he said. “They were hunting safaris.”

  A chill ran through me. “Hunting?”

  “Slaughtering animals for sport. Just like that Minnesota dentist did to that famous lion in Zimbabwe.”

  “Cecil the Lion,” I whispered horrified. I’d seen the pictures on the news, of the poor animal lying bloody on the ground, eyes glazed and tongue out. “That’s barbaric.”

  Booker nodded, his face a mask of barely controlled rage. “And when the thrill of legal hunting wasn’t enough, my wife remembered somewhere that she had seen an animal so rare there were only a few left in the wild. And she remembered that she owned the land it lived on.”

  His fists clenched. “We separated the day I found out, when she walked into the house with a leopard pelt around her neck, and told me she was going to build a hunting reserve here; a way for the wealthy to get the ultimate thrill—hunting a creature to extinction.”

  He paused. “That was three years ago.”

  “What happened?” I asked breathlessly.

  Booker nodded to Leena. “She came along. She wanted to go off grid. I needed someone ‘unofficial’ to stop that Lodge ever being built.”

  “You kill people?” I asked, horrified.

  She shook her head. “No. Booker won’t let me do that. But I sabotage equipment—make sure every time someone lands here, they go home packing. No construction company will touch the place—they think it’s a guerilla group working in the area.”

  Booker nodded. “I’ve been paying off the government to keep a blind eye. But with the end of my funds-”

  “You won’t be able to keep up the bribes,” I said.

  Booker nodded again. “Lenz has said she would work for free, but it’s too dangerous. When they stop taking my money, they’ll start taking my wife’s, and her orders will be to shoot to kill.”

  I looked from one to the other. “So… what now?”

  Booker’s grin became a rictus snarl. “We go out with a bang.”

  * * *

  Son of a Biscuit. I’d been such a fool. I didn’t deserve a man like Booker, who saw a crazed note scrawled across a fridge and then didn’t just turn away, but strode into the jungle to find me and make it alright again.

  I burst into tears—I’d done a lot of that lately, but this time they were tears of shame.

  Booker strode toward me; wrapping my body in those broad, strong arms of his, kissing the top of my head. “Shh, it’s ok.”

  I shook my head in his arms. “It’s not. Every time I think I’m happy, I go imagining the worst. Every time you do nothing but show how much of a good man you are, I go threatening to leave you.”

  He held me at arm’s length. “You’re worth it,” was all he said. Then he wrapped me in his arms until my tears ended.

  I became aware of Leena, arms crossed, chewing a leaf and leaning against a post nearby. “I’m so sorry you had to see that.”

  Leena grinned. “Don’t mind me. This is a better soap than East Enders.”

  I looked at her, confused.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot you’re American. Think The Bold and the Beautiful, but with cups of tea.”

  I giggled, Booker grinned, and suddenly the whole world was ok again.

  Leena pulled a map from one of her pockets, and Booker explained what he and Leena had been doing. It wasn’t legal, which is why he hadn’t wanted me involved—he knew how I felt about breaking rules. He also wanted me innocent, in case things went wrong.

  They were planning a raid. This island was larger than the others, but several around it were more developed. On one of them, Leena had noticed construction equipment massing. Her guess was that Booker’s wife was waiting for the divorce papers before sending a team to bulldoze the south side of the island and build her Hunting Lodge.

  Without Booker’s interference, the workers would have an armed government guard. And the remaining animal population wouldn’t have a chance.

  Booker and Leena were going to hit them first. It would be dangerous, but blowing the compound where his wife’s equipment was kept would protect the animals for a few more months.

  “What happens after that?” I asked.

  Booker looked to Leena, then back to me. And he suddenly became quiet. “I made my choice,” he said. “And I chose you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It wasn’t how I’d imagined our vacation to play out. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’d imagined tropical beaches, yes, but tropical beaches with a backdrop of resorts behind, and margaritas by the pool. The only five stars I’d seen since we’d arrived had been the arms on a Phylum Echinodermata, otherwise known as the common starfish.

  Still, somehow, this was better. The tranquility of those mornings after Booker found me, when he’d roll over and nudge me. I’d stumble grudgingly from bed to survey a view that took my breath away.

  And serene evenings, when we’d sit in the spa or on deckchairs with a cocktail and watch nature’s most perfect of movies—an orange sky fading slowly to indigo, the distant screech of monkeys and birds echoing over the water as the island’s nocturnal population awoke.

  The only blemish would be after lunch, when we’d board Booker’s speedboat and motor toward the shore; Booker dropping me off with a kiss, Leena grunting a hello as we changed places.

  It wasn’t him motoring off with another woman that was the problem. Relationships were about trust, and I’d already failed that test once on this vacation. I wasn’t going to do that again.

  And it wasn’t that I couldn’t go with them. I understood Booker’s motives for keeping me out of things. This was something he had to do, and besides, I was a librarian who had lived in a city all her life—I had absolutely nothing I could contribute.

  Rather, my discomfort came from where Booker and Leena were going—what they were planning on doing. They were going to break the law, and that didn’t sit well with me.

  We’d argued about it, that evening he’d found me, standing on the shore as the stars came out. But Booker had simply pointed to the untouched sand beneath us and the forest at our backs, and held
his fingers to his lips. I’d quietened, listening to the sounds of the jungle. Birds chirping, and then a monkey’s chatter. And somewhere in the distance, the roar of one of the last great cats.

  I hadn’t had an answer for him after that. What was any rule if it meant this forest would one day be silent?

  In a way, he was doing it all for me. That was the bittersweet point of it all. Me, a woman who had lived her life following the rules, now the one causing them to be broken. If I hadn’t come along, Booker wouldn’t be in this situation. He might be divorced, yes, but it would have been on his own terms, this island transferred to him as part of the deal.

  The solution was simple. All we had to do was break up. Simple, but impossible. And while his actions might slow things for a while, they wouldn’t last forever. Sooner or later, this island would have hunters on it. It was our relationship, ultimately, that had doomed it.

  There had to be another way. A way to stop the ex-wife. A way to protect the island.

  Each day, as I trudged the beach, the problem looped in my mind. I’d walk sands of pure white; between emerald green forest and turquoise blue sea, and not see a thing but the problem in my head.

  Not until I reached the second cove, that is. Then I’d hear a youthful shout, and my head would snap up, and a smile would spring to my face as suddenly cries began to echo down the beach ahead of me. A swarm of little figures would start racing barefoot across the sand, their excited laughter growing louder as they approached, until finally they’d surround me with a wall of noise and animated bodies, and all my worries would wash away.

  When I reached the village I’d be kissed by the elders and greeted with food, the children running back and forth with an excess of energy until I sat down. They’d gather in a circle and sit excitedly too. Then slowly, tantalizingly, I’d pull a book from my bag.

  By chance, a number of books purchased by Booker’s agent for the library had been for younger readers; an occurrence that I suspected owed more to the need to fill shelves in the large space than anything else.