by Ava Miles
Marvin croaked again as Boyd rolled over, making the lizard skedaddle. Grabbing his watch, he eyed the display. “What the hell, Marvin—”
It was after seven. How in the hell had he slept so late? Oh, wait. He’d spent hours tossing and turning, thinking about his fight with Michaela.
“Our Mickey is the most aggravating woman in the world. Croak if you agree, Marvin.”
The gecko remained silent.
“She’s also so beautiful it breaks my heart.”
Marvin croaked.
“Now you agree,” he said, patting him on the head. “Of course, you have terrific taste in women. But seriously, Marvin, we’re going to have to work a lot harder to get our Mickey back. I need you in tip-top shape.”
Marvin croaked again.
“Okay, I know you’ll do your part. She’s the only girl I’ve ever dated who fell for you. The moment she met you, she reached into your terrarium to touch your head, and that’s when I knew she was a keeper for life.”
He thought about the engagement ring he carried in his pocket. Would he have the chance to show it to her? Would they ever get past the bitterness that had settled between them?
“Come on, Marvin,” Boyd called, picking him up. “Back in your mobile home. We’ve got to get a move on.”
He heard some muffled laughter in the next tent, followed by a low groan. Sex sounds?
That had to be Arthur and Clara. Well, hell… He supposed he should be happy for them. Who didn’t want to have a thriving sex life into their twilight years?
He got washed and dressed. Dabbing on Michaela’s favorite cologne felt more heartbreaking than hopeful, but he wasn’t a quitter. He wouldn’t let himself get mired in negativity. Striding out of his tent, he stopped short.
Michaela sat at the dining table in the center of camp, the morning light picking up the golden highlights in her brown hair as she sipped a cup of tea. She was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he imagined that would be true until the day he died. He walked toward her, noting how his mouth curved into a smile as though it was his body’s natural response to seeing her.
It probably was.
“Good morning,” he said, sitting across from her at the table.
She raised a wary brow. “Mornin’. Looks like we both slept in. My aunt and uncle seem to have gone back to bed. Joseph took Hargreaves out for a brief nature walk with Simon.”
“Your aunt and uncle have the right idea. If things were different between us, we’d be back in our tent too. Or we wouldn’t have left it.”
She set her teacup down hard. “Don’t, Boyd. I’m in no mood.”
He held up his hands. “All right. I won’t talk about wanting you if you’ll promise me something.”
Her level gaze would have made most men turn tail and run. “What?”
“When you’re ready, we finish the conversation we had last night. I want to better understand why you felt we needed to break up, and I want to share why I think we should get back together.” There. That was fair and calm, wasn’t it?
“I don’t see the point, but there was something you said that I might want to hear more about.”
She rose from her chair, giving him an eyeful of her beautiful curves.
“Best have your breakfast,” she said, gesturing to the table. “We can start packing up the camp when everyone returns, minus my aunt and uncle’s tent if they haven’t reappeared.”
His mouth quirked up. “Good idea. I don’t think anyone wants their tent to come down while they’re—”
“Napping?” She chuckled. “That’s what they call it. Oh, by the way, there’s still no word from Iggie. Connor texted me that our people are working on his release.”
“Good thing Iggie wasn’t around last night,” Boyd decided to say. “I wouldn’t want him overhearing our personal matters. In fact, it’s one of the reasons why I’m glad he’s not with us. I don’t want your reputation to suffer.”
She cocked her hip. “Mine, huh? Not yours?”
He stood as Jaali approached with a plate of food. “Yes, your reputation. It means something to me because I love you. Iggie made up his mind about me a long time ago.”
“I won’t argue with you,” she said, smiling at Jaali as he set the plate down and left promptly to give them privacy. “I had enough of that last night. Any word on our destination today?”
He pointed east and tried not to let his lips twitch. “We’re going that way.”
Fire sparked in her eyes, but he thought he could see the tiniest hint of amusement behind it. “I told my aunt I only wanted to kill you sometimes when we were together. This is one of them. East, he says! Ugh!”
He laughed as she stalked off, her backside swaying in her loose pants.
Joseph smiled as he returned to camp and took a seat across from him. Wonderful. Time for another kick in the butt.
“You and Michaela seem to have very different versions of your current predicament, my friend,” he said in a lowered voice. He folded his arms calmly on the table, but his dark brown eyes were ever watchful.
“She still loves me, Joseph,” he told the man in a tone that wouldn’t carry across the camp as he picked up a banana and peeled it. “And I love her.”
“But you do not live together anymore,” Joseph said. “That is a concern. My cousins saw a couple in their visions, Dr. Boyd. This could change our travel plans.”
He took a few bites of the banana to give himself a moment to consider his response. “Do you know the exact timing of the visions, Joseph? Maybe they were seeing the past—or the future. Michaela will be mine again, my friend. Trust me when I tell you that.”
“I do trust you, Dr. Boyd. I only hope you are not wrong because I fear my cousins will not show you two the Valley of Stars and give you the healing flower unless you have pledged your love for life.”
Shit.
“We will see what my cousin, Sironka, says when he finds us at the meeting spot tomorrow. I fear he may not take us, given this new situation. He will be very unhappy.”
Boyd took a hasty gulp of his tea, barely noticing when it seared the roof of his mouth. That would be a problem. Sironka was the guide who was to take them through the restricted territory to his family’s village. Joseph alone couldn’t do it. No one entered the valley without a guide from the village. According to Joseph, it had been so since the passing of Kenya’s Witchcraft Act in 1925, which had outlawed traditional medicine and its practitioners. The people in the Valley of Stars had offered protection to traditional healers and such, an act that had required them to close their doors to anyone who might report them.
“Don’t count me out yet, Joseph,” he muttered, looking at Michaela.
The woman in question glanced over her shoulder in the act of pulling out the front stakes of her tent, as if sensing his silent regard. Their eyes held, and he watched as a line of sweat trailed down her neck. Although he’d been too worked up at the time to properly register it, she’d surprised him with her talk of being an untraditional girl. Of not fitting into her family. She’d never told him that before, and he’d neither seen nor heard anything in her family to give him that impression.
Joseph smiled warmly. “If I were a betting man, I’d say your chances are fifty-fifty right now, Dr. Boyd.”
He pushed back from the table and grabbed a slice of fresh-baked bread. “By tomorrow, my chances will have improved, Joseph. Just wait.”
“I certainly hope so,” Joseph said, patting him on the back as Boyd passed.
“Find me a baby elephant or giraffe today, my friend, and this will all turn around.” Not that he was fool enough to get too close, but Michaela turned into a total ball of mush around baby wild animals. “Or a black leopard.” A rare find, and more valuable for it.
“Simon and I will tune into the safari guides’ radio stations. Although I didn’t know we’d be sightseeing on the way to the meeting spot.”
“A small concession in the game
of love, my friend. Let’s get going.”
He walked over to where Michaela was working, but she pulled out the last stake before he could get to it. She’d always insisted on doing everything herself, something he admired in the field. Except she’d always done it at home too. Sometimes it had rankled, how she wouldn’t let him do things for her. He used to think she was taking away his chances to be the guy in the relationship. Now, he had to wonder if he’d gotten it wrong. She’d felt like an outsider when she was young, but instead of repressing her identity, she’d embraced it. Maybe being independent was as important to her as it was to him.
Mickey smiled at him, a victorious smile, but he just tucked her hair behind her ear and walked back to his own tent.
Chapter 7
Michaela had traveled to nature’s most captivating hotspots, but these wild grasslands had always pulled at her heartstrings in a special way. They had three Land Rovers to carry their things, and Michaela’s group was in the middle, with Simon and Joseph in the lead and Jaali coming in last. Boyd had taken the wheel, of course, and since it was a given her aunt and uncle and Hargreaves would ride together, she’d taken shotgun. She’d decided to ignore him as best she could and let the magic around her seep into her soul. Her party seemed to have fallen under the spell of the savannah too, what with the gasps of delight coming from the back.
The grasses—varieties like Rhodes, red oats, lemon, and star—were scorched in places from the higher temperatures and lack of rain. The occasional baobab tree studded the landscape, their massive, squat cylindrical trunks topped off with dense tapering branches. The trees many Africans believed God had planted upside down were actually the largest succulent on the planet, collecting water in the rainy season into its mostly hollow tube-like trunk to sustain itself when the rains didn’t come. Beyond that, its leaves boasted strong nutritional components for humans: vitamin C, sugars, potassium tartrate, and calcium. She’d eaten a delicious soup from the baobab’s leaves and drunk a coffee substitute from their seeds, which were roasted over an open fire.
Everywhere she looked, she saw nature’s wisdom, her greatest passion. Boyd shared that passion, and usually they exchanged remarks about the landscape and its treasures when they passed through the wilderness.
But he was unusually quiet and tense this morning. Heck, he was practically white-knuckling the steering wheel. His tension was rubbing off on her, so she fixed her gaze on the herds of zebra, gazelle, and topi, wildebeest, and Impala antelope grazing ahead.
As they rode toward the herd, keeping a respectful distance, Boyd broke the silence by pointing and saying loudly, “There’s a cheetah stalking on the edge to the right, looking for a meal.”
Damn but he’d always had the eyes of a hawk. She caught the spotted animal stalking through the grass, every muscle intent on its prey.
“I see it!” her aunt cried from the back of the Land Rover as the cheetah broke into a sprint and raced in on its chosen prey, causing the antelope on the edges of the group to veer away and take off running. “Goodness, it moves fast.”
The cheetah seemed to be leaping off the ground with each stride, so majestic in its power. “Sixty-five to seventy miles an hour,” Michaela called over her shoulder. “The topi are crazy fast too—”
“Fifty miles an hour,” Boyd said, turning and grinning at her before dialing himself back.
In moments like these, she could feel that familiar click between them: thinking the same thought, finishing sentences, sharing the same joys. It only made it harder when the distance between them felt like a crevasse.
“Let’s watch the kill close up,” Boyd said, steering them in the direction of the chase as the rest of the Rovers followed.
When Boyd hit one of the larger ruts in the grassland, her uncle exclaimed with a loud ouch while her aunt gave a gusty laugh.
“Faster, Boyd!” Aunt Clara called out.
Michaela looked back, delighted to see her aunt practically hanging out of the open cab of the Defender. Hargreaves sat in the middle, binoculars clutched in his hands. Arthur was holding onto the metal frame for dear life, but his eyes were glued to the scene.
She was surprised at the amount of sightseeing they’d done in the three hours they’d been driving. Despite their talk, this wasn’t a safari—they were here on a mission. But she wanted her aunt and uncle to have fun, and Boyd seemed determined to make that happen. He’d even turned them in the direction of a black leopard, one of her favorite animals. Of course, he knew that, and their eyes had met and held before she’d looked away. His face had fallen after they’d finally given up their search. She’d resisted the urge to thank him anyway.
“By God, she’s got him,” Hargreaves shouted out loud, his British accent somehow starker for the uncharacteristic shouting. She’d never heard him raise his voice before.
Sure enough, the cheetah closed the remaining distance and pounced on the antelope’s posterior, bringing it down. The cat’s sheer speed caused it to soar through the air for a moment after it took its prey down, and it had to slow and correct its course to return to the wounded animal.
“Incredible!” Her aunt gripped the cab’s frame. “I should feel horrible for that poor animal, but there’s something majestic about the chase and catch, isn’t there?”
“Indeed, Madam,” Hargreaves answered, leaning her way and lifting his binoculars. “But this is—”
“The circle of life,” Arthur said, snorting. “Hargreaves, I expected something more original from you.”
“Sir, would you like me to describe Darwin’s treatise on survival of the fittest? Would that be more original?” The butler lowered his binoculars and passed them to Aunt Clara, who quickly lifted them to her eyes.
Another snort came from Uncle Arthur before he turned back to the scene. “Clara, are you bloodthirsty enough to want to watch it eat the poor beast? Woman, I didn’t realize something like this would excite you so. But it is pretty cool, I must say.”
She didn’t lower her binoculars. “Cool, indeed. It’s incredible. Moving. Sad. Captivating.”
“That’s the savannah for you,” Boyd called out. “It’s a ringside seat to the way nature works out here. There’s nothing like it anywhere else.”
“No, there isn’t,” Michaela said, turning as naturally toward him as a plant to the sun. Their eyes met and held again. Earlier, when she’d looked up to see him watching her unpack her tent, a tremor had gone through her entire body. And when he’d come over to pull out the last stake for her, something she hadn’t needed him to do…she’d thought he’d be pissed when she did it herself. Or that he’d feel emasculated by it, a charged topic in their recent discussions. Instead, he’d just touched her hair and then walked away, and nothing else he could have done would have confused her more. She’d felt like he was trying to tell her something, but perhaps that was only her confusion talking.
“Anyone want to get closer?” Boyd called after returning his gaze to their makeshift road.
“No, I’m good,” Aunt Clara said. “Oh, I can’t wait to see what’s next.”
“You won’t have long to wait, Clara,” Boyd said. “I called in an abundance of good sights today, and I know the Universe won’t let me down.”
That sounded both nice and suspect. “Like what?” Michaela asked.
“How does a baby elephant sound?” he shouted so everyone in the back could hear. “Anyone want to see that?”
Michaela blinked, her suspicions confirmed. Damn, he knew she went all soft when she saw one of those little guys. “You jerk,” she hissed.
His response was a fiery, determined glare.
“Stupendous, sir!” Hargreaves shouted back, making everyone look at him. He blushed a bright red. “Excuse me. I seem to have gotten carried away.”
“Get carried away, Hargreaves,” her aunt said, handing his binoculars back. “If you can’t get moved by all this, something is wrong with you. Also, I like your safari outfit. I wasn’t sure if I s
hould say anything.”
He had on tailored tan cotton slacks and a tan shirt to match, as well as an oilcloth hat in the Outback style. Although Michaela was no fashionista, she thought it quite dashing on him.
“I thought he’d modeled his outfit after Dr. Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark,” her uncle said, his lips twitching.
“We certainly couldn’t say that about your khakis and straw hat, now, could we, sir?” Hargreaves replied, his mouth lifting in a snarky smile, although surely Hargreaves would never use such a word.
Thank God they were here as buffers. She didn’t know what she and Boyd would be doing otherwise. Maybe fighting… Maybe…
No, she wouldn’t go there right now.
“Clara picked this outfit out with your help, you numbskull,” Uncle Arthur said, making Michaela laugh. “I’m never letting that happen again.”
“Sorry, Uncle, I think you look quite…handsome.” She cleared her throat to muffle her laughter, although she wasn’t the only one chuckling.
“Right! Make fun of the old man. Heck, Boyd, you might as well let me out. That cheetah can have me after she finishes with the antelope.”
“Oh, you old poop,” Aunt Clara said. “Hargreaves is only teasing you because you teased him.”
“Exactly, Madam.”
Her aunt and Hargreaves exchanged a bemused glance, while Uncle Arthur’s glare made it clear he knew they were having some fun at his expense.
“Female serval cat at one o’clock,” Boyd called, distracting everyone.
It struck her again that he was really playing up the guide bit. If the two of them had been traveling alone, he would have stuck to their destination, only diverting if they saw something special. Or if their desire became so powerful they needed to stop for a quickie in the back of the open cab before continuing their journey. Her insides tightened at the thought of sex. God, she missed it. She hadn’t found anyone after their breakup who’d interested her or charged her engines enough for her to go there. No one else had given her the kind of earth-shattering pleasure she’d experienced with Boyd, and better yet, they’d always talked and laughed together. Before, during, and after. That was something she doubted she’d ever experience with another man. Seeing his strong, large hands on the wheel, she had to admit she was more than tempted. Wasn’t it smart of her to admit it to herself? Her inside temperature was starting to boil, and she gave in to the urge to fan herself. The hot air in the open cab was sufficient cover.