The Guardian (A Wounded Warrior Novel)

by Anna del Mar

  “Hellooo!” Sarah called out about three seconds before my door bust open. She marched right in, still clad in her field boots, followed by Lara and Cara. “Dinner time. Come on, Jade. We’re famished.”

  I stowed my camera in my pack and followed them out the door, secretly relieved that I didn’t have to face the dining hall all on my own. Sure, the women weren’t exactly like me, but who the hell was?

  We made our way to the main lodge, where the dinner buffet was already laid out, framed by the conclusion of another gorgeous Serengeti sunset. I spread some fragrant rice at the bottom of my dish, added some scrumptious-smelling stew to the fresh offerings on my plate and joined the girls at our usual table. I’d made some serious progress with my food by the time that Lara got up to get some ice cream and Peter Drake, the bush pilot, plopped down in her empty chair next to me.

  “Hey, Jade.” He planted a kiss on my cheek.

  “How about keeping your lips to yourself?” I wiped his wet slobber off my cheek and met his amused stare. “When did you get here?”

  “Just flew in a load of supplies.” He put his arm over the back of my chair and leaned over my ear. “Are you up for a little get together tonight?”

  Christ almighty. He was completely tone deaf. I stuffed my mouth full and totally ignored him. Peter was attractive, but it didn’t matter. After the schoolroom fiasco with Matthias, I’d recommitted to my imaginary chastity belt. It was firmly in place. I wasn’t hooking up with anyone in Africa.

  Matthias chose that moment to stride into the main lodge. Seeing him after so many days was a shock to my system. He looked good, tired but hale. Best of all he wasn’t limping. The sore I’d caused him must’ve healed by now. My stomach squeezed and the evening turned stifling hot. I pulled on the neck of my T-shirt and fanned myself with the fabric.

  Matthias gave our table a casual glance. His stare slid over me and tripped on Peter. He started our way, but then Claudette came over to greet him and his face broke into the wide smile that made the girls squeal and swoon in their chairs. The familiar way in which Matthias and Claudette related to each other raised my hackles. By the twinkles in their eyes, I just knew those two had slept together. The thought irked me.

  Well…why not? So what if they’d slept together? Most people listened to desire over logic. And why did I feel so irritated by the sight of Matthias and Claudette? Or by the memory of Matthias and Mia, or Mei or whatever the hell her name was? I’d never been prejudiced against women who went after what they wanted. What was my problem tonight?

  The problem was I kept wondering if he’d kissed them with the same enormous passion he’d kissed me at the schoolhouse.

  Claudette led Matthias to the buffet, picked up a plate, and actually ladled the food onto his plate. Couldn’t he just serve himself? I looked around. The eyes of every woman in the joint were on Matthias. Every girl in the hall—including Sarah, Lara, and Cara—was jealous of Claudette, salivating, and not after his food.

  I chewed on my carrots until they turned to mush in my mouth. I told myself that I wasn’t mad about what had happened at the orphanage, or about the confusing emotions that had sent me into a tailspin, or about the fact that, after making out with me, Matthias had vanished from radar and left me hanging from his hook like a snared fish. I told myself I was mad because he’d neglected his job and reneged on our agreement. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of groveling. I had to play it cool.

  From the corner of my eye, I tracked him across the room. He took his plate from Claudette, greeted the director and the high-ranking researchers sitting at his table, and then went over to the corner, where he sat with Zeke and some of his rangers under the breeze of one of the hall’s giant fans. He hunkered over his plate and inhaled his food. He ate steadily, automatically and methodically, like a grizzly in the fall, intent on packing on the calories.

  Sarah nudged me with her elbow. “Are you listening, Jade?”

  “What?” I recovered swiftly. “Sure, yes, I’m listening.”

  “Saturday night,” Sarah announced to the whole table. “We’re having a party, right here, nine o’clock. No excuses. Proceeds go directly to the orphanage, so show up.”

  I smiled at Sarah. I’d told the girls about my visit to the orphanage and I’d convinced Zeke to take a bunch of us out there earlier in the week. Sarah had been smitten by the kids and had returned to the station looking for ways to raise funds to help with the expenses.

  “We’re going to dance all night,” Sarah said. “My man Jamie has a killer dance playlist.”

  “Hell, yeah!” Jamie pumped his fists in the air. He was a research assistant, a Goth all the way down to his black clothes and his tattoos, rough looking outside but as kind as Mother Theresa inside. Best of all, his tastes in music were surprisingly diverse. “Ain’t no dance club better than my playlist, baby.”

  “So be here, everybody,” Sarah said and the entire table cheered.

  The news jumped from one table to the next. Everybody seemed excited about the idea. Everyone except Andrew Stoats, whose sour face looked like he’d swallowed a toad whenever he looked in my direction. I ignored him and concentrated instead on the enthusiastic little crowd at our table.

  “We ought to let Matthias and his guys know about the party,” Sarah said, nibbling on a pineapple wedge.

  “Matthias doesn’t dance.” Peter curled his arm over my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “Ask Cara.”

  “Peter’s right,” Cara said. “The whole year I’ve been here, he’s never come to the parties.”

  “But I do,” Peter said, “and I’ll make sure to be here.”

  Oh, goody. The tomatoes soured in my mouth.

  “Excellent,” Sarah said. “You can fly in the beer kegs.”

  “What are we celebrating?” Lara plunked her bowl of ice cream on the table.

  “Peter will smuggle the beer for the party.” Cara stole a spoonful from Lara’s bowl.

  “Sharing food increases the likelihood of germ transmission by almost a hundred percent,” Lara said, but she dug into her ice cream all the same. “Jade, you’re going to be so happy. I talked to Dr. Schumer. She has agreed to do an interview with you.”

  “Oh, wow. Thanks!” Dr. Schumer didn’t give interviews, but Lara had grit and she’d been at it the whole week. “You didn’t have to do this, you know.”

  “But I wanted to.” Lara’s gaze slid a few tables over. “You really did fix my little problem.”

  Stoats. Yes. The asshole hadn’t come close to Lara since I’d talked to him.

  “Oh, and Dr. Valdez said yes,” Sarah added. “You can travel with the elephant team whenever you want—I mean…” she launched a cursory look in Matthias’s direction. “Whenever you’re allowed.”

  “Wait, what’s this?” Peter leaned forward, chin in his hand, his stare flicking between Matthias, sitting at his table, and I. “The game warden’s wrath is legendary around these parts. Do tell. Matthias put you on ice?”

  “It’s really nothing.” And it wasn’t any of his business anyway.

  “You know Matthias,” Cara said to Peter, scowling in Matthias’s direction. “He’s all about the no.”

  “He is a stickler for law and order, that’s true,” Peter agreed, sipping on his glass. “What an ass.”

  “I can’t believe he’s treating you like that,” Cara grumbled. “You ought to write a really nasty piece about our resident control freak.”

  “Control freak he might be, but he’s still pretty dreamy.” Lara sighed wistfully.

  “And truth be told,” Sarah added, “Jade is not safe until Kumbuyo is not in the picture.”

  Great. Now everybody had an opinion about my private business. “Can we change the topic, please?”

  “Not sure it would work to clear the slate,” Sarah murmured.

  I puffed out a frustrated breath. “Why the hell not?”

  “Because,” Sarah said. “He’s on his way here, right now.�
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  Oh, shit. My gut solidified into a concrete block. I clung to my fork as if my life depended on it.

  “Evening,” Matthias said, speaking to the table in general.

  “Oh, hi.” Lara looked up and wiggled her fingers in the air, but there was nothing particularly friendly about her demeanor.

  “Do you still work at the station?” Sarah demanded in a brisk business tone.

  “Yes,” Matthias frowned. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because we haven’t seen your face around here all freaking week.”

  “Gone.” Lara snapped her fingers. “Poof. Vanished. Inhaled by a spatial vortex.”

  “Very rude.” Sarah added. “Can we help you with anything?”

  For Christ’s sake. I peeled my eyes at Lara and Sarah. What was wrong with the girls? They’d gone DEFCON 1 on Matthias and I hadn’t even asked for an assist.

  I refused to look directly at Matthias. I did keep him within range of my peripheral viewfinder, glancing up through my eyelashes while pretending to be busy with my plate. I felt the weight of his stare a couple of times, but if he was trying to catch my attention, he was shit out of luck. I devoted all my efforts to rearranging the leftovers on my plate.

  “Drake?” Matthias said. “I didn’t know you were staying tonight.”

  “Me neither,” Peter said. “It was a spur of the moment decision.”

  “Where are you staying?” Matthias said.

  “Oh, I don’t know yet.” Peter glanced at me. “Wherever the evening leads.”

  I flushed like the stewed tomatoes on my plate. Great, fantastic, fabulous. I wanted to tell Peter to bug off, but I didn’t want to shoot him down in front of everybody. He was pushing my buttons and not in a good way.

  “Jade?” My name sounded like a scolding coming from Matthias’s lips. “May I talk to you, in private, please?”

  I looked up and he jerked his chin in that stern, commanding way that curled my toes. Crap. “Sure.”

  I put my napkin on the table and pushed back on my chair. I got up slowly, determined not to cave. On anything. A professional relationship, that’s all I needed. I was going to be cool, patient, and non-confrontational. I was going to make my points logically and I wasn’t going to lose my temper. But he better have some good news for me.

  At least I was free of Peter’s bodily encroachment. That’s not to say I was happy about coming into Matthias’s orbit. He stalked out of the dining area and waited for me on the far side of the pool, arms crossed, flinty stare tracking my movements. His gravity pulled on me as if he were a huge planet and I his puny moon.

  “Hey, Jade?” Sarah flashed her best puppy-eyed look. “Ask Matthias to come to the party on Saturday. Better yet.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Ask him to bring his rangers, please?”

  “Oh, geesh, I don’t know about that…” I didn’t want to ask Matthias anything of the sort, but Sarah gave me a pitiful pout and I found it impossible to say no. “I’ll see what I can do. I never know who I’m going to get when I talk to that man, Doctor Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.”

  The girls, in fact the entire table, burst into laughter and off I went, down the steps, across the old pool deck, shoulders straight, chin high in the air, to square off with my jailer.

  13

  Matthias

  She marched over to me with that look on her face, the one that said she was a mean fighter about to step into the ring and beat the shit out of her opponent. She parked three feet in front of me, planted her feet apart, and perched her fists on those perfectly proportioned hips of hers. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “No need to cock your guns.” I lifted my hands in the air and showed her my palms. “Peace. Okay?”

  “Sure.” She smirked. “That’s what you always say, right before you take your shot.”

  “Hell, Jade, what part about the word ‘peace’ don’t you get?”

  “You want peace?” She crossed her arms and lowered her chin, leveling her gaze on me. “Then why are you keeping me inside the station 24/7?”

  So much for peace. I should’ve had a beer with dinner. Or better yet, whisky, neat.

  “I’m trying to do my job.” Trying to keep her alive. “I’ll take you out as soon as practical, I promise.”

  “I want to go out with the rangers on patrols.”

  “Negative,” I said, automatically. “That can’t happen right now. The reserve is not secured. I have several new rangers in training and I don’t want you distracting the patrols.”

  “How am I distracting to the patrols?”

  My lips compressed in frustration. “Jesus, Jade, you know what happens when you’re around, don’t you?”

  “What happens?” she snapped. “Disasters? Poachers? Dead-end hook ups?”

  Holy hell. Time to face the music. “About the other day, at the schoolhouse—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “But—”

  “I said no.”

  She didn’t wanna talk about the one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about. Awesome. I was gonna have to come up with some round about strategy, one that didn’t include my head detonating right here, right now.

  “Don’t forget to ask him,” Sarah called out, and Jade’s cheeks flushed strawberry pink.

  I nodded in Sarah’s direction. “What’s she talking about?”

  “There’s a party,” Jade said icily. “Saturday. Nine O’clock. They want you to come and bring your rangers.”

  I was pretty sure she wasn’t asking me out. “I don’t do parties.”

  “I get that, believe me,” she said. “But maybe, I don’t know, if it doesn’t kill you, perhaps, you could make an effort and break your no-party rule, give your guys a night off, and be nice and sociable to the folks who work here. They’re fine people and they deserve their fun, even if they act a bit silly sometimes.”

  I chewed on that. Maybe she was right. My rangers had been working double shifts. They deserved a little time off. “Are you going?”

  “I’m not sure…maybe…” She looked away from me, a woman in bail-out mode, searching for the closest emergency exit. “Got to go now.”

  I wasn’t ready for her to go, hadn’t said what I’d come to say. “Why do you have to go?”

  “My ice cream is melting.”

  I didn’t even have to look at the table. “You didn’t get any ice cream.”

  Her head snapped up, green eyes wide. “Were you watching me?”

  I saw no point in lying. “Yes.”

  She steadied herself on the wall and glared some more. This wasn’t going the way I wanted. Change of subjects. “Why does Doctor Stoats hate you?”

  She flicked a long-fingered hand in the air and wrinkled her nose at me. “What?”

  “Doctor Stoats,” I repeated. “The way he looks at you. He doesn’t like you. Why?”

  My question took her by surprise. Obviously, she didn’t think Stoats’ glares were evident to anyone other than herself. Well, she was wrong. Stoats didn’t like Jade and his hateful stares had moved him to the top of my watch list.

  “Oh, that. It’s nothing.” She dismissed my concern with a wave. “On her first day here, Stoats demanded a blow job from Lara. I got pissed, so I told him off.”

  How I kept my jaw from breaking from my clench was beyond me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Not a joke.”

  I opened and closed my mouth several times before I could muster the restraint to speak instead of shouting at the top of my lungs. “Why didn’t you come to me right away?”

  She shrugged. “What for?”

  “What do you mean, what for?” I clasped my fists so tightly that my knuckles ached. “How about so that I could do my job and take care of the situation?”

  “There was no need,” she said. “I took care of the situation.”

  “Jade…” I looked up to the heavens, begging for some serious divine assistance or for a bolt of lightning to pu
t me out of my misery. She didn’t trust me. There was an excellent chance she was never gonna trust me. My face and ears were on fire, announcing the outrage that seemed to be my permanent status around Jade.

  “Here’s the deal,” I said, trying to stick to a civilized tone although my voice came out clipped and stark. “When you have a problem at this station, be it a leaky roof or an instance of sexual harassment, you come to me.”

  “Why would I do that when I’m perfectly able to take care of myself and my friends?”

  I inhaled all the air in the Serengeti into my lungs. She really did believe she was alone in the world and I was a piece of shit good for nothing.

  “I’m the game warden here.” I grappled to hold together the shattered pieces of what had once been my control. “It’s my job to keep everything and everybody safe. Sexual harassment will not be tolerated here. If Lara, or any other person for that matter, doesn’t feel safe at this station, if anyone, including you—especially you—has a problem, I need to know.”

  “Okay, all right, take a chill pill,” she said. “Now you know. End of story.”

  “That’s what you think,” I muttered.

  She shifted on her long legs, examining her hands. “Are we done now?”

  “No.” I narrowed my eyes on her face. “I don’t think he’s such a good idea for you.”

  Jade shook her head, trying to dispel the confusion clouding her eyes. “Who?”

  “Drake,” I said. “You’ve been given fair warning.”

  “Oh, wow.” She gawked at me as if I’d just slapped her on the face. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you, I guess, but also stay the hell out of my private business.”

  This was going from bad to worse. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “I’ve had it with your shitty attitude.” Her eyes sparkled with anger. “Maybe you don’t like Peter. Maybe you think you own all the grazing rights around here. Perhaps you feel as if it’s your prerogative to make out with whoever you like, whenever you like, and then move on. Or maybe you can’t stand a little competition in your play yard. It messes with your captive harem.”