She was shivering uncontrollably, and the tears were brimming.
“And then there were the police investigations and medical examinations. You know they left me alone for three hours before anyone could clean me up so they could at least see if any damage was done. I needed stitches. It was degrading and humiliating … and as I said before, no one ever wanted to talk about it afterwards. It was a huge family embarrassment, like my brother’s car accident – which you probably don’t know about - like Michaela’s baby, and my father paid to keep it off any records and out of the papers, so it wouldn’t be dragged up by prying reporters searching for dirt on me or the Delucci family. So it wouldn’t rise up to bite me later in life. Can you see why I don’t want to tell anyone? Can you understand why I have kept this from you all this time?”
Stratt stared at her in disbelief. “My poor, poor baby.” He said, and his voice was thick with emotion.
“You can hold me now,” she sobbed.
He gathered her in his arms and held her until the shivering and sobbing had subsided.
“Do you think any less of me, now?” she asked.
“Oh, no, Shilo,” Stratt said soothingly, “No, I think more of you, because I understand where you’re coming from now. I have more insight into your whole personality. I’m the one that’s feeling a little sheepish about not seeing the real you through that façade… Your sister had already told me right on the first night that you really were a lovely person, I just couldn’t see it then. Thank God you killed that bastard otherwise I would have hunted him down and done it myself. Men like that are sick and perverted paedophiles. You must not blame yourself. Children are supposed to trust adults… and what you did was purely in self-defense. You don’t think for one minute that he was going to leave you alive to tell the world what he did to you?”
“I went through all that in the therapy… but you are the first person I’ve told this to since then … besides the police, the therapists and my parents. I don’t even think Michaela knows everything – not the whole story, anyway. Fortunately they managed to keep everything out of the papers …It sometimes pays to have rich parents. And Moffat had no family.”
Some animal cried into the night and Shilo started.
“Can we go back, Stratt?” she asked, feeling a little embarrassed by her cowardice, “I’m not going to relax here now.”
“Sure,” he said, “let’s go.”
He pulled her to her feet, wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and helped her get her clothes back on before he ushered her back to the Jeep. Stratt climbed up next to her.
“I’m sorry to have ruined all your plans for tonight,” said Shilo.
“That damned animal did,” Stratt answered, “I wanted it to be just perfect for our last night together.”
“Well, it was perfect and I will certainly remember it as long as I live.”
“And it’s not over yet,” Stratt smiled and bent over to kiss her gently on the lips, “we can still go back to my room and finish what we have started.”
He inserted the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing. He turned it again. It just went click! The car was dead.
“Shit,” he said.
“What’s wrong?” Shilo asked.
“It’s not starting – it’s completely dead.”
Shilo giggled: “Are you sure this isn’t part of your plan to seduce me, Doctor Ogilvy?”
“I’m not that imaginative,” he answered smiling.
Stratt opened the hood, fetched the flashlight and started prodding around inside the engine. Fifteen minutes later and after several attempts, the Jeep still would not start.
Shilo had just been sitting watching him, her mind reliving his gentle caresses, the feel of his body, the yearning of hers for his and his lingering fingers inside her. Impulsively, she climbed out of the Jeep and walked around to where he bent over the engine. She pulled off her jeans and underwear again. She put her arms around his waist. She let them drop to his thighs and then up under his shirt. She caressed each nipple and then moved them down to his legs again. She heard him groan with pleasure and then she moved them to where he wanted her to touch him the most. Then he turned around and leant back against the Jeep.
“Shilo,” he breathed, “What are you doing?”
“Seducing you, I think,” she said.
“Wow!”
“Come,” she said, “this isn’t going to start.”
While he kissed her, she undid his zip, and pulled off his trousers. Stratt put his hands under her tee shirt and cupped each breast in his hands. She pulled off her tee shirt and her naked body was shining silver in the moonlight. He lifted her up onto him, with her legs wrapped around him, and the two bodies merged in the moonlight, and became one.
Shilo spent the remainder of the night with her head in Stratt’s lap, with him stroking her hair. They talked for what seemed like hours of their lives before they had met each other. He told her more about Iris and how she had hurt him. Shilo dwelt on Charles. He spoke about his dream of renovating the lodge. How his mother had decorated it before she died and how his father was loath to redo it because of her memory. He wanted it fresh and modern and even more luxurious. He wanted to build a new hide, which jutted out into the lake so that guests could be right among the animals and water birds. He wanted to build an airstrip so the long drive from the main airport in Johannesburg could be eliminated. He wanted to do so much, but Philip hated change. He wanted to offer more extras, maybe build a spa and a gym, upgrade the restaurant … the lest went on and on.
At three, Shilo drifted off into a restless sleep. As the first glimmer of dawn lightened the sky, Stratt stared down onto her beautiful face: Her rosebud lips, her long lashes casting wispy shadows on her cheeks, her smooth skin. Her hair cascaded over his legs, so soft and thick, and he kept on lifting it and letting it fall. He thought how much he had detested this woman when she had first arrived – and how now he was facing all the emotions of an unwanted separation from her.
Something beautiful had started and yet they were being torn asunder by fate, by circumstances beyond their control. It was just not meant to be. But why? He was not a man who had been with many women. There was Iris, and two before her not worth mentioning from his first year at university… and now Shilo. He had really started to care again. Love again. He could kick himself for allowing himself to make love to her again because it just made everything even more complicated. She was nineteen, and it wasn’t her first time, but she had given herself to him, like a rare gift – and he had gently unwrapped it, marveled in its beauty and savoured it.
Shilo was right: Making love was just part of a magical moment shared by two people, in which a desperate man and a lonely woman had found each other, needed each other. It had felt so right. They could not afford to have any regrets… and the fact that she had revealed her dark secret to him was proof that he was not just any man… he must mean something to her.
*
Shilo was running through the undergrowth. Thorns clutched at her calves and the tall grass whipped her bare thighs. She ran blindly, her only goal was to escape from whatever beast was crashing through the brush behind her. Fear gripped her heart. She was shouting for help, but she was exhausted and her breath came in short gasps. Tears streaked her cheeks. Something grabbed her head, had it in a vice-like grip. Her eyes suddenly opened. Stratt was looking down at her.
“You were dreaming… another nightmare?”
Suddenly her tense body relaxed as she realised where she was and who was holding her.
“I was having a nightmare, Stratt,” she said smiling, “but guess what? It wasn’t Bill Moffat chasing me; it was an animal. Did you hear that? Bill Moffat isn’t after me any more.”
He smiled.
“It’s nearly five,” he said, “They’ll miss us soon. I told Regan where we’d be so they’ll find us pretty quickly. You know what trouble I am going to be in for not bringing the 2-way radio unit?”
In the dawn light, Stratt could see the tracks that the intruding animal had made the night before. It definitely was not a warthog – he knew that already the previous night, but did not want to frighten Shilo. That deep guttural growl could only have belonged to a big cat. The hand-sized tracks confirmed this – a lion. It had been Ramone, the outsider. The lion which no longer hunted with his former pride. The old king, which had since been challenged and lost his position as head of the pride by a more dominant male. It was a dangerous beast. Thank God he had not revealed this to Shilo last night. If a warthog had rendered her so terrified and resulted in nightmares, imagine what the a rogue lion could do.
Regan arrived at their makeshift camp shortly before seven, and soon they had towed the Jeep back to the Lodge. Michaela was in a flat spin. They had been worried sick about Shilo’s disappearance. She had told no one where she was going. They had packed up all her things and were waiting anxiously for her in the lobby.
“Don’t think I’m going anywhere like this,” Shilo said, “I’m first going to take a bath.”
She picked up two of her suitcases.
“I’ve been in the jungle all night with warthogs… and Stratt.”
CHAPTER 10
Shilo sank into the foaming water and closed her eyes. What a night it had been. But she had realised something – she was starting to fall heads over heels in love with this hulking man. Starting? No – she was already in love with him. How could she have let this happen? He was here… now. In Africa. She was going away. She had to go away. First to the city and then back to England … to her parents, her high society life, her rich circle of friends and her jet-set lifestyle, which all seemed so meaningless now. There was no future here with Stratt. There couldn’t be. But, she had felt so safe with him, so deeply attracted to him … she had even trusted him enough, out of everyone else in the entire world, to tell him about her dark secret that she had been harbouring for so long in her soul. He had been her comforter, her protector and her healer … things she would always hold dear to her heart. This departure was going to be the hardest thing she had ever done.
She did not hear the door open softly, or the soundless footfalls over the thick-piled carpet which made their way towards the bathroom. Nor did she feel his eyes staring longingly at her as she lay there in the foamy tub, the eyes that savoured her curves, that lapped up her beauty.
Suddenly through her closed eyelids, she noticed that the morning sunlight, which had been streaming through the bathroom window, was suddenly shadowed. Her eyes fluttered open and there he stood.
“Hi,” Stratt said, surprised at how guiltless he felt about the intrusion. “I just never had the chance to really say goodbye properly with all those people milling around and fussing when we got back.”
He knelt down beside the tub, leaned over and kissed her tenderly on the lips. Her arms came up to embrace him. His slipped his beneath the foamy surface and grasped her tiny waist and lifted her up.
“This is how I want to always remember you,” he breathed.
Impulsively, she pulled him into the tub, clothes and all, as they smothered each other with kisses, and she allowed his hands to slide over her body. For a few brief moments, she imbibed his caresses, his smell, his touch, as he did hers; they felt the unquenchable passion – Then she pulled away, feeling the prickle of rueful tears.
“Don’t,” she sighed, “don’t make this more difficult than it already is.”
He stood up slowly, his clothes covered in foam and dripping wet, and climbed out of the bath. He reached for a towel and tried unsuccessfully to brush the foam from his clothes and rub them dry.
“Oh, Shilo. I have been dreading this moment for days. I never knew it was going to be this hard. Thanks for everything, my love. I’m really going to miss you.”
“Bye, Stratt,” she said, choked with the threat of tears.
He turned to leave. At the door of the bathroom he stopped and turned to face her again and opened his mouth to say something, but he hesitated as if he had reconsidered. He stared at her for some exaggerated seconds – his face a mask of consternation – something unspoken lingering in the air. Then he lifted his hand in a hopeless gesture of farewell, and turned and walked out of the room. She heard the door close behind him.
Suddenly the tears flowed and she wept uncontrollably into her soapy hands… Why was she crying? Were they just rueful tears for what might have been? Or was she leaving part of her soul here in Africa. She chastened herself as she reached for the towel.
*
Corbett was amazed at the wealth of information he now had. He had his physical description in the bag. His killer was someone very wealthy. It was evident from the car he drove, the clothes he wore, the aftershave he used. Bernice had been so sure that it was Davidoff Cool Water she would “stake her life on it.” Wealthy but also well-known. She had been sure she had seen him somewhere before. He had told her he was from London, obviously not thinking he need worry about her as a material witness. He had told her that his girlfriend was away in Africa, he had even mentioned her name… but she could only remember that she had the title “Lady” and a foreign surname like Carducci or Ricci. His field had been narrowed to a sliver… and now it was only a matter of time. Corbett had his men on all the leads he had. He was sure that they would have him before Christmas.
*
As the helicopter lifted off the ground in a swirl of dry, African dust, she spotted Stratt standing next to the broken-down Jeep with two other men, who had their heads beneath the hood. He lifted his hand in a pathetic attempt at a casual farewell, and his face was pinched and drawn. Her fingers fluttered against the glass in response, but he had slipped out of view as the chopper hovered momentarily above the Lodge and then disappeared at speed over the hill.
Stratt walked forlornly back to the main building. His heart was heavy and the future looked very bleak and empty. He knew that this was going to happen. He knew that this romance was destined to fail and end in hurt. He immediately regretted not having more self-control and nipping it in the bud like he had tried to do so many times. What did he have now? Only memories: Precious memories. And inevitable pain. A deep-seated pain in the pit of his stomach … like he had felt after the death of his mother. After the betrayal of Iris. The pain of loss. Irretrievable loss.
“Stratt?” said Rebecca, who sat behind the courtesy desk, interrupting his thoughts, “Lady Delucci said I should give you this.” She held up a neat white envelope with the lodge logo emblazoned on it in embossed gold.
“Thanks,” he said, and his heart beat loudly in his chest as he sensed it was a last message from Shilo
He took the envelope up to his room and lay on his stomach on his bed. He ripped it open and withdrew a crisply folded page with the Malebane Lodge logo and address in the top right hand corner. Her writing was small, cursive and feminine with attractive loops and curves.
“Dearest Stratt,
I’m really sorry I have to go so soon. It feels strange admitting that, as I never wanted to come to Africa in the first place. And then I met you. You taught me a lot, Stratt: You taught me not to prejudge people, you taught me not to be such an arrogant snob…”
Stratt smiled to himself as he recalled several of their heated encounters and especially the screaming match that had ended up in them making love…
“… And more than anything, you taught me how to love…”
He froze. Love? He read on.
“I don’t know exactly how you feel, but I know I was falling in love with you, with every cell of my body. It’s really hard to admit that especially now that I have to leave you. Who knows what would have happened if we had stayed longer.
Come and see me in Johannesburg, if you get the chance. And if you’re ever in London, I’ll never forgive you if you don’t look me up. You can write to me too: My address in England is: ladys@yahoo.com
If you want to visit just ask for Lady Shilo Delucci at Cairnsway i
n Somerset.
There’s so much I want to say, so much that is weighing on my heart, so much unfinished business between us… but I must go. I love you and you’ll always have a special place in my heart.
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