I ran, knowing I couldn’t go back to the clinic. Hasa was at least 15 miles away, through thick jungle since I couldn’t dare the road, but it was my only choice. The camp sat perched on a mountain ridge, so luck laid my path across and down.
A mile or so on, however, I realized I was losing too much blood to keep up my pace for long. When the rude forest abruptly gave way to more civilized plantings, I knew I’d chanced onto one of the dozen or so coffee plantations that had been carved from the mountainside.
I pushed forward, panting with the stress and growing pain as the initial numbing shock wore off. When the rows of trees opened up onto a clearing with a large and modern-looking house on its far side, I breathed silent thanks as I stumbled to the door.
I don’t know what I expected, drained as I was, but the barks of an angry dog here on a coffee plantation in the middle of Africa somehow wasn’t it.
Less expected still was the exquisite face of the woman who opened the door and seduced me into her life.
CHAPTER 3
Kayla
The bright orange collar Gus wore was foremost to identify him as a claimed pet so no one would shoot him when he wandered the wild mountain slopes. I put it to its secondary use when I grabbed it before opening the door. Not that I could hold Gus back if he was determined to attack—he very nearly outweighed me, and he for sure out-muscled me.
Luckily for the stranger slouched against the wall, Gus allowed me to control him, ratcheting down the deep challenge of his barking to a guttural whimper when he could at last see the intruder. I could have added a “stand down” command to further reassure him, but I wasn’t reassured enough myself yet to take any further edge off my protector.
Eyes on the bristled back and bared fangs of my 50-kilo companion, the stranger pushed away from the crutch of the wall to where I could clearly see two important points: He was in pain and unarmed. When his eyes followed from my arm up from where my hand gripped Gus’s collar to my shoulder and then to my face, I could also clearly see the firm chisel of his jaw and cheekbones framing features both rugged and striking. My breath seized in my chest. We got few enough white visitors out here, and certainly none who looked like him.
When I caught myself staring, heat stung my cheeks, although I was pretty sure the healthy tan on top of my normally deep olive tones wouldn’t show a blush easily. Besides, the mothering instinct kicked in strong when I forced my eyes from his face to points lower where sticky blood covered the front and side of his blue cotton shirt.
Whatever his other circumstances, he was in pain and needed help. “Who are you?”
“Mark—Mark LeSabre. I’m a doctor, an American. Do you know you have hidden militia units out here and helicopters and men with rifles? I thought I left that kind of gang and drug warfare behind in the States. What the hell?”
I frowned at the mention of helicopters, remembering the one I’d seen earlier, but my ears perked at the word doctor. I’d also been keeping up with the news. The fresh start promised by the upcoming elections had a dark and growing shadow over them, and suspicion pricked at me. I must have communicated my unease to Gus because his anxious whine turned into a chest-deep growl. “The incumbent regime doesn’t want to be ousted and the opposition party wants to be sure they are. But it’s internal, political. A foreigner shouldn’t concern either party unless he’s here to abet one or the other. Is that why you’re here, Dr. LeSabre?”
The surprise in his eyes looked genuine. “Abet? No! I didn’t even know where the Doctors Making a Difference folk were even sending me until two weeks ago.”
“So that”—I nodded toward his blood-stained shirt—“was what, a hunting accident?”
“Look, all I know is a team of guys in red armbands—the Democrats, right?—came to the clinic and kidnapped me off to their camp where they threatened to force me to go to Hasa with them. That’s when the Republican dudes in a helicopter came charging in. I took the opportunity to escape, but apparently my hosts weren’t as distracted as I thought.” He glanced briefly down to his lower chest where he’d folded a hand over his ribs.
I scanned the hill above. “Are they following you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But they could be?”
“I didn’t hang around long enough to find out what any of them were doing next.”
“Is there anyone else at your clinic?”
“Just me. I signed on for a month. My replacement won’t be here for another two-and-a-half weeks.”
“You’re awfully free with your information, Dr. LeSabre. Did it never occur to you I might be sympathetic to the men who shot you?”
He blinked. “I don’t even know for sure which side did shoot me. Does it matter—to you?”
I shrugged, deliberately non-committal. “Whose side are you really on?” I stared the question into his heart.
“Yours.”
I almost smiled at that. My coloring, hair and features were decidedly not African, nor were they white either. Maybe he thought my feelings were as mixed as my heritage, but he’d be wrong. My allegiance was strong—to Zahur. Whatever became of Ushindi was mere fortune in the wind, so long as my plantation and all who worked it endured.
In the end, I nodded my answer to his unspoken plea.
He was wounded and displaced, a stray like any number of others who’d found their way to me—gorillas, chimps, bush babies and more. I couldn’t turn him away any more than I could walk away from any stray in need that came my way. Not that I went out looking for strays—it seemed Fate threw more than enough in my path as it was. I had a choice: ignore them or shoulder the responsibility. I chose to be one of the ones on the other side of the balance scale from those who hunted, poached and exploited Africa’s resources. To be a caretaker of its land, its animals and its people—all people.
Caretaker didn’t mean pacifist and pushover, though. Caretaking often meant making the hard choices.
I kept that in mind as I gestured him inside. This man, with the jaw-dropping build and eyes as deep with mystery as the very heart of Africa was just another stray.
The only difference was this one was a skilled stray. A fact I remembered as the jeep horn beeped just as I was closing the door.
My newest stray stabbed a startled and accusing glare at me.
“My foreman,” I quickly explained. “His wife is sick. We were—” A strangled half-laugh escaped despite my best efforts to smother it. The coincidence was mambo, just too crazy. “We’re supposed to be on our way to your clinic. Come on, we’ll go down together.”
The doctor shook his head. “I deliberately didn’t head back there. If the militia still wants me, that’s the first place they’ll go.”
“All right. Then we’ll go to Hasa.”
“On the road? In an open jeep?”
I exhaled sharply in frustration. “What do you suggest then?”
He winced, and I recognized it was from pain not my retort.
“Let me take a look at your foreman’s wife before we make any rash decisions.”
Jamal was halfway up the wide veranda when the doctor and I stepped out. With a stern, “Stand down,” thrown at Gus, I lifted a knee to stop him following as I shut the door. Immediately his nose was against the sidelight, keeping watch on me, ever my guardian.
Jamal was obviously feeling protective himself. His hand curled over the butt of the revolver he wore always at his hip.
“Sawa-sawa,” I assured him. “This is Dr. LeSabre. The clinic doctor.”
Jamal eyed the stain of blood on the doctor’s scrubs with suspicion. It only occurred to me I had no proof of the story the stranger told nor anything to validate his claim of being a doctor other than my own intuition. And it was telling me there was nothing false about him. But even if I believed he was a doctor, did I have cause to believe he was a competent one?
In the jeep, Lisha stretched out in the back seat where Jamal had made her comfortable on a pile of blankets and wit
h a pillow tucked under her tightly braided hair. She tried to return my smile, but couldn’t quite manage as a wave of pain crashed over her.
When I moved aside to let the doctor get a better look, my smile faltered altogether. Maybe it was his own wound keeping his bruised emotions so visible in his dark eyes, but the deep sadness in his expression slammed right into my heart.
I caught one muttered word, “telangiectasia,” before he turned away without so much as touching her.
Jamal and I both crowded him, his profound sadness becoming our gathering fear.
“I just saw this,” he said at last. “In the camp over the ridge.” He laid a hand on Jamal’s shoulder and the look of compassion that overcame him was almost as heartbreaking as the tears that sprang to my foreman’s eyes when the doctor softly confirmed what Jamal already knew deep down. “It could be Subs.”
“You can’t be sure,” I whispered.
“You’re right,” he agreed, “but the odds of finding the same unique symptom in two people in the same locale on the same day for it to be anything else are pretty astronomical. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Then there is nothing to be done?” Jamal’s hollow voice sent shivers of helplessness through me.
“Take her to Hasa. They can make her comfortable. Maybe even try new drugs that might make a difference. We’re still learning about this disease, and it’s possible she can help doctors learn how to fight it. She can still do good, and you can do good for her. Take her to Hasa.”
“It will cost—”
I slid a 10,000-franc note into his thin and shaking hand, then closed my fingers briefly over his. “Give them this to start. I’ll bring more later, once she’s settled.”
“You’ll come soon?”
I nodded toward the doctor. “Once he’s cleaned up and settled here, yes, of course.” I crossed to the back of the jeep, leaned over the half-door, and kissed Lisha gently on her forehead, dismayed at the fever gathered there. “Wana nguvu,” I told her. Have strength. Where I was going to find that strength myself I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure Jamal would ever find it again, if his utterly blasted look was any indication. What was it like to love and revere another human being so much, I wondered.
“Are you okay to drive?”
Jamal nodded, absently as though he might not have understood the words, just the tone. I placed my fingers under his chin and turned his head so we were looking directly into each other’s eyes, and repeated the question.
He took a shuddering breath and nodded again. This time at least I knew it was a conscious response.
On a whim, I stood on tiptoe and placed a kiss on Jamal’s forehead in the exact same spot I had kissed Lisha. “For strength,” I echoed. “For you both.”
Nodding over and over, as though the gesture provided him courage only as long as he didn’t stop, Jamal slid behind the wheel and sped away.
“She’s going to die,” I said.
“Probably,” came Dr. LeSabre’s gentle agreement.
But he had misunderstood me.
“Going off to the city. To a strange hospital. Away from her children. Away from her home. The decision made for her.” I turned wide eyes on the man beside me. “Why is going to die better than staying to die?”
He opened his mouth as though to say something.
He earned my respect when he closed it with a thoughtful shake of his head just before his own pain and stress and blood loss caught up to him and he swayed dangerously under the heat of the sun.
CHAPTER 4
Mark
Hindsight told me I should have grabbed my medical bag when I’d fled the rebel camp. Had I known I’d need heavy-duty pain meds so immediately, I wouldn’t have left those behind.
“If you’re staying, we need to get you inside,” my benefactor said, her tone brisked with worry for her friend, for me, perhaps for Ushindi in general.
Trying to distract myself from the pain, I focused on the smooth lines of her heart-shaped face, the olive-tan coloring of her skin that seemed as much natural as sunbaked in, and the moody depths of her espresso-washed eyes.
When she turned away, I followed her across the planked veranda, losing myself in the soft sway of her hips. When she laid her hand on the door latch, an anxious whine and the scrabble of big claws on hard floor drew my attention instead.
“Sawa-sawa, Gus,” she seemed to assure the beast as she eased her way in and took its collar before gesturing me inside. I was almost through the door when a bundle of black energy swept past, bumping against me as it launched itself at my host with a screech.
“No, Jengo.” The woman’s voice was stern as she put her free hand on the shoulder of the young primate attempting to scale her legs.
She threw me an apologetic look as I eased around the three pairs of eyes tracking my progress.
“I’ve lived on a university campus most of my life,” I told her as way of excuse for my trepidation. “I don’t have much experience with dogs or”—was I really about to say it?—“monkeys.”
“Gorilla,” she corrected. “Jengo’s still a baby—a toddler—and pretty much mvulana mama ya—a mama’s boy.”
With a face only a mother could love, I thought as I stared at the deep folds of skin under his impossibly huge eyes and the wrinkle of his wide, flat nose. “Quite a family.”
She smiled. “This is only half of it. The boys. Wait’ll you meet the girls.”
I arched my brows her way.
“Later,” she said, releasing the collar she still held. “After we get you cleaned up.”
The big black-and-tan dog padded obediently beside her, the gorilla’s hand in hers as she led the way to the kitchen, an open, airy room dominated by two large picture windows that looked out over the planted rainforest. I collapsed in one of the chairs around a small round dining table. The gorilla swung up into the chair next to me and the dog sat in the middle of the kitchen while the woman rattled efficiently about in the cupboards and refrigerator. Just as efficiently, she dropped a treat between the dog’s expectant jaws as she walked by, handed the gorilla a mango, pressed a liter bottle of cold water into my hand, and dropped a plastic vial of pills on the table beside a bottle of… I peered at the label.
“Penicillin?”
A sterile package containing a needle and syringe fell on the table beside the bottle.
She shrugged. “We’re pretty isolated out here. I like to be prepared. It came from a veterinary supply catalog, but I’m guessing your ribs won’t know the difference.”
I checked the label on the pill vile. “Percocet?”
“That…didn’t…come from the catalog. Don’t ask. Just take.”
“Thank you.” I swigged down a couple of the pills and drew up a syringeful of penicillin while she busied herself getting a bowl of soapy water, a washcloth, a clean sheet and scissors.
Dried blood plastered my shirt to the wound. She handed me the wet washcloth and I held it to my side. “You haven’t told me your name.”
“Kayla. Van den Berg.”
“German?” My eyes must have registered my surprise because she smiled.
“Dutch. Ushindi was part of the Congo until 2003. Well, the DRC—the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was a Belgian colony through much of the last two centuries. The Republic of the Congo to the west was a French colony. It’s a terribly complicated—and bloody—situation. But my baba was Belgian, from a long line of Belgian aristocracy who went out of favor in the Second World War. But by then, Baba’s grandparents and great grandparents had made Zahur their home.”
From context, I figured out baba meant father. But, “Zahur?”
“That’s what they named this plantation. It’s Swahili for blossom. They wanted a name that fit culturally.”
“But you don’t look—” I caught myself. “I’m sorry. The Percocet must be kicking in.”
She laughed, an easy sound that held not the slightest bit of rancor at what she could have taken as an insult
. “And what, it’s making you hallucinate?”
“No, I didn’t mean—what I meant —” Damn, no matter what I said to explain my intent I was screwed. She was going to think me an insensitive jerk. “You’re beautiful. Stunning even. I just didn’t expect —” I couldn’t leave well enough alone somehow, and just kept digging myself in further. I figured now was a good time to strip off my shirt, rip it off the wound. I deserved that pain right about now.
Gritting my teeth, I gripped the hem. Soft hands covered mine, moved them aside. Dark eyes stared straight into mine. With a quick tug, she jerked the shirt up, over the wound. The pain wasn’t nearly as intense as I thought it would be. Until I tried lifting my left arm so she could pull the shirt away completely. Instead, I had to shrug my right arm out awkwardly and then let her work it off my left.
Just more awkwardness to add to an already awkward situation. Maybe, though, it was enough to distract her.
We both examined the bullet trail. It’d actually gone through, slicing the intercostal space between the sixth and seventh ribs, back to front. One or both of those ribs was possibly shattered. And the cartilage was definitely a mess. Two inches in and up and my lung would have been involved too. As it was, painful though it might be, I had been very…very…lucky.
I leaned to my right, and Kayla took the needle off the syringe and dribbled the penicillin over the wound. As gently as possible, she pushed the rounded nub of the syringe into the bullet hole from the front and squirted the penicillin in as far as it would go, repeating the same from the back as well. Then she cut long strips of cloth from the sheet and wound them around my chest with warm and comfortable hands.
It occurred to me I hadn’t had to instruct her in any of this. Under the circumstances, she did exactly what I would have done, as competently as I would have done it. As competently as any medic in the field would have acted.
With a safety pin she found in a kitchen drawer, she pinned the bandaging in place, then backed off a step to eye it over. I got the feeling it wasn’t just the bandaging she was inspecting.
Noble Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 3) Page 2