by Liz Fielding
It had been weeks since he’d felt like smiling but he did his best to keep it out of his voice as he said, ‘Would you care for honey with your tea, Miss Eve?’
‘Yes, please. Just one spoonful.’
He added the honey, handed her the cup and then, done with butlering, picked up his coffee and leaned back in his chair.
Eve hadn’t asked why he was here, which suggested she knew, but there was no rush.
This was a good moment and he didn’t want to spoil it by saying something stupid.
CHAPTER SIX
EVE STIRRED HER TEA, not at all sure what to make of this turn of events.
The last few moments had felt very much like flirting. In the darkness, the intimacy of the moment, she could imagine spilling out the truth and that, somehow, it would all be okay.
She glanced across at Kit. The shadows threw his face in contrast, emphasising the hollows in his cheeks, the dark smudges beneath his eyes. His life was in a chaos and she knew what that felt like. He’d once seen that in her, and he’d come to sit with her so that she was not alone. Now she longed to go to him, kneel by his chair and stroke his forehead, temples.
Now. Now was the moment...
‘Kit—’
He started as she said his name. ‘Sorry... Being your butler has been the better part of my day. I asked for a few minutes and I’ve overstayed that, but I need your help, Eve.’
What?
‘I’ve seen how the people here respect you. How friendly you are with Peter Ngei.’
The moment had turned in an instant from unspoken intimacy to weird. Had she got it completely wrong?
‘The respect is for my parents,’ she said, hauling herself back from the brink of making a fool of herself. ‘And Peter and I go back a very long way.’
‘James told me that your parents lived here. Before the lodge was built.’
‘You were talking about me?’ she demanded.
‘I really was concerned when you didn’t return from your canoe trip,’ he said, ‘but when I raised my concerns with James, he explained that the village had arranged a surprise for you.’
‘Yes...’ It had been a day for surprises. ‘I had the shock of my life when I realised that it was Peter at the business end of the canoe.’
‘He came for you himself?’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘Clearly I saw a different side of him.’ It was true, he did need her help to smooth over the mess he’d made of his initial meeting with Peter Ngei. The fact that it gave him the perfect excuse to spend time with her was a bonus. ‘James told me that you lived here when you were a girl. That the lodge was built on the site of your parents’ boma.’
‘You two did have a nice chat.’
‘It wasn’t... James and I were talking about the history of the place.’
‘Did he tell you that it was my mother who called it Nymba?’ she asked.
‘No. What does it mean?’
Eve, who had anticipated a difficult conversation about the future, instead found herself drowning in memories. Not all of them happy.
She stirred the melted honey into her tea. ‘It’s a Swahili word for home.’
‘It must have been a shock when you saw your home at the auction.’
‘This wasn’t my home,’ she said. ‘This is a hotel built where our house once stood. There was a thick thorn fence around it to keep out predators. We had a lot of orphaned animals.’
‘James told me about the baby elephants your parents reared, that the guests can walk with.’
‘Daisy and Buttercup.’
‘They’re names for cows.’
‘They were cow elephants. My dad’s idea of a joke.’
‘They say elephants never forget. Do you think they’ll remember you?’
‘Come with me and you’ll see,’ she said, her smile so unexpected that for a moment it took his breath away. ‘That’s if you have time. I imagine this is a business visit? Here today, gone tomorrow?’
‘That was the intention,’ he said. ‘I’m here for the annual meeting with the Nymba Trust, who are our partners here. Unfortunately, Joshua Ngei is in hospital and, although his grandson runs the trust now, it seems that the meeting can’t go ahead without him.’
‘Joshua is the senior village elder. It’s a question of respect.’
‘Stuff you know and I’m having to catch up with, but that’s okay. It gives me a chance to get to know the place.’ Get to know her. He took a mouthful of coffee, then said, ‘James said that your parents were studying the local elephant population.’
‘Yes. I had hoped to follow in their footsteps, but life got in the way.’
‘Life has a way of doing that,’ he said.
‘There are compensations.’
‘Are there?’ He sounded doubtful. ‘What do you do, Eve?’
‘I teach biology to high school students.’
‘And your parents? Where are they now?’
‘My father left to head up a new project in Sumatra. My mother stayed on here for a while. I came back that last summer and worked with her. I thought I’d be doing that until I joined her permanently, but then she left, too.’ She looked at him. ‘I had no intention of bidding at the auction, but when I saw Nymba on the screen it called to me.’
‘Why did she leave? Your mother?’
Eve shook her head. ‘My father had an affair with his research assistant. She went with him to Sumatra. This was his project and without him the money dried up. My mother moved to a new project in Central America. She was deep in the rainforest when she caught a fever and died before she reached the nearest hospital.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That goodbye has been said. This...’
He said nothing, waiting for her to find the words.
‘When I left that last time, I thought I’d be returning at Christmas. Instead I stayed with my father’s parents in England. I broke my leg just before Easter so I had to stay with them again. My mother was supposed to go to Nantucket that summer, so I went there, but she was setting up the project in Central America and was too busy.’
‘What about your father? Why didn’t you visit him?’
‘He had a new research project and a new woman in his life. The last thing he needed was a stroppy teenager underfoot.’
‘That must have been tough.’
‘There were other girls at school who were going through the same thing.’
‘That doesn’t make it better.’
No. And it was why she’d given up her dreams and chosen teaching. To be there after school and during the holidays for Hannah.
‘I’m sorry, Eve.’
She waved a hand. Today had been very emotional and this wasn’t helping.
Kit had looked her in the face and, after all, hadn’t recognised her. It should have been a relief but, having got what she wanted, she was suddenly, stupidly furious. With her mother for dying, for losing the home she’d loved, the life she had dreamed of, and with Kit for being so blinkered.
Brown hair? Was that all it took?
‘Why are you here, Kit?’ she demanded. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘I’m sorry. I just wanted...’ He lifted a hand in apology, clearly taken aback by her fierceness. ‘My dad loves this place. My parents stayed here, on a second-honeymoon trip. All our other resorts are on the coast, the sea is our business, but they fell in love with Nymba. The lodge was doing well and I can see why. The setting is magnificent. What the trust badly needed was a partner with investment capital so that they could not only expand, but upgrade to meet the expectations of the luxury end of the market.’
‘A match made in heaven.’
‘So it would seem. Dad comes every year for a week to have a meeting with the Nymba Lodge Trust and relax. This year,
as you know, he can’t come, my brother is up to his eyes in the annual audit, so I stepped in.’
‘So, have your meeting and relax.’
‘I thought it would be a good idea to talk to Peter Ngei before the meeting, to make sure there were no problems. James arranged for me to see him this evening and it all went downhill from there.’
Eve frowned. Peter had been full of his plans for the village, the school extension, Mzee’s party, but hadn’t mentioned anything about problems with Merchant.
‘What happened?’
‘I was distracted when he arrived and he was expecting to meet my father, not some playboy sailor.’
‘Playboy sailor?’ Eve, well aware that she had been the distraction, felt a stab of guilt. ‘That’s an outrageous thing to say.’
Except wasn’t that how she’d always thought of Kit? Ignoring the dedication, the skill it must have taken to achieve so much in one of the world’s toughest, most dangerous sports.
Judging him instead on the covers of gossip magazines.
‘Did he really call you that?’ she asked.
‘A blue-eyed playboy sailor were his exact words.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s water off a duck’s back, Eve, but I’ve got to get this right. I’ve a lot of ground to make up with my family.’
‘It’s true, then, about the rift?’ He glanced at her. ‘It was all over the media just before you went on that round-the-world yacht race.’
‘Dad was furious with me for entering. He said it was time I stopped messing about in boats and started using my name to support the business.’
‘That was harsh. You must have already brought an enormous amount of publicity and prestige to the resort. I saw your gold medal beside your photograph in the entrance hall.’
‘I gave it to him. I brought it back from London and gave it to him. He thought that was it, that I’d come home, go to college, join Merchant and wait for him to retire in twenty years...’
‘Instead you did it again in Rio.’
‘A two-hander that time, with Matt. After that there were other races, but when I announced I was taking part in the single-handed round-the-world yacht race he totally lost it.’
‘Maybe he was scared for you,’ Eve suggested, remembering how she’d felt watching the yachts put out to sea for the hardest race in the yachting calendar on the evening news. Up to sixteen weeks alone, not touching land, storms, whales, icebergs...
How she’d felt when he was missing.
‘Imagine how you would have felt in his place,’ she said.
‘I had a taste when I got the phone call from Brad saying that Dad was seriously ill, but when you’re young you think you’re indestructible.’ There was a long silence and she knew he was thinking about Matt Grainger. A year or two older than him, with everything to live for. Eventually he stirred, looked at her. ‘I told my dad that I wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of my life showing my face at resorts and shaking hands with the guests like some trophy he’d won.’
‘No one can hurt you like family,’ she said.
‘You’ve been there?’
‘Not quite like that. Your dad wanted you to be with him, mine didn’t even bother to come to my mother’s funeral. I know they weren’t married any more, but I asked him to come. I needed him there.’
She’d needed someone.
What she’d got was Kit.
And Hannah.
‘When he didn’t come, I told him I no longer considered him my father and blocked my bank from accepting any more direct transfers from him.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Nothing that made any difference to me.’
‘And your grandparents?’
‘They moved to Spain.’
‘In case you made a habit of breaking limbs?’
She smiled as she was meant to. ‘Something like that. I’m so sorry you lost your friend, Kit.’
‘He was my sailing brother. I should have seen what was happening to him. Instead I was on the other side of the world talking to race sponsors...’ He was looking out into the darkness. ‘Lucy went to give him a shout when he didn’t turn up for training one morning. She found him lying on the floor, stone cold, a needle in his arm.’
‘Poor woman,’ Eve said, thinking of the tenderness with which he’d held Lucy... ‘You are both doing a lot to raise awareness, raise funds. And you turned up when your family needed you.’
‘And I’m still making a mess of it.’
‘You’re here when you’d rather be at the far end of the world at the helm of a multimillion-dollar racing yacht.’ Winning another trophy.
Had her judgement been way off all round that summer? She hadn’t been in the best place. Throwing herself into the arms of a total stranger had been totally out of character.
But then neither had he.
Forced to choose between his chosen career and his family business, he’d set off on that round-the-world race determined to prove something, even if it killed him. And it very nearly had.
There had been times when she’d wondered if it was just Kit’s bad luck to be in her way when she’d lost it that night or whether any reasonably attractive man would have done.
She was about to turn his world on its head; the least she could do was try and help him.
‘Peter is a decent man,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should suggest a fishing trip, sit quietly for a couple of hours, drink a couple of beers... You do know how to fish, don’t you?’
‘You put your toe in the water and wait for a bite?’
‘Only if you’re fishing for crocodiles.’ She sighed. ‘I’m not sure that I can help, Kit. The last time I saw Peter was the day my mother drove us both into the city. I was fourteen and going back to boarding school. He was just starting his second year at university. He was charming, glamorous and I had the world’s biggest crush—’
There was a rattle of china as the teapot fell to the floor and smashed, and Kit let out an expletive.
‘Sorry... I got a lapful of coffee.’
Eve leapt up to grab a towel from the pile stacked beside the bath, handing it to Kit as he abandoned the wet chair.
‘Look out!’
His shout came too late as something that had been lurking beneath the towel leapt to her shoulder where, unless she turned to face it, all she could see was a dark shape.
She screamed as it brushed against her neck, her cheek, reduced in seconds from a grown woman who could handle anything to a gibbering wreck.
Kit knocked the creature away, sweeping it off the deck and out into the dark, and then gathered her in as she sagged, trembling, against him.
‘Shh... It’s okay...it’s gone... I’ve got you...’
It had been seconds, it had felt like years, but his arms were around her, supporting her as she clung to him.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked. ‘Did it bite you?’ She whimpered. ‘Can I check?’
She nodded into his chest, not moving as he lifted her hair to examine her neck. ‘I can’t see any marks or swelling. Let’s just...’ He eased back her robe to expose her shoulder and went very still.
‘What is it? Have you found something?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his thumb grazing her back a few inches below her shoulder, ‘but it’s nothing to worry about. Just a butterfly.’
‘Oh.’ Her stomach clenched as she realised what he’d found, and she forgot all about the hairy-legged spider. ‘The stupid things you do when you’ve had one glass of Prosecco too many...’
‘Oh?’
‘It was a post-graduation party. A group of us decided we should mark the occasion with a tattoo.’
‘And did you all go for a visual pun?’ he asked, ‘or was that just you? Only that looks to me like a red—’ he turned from his examination of her shoulder to look straight into her eyes ‘—
admiral.’
‘Kit...’
‘Don’t! Don’t say a word... Not until I’ve done this.’
She thought he’d been holding her close, but this was a whole new level of intimacy and she knew she should stop it but, even as her brain was scrambling for the word she needed, his mouth came down on hers like lava on ice and the only word hammering in her head was yes, yes, yes...
CHAPTER SEVEN
RAIN AFTER DROUGHT, feast after fasting, wind after a flat calm...
Kit was going to wait, give Eve time to decide when, if, she ever acknowledged what had happened between them, but the butterfly changed everything.
She might have disappeared after their night together, but she had not forgotten. She did not want to forget, or why would she have had a permanent reminder inked into her skin?
And her response to him was not one of reluctance. It was everything he’d ever dreamed of during long nights alone because, despite the many lovely women he’d met, who’d smiled, saying yes with their eyes, no one else would ever do.
He’d lost count of the times he’d turned at the glimpse of red hair on a slender whip of a girl, but it was never that pure red. Never the right girl. And in the years that had passed since that unforgettable night in his cabin, she had matured into an infinitely desirable woman.
Was the woman as impetuous as the girl he’d met on the beach?
The first time had been frantic, clothes coming off as they’d raced up the steps to the cabin, already naked as he’d kicked the door shut, tearing open protection with his teeth.
They hadn’t made it to the bedroom, let alone the bed. She’d been on him, desperate for raw physical contact, the primeval heat of a man inside her. It had been explosive, blow-your-mind sex that had left them breathless, staring at each other in stunned wonder.
And then he’d kissed her.
The second time had been dreamlike; a slow, sensually devastating exploration. Tasting, breathing in the scent of her skin, discovering where touch was rewarded with a moan of pleasure, how to bring that moan to screaming pitch.
He’d never felt so powerful or so humbled...