by Liz Fielding
‘You’re not a morning person, then?’
‘While you are insufferably cheerful when you’ve got up before dawn.’
‘Sailors catch sleep when they can. It means that I’m good for tea and toast in bed.’
‘Only if you stick around,’ she muttered.
‘I thought we were over that.’
‘Over and so done.’
‘It doesn’t sound like it.’
‘I thought you were here on business,’ she said, changing the subject.
‘This is business. The delay in the meeting is giving me the opportunity to experience everything we have to offer our guests.’ He nodded in the direction of the horizon. ‘It’s going to be spectacular.’
In the few moments that they had been standing there, the sky had taken on an imperceptibly paler edge and, while she was an owl rather than a lark, she gave a little sigh. ‘It always is,’ she said, turning away to listen to the pilot as he began briefing them on the flight, explaining what to expect while in the air, what they would see, how to stand for the landing.
That done, they climbed aboard, men first to help their partners into the basket, which meant that Kit was holding out his hands to steady her as she jumped down to join him.
The other women had managed it gracefully. Feet together, soft knees.
Still half asleep and, yes, definitely not feeling the love at such an early start, Eve caught her heel on the edge of the basket and she fell hard against Kit. He was rock steady, gathering her up, holding her so that her breasts were pressed against his chest, her face tilted up to his. Far too close.
Heat raced through her body, her lips felt hot and swollen and his eyes had the same darkness as the night she’d thrown caution to the winds, inviting his kiss and a whole lot more. The same darkness as when he had kissed her last night.
‘Are you okay?’ He was still holding her, his expression unreadable. The man should play poker.
‘Y-yes. Sorry. You’re right. I’m not great first thing in the morning. Or the evening, come to think of it. Heel in basket, foot in hem, boot in mouth... Thanks for catching me.’ She managed a rather shaky laugh as she eased away from his body. ‘You can let go now.’
‘If you’re sure?’ His hands were holding the tops of her arms, still steadying her. ‘You seem, a little shaky.’
‘There was no one around to force-feed me a croissant.’
‘I’ve got a Lifesaver...’
She took the candy he offered as flame roared upwards, heating the air in the balloon and, as it began to rise slowly from the ground, instead of letting go, he put his arm around her shoulders as they turned to look out across the top of the trees.
‘It would ruin everyone’s day if you fell out of the basket,’ he said, before she could object.
‘It would certainly ruin mine,’ she agreed. ‘It’s good to see that you’re taking an interest in Nymba, despite the lack of wind and tide.’
‘Your enthusiasm is infectious,’ Kit said, the basket rising above the trees just as the sun edged over the horizon, creating long shadows that stretched across the savannah, and turning the river into a winding shimmer of gold.
‘Magic,’ Eve murmured, allowing herself to relax against him, stealing a precious moment of closeness as they drifted silently above grazing zebra and antelope.
‘Magic,’ he agreed, but when she turned to smile up at him, hoping that he was feeling it, too, he wasn’t looking at the world beneath them but at her.
Even as she registered the fact, he took the sunglasses hooked over his shirt pocket, flipped them open and put them on, leaving her with the impression that he was the one hiding.
Someone exclaimed at the sighting of three giraffe, moving majestically along the riverbank.
‘I had a close encounter with one of those yesterday,’ he said, not to her, but to the entire group. ‘I opened the siding on my deck and it was right there. Have you any idea how long their eyelashes are?’
‘Long enough to make an entire chorus line weep,’ Faye said with a sigh and everyone laughed.
After that they all seemed to come together, bond in the experience, exclaiming as they rose high enough to see the curvature of the earth, catch a glimpse of the sun shining on a distant lake, see the range of hills between them and the capital in the west before the heat haze rose to obscure them.
‘They’re blue,’ someone said. ‘In England the hills are blue when it rains. Is it going to rain?’
The question had been addressed to Kit who, as a sailor, seemed most likely to know these things, but Eve said, ‘In Africa the hills are always blue.’
Having established that she was the resident expert, they quizzed her on the animals they saw and she told them the local names: twiga for giraffe, punda milia for zebra, and then, as the balloon neared a rocky outcrop, simba for lion...
The others used a variety of equipment from heavyweight camera gear to their phones to film the pride of lions lazing on the rocks, but Eve was content just to look and so, it seemed, was Kit.
The big cats were watching the herds of antelope grazing quietly below them, undisturbed by the balloon. The male gave a mighty yawn. The herd was safe enough for now.
At the pilot’s urging they all reached out to grab a ‘lucky’ leaf as they swooped low along the river before landing gently an hour later.
The long wheel base four-by-four and trailer that had been following them arrived as they were all helping to gather in the deflated balloon. It had brought along a hamper with champagne and a picnic breakfast of smoked salmon, eggs, meat, cheese and pastries for breakfast.
Kit had been drawn into conversation with the men about yachting, leaving her with the women.
‘You know Kit Merchant?’ Faye asked, clearly impressed.
‘I won a bid for this trip at a charity auction held at the Merchant Seafarer Resort in Nantucket that he was hosting. I had no idea he’d be here.’
‘It’s just coincidence?’ Faye said, rolling her eyes. ‘If you were to ask me, I’d say he has the look of a man who thinks he’s the winner.’
‘No,’ she said, quickly, but knew she was blushing. ‘He’s here on business.’
‘That would be Health and Safety.’ The other woman, Chrissie, smirked. ‘Your health and safety.’ And the pair of them laughed as they fanned their faces with their hands and mouthed, Hot...
Protesting further would only make things worse, Eve knew, but when they returned to the four-by-four the rest of the party scrambled into the two front seats leaving the rear vacant for the two of them. Kit stood back as she climbed, self-consciously, aboard.
‘Have you got enough room up there?’ he asked the others.
Having been assured that they did, he climbed up after her and, as they bounced back to the lodge on barely there tracks, said, ‘Thank you, Eve.’
‘What f-f-for...?’ She yelped as the vehicle hit a particularly deep rut and she was thrown sideways. Kit caught her hand, then put his arm around her.
Faye glanced back, grinning as she mouthed, Health and safety.
Except that this didn’t feel safe. Not at all.
‘For this morning. For being here. This kind of thing is not much fun unless you’re sharing it with someone.’
‘I suppose so.’
She hadn’t shared very much with anyone in the last three years. She met her uni mates from time to time, but her life was so different from theirs. While they were out clubbing, dating, living from one drama to the next, she was reading bedtime stories, watching natural history and cooking programmes and going to bed early to cope with an early-rising toddler.
Sharing even those things would make them special.
* * *
Eve was quiet for the rest of the ride back to the lodge, but that was fine. He was content to sit like this. To know that they had the rest
of the morning ahead of them, then lunch.
He was fairly sure that an afternoon nap was the order of the day after that, a chance to catch up on the predawn wake-up call and prepare for the night-time game viewing, with the chance of spotting a leopard.
He refused to allow his mind to wander into the realms of siesta fantasy, but then another bump threw Eve against him. His hand brushed against her breast as he fielded her and he felt a quiver of awareness ripple through her that answered his own stirring arousal.
She pulled away, and as soon as the vehicle drew into the Nymba compound she jumped down without waiting for help.
‘See you for coffee by the pool, Eve?’ Chrissie called.
‘Great,’ she said. ‘See you later.’
Kit was held by the necessity of helping down the other women, of being a good host, thanking everyone for their company, and all he could do was watch her go.
‘Richard and I are going night-time fishing with the locals this evening,’ one of the men said, claiming his attention. ‘You’re welcome to join us, Kit.’
‘Don’t be silly, Jeff. Kit has far more interesting things to do than go fishing.’
‘Really?’ He looked at his wife in surprise. ‘What?’
‘Clueless,’ she muttered, shaking her head.
Jeff shrugged. ‘Well, the offer is open.’
It was what Eve had suggested. He doubted that Peter Ngei would be in the party, but it would be a chance to prove to the village that, while he was not his old man, he was a fairly decent human being.
‘I’d love to come along. Thanks, Jeff.’
‘Men,’ Kit heard Faye mutter to her friend as she walked away. ‘They are all totally clueless.’
She was right, he thought. He was still wondering why Eve had acted as if they’d never met. He’d heard her reason, but she was a confident woman; if anything, he would have expected teasing. If it really hadn’t meant anything. But she’d run away at the auction, too.
The attraction was still there, as hot and urgent as ever... He’d been thinking that kiss had been like the first time, but he was wrong. That had been all about discovery. This time, when he’d kissed her, it had felt like coming home after a long journey.
At least for him.
Eve had pulled away, but then she had no reason to think that he wanted anything other than a repeat performance. Wham, bam, see you in another four years.
At least this morning, once she’d got over her predawn snippiness, she’d relaxed in the calm of the balloon’s gondola, leaning against him as if it was the most natural thing in the world while they’d wondered at the earth unfolding below them.
In the air, with other people around her, she’d felt safe.
Now they were back on the ground she wanted to put some distance between them.
He could wait.
He knew how to be patient, tacking against the wind, teasing his boat forward even in a flat calm. He’d waited four years to find his Red and the last thing he wanted was for her to cut and run again.
* * *
James was waiting to greet them back at the lodge with coffee, juice and water. ‘How did you enjoy the balloon trip, Eve?’
With every cell in her body vibrating from the ride back with Kit, the ease with which she’d slipped into closeness, Eve had hoped to make a quick getaway and grab a little recovery time.
Caught, she said, ‘It was wonderful. The sunrise was spectacular, and we had a thrilling view of a pride of lions on an outcrop of rocks.’
‘That’s always good to hear. Photographs of the big cats on social media are good for business.’
As the rest of the party joined her she slipped away to her suite, tossed her hat aside and took a very cool shower. It didn’t help and she sat for a while, her entire body shaking with need.
She’d leaned against Kit in the balloon and she’d wanted him to hold her, wanted to feel his skin against hers, to be touched. To assuage the ache to hold him within her body that had stayed with her in the months after she’d left Nantucket.
It had only eased in those early months of motherhood, when sleep had been reduced to snatched minutes and exhaustion had focussed all emotion on a small, demanding infant who’d looked at her with Kit’s blue eyes.
She’d done everything she could to distance herself from the memory, only to be caught out by photographs on the covers of glossy magazines.
His kiss, long moments when the world had gone away and every barricade she’d erected had come tumbling down, leaving her weak with longing, had brought it all surging back.
Kit, with his hand close enough to a nipple throbbing for the stroke of his rough thumb, must have known that all it would have taken was one touch and it would have been that night on the beach all over again.
Instead he had covered her.
Not a playboy, but a ‘parfit gentil knyght’. A man who, when he’d looked for her, had taken care not to do anything that might embarrass her.
He was reckless, careless of his own safety, but he was a much better man than she’d given him credit for.
It wasn’t Kit she was hiding from up here in her suite, it was herself.
This trip had been a chance to relive that last holiday with her mother, reach back to precious memories, but this wasn’t the Nymba of her childhood. It wasn’t even the Nymba of that last summer with her mother.
She had chosen to remember it as a magic time, and it had been, but her mother hadn’t asked her to come, hadn’t wanted her to come. Busy with what had later transpired to be the final details of the project and with papers to write, her mother had encouraged her to go and visit her grandparents in Spain.
It was she who’d insisted on coming, saying that she wanted to help.
Had her mother given in out of guilt for having sent her away? She could have come home after the Nymba project, they could have lived together in the London flat, done the things her friends did with their mothers. But she’d already chosen the dangers of the Central American rainforest rather than her only child.
Eve had, she realised, made a conscious decision not to be like her mother, and yet here she was chasing the past when she could be at home with her daughter, tucking her into bed, reading her stories.
She would have video-called her, just for a glimpse of her sweet face, but they would all be asleep in Nantucket. Instead she took out her photo wallet and vowed to her baby that she would never again be the mother who put her own desires, wishes, above those of her child.
CHAPTER NINE
KIT PULLED TWO loungers into a shady spot at the end of the infinity pool. With her colouring, Eve wouldn’t want to be in the sun.
He sent a couple of texts—one to his dad telling him what he’d done that morning, what he’d seen; one to Lucy asking her if she wanted to stay in Nantucket and, if so, would she be interested in going ahead with the design partnership they’d talked about.
Then he opened a book and waited.
It was about twenty minutes before Eve finally arrived, a long beach wrap over her swimsuit, her face shaded by her hat, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses.
She looked around but all the other loungers were in the sun and Chrissie, clearly a sun-worshipper, called out, ‘Kit sorted you out some shade.’
She waved an acknowledgement but took a breath that was as much mental as physical before joining him. ‘I was concerned you’d get fried,’ he said.
‘That is very thoughtful.’ She sat down, stretched out, produced an eReader from the bag she was carrying. ‘I imagine it’s a problem when you’re at sea. What are you reading?’
He held up his book so that she could see the frozen ship on the cover and the title Endurance.
‘Shackleton. The man who navigated across six hundred miles of the most dangerous sea in the world in an open boat. Just up your street.’
‘You know about the expedition?’
‘Our school houses were named after explorers. Stanhope, Kingsley, Shackleton and Livingstone. Two women and two men. They were hot on equality.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said, waving over a steward. ‘What would you like to drink?’
‘Iced coffee, please.’
‘Two iced coffees, please, Jonah,’ he said, then turned to her. ‘So how was boarding school?’
‘They did their best,’ she said, ‘but it was cold, it rained all the time, there was no freedom, no animals and no mother.’
‘You hated it.’
‘I hated not being here.’
‘I don’t suppose your parents had much choice.’
‘I’m sure that’s how they saw it. It’s not one I’d ever make.’ She stood up, slipped off her robe to reveal the stunning curves only hinted at beneath the shapeless bush gear she’d been wearing. ‘I’m going to cool off.’
He watched her power up and down the pool for a few minutes before he joined her in the water, matching his speed to hers as he swam alongside her.
‘Why are you so angry,’ he asked as they reached the end of the pool.
She stopped. ‘I thought sailors were superstitious about learning to swim.’
‘A superstition they realised was bunkum the moment they fell overboard. Why are you so angry?’ he repeated.
She propped her chin on her arms, looking at the heat haze dancing across the savannah. ‘They say you should never go back.’
‘You regret coming here?’
She sighed. ‘I came here on a wave of nostalgia for some golden past and it’s great catching up with people I grew up with.’
‘But?’
‘Memory blurs the edges. I remember the animals, the freedom, those special moments with my mother.’ She turned away from the view. ‘She was adorable. Everyone loved her and there are sweet moments, but she was always busy, always working. Sometimes she and my father were gone for days. It was Ketty who took me to school, made sure I was fed, who was always there for me.’ She dashed a tear from her cheek. ‘The last holiday here with her is a precious memory, but even then her mind was on the future. All she could talk about was her new project. I was studying zoology so that I could be with her, be part of her life...’