Proud Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 2) Read online

  He was quiet a moment, and I thought he was done with the topic. Then, “That’s why I respect you.”

  I took a deep breath. Smoke billowed still in a long cloud behind us. At some point we’d have to take the chance that we’d gained enough time on the fire and could cross in front of it all the way to its northern point and beyond without it catching us and forcing us even further away from the pride. In a sweeping turn, I headed us north, running parallel to the flames and smoke, holding ground on this track against the advancing line of fire.

  The maneuver also provided an excuse for not looking Chris directly in the eye or responding immediately to his honest confession.

  Why was it so much easier to deal with Chris the arrogant idol than with Chris the earnest man? The man who respected me for my honesty when I wasn’t even sure I was being honest with myself.

  Committed now to the path ahead, I risked a look at Chris. “You did a good thing back there. An honest thing. And I respect you for that.”

  Respect. That was an emotion I was comfortable with—an easy emotion to hide behind.

  Because the last thing I wanted to acknowledge was that I might be feeling something more than simple respect for this man.

  For nearly 15 minutes we raced along. Even with the fans on full and staying well ahead of the thick, black clouds of it, smoked air oozed its tendrils everywhere. My eyes smarted from it, tearing in protection. My nose finally quit fighting the onslaught and stuffed up so I could only breathe through my mouth. What it was doing to my lungs I didn’t know. What I did know was that every pore of me, my hair, my clothes, tents and supplies reeked of a smoke that wouldn’t be easily washed away.

  We skirted herds of wildebeests and zebras, swarming before the fire. A dozen ostriches paced us for half a mile. At one point, I had to wait for a herd of fleeing impala, the Rover crawling impatiently forward as they leapt past. How many of theirs had they left behind? How many families wouldn’t make it out? The thought continued to plague me long after we’d gone by them.

  I dodged a rhino that appeared out of nowhere.

  Further on, a pair of cheetahs loped by, all grace and spotted beauty—and obviously bone-weary from their flight.

  How far had they come?

  How far did they still have to go before they’d be safe?

  I could only imagine the ultimate toll.

  Our rumbling tires scared up a flock of guinea fowl, the heavy birds scattering at darting runs, with a handful winging up in panic. I wondered if they knew the flames were closing in. That if they hadn’t yet had the sense to start their escape, that it was already too late for them. Too heavy, too slow, unable to fly far, even less able to fly high, they were doomed.

  “So much life out here on the run today,” I despaired, “yet the veldt has never felt more dead.”

  Chris’ hand on my shoulder was unexpected. A touch of comfort and understanding. A welcome touch. I covered his fingers with mine.

  “How’s our cub doing?”

  “Lying there, just looking around. Amazingly calm, I’d say. Whatever was in that tranquilizer I could use some of it myself.”

  “You and me both.” I returned my left hand to the steering wheel, taking up its death grip again as I navigated around a copse of thorn trees, then veered as a warthog charged straight into our path.

  My body was tight with concentration as I blew out a lungful of probably toxic air. How much longer could I keep this up without running us into some hidden ditch or colliding with a panicking beast? One miscalculation now and the flames would have us.

  Chris squeezed my shoulder. “Easy. You’ve got this.”

  I let his strength and his assurance flow through me, let it steady me as I drove on.

  Finally the flames thinned, then disappeared, and I felt confident enough to turn us east again.

  Two more miles and a herd of eland with their striped shoulders and stately horns later, I braked us to an easy stop. I didn’t think I was shaking before, but I definitely was now.

  “Well, this is stupid.” Embarrassing really.

  “Adrenaline withdrawal,” Chris said. “Don’t apologize. Your cells are in after-shock. You couldn’t stop it if you wanted to. Ride it out.”

  “You’re an expert on this why?”

  There was that incredibly seductive grin again. “I got that same lecture from a bear wrangler in Montana after tracking a grizzly on horseback for half a day.”

  “Why was the grizzly riding a horse?”

  “It…wha—? Oh.” Chris rolled his eyes.

  I smirked back at him, the momentary break in tension exactly what my body needed to calm its shakes. Half-seriously, I asked, “How would your bear wrangler track down a pride of lions, with or without a horse?”

  Chris gave my shoulder another encouraging squeeze. “Probably the same way you’re going to.”

  From the cargo bay, Caesar whuffed his agreement. He seemed to know we were trying to help him; otherwise, where was that level of trust he was displaying coming from? Granted, I had been a constant in his life, filming him and his sister almost from the moment they were born eight months ago. He trusted me enough to eat and sleep while I was near. Enough to venture up within a few feet of me, coming so close once that his just-tufting tail had brushed along the back of my knee.

  That was a far cry, though, from being bundled unceremoniously into the back of a van, hurt and without family support of any kind, and being asked to believe his best interests were at heart.

  Then again, maybe because everything about this experience was so far out of his realm of familiarity, so overwhelming, that the only choice he had was to trust. That, or go mad. My heart still tugged at the devastation he must have felt watching his family abandon him. Knowing without Chris here I would have done the same to him. Not because I didn’t care—because the pride was the whole of my heart—not even because I’d have been operating under the video journalist’s own prime directive of non-interference, but because I physically didn’t have the ability to carry him out by myself.

  Without Chris, I would have abandoned him twice—once to the leopard, once to the fire.

  I didn’t deserve the trust he was showing me now.

  Or the trust Chris encouraged me to shoulder.

  They both seemed to think I was something that every decision I’d made lately was proving I wasn’t: competent.

  Hell, without the pressure of escaping the fire on me and I could think more clearly about the cub’s predicament, I realized I didn’t even know how we were going to get him out of the SUV without hurting him further.

  For now, despite all of Chris’ kind shoulder-squeezing, I was paralyzed, with no clue what to do next.

  To our south, the line of fire snaked off still to the west, leaving an expanse of blackened veldtland. Here at the edge, all was quiet—the animals lucky enough to escape had all fled beyond the point where we sat. And the slower, burrowing beasts wouldn’t emerge till the land had cooled appreciably more.

  “How about we find a place to set up camp?” Chris suggested. “We can’t just drive around forever hoping to stumble onto the pride. At least we’ll know wherever we are, the cub won’t be running off. Not for a while anyway. If we don’t find the pride today, or even tomorrow, it’ll be okay.” Cupping his hand under my chin, he turned my face his way. “We’ll be okay.”

  I nodded, emboldened by Chris’ assurances, his utter confidence.

  Realizing that Chris’ trust—Caesar’s trust—didn’t weaken me.

  It made me strong.

  CHAPTER 18

  Chris

  Dee had been living alone with the lions far too long. Her instincts were good. She kept her head in a crisis. But throw in another person, like me, and she was second-guessing herself in a way I was certain she wouldn’t be if I hadn’t been in the Rover with her. That was her insecurity showing. She needed to be around people more to develop a better sense of herself.

  No. Not just
any people.

  Me.

  She needed to around me more.

  And I needed to be around her.

  Only not the way I had needed Reena around me. Dee kept me grounded the same way Reena had—by telling me no, a word I didn’t hear often these days. That didn’t stop me from trying to get a certain yes from Reena, but it was nothing more than a game between us—she knew it as well as I did. It was a way for us to define our relationship considering we spent half of each year in ultra-close quarters with one another. We had set bounds and habits we were each comfortable with. Although I teased persistently on the outside, we were platonic—and content to be so—on the inside. She was a challenge I didn’t feel the urgent, pounding need to conquer. So I could use her as my ground, my lode star—my friend. One of the few I had, and, I realized sadly, the only female friend I knew.

  Dee was something completely different. I wasn’t content to be around her. In fact, the more I was around her, the less content I was. Nor was it simple lust. I’d been around women who were classic beauties with the machine-sculpted bodies to match. I’d had many of them in my bed even. And while I could pick out names of some I’d been with mainly because of their reputations, none of them were particularly memorable. Short-term satisfaction only.

  Dee, with her admirable if perfectly imperfect lines, who wore no make-up and who kept her beautiful chestnut hair tied back, nevertheless inspired me to long-term dreams.

  To be honest, she inspired other dreams as well. This morning I’d woken up erect and hard, thrashing out in her imagined depths. Passion enflamed, no doubt, by its forbidden temptation.

  Beyond the lust, though, lay something unexpected. I’d felt it today when she loaded the tranq rifle, when she’d gunned the engine into the face of the fire, and as we’d swerved to avoid beasts and flames.

  She was fearless. Decisive, too, when it mattered most. Caring, funny, snarky, though not obnoxiously so. It was that complete mix that was her that resonated so within.

  I wanted her. Needed her inside me.

  But as experienced as I was with sex, I had little knowledge of courtship. I knew a thousand way to seduce the body, but had little clue as to how to seduce a heart.

  Especially a heart so disinterested in the arrogant, egotistical, fake bastard she no doubt thought I was.

  Before I could win her heart, however, there was the not-so-small matter of winning over a lion.

  Not long later, Dee eased the Rover to a stop. A thin, clear stream cascaded out of a hillock of rocks to the south, out of the burn, meandering off to where the land fell away to the north. The grass grew low under a single tall acacia tree.

  “We’ll set up camp here,” Dee said. “Clean water off the rocks, but not a major source so it won’t attract a lot of animals. It’s flat and grassy, so hopefully no surprise burrows or lairs.”

  “Only one thing it’s missing.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me.

  “Our lion.”

  Nodding, she took a deep breath, all of this an obvious stall for time. With slow, unhurried movements, Dee reached into the backseat and retrieved the rifle and dart case from the top of the supply pile, passing each up carefully to me.

  Taking the rifle, she clicked open her door. Caesar didn’t budge. “Blue dart.” She held her hand inside while I opened the case and passed one to her before clicking open my own door and sliding out.

  We circled around to the back.

  “Hey Caesar,” Dee crooned as she went. “We’re coming up behind you, munchkin. Don’t be scared. Or mad. Don’t tear the truck up. Or tear us up. Don’t make me use another dart on you. OK?”

  Inside, the cub swung his tawny head around, ears swiveling to catch her words as he tracked her progress. She lifted the rifle and nodded at me. Camera in hand, I clicked the handle on the hatch. Immediately the cub’s ears laid back. I cracked open the hatch a couple of inches and his lip curled back in a silent snarl. A warning.

  “No making faces, munchkin. Let Chris open the door.”

  Caesar’s ears perked up again at her words. She was the only familiar thing in his world right now, and he responded to her presence, to her voice. Heck, if she ever spoke to me in that sweet, comforting tone, I’d respond too.

  I inched the hatch up a little more. Caesar twisted on the floorboard, definitely favoring his right shoulder and foreleg. Whatever he might do, he’d be awkward and slow at doing it. Which made him only marginally less dangerous.

  He stretched his head out and sniffed at the hatch opening. His tail thumped against the side and window.

  “You’ve got his interest,” Dee told me. “Swing the hatch up and step back. Fast.”

  With a tight grip on the camera, I stepped back toward the tail light, running my hand along the bottom edge of the open hatch door. Taking a deep breath, I lifted the hatch till the hydraulics caught and carried it up the rest of the way while I threw myself on the other side of the tail lights against the Rover’s rear panel.

  Dee held her ground, the rifle pointed dead in the hold.

  When Caesar didn’t explode from the hatch as I’d half-feared he would, I eased the camera around the hatch frame for a clearer view of the cub after getting a quick shot of Rambo Dee.

  Caesar took a swipe at the camera with the paw on his good leg. Unfortunately for him, it was also the leg bracing the weight of his forequarters, so the claws passed far shy of their goal as he quickly dropped the leg back down to keep from pitching forward.

  Dee’s smothered laugh was an echo of my own. In the camera’s viewfinder, the cub’s expression was priceless. Was he more bewildered or embarrassed? I caught myself. Cute and comical he may have looked, he was still potentially dangerous. As with Dee, I didn’t know what was going on in that muddled head of his. Treading softly and carrying a tranq rifle still seemed the prudent way to go.

  “So what now, Caesar?” Dee asked in that motherly, sing-song voice.

  As if in response, he stretched out on his good side and hung his head over the bumper, contemplating the knee-high drop. After a moment, he gave an experimental push with his back feet against the backseat. The rrrip of the vinyl upholstery made him pause only a moment before he pushed again, inching his body closer to the hatch. If he went over all at once, he could tear up his injured shoulder even more. Instinctively, he seemed aware of the danger. His back feet paddled slowly and deliberately, the scrabble of claws sharp and loud, only occasionally catching purchase against the molded plastic of the bay. Still, he made steady progress as his forequarters draped over the hatchway, then the bumper.

  He stretched out his good leg, and when the paw touched the ground, he drew one back foot tight up against his belly where it caught the edge of the hatchway. Dee subtly shifted position, and my own muscles tightened in anticipation.

  With a shove, Caesar twisted his haunches beneath him as he slid for the ground. The jolt when he hit hurt—his head ducked and the pain flinched along his shoulders and back. But he had three good legs under him, and the pain and trauma wasn’t nearly as bad as it would have been if he’d simply tried leaping to the ground the way we were afraid he would.

  “Now what, munchkin?”

  His tail twitched as he took a tentative step away from the Rover. Getting out of the vehicle, though, seemed to have taken all his strength. He lifted his head and either sighted or smelled the stream that flowed about 20 feet away. A fresh wave of smoke billowed over us, though the winds behind helped keep the smoke moving across the new campsite.

  The cub didn’t, after all, appear to want to chew us up. All he seemed to want right now was a drink of water—and the stream seemed to be within his grasp.

  It was painful watching his slow progress, but he made it to the bank, then slid into the water, lying in the shade of our acacia tree, and lapped at the liquid flowing languidly past.

  Dee placed the still-loaded rifle on the floor of the now empty cargo bay and left the hatch open. Moving slowly, try
ing not to frighten Caesar, we unpacked the Rover and set up camp.

  Later, when three tents—mine, Dee’s and the one for supplies—were up in a cozy triangle, the generator was humming along and the satellite receiver had found a signal to the north in the darkening sky, Dee and I sat at the camp stove for a warmed-over dinner of ready meals. Caesar had crawled onto the dry bank, the water a balm to his wounds, and slept now about 50 feet away.

  I sipped on my tea, wondering if it was time to break out the bottle of brandy in my luggage. “Can I see a copy of the itinerary the studio sent you? Because so far this hasn’t been the trip I signed up for.”

  That twerked a reluctant smile from her. I hoped to see another.

  “I’m not sure you’re quite what I signed up for either,” she said. “In a good way.”

  “Yeah, I do have that reputation for being a proper boor. Like that Alistair Cooke fellow with his suit and tie and proper English accent. I disappoint a lot of the ladies when it turns out that’s not me at all.”

  That didn’t elicit the reaction I wanted. Instead of keeping that magical smile that somehow made her appear as beautiful in my eyes as any starlet I’d ever met, she frowned.

  “Not a fan of Alistair Cooke?” I asked gently.

  “Not a fan of a lot of ladies.”

  “Oh.” Dammit. I should have known better. Dee wasn’t a player. Which was one of the things that attracted me to her. Really attracted the me of me, under the lust of me. My problem here was that I didn’t know how to deal with myself, much less women, at that heart-deep level. Glib wasn’t doing it, so how was I supposed to talk with someone like Dee?

  I tried again. “Sorry. Look, I’m glad you think maybe I’m something better than what you thought you were getting when you signed on. Fact is, most of the time, I am that person you thought you were getting. That’s because that’s the person Hollywood’s trained me to be. That’s the person who gets the gigs, makes the bucks. The person that was with you today and is here with you tonight—that’s a guy even I haven’t seen in a very long while.”