Blooming in the Wild Page 0,19
alive. But the injured man was in a lot of pain, with fever setting in.”
He looked around at them. “So we built a raft.”
Matt nodded happily, but Frank raised his eyebrows in respect. “With what, an axe? How long did that take you?”
“No axe. Had my knife and a hatchet in my gear. Didn’t really expect to need the hatchet, but I was damn glad to have it,” Joel told him.
“Lashed the raft together with vines?” Frank guessed.
Joel nodded, pausing to take a drink of his beer. “Fastened everything on the same way, along with our injured man. Tied some handholds, cut some poles to steer with, made a rudder out of a plastic supply bin lid lashed to a pole, and off down the river we went.”
Bella eyed him with reluctant respect. Creating a floatable raft from live tropical wood, most of which was hardwood, with no power tools? The fact that Joel was here now demonstrated his success, but it must have been incredibly difficult. Then she frowned to herself. Why was she assuming he’d been the one to do the work? He might have sat on the bank and whined while the natives did all the work, for all she knew.
“First thing we found,” Joel said wryly, “is that you don’t steer a raft so much as you bounce off obstacles with it. I fell off at least five times myself, and we lost everything except the camera gear. My photographer had that tied on so tight it wasn’t coming loose for anything less than an explosion.”
“The Amidauro River?” Camille said. “Aren’t there crocodiles there?”
Joel’s face tightened. “Yup. There are crocs.” He kicked off one of his sandals and crooked his leg, holding up his right foot. “Got that as a souvenir from that trip.”
Bella gazed in horror at the ugly gouge on the arch of his large, well-shaped foot, marring the white strip of skin left by wearing sandals in the sun. Her stomach lurched as she imagined a huge mouth full of sharp teeth snapping at him, nearly dragging him into the water and under it.
“Holy crap,” Matt said. “I heard they pull you under and drown you.”
Joel nodded. “Wedge their prey under a log and let it, uh, tenderize for a few days before they eat it. Luckily, this one didn’t get a good grip on me, and I was able to climb back onto the raft. But if Al, my photographer, had let go of me…” He shrugged, taking a pull on his beer.
Tanah shuddered, and Cassie’s eyes went wide.
“You’re so brave,” she breathed. Bella snapped out of her own vicarious fear for him. The TV star didn’t need any more female fans oohing and ahhing over him.
“How long did it take you to reach the nearest village?” Frank asked.
“Ten hours. Five times as long as it took us to go up in the jet boat. We reached the main river by dark, and it was a damn good thing. Crocs are more active at night, so they would’ve taken me on one of my little dips instead of just trying to nibble.”
Bella felt a grudging respect for his self-deprecating humor. He hadn’t tried to make himself the hero of the story, anyway.
“Of course, there are tiger sharks here,” Li said. “One of the fiercest predators on the planet. I hear they cruise the shorelines at night, searching for prey.”
Bella stared at him in the firelight, her unease about him morphing into dislike. She had to bite back the urge to snap at him to shut up.
“Not gonna bother us,” Frank soothed. “Nobody go swimming at night, yeah?”
“Not me,” Tanah agreed fervently, and the others laughed.
Joel yawned and shoved himself out of his chair. “Well, if I have to smile for the camera bright and early, I’d better get my beauty sleep.”
“Matt and I had better do the same,” Cassie agreed with complete seriousness.
Joel grinned at her. “Nah, you could stay up all night and still outshine the rest of us.”
She’d better go to bed too, Bella realized. Not for beauty, because she wouldn’t be in front of any cameras, but because she was in charge.
She just hoped she could sleep.
An hour later, the camp was dark and quiet, the only sounds the rhythmic hiss of the surf and faint rattle of palm fronds in the night breeze. As a crescent moon shone from a star-filled sky, Bella grumpily conceded that she wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon. Every time she closed her