many safaris have you been on?”
The guttural sound of his voice curled into her chest, the intensity in his ice-blue eyes cutting her to the quick. But something in Dalilah hardened as she saw where he was going with this—he was aiming for his switch again, seeking something to dislike in her, a way to shut her out.
“A few,” she said guardedly.
“And before you arrive at the safari destination of your choice, you fill in one of those forms, check off what animals you want to see? A lion kill. An elephant charge. Like going to Disneyland. Big tip to the guide at the end of the trip if he delivers?”
She removed her hand from his thigh.
“I thought,” she said quietly, “that you might be trying to irritate me, get under my skin in order to keep me angry. Or that maybe you were being a jerk because you had issues over something in your past. But I was wrong.” She paused, looked up and directly into his eyes. “You’re just a prick. An arrogant, self-absorbed, pigheaded bastard.”
He said nothing.
Tension simmered between them. Sexual. Fierce. She could see it in his face. She could feel it in herself. And in the distant sky dark forms circled. Vultures.
She turned away. “Fine. You’ve got your assignment from my brother, you’ve got a package to deliver so you can get paid. Where do we go now, and how?”
Abruptly he reached for the rifle in her lap. He yanked open the glove compartment, removed a pouch with maps. Unhooking the GPS from the dash, he swung open his door and jumped out.
Brandt spread the map out on the hood and bent over to study it, sun beating down on his back, his skin gleaming with sweat. Dalilah watched the lion tattoo on his biceps as his muscle flexed when he moved. Tautona. They were right—he was a gnarly scarred lion of a man without a pride or the social skills required to belong to one. No wonder he prowled and hunted alone, lived in his own territory.
Sweat pearled and dribbled down between her breasts, the sling and splint making her feel irritably hot. She glanced up as a massive bird flew low overhead, its wings beating with a soft whoosh whoosh whoosh through the air. A snake writhed in its beak. There was a scent of hay, or sage, coming from the grass and in the distance she saw dark shapes moving slowly. Buffalo? Nerves whispered and Dalilah’s attention shifted to the rifle lying on the hood near Brandt’s hand. She just wanted this over now.
“We need to go on foot,” he said, fiddling with the GPS.
“Obviously.”
He shot her a sharp glance.
Dalilah recoiled at the look in his icy eyes. More softly she said, “Which way?”
He jerked his head to the map. “You want to see, come look.”
She muttered a curse, got out, went round the hood to stand beside him. The sun baked down on them like a furnace and Dalilah realized just how much she was going to miss the shade provided by the jeep’s cover.
“This is where we were headed via vehicle—” He pointed to the topographical map, the hairs on his bronzed arm gleaming gold in the sun, his skin glistening. “Along the plain, toward this rift.” He jerked his chin up to the horizon. “The rift is that way—it’s a big cliff that runs for several kilometers. The idea was to drive north where the terrain levels out a bit, and then drive up onto the plateau here.” He jabbed his finger on the map. “From this point the plan was to head to the paved road here.”
He pointed to a thin line bisecting the eastern part of Botswana from the South African to the Zambian border. Dalilah squinted against the glare of the sun and shaded her eyes, studying the map, conscious of the scent of him. And the smell of oil and dust.
“That road serves as a main thoroughfare for occasional truck convoys carrying oranges from Zambia, copper from the Congo, laborers, cattle. It bisects a game conservation area here, where I wanted to cut off the road and head through bush to the west, there.” He jabbed his finger at a space of nothing.
“What’s there?”
He rubbed the dark blond stubble appearing on his jaw, not looking at her, thinking. “My farm,” he said quietly.
“Your farm?”
He didn’t answer. He was busy plotting a route into the GPS. He glanced up, squinting into the distance. “Now we’ll have