Guarding the Princess - By Loreth Anne White Page 0,73
calculating alternatives.
“That road you mentioned—how far is it from here?”
He rubbed the back of his neck—it was being burned by the sun. She could feel her own skin burning and was grateful for the hat. He had none.
“It’s not just the distance to the road. Once we hit that road we need to go south, then veer off into bush again. It would take us days on foot.”
“Maybe we could flag down a vehicle on the road.”
“The traffic is sporadic at best. We could be sitting ducks waiting out there.” Tension was tightening his voice. He was being eaten up with this immobility, the waiting. She swatted a fly. Another hour ticked by, but life continued to move in the village.
“I made your brother a promise,” he said quietly, as if thinking out loud. “No matter what you say about this mission being yours or his, I’m going to get you home alive. And I need that jeep to do it.”
The sun hit its zenith, small and white-hot in the hazy sky. Dalilah took off her hat and smoothed back her hair, wiped her brow. Brandt handed her a stick of biltong. They chewed in silence.
“So, what did happen ten years ago, Brandt, that has you paying Omair back like this now?”
His mood darkened. Then after a few beats he said, “I think you already have it figured out, Dalilah.”
She hooked her brow up. “How so?”
“You’ve been digging information out of me in bits, storing them like puzzle pieces in that pretty head of yours—I figure you’ve put most of the puzzle together.”
A dung beetle tried to roll a ball of dung up the sandbank. It got almost to the lip, then the dung rolled back down. Like a small black crepuscular tank the beetle scurried after it, started again. Almost at the lip, the ball escaped the beetle’s grasp, rolled back down, and the beetle once again began the upward push—a Sisyphean task. Beetle needed a damn break. She picked up a stalk of dry grass and pushed the dung ball over the lip for the beetle, then dusted her hand off on her pants.
“You want me to tell you what I’ve got, then?” she said finally.
“Not really.”
She poked holes in the dirt with her stick, thinking. “I’m going to tell you anyway.”
A wry smile twisted his mouth. “Why does this not surprise me?”
“I got that ten years ago something happened while you were with the FDS. Maybe on a job. It involved a woman, and it involved betrayal. And you blame yourself for her death—it cracked something inside you.” She glanced at him. “It made you bitter, leery of any level of commitment, afraid to fall in love again.”
His eyes bored into her, intense. A muscle began to tick at his jaw.
“Omair intervened and saved your life somehow.” She paused, thinking. “It had to be something big, or you wouldn’t be here with me now, paying him back like this.”
She doodled her stick, then slid her gaze back to meet his. He wasn’t smiling. He looked dangerous—a look she’d glimpsed in him before. She swallowed, throat dry, feeling nervous suddenly. “But the part I haven’t figured out,” she said, “is that you mentioned you were betrayed twice. Promises broken twice.”
He remained silent, regarding her intently.
“So—what happened? Does it have something to do with marriage?” she said after a while.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because you said you were not the one to talk about marriage, that you’d failed at that.”
“Dalilah.” His voice was low, cool. “Why are you pressing me like this—what difference does it make to you?”
Her face heated. She glanced away, watched a row of little red ants trying to attack a dragonfly—iridescent green and turquoise. She thought of her jewels, her wealth. Her ring.
Slowly she glanced up and met his eyes again. “Because you’re not the only one who cares, Brandt.”
“And that’s where it ends.”
“Does it?”
His eyes narrowed sharply. “What are you saying, Dalilah?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” But she did know—she was thinking beyond caring for him. She was thinking about the possibilities of acting on her affection. Of being with him beyond this mission.
He moistened his lips, a pain gleaming in his eyes, brief, then gone. He wiped his brow, fingered his gun.
“When I was twenty-one,” he said slowly, “just after I got out of the army—they had conscription back then in South Africa—I married the woman I loved. We had a son.”
Shock whispered through Dalilah—this she had not expected.