Guarding the Princess - By Loreth Anne White Page 0,92
of wine and two glasses in his hands, his features tight.
“What does it mean, Brandt?” she said, her fingers touching the Afrikaans inscription.
“For my dearest little Stefaan. May we have happy times with our own dog, your father.” He hesitated, as if torn between speaking and turning away. “I’d just come across a copy of that old edition. I wanted it for him.”
Dalilah’s eyes prickled with emotion. “It’s so uncanny,” she said softly, “that the dog from the lodge looks the same, has the same name.”
“Jock is a common name for a Staffordshire cross of that color. Like I said, Jock has become a cultural icon in this part of the world. There’s even a statue of Jock outside the Barberton city hall in Mpumalanga, South Africa.”
“I still think it’s eerie,” she said, closing the book and setting it carefully back in position under the photo. “Stefaan looked like you when you were a boy, if that’s you in the hunting photo over there, with your father?”
A wry smile twisted over his lips, but there was a sadness around his eyes. “Yeah, that was me. Lost my dad when I was twelve.”
“How?”
“Lion.”
Dalilah waited, but he said nothing more, and she didn’t press, not now.
“How about that wine,” she said with a smile.
* * *
With a view of the setting sun, Brandt poured their drinks at an outside table.
“A Buiten Blanc, from Buitenverwachting,” he said, pouring. “It’s a vineyard near Cape Town—the name means Beyond Expectation. Cheers,” he said, raising his own glass, and she chinked hers against it.
“Beyond expectation,” she whispered, meeting his eyes.
They sat side by side on lacquered wicker furniture watching animals come down to the pond to drink. Monkeys squealed in a tree above the water hole, and Dalilah’s thoughts drifted back to that night in the lapa. She turned to look at Brandt.
“Did you watch me for long, in that lapa, before the attack?”
A slow smile curved his mouth, and this time a lightness did reach his eyes.
“I thought you were a flame to those diplomatic moths around you.” He paused. “I thought you were a tease.”
She fell silent as his eyes held hers, a sudden tingling heat low in her belly.
He got up suddenly, taking his glass to the railing. “Come here,” he said, holding his hand out to her.
Dalilah joined him at the railing with her glass. The sun was blood-orange and going squat on the horizon, as if resisting the end of the day before being pushed under.
“I positioned the house and veranda so you could see the watering hole at sunset and catch the last rays of the evening sun. This is my favorite time of day, when everything is magic. Anything seems possible.”
He took her glass from her hand, set it on the railing and tilted her face to his. As the sun slid below the horizon, the last rays caught the rugged planes of his face, and his eyes darkened.
And suddenly she wanted him. All of him.
“I need you, Brandt,” she whispered. “I need you, now.”
* * *
He carried her to his bedroom and laid her on the bed. Here, too, glass sliders were open to the evening air. Outside in the dusk the bush noise grew loud.
But Dalilah froze suddenly as she caught sight of what was hanging on the wall opposite Brandt’s bed—a poster-size photograph of her. Naked under a waterfall, droplets like jewels spinning in an arc from her wet hair as she tossed her head back, sunlight glancing off the emerald in her navel. The hair between her legs was dark and wet, her nipples tight and pointed. A look of pure joy on her face, her eyes closed.
Dalilah’s jaw dropped and she quickly pushed herself back up into a sitting position. She stared at the image—a stunningly artistic shot, more about form than a naked woman, the curves of her body being echoed in the contours of the smooth red rock.
Her gaze shifted slowly up to meet his.
“Why?” she said.
“Touchstones,” he whispered, watching her intently. “To capture something of your spirit and bring it home.”
And hang it where he could lie and look at her every night...
He lowered himself to his knees in front of her, taking her hands in his.
“I never dreamed I’d be lucky enough to actually bring you home, Dalilah.” He drew her closer on the edge of the bed, parting her legs around him as he spoke. “So I stole something I could keep, just for me. Do you mind?”