Moonflower (21 page)

He
stepped back as the gown slid down her body to land in a pool at
her feet. She wore no underwear; only the gold stilettos. He
dropped to his knees, sliding his hands up her thighs, her legs
parting at his bidding; he dipped his head forward and licked her
centre.

Sophie’s
moan was long and deep and she tangled her fingers in his hair. She
was sure he would draw away from her as she edged towards climax,
but he did not.

‘
Ah, Reuben!’ she exclaimed, then was lost in an arcing spasm
of desire.

Her
breath came back in small gasps. He was on his feet, watching her
face closely; torment on his.

Her hands
went to the buttons of his shirt. He stilled them.

She
frowned up at him. ‘Reuben?’

‘
What have you done to me, Sophie?’ he asked. There was some
anger in his voice.

Her hands
dropped to her sides. Her eyes prickled with unshed tears. She felt
suddenly ridiculous standing there in nothing but a pair of
stilettos. Quickly, she bent to pull the sheet off the bed and hold
it up to her body.

His eyes
blazed at her, nostrils flaring.

Sophie
tried desperately hard not to cry. He seemed disgusted with her, or
with himself.

‘
I can’t let sex threaten everything I’ve worked so damned hard
for,’ he told her, his voice hard. ‘You turn my head, Sophie. It
doesn’t work so well when you’re around.’ He knocked a fist to his
forehead.

She
reached up, drew his hand away. ‘I have never asked you for
anything. Never expected you to give up anything for
me.’

‘
But that makes it worse. Don’t you see that?’

Sophie
shook her head.

‘
These are decisions that should be made in the cold light of
day. But that doesn’t happen because you keep weaving this spell
around me each night, Sophie Kyle. Like some mythical creature that
comes out of the bush at night to tempt and entice and drive me out
of my mind if I’m not careful. I need to get away from you where I
can think. That’s what I must do. Get away from you.’

He turned
and strode from the cottage.

Chapter
Thirteen

Sophie
took Max and Ruby on a morning game drive. Reuben did not join
them.

Upon
their return, Max headed back to the house, while Ruby asked Sophie
to show her the garden.

Sophie
hoped they’d bump into Mr Solomon, but when the old man failed to
appear she did her best to point out the plants and tell some of
the stories behind them that Mr Solomon had passed to
her.

Ruby was,
of course, enthusiastic, but Sophie sensed there was something else
on her mind. Eventually, she stopped beside the lake.

‘
Is there something you’d like to speak to me about,
Ruby?’

The older
woman turned to Sophie, smiled and nodded. ‘You’re a wonderful
girl, Sophie. Beautiful but unaffected. No player of games and
that’s a rarity today.’

Sophie
smiled a little wanly at the comment.

‘
Mark told us something of Reuben’s attraction to you and I can
see now that the situation has become a little
complicated.’

She
looked to Sophie for confirmation and got a nod in
return.

Ruby went
on, ‘I love my son dearly. More than that, I admire him. He’s a
good man. And for that reason it pains me to see how suspicious
he’s become over the years; with all the money he makes.
Personally, I wish he hadn’t been as successful as he’s
been.’

She
glanced quickly at Sophie to see her reaction. ‘Does that sound
strange to you?’

‘
No,’ Sophie said. ‘I know what you mean. A lot of
responsibility that weighs heavily on him. A lot of money and not
always much choice.’

‘
Exactly! All I want is for my son to be happy. To be
financially secure, yes, but also to have the love of a good woman
and a house full of children. That’s what Max and I want for our
sons.’

She
paused for a moment. Sophie waited.

‘
Reuben’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time. But he’s
also full of turmoil and I think you have something to do with
that.’

Sophie
looked down at her feet.

‘
Reuben was a very easy child. Loved the outdoors and animals,
as Max and I told you. We thought he’d become a vet or something
like that. But he turned out to have this unusually brilliant brain
for strategy and business, and success followed success and the
money rolled in. I think before he knew it he found himself
neck-deep in a future very different to the one he’d imagined for
himself.’

Ruby
sighed. ‘I’m rattling on a bit, aren’t I? Max always tells me I
need to get to the point this side of the twenty-first century. So,
this is what I’m trying to say, Sophie. Reuben has a lot he needs
to sort out for himself. But I have a gut feeling—call it mother’s
intuition—that you should hang in there. Don’t give up just
yet.’

‘
You sound like Mr Solomon,’ Sophie said, trying to smile at
the other woman.

‘
Well,’ Ruby said, linking her arm through Sophie’s, ‘I think
Mr Solomon sounds like a very wise man.’

Sophie
saw Reuben briefly when she walked Ruby back to the house, hugged
and said goodbye to her. Reuben passed her going up the verandah
steps as she was coming down.

‘
Goodbye, Sophie,’ he said. ‘Thanks for everything.’

Sophie
felt a stinging behind her eyes. She didn’t think her heart could
experience so much pain without bursting. But she would not let him
see it.

‘
Go safely,’ she said quietly, without looking in his
direction, and walked quickly from the house.

Sophie
did not return to the cottage until long after the sun had gone
down. Then she showered, ate a cold supper she’d had delivered from
the house and eventually went to bed, too exhausted to
dream.

She rose
before the sun the next morning and had breakfast at her desk while
she pored over her charts and spreadsheets.

Then out she went to the
veld
with Sipho and Isaac. They erected the fencing for
another orientation pen for the next consignment of animals due on
the farm. Sophie put her back into the work, digging deep holes for
support posts, mixing cement and wrestling the heavy poles into
place.

She
returned to her office only after the sun had gone down and, again,
had supper at her desk. After a brief shower she crawled into bed,
every muscle in her body aching, and her mind an exhausted
blank.

She
overslept the following morning, waking to the shrill of her alarm
clock for the first time in many months. The sun already streamed
into the cottage, and outside birds called to each other as a
breeze stirred the curtains. Her first thought was of Reuben, her
second that a group of five Cape Mountain Zebra were due to be
delivered to the farm that morning and she was late.

That
afternoon, with the zebra settled in their orientation pen, Sophie
discovered that one of her grid calculations was incorrect. It was
time to pull herself together.

But as
much as she tried, the task defeated her.

Sometimes she won for a morning or even a day, but then
there’d be a reminder: his chair on the verandah, the place she’d
first seen him as she’d stomped across the
veld
in her bra. The hikers’ cottage
where they’d made love for the first time, the
boma
where he’d stood up for her
against McTavish. Each time she heard the whoosh and squirt of the
sprinklers on the lawn she was reminded of their assault on her,
much to Reuben’s amusement, one hot summer afternoon. And she
avoided the orchard at all costs, where they’d made love in the
moonlight with a passion that still left her dizzy at the
thought.

Nights
were a particular agony. There was only so much she could do to
exhaust herself during the day. But there would always come a time
when she would have to face the emptiness of her bed. She even woke
sometimes thinking she could smell his scent on her pillow. Sure
she could hear his footsteps on the creaking steps outside, waiting
for the moment he would come through the door and slip into bed
beside her.

Sara
encouraged her to eat her dinner at the house. Most of the time she
declined.

Mr
Solomon tried to cheer her up by instructing Patience or Beauty to
place fresh flowers in her bedroom. But it was a mistake. An
earthenware pot of moonflowers had her doubled over at the edge of
the bed, tears streaming down her face as their fragrance reminded
her again of a room flooded with moonlight, every sense aflame with
the taste of him, his touch, the scent of his skin and her
overwhelming love for him.

For the
first time in her life, Sophie felt as if she were drowning in her
own misery, and she looked for ways to claw herself up out of it
again. But the more she cast around for some way to save herself,
the more she seemed to long for him and the deeper she sank. Even
resorting one desperate evening to an internet search for
him.

“
Manning in new merger with asset management company,” the
headlines screamed back at her. “Manning gives as good as he gets
at gala fundraiser.” “Consolidated Investment Group posts
favourable Q3 results.” “Manning firing on all cylinders.” “Tycoon
attends world premier with friends…”

It was
silly of Sophie to have done this. It made her feel like a
ragamuffin who’d crept up to the big house and pressed her nose
against a window to watch all the beautiful people partying and
feasting inside.

She had
hoped he’d contact her, but the phone remained stubbornly silent,
at least where Sophie was concerned. She knew he called Rolf and
Sara, but even these calls had become few and far
between.

To keep
her sanity, Sophie phoned her flatmate and her mother often. It was
good to hear about life outside the farm. It grounded her, gave her
the strength to go on for another day.

‘
Why don’t you come home for a visit?’ her mother encouraged
her. ‘You sound as if you need a break, and I could do with a
little female company, if you know what I mean. The men in this
house are driving me crazy.’

Her
flatmate was more forthright. ‘Writing’s on the wall, Sophie. I’ve
never heard you sound so miserable. I know you’ve fallen for the
guy, but if it’s not going anywhere maybe now’s the time to the
make the break. It’s never going to be easy, but the longer you
leave it…’

She was
right. The longer she stuck around, putting herself through all
this pain, the worse the final break was going to be.

She asked
to meet with Rolf and Sara that afternoon.

‘
We thought you were happy here,’ Sara said. ‘You’ve settled in
so nicely.’

‘
And what about the research project Ben Duval’s proposed?’
Rolf asked.

‘
I’ll speak to Ben and Caro myself,’ Sophie said, trying to
ignore the tightness in her throat. ‘And I promise I won’t leave
you or the animals in the lurch. I’ll stay on until a suitable
replacement can be found. I’ll also put word out to my contacts. I
know this doesn’t make sense, but my circumstances have changed,
and please believe me when I say that I have to leave the
farm.’

Rolf and
Sara agreed to her decision but were obviously unhappy about
it.

‘
You’ll let Reuben know I’m leaving?’

Sara
looked into Sophie’s eyes, sighed and nodded.

Sophie
thought he might call when he heard she had resigned; that the
phone would ring and she’d hear his voice on the other end, asking
her to stay, telling her that they’d find a way. But one day turned
into another, then another, and there was no word. Sophie knew then
that she’d made the right decision.

On her
last day at Labour’s End it rained in the morning.

On her
way to the kitchen for breakfast, Sara stopped her. ‘Reuben’s going
to call this morning. Don’t leave before you’ve spoken to him,
okay?’

Sophie
smiled and nodded, but she had no intention of speaking to Reuben.
The very thought of a stilted thanks-for-all-your-help conversation
was too ghastly to even contemplate.

She’d
already set her office to rights, and although they hadn’t yet
found a conservationist to replace her, Alan Jeffries was on
sabbatical and would take over until they found a
replacement.

The weather cleared as she drove along the farm’s dirt tracks;
rain giving way to a thirsty sun that soaked up the moisture and
lent a beautiful clarity to the air and colours of the
bushveld
. Sophie needed to
take her leave of the farm in her own way.

Chapter
Fourteen

Reuben
glanced at his watch: 11:45. He had until midday.

There’d
been a last minute crisis to do with the merger he and Mark had
been working on. A month of hard work saved at the last minute;
deal in the bag. But it had delayed his departure by two days. Then
his jet had taken off from Heathrow forty-five minutes later than
scheduled because of heavy fog.