Moonflower (3 page)

‘
I have no doubt you’re capable, Ms Kyle. But what I’d like you
to do is take a drive around the farm with me so we can discuss
some of my requirements—my reason for coming out here in the first
place. That is, of course, if I’m not interfering with your
schedule.’

Sophie
swallowed, shook her head. ‘No, of course not.’

She
replaced the tyre iron, went to her vehicle, removed her holdall
and placed it in his vehicle along with her rifle. ‘And please
don’t call me Ms Kyle. We’re not that formal out here. My name’s
Sophie.’

‘
Very well, Sophie. I’ll drive,’ he said, as she made to climb
into the driver’s seat.

Sophie
went round the vehicle and climbed in beside him.

As he started the engine, he said, ‘At the risk of further
displeasing you,
Sophie
, I suppose you’d like to call me Reuben.’

‘
Actually, I don’t have any feelings on the matter,’ Sophie
replied, shrugging. ‘It’s up to you.’

‘
Reuben it is then.’

She let
the silence sizzle between them for a while before she said, ‘I
hope you don’t think I’m rude, Reuben, because I’m not. I also have
absolutely no problem with authority. It’s just that there are some
things I feel very strongly about, and my profession is one of
them.’

‘
I can understand that.’ Reuben steered the vehicle over the
dirt road with enough skill to make Sophie think he hadn’t spent
all his time in a boardroom.

She
turned to look at him and their gazes locked for a moment before
hers slid away to her feet, then out the window. As they bounced
along, she began to point out features of the landscape that she
thought might interest him.

‘
Quickly, stop!’ she called, about ten minutes later. She
leaned forward, peering through the windscreen.

Reuben
cut the engine. Sophie pointed across a stretch of fynbos as she
reached for her binoculars. She’d spotted a small herd of eland.
One of the males stood out from the rest of the group.

‘
Oh, what a beauty,’ Sophie breathed.

Reuben
felt the onset of arousal with a sense of disbelief; a delicious
liquid warmth spreading along his thighs.

She’d done this to him. With nothing more than a few
breathless words, she’d got him going again. What
was
it about her? He
looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes flashed with
excitement as she turned to hand him the binoculars. Her fingers
brushed his and heat raced along the veins of his arm.

He
dutifully took the binoculars and peered ahead.

‘
Just look at that,’ Sophie breathed again, putting her hand
over his to direct the binoculars in the right direction. Her hand
was warm, strong, sinewy, the skin soft. ‘Isn’t that just
magnificent?’

Reuben
took a deep breath. Oh, yes, it was magnificent. And so was the
response she aroused in him.

He was
relieved when they set off again, Sophie chatting away about the
ideas she had for the farm, while he struggled to keep his mind on
what she was saying. This from a man who in the world of high
finance had built a reputation for possessing considerable powers
of concentration and a laser-sharp focus.

He was so
intent on his internal struggle that he almost missed her directing
him onto a small dirt path, just wide enough for the
vehicle.

‘
This
is what I wanted to see this
morning,’ she said, looking up from the map spread across her knees
and gazing towards the mountain directly in front of them. The
tremor of excitement in her voice was not lost on him.

He turned
off the engine and followed her out of the vehicle.

She took
no more than ten strides before she came to an abrupt halt and
stood, head tilted back, facing a dizzying sweep of mountain and
the massive shaft of sunlight that had burst between two peaks,
sweeping dramatically into the valley.

‘
Beautiful,’ she said. ‘Just beautiful.’

Reuben
gazed at the sensuous curling of the corners of her mouth. She drew
air deep into her lungs and he watched her chest expand, breasts
straining against the fabric of her shirt. In the coolness beneath
the mountain, he saw the impression of each erect nipple. His
fingers tingled at the thought of her breasts nestled, warm and
soft, against the palms of his hands; their rosy tips slipping
beneath the pads of his thumbs, the feel of her against his
tongue.

Oh, for the love of all that’s sane!
Reuben thought, tearing his gaze from her.
Pull yourself together, Manning
. He
curled his fingers into tight fists and tried to concentrate on the
scenery in front of him.

‘
You’re looking at a jewel of the continent, Reuben,’ she said.
Again in that unconsciously seductive way of hers. This time, he
didn’t turn to look at her. Even so, the way she’d said his name
made his body tingle. Who would have thought African flora could be
so damned arousing?

They
stood together like that for a long time before reluctantly turning
back to the vehicle.

Soon
after heading north along a path that hugged the edge of a wooded
area, they came to an old stone cottage used many years ago by
overnight hikers. Reuben planned to restore it. He was surprised to
find himself telling Sophie about his plans.

He had a
reputation for being a man who played his cards close to his chest.
It had become a habit in the corporate world and he supposed that
over the years he’d become something of a closed book. That went
for his personal life, too.

‘
And when you don’t have guests, we could use it as a lecture
room,’ Sophie was saying.

‘
A lecture room?’

‘
Yes, or you could build a hut just for that purpose. It’s a
wonderful opportunity for local schoolchildren to visit the farm
and learn about conservation.’

‘
I hadn’t exactly thought about schoolchildren—’

‘
It would be a terrible waste to have all this biodiversity
around and share it only with a group of wealthy business people
who could afford to stay at any game reserve of their choosing.
Children are so receptive, so eager to learn. They’d soak it all
up,’ Sophie said, gesturing about her.

Reuben
found himself smiling at her enthusiasm. Again, something he didn’t
do that often. It wasn’t the sort of thing that went down well in a
boardroom. In the business world of high stakes, one had to
intimidate. Grinning just didn’t do it.

‘
Let’s go and have a look inside,’ she said,
excitedly.

Her smile
when she turned to him was radiant, and it felt to Reuben as if his
heart had suddenly expanded to beat hard against his breastbone;
like an unwelcome visitor at the door. Well, he had every intention
of pretending he wasn’t at home, he decided, as he followed her
into the dim interior of the cottage.

Sophie
had seen many hikers’ cottages, but this one was more rundown than
most. Immediately, her eyes were drawn to an enormous, heavy-weave
wall hanging that covered almost the entire back wall. At least an
inch thick, it must have been beautiful once. Perhaps it had been a
large rug that someone had so admired they’d thought it a shame to
set it on the floor and walk all over it. It was definitely more
beautiful on a wall. But now it hung skew and was covered in thick
dust. She was sure it could be salvaged.

She
reached out a hand to straighten it and saw Reuben, out of the
corner of her eye, come rushing towards her, gaze fixed on a spot
above her head. Following his line of vision, she saw that the wall
hanging had begun to curl away from the wall at the top, like a
wave about to crash down on her.

He
reached her—it could only have been a second later—and threw an arm
around her waist, trying to drag her out of the way, but it was too
late.

The
enormous weight of it landed on top of them, sending them sprawling
to the floor. Sophie heard the crash of the large brass rod as it
hit the floorboards close to her head.

Reuben,
still with arms around her, landed half on top of her; the two of
them pressed together under the large, surprisingly heavy wall
hanging, in a world of dimness and dust.

Sophie
looked up at the handsome face inches above her, but her brain
still had her standing at the wall hanging, hand raised to
straighten it. It would take a while for her grey matter to catch
up with her body. Reuben seemed to be having the same problem,
because he did not move a muscle.

Things
only got worse when her brain finally did catch up with her body.
That was when she became aware of his breath against her cheek. She
moved beneath him, tried to raise her knee. His leg slipped between
her thighs and arousal hit her, quicker and more devastating than
anything she’d experienced in her life. She felt the contour of
hard muscle flex against the inside of her thigh as he moved, the
heat of it burning her skin.

‘
You okay?’ he asked, voice taut with dust and
tension.

‘
Mmm.’

‘
You sure?’

She could
only nod.

He
touched her cheek. She closed her eyes, aware of the way her lips
tingled. She wanted him to touch her there, with his fingertips,
then his mouth. She would catch his tongue between her lips,
sipping the moistness of his mouth. Her hand slipped, of its own
accord, across his shoulders, down his back, towards his waist.
Moving again beneath him, she felt his thigh press more insistently
between her legs. It was as if they were in a twilight zone. A
magical world beneath the hanging where all the usual rules didn’t
apply. Like those that cautioned a new employee to never grope her
boss less than an hour after meeting him.

Never grope your boss
… The thought was
like a bucket of ice cold water in her face. Sophie was flooded
with sudden panic.
What am I doing? Oh
my
…

She
gasped, sucked in a mouthful of dust and started
coughing.

Reuben
pressed his bulk against the heavy carpet that should probably
never have been hung on a wall. With its entire weight concentrated
on top of them, the wall on one side and the brass rod weighting
down the other side, it was impossible to stand.

‘
Hold on a second,’ he said, coughing as he started to tug her
shirt out of her waistband.

‘
What are you
doing
?’ Sophie croaked, in genuine alarm. It set off another
coughing fit.

He tugged
at his own shirt and held it up over his nose and mouth. Sophie
followed suit.

Reuben
disentangled himself from her and managed to pull himself towards
the edge of the hanging. A moment later the heavy weight was lifted
off her. Sophie stayed where she was, lying on her back, breathing
in mouthfuls of delicious air.

Reuben
stood above her, glaring at her with absolute fury. ‘Damn it,
Sophie! You’re one dangerous woman. Get up!’

Sophie
was utterly mortified, lying there, staring up at her boss. She
remembered his leg pressed between her thighs and how she’d
responded to him, curling her hips towards him. Her cheeks flamed.
That this man was the most infuriating person on the planet helped
her get over her embarrassment pretty quickly.

‘
Look, Reuben,’ she said, getting to her feet and trying not to
burst into tears. ‘Things sometimes just happen in life, and they
aren’t always somebody’s fault.’

‘
They just always seem to happen around you, is that
it?’

He was
brushing furiously at his filthy shirt and chinos.

Sophie
was about to answer but was seized by a fit of violent
sneezing.

‘
This isn’t exactly how I’d envisaged my morning,’ Reuben was
saying as Sophie tried to swipe some of the dust off her own
clothes.

‘
Well, I really am sorry,’ she said, pulling a cobweb from her
hair. ‘But I didn’t exactly do it on—’

‘
Let’s just get out of here,’ Reuben said, rubbing at his
dishevelled hair.

He drove
back to the house in a right royal funk. There was absolute silence
in the vehicle, except for the occasional sneeze.

Sipho and
Isaac were loading up equipment when they arrived at the garages.
Both men’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when they saw
the two filthy, dust-covered figures climb out of the
vehicle.

‘
Sophie will tell you where you can find the other vehicle,’
Reuben said as he passed the men and stormed towards the
house.

He wasn’t
angry with Sophie for her clumsiness, even though the woman had
about as much sophistication as a cantaloupe. But he hadn’t hired
her for her social skills. Truth was, he was furious with himself.
At age thirty-four, he’d had his fair share of erotic hook-ups;
sensuous dances with skilfully provocative women, even though he’d
never come close to being the playboy the tabloids
suggested.