Chapter Thirteen
Simone walked faster, getting away from Carlo, but no footsteps sounded behind her. Once out of the entrance hall of the hotel she followed the receptionist’s directions to the homestead. It was a refreshing walk, out in the cold, away from all those eyes. She could have walked for miles, but it was a short distance to the old farmhouse. It was a simple house—one of the first built in the area—and had some historic value but was lost after the glass and glamour of the main Carlevaro Crater Lodge.
Natalia must have sky-high standards because the interior was much more up-market than she’d expected. Embers glowed in the fireplace, warming the penetrating chill of the late winter afternoon. Her suitcase and backpack were already allocated to a room, so she closed the door and collapsed on the bed. Inhaling deeply, she took her phone from her pocket. She rubbed her face and breathed into her hand, taking a moment to gather herself.
Her finger hovered over the speed dial number, but instead of calling her mom she ended up dialing Ruth. After a short chat Ruth passed the phone to Sarah. “Hello, darling.”
“When you home, Mommy?”
Simone swallowed. “I’m not sure. This is hard for me too.” Pain tightened in her throat. She couldn’t let Sarah hear tears in her voice. “What did you do today?”
Sarah was quiet for a moment, and Simone smiled through the burn behind her eyes. That little brain was churning, probably trying to put things in order.
“School, nap, and play with Tim,” Sarah said, her words not perfect, but the picture was there.
“Sounds like a fun day. What are you having for dinner?” Simone asked, imagining Ruth pottering around the kitchen with Sarah.
“Ruthie’s making fishy chips.”
“Sounds yummy.”
“You must have some too,” Sarah said, as if everything could be transported over the phone line.
Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, but she forced a laugh. “Next time.” She sat up straight with a sniff and leaned forward, dropping her head in her hand.
“What you do, Mommy?”
“Oh, the usual. I flew people around.”
“A pwincess?”
“No.” Simone chuckled. She’d flown the odd celebrity—film stars, musicians, and European royalty—a little excitement she’d tell Sarah about when she got home. The royalty had clung to Sarah’s make-belief world of castles and kingdoms.
“A pwince then?”
Sarah’s innocent question choked her up. Your daddy. She dropped the phone to her chest to kill the sound of her sobs and took a breath. She sniffed. “Nobody special, just the big boss.”
“He scary?”
For a second Carlo’s face appeared in her mind’s eye, the permanent scowl he wore, so different from the man she’d known four years ago. “Very.” She laughed. “No, he’s not scary at all. Not deep down. You might get to meet him.” The words just slipped out. She had no idea where they’d come from.
“No, thank you.”
She had to pause at Sarah’s retort. Sarah wouldn’t say that if she knew he was her father.
Through the slit of light under the door, she saw movement in the adjacent lounge, and voices speaking in Italian penetrated her room. Sarah’s frank response was sobering. “Yes, maybe not. Just you and me, okay?”
“You and me, Mommy. I love you.”
Someone knocked on her door. “I love you too.” She didn’t have time for a proper goodbye. “I’ve got to go.”
“Love you, Mommy.”
She cut the call with Sarah and went to open the door, wiping her face in the crook of her arm. Angelo’s voice sounded from the adjacent bedroom and a door shut further down. Natalia and Dino laughed in their room; their voices were soft, but distinct. Whatever changes were made to accommodate three en suite bedrooms in the old farmhouse weren’t solid. She’d make no more phone calls until she was sure of privacy.
She opened her bedroom door. Carlo stared at her and every nerve in her body tightened. How much had he heard? By the expression on his face, he’d heard her whole conversation with Sarah.
How could she have been so stupid? She’d come to the house alone but the rest would have followed at some point. Everything she’d said to Sarah echoed through her mind, but she couldn’t pinpoint any words that would give her world away.
Carlo held out a stack of papers. “A printout of the work we did.”
She’d gone blank.
“The graphs.” He searched her face. “Have a look, please.”
She brushed some stray wisps of hair from her face and took the printouts from him. “Sure.”
“Let me know if you uncover something.”
She nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning.” She wanted to close the door, but he opened his mouth as if he would say something.
She had to cut him off. “What time are we leaving?”
“We’re driving to the mobile safari once we’re at Seronera.” He sighed. “Fly out at nine? Leave here around eight?”
She nodded, burning for him to go. To stay. To take her home, to Sarah.
He blocked her view into the rest of the lounge with his bulk, but they were as alone as they could be with the others in their rooms.
“Mona.” When he lifted his hand and stroked at her cheek with a forefinger knuckle she wanted to lean into his hand. Instead she pulled her chin away from him and avoided his storm gray eyes that peered right into her, seeking. He knew something was amiss with her, and the notion of him seeing straight to the heart of her secret was as scary as it was suddenly inevitable.
She dropped her gaze and wiped at her cheek with the back of her hand, drying the stray tear he’d caught on his finger.
“Don’t,” she whispered with a glare. They’d discussed his nickname for her that morning, and this was not helping her keep things business-focused.
At least the next day’s flight was a short one. Once at Seronera he’d be gone, along with his gentle hands and caring caresses which knew just how to make her yield. “I’ll check the weather and let you know if we need to make changes. Good night.” She pushed the door closed but a swift hand blocked her from shutting it.
“Come have dinner?” He spoke softly, as if he really cared. “You hardly eat, Simone.”
No. A sense of vulnerability had shot through her at his touch, at the soft tone in his voice. And now his eyes questioned quietly, as if he would wait for her to talk when she was ready, making her want to collapse into his arms and tell him everything. “I was shredded at breakfast and lunch, Carlo. Spare serving me to your clan for dinner.”
He put pressure on the door, and it widened, her hand weak. He was leaning in, centimeters from her face. She would’ve stepped back if her legs hadn’t been so wobbly.
“Don’t feel like that. I—” His gaze rested on her mouth, and for one sweet second she thought he was going to kiss her. Then he lifted his eyes. He stared into the room and at the double bed with a sigh. He cleared his throat. “You’ll be okay here? Alone?”
The stupid question made her smirk. “Sure. Unless security is not what it should be. I’m starting to have my doubts with all the things happening.”
It was a stab at him, the company, and everything he stood for. The barb hit home, for he stepped back, dropping his hand and gaze. “Lock your door then. As if it would…help.”
She closed the door and turned the key. The twisting of metal rang through the room, and she peered down to see the two shadows of his feet at the door, which she’d basically shut in his face. She rested her forehead on the door, breathing shallowly until he’d stepped away.
God, she was one mean bitch. She slumped on the bed, scattering his stack of papers to the floor.
She hadn’t locked the door to keep him out, but to keep herself in. The last thing she needed right now was to turn into that wanton, needy girl she’d been four years ago, burning with the desire to please him, to love him. Her self-assured independence was being undermined by her body, which had its own underhanded agenda. Every pulse centered on her own need, distracting her focus from Sarah. Her willpower to stay away from Carlo was evaporating.
****
Carlo let the hot water beat down on his tense shoulders and naked back. He leaned with arms outstretched against the shower wall, trying to shake his anger. He was slowly losing his footing on this situation with Simone, and it was the last thing he needed.
Spending the whole day next to her hadn’t helped. He’d caught himself reliving snatches of those six weeks as if they’d just passed. The weirdest things surfaced in his mind, small things, everyday things. The way she tapped with the pen on her nose during the pre-flight checklist as they went through each step. Her almost manly scrawl of a signature at the bottom of the checklist where she had to sign. The way she tugged at a curl from her temple when she was self-conscious. How excited she was when he took her to the bookstore at the Slipway for the first time. How quickly they settled into a routine during their days off, mostly lounging in bed, reading and making love between chapters, before eventually getting up and going for a late lunch at the Italian restaurant where it had all started. He could even recall what she wore that day, because he had the pleasure of picking each bit of clothing off her in a slow, provoking game that left her so aroused, she came in his hand.
He didn’t guess she was a virgin, she had it written in her eyes, and in her sweet laugh when she told him that she’d “never gone this far with anybody” and that her “mother would kill her.” That her mother was thousands of miles away was an antidote.
For the first two nights he enjoyed teasing her, because it was as novel for him as it was for her. In the circles he frequented in at school and later at university, and in the elitist circles of Rome, virginity was not valued or expected. He’d never been with a virgin before, but by the third night they spent together she was begging him to go all the way and he had no control left.
When asking her how she managed to hold out so long, she laughed it off. “I was that unwanted baby that ruined my mom’s life, you know, pre-marriage, pre-abortion, pre-everything.”
She never told him more, but between the lines he gathered that she grew up running wild on some neglected farm in South Africa. She was always taller than the boys in the class, but when puberty struck and the boys started catching up, her mother, who never cared what she was about, all but locked her up.
There was a proper rift between her and her mom when she uprooted to go fly tourists, unsupervised, in Tanzania. She told him he could do what he wanted to her, as long as he didn’t get her pregnant. Babies had been one of the last things on his mind too, and he’d taken every precaution possible.
He’d been such an asshole that first night, arrogantly telling her that now that she was his employee she was off limits. He was eating those words, one by one, and they crunched in his mouth like sand. At least Angelo had backed off. He wasn’t sure what had passed between the two, but Simone had managed to put his brother off. That would be a first. A warmth spread through his chest at the thought that she might have done it for him.
“Leave some hot water, will you?” Angelo called from the bedroom.
Carlo sighed as he closed the tap. He wasn’t keen for his family’s company. He’d make the excuse of more work to do after dinner. There were always unread emails in his inbox. Especially the one from the HR department in Dar es Salaam. Simone was hiding something from him but he didn’t want her to see him spying on her. Reading that email while her eyes were on his laptop screen would have been wrong. He still trusted her, and deep down it was treacherous to even think she could be involved in something illegal. He groaned. The situation was making him sink to new lows.
****
Simone exhaled the breath she’d been holding as the Carlevaros left the house for dinner. There was a coffee and tea station in the lounge with a mini bar, and she would forage dinner from there. She didn’t know the lodge manager and wasn’t in the mood to stroll around the hotel in search of the kitchen or staff mess.
She unlocked her door and peeked out to be sure no one was left in the lounge, then made tea and took a packet of chips, some cookies and a chocolate from the display. She returned to her room and put the makeshift meal down on the bedside table. She locked her bedroom door with one final twist of the key. For good measure she took it out of the lock and put it on the vanity. Sleepwalking was definitely not an option.
Gathering the stack of scattered papers from the floor she considered her bedtime reading. She sat down on the bed, kicking her shoes off and plumping the cushions up behind her back. She fingered the graphs, reading the titles, studying the axes and reading names, dates and places. The longer she stared at it, the clearer it became. It was indeed a picture. It showed the pattern each pilot had flown over the preceding eight months, and at the end of twenty-four pages a comparison with the poaching data. There were the staccato line graphs of the short flights, the longer waves of the pilots who flew the longer destinations. She’d never kept track of staff movement like this.
The overnight flight from the Serengeti to the Selous, which stopped in Ugalla and Ruaha, was a wave replicated by the flight schedules of only five of the twenty-two Carlevaro pilots. Simone sat up straight, because her name was on the list. She turned to the last page where the poaching graph was depicted in a thin red line. A chill ran down her spine as she saw the perfect visual replica of the five pilots’ flight schedules matched to that of the poaching activity.