Proud Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 2) (3 page)

Contrary to first suspicion, the three of them did an adequate job helping to set up camp based on their prior experiences filming various
Living With…
episodes. It was a new site closer to where the pride had recently relocated, and I would have moved camp there regardless. The crew’s arrival just gave me a deadline for doing it.

Without much fuss we erected the six two-man tents well before sundown. One roomy tent for each of us, plus an equipment tent for my gear and supplies and an equipment tent for theirs.

By the time they were unpacked and sorted, working in the heat—even though the camp site sat in the shade of a handful of acacia trees—the paparazzi-fresh faces were no more, replaced by the typical tired and sweaty faces of the veldtland. In late afternoon, my company disappeared into their tents to sleep off the jetlag.

The morning sun was still only a hint to the east, the last yipping of the hyenas dying away, when Chris emerged shirtless, clad only in baggy nylon shorts. Hardly appropriate attire out here, but I wasn’t going to tell him that as I lit the camp stove so I could drip-brew coffee for all. When he found a clear spot and started stretching, I realized I was about to get an eyeful of Chris Corsair’s workout regimen.

That certainly made things more interesting.

Chris was a “pretty” man—leanly built and well-proportioned. He wasn’t overly muscle-bound, but those muscles he did have were delicious eye-candy with clean definition to his well-sculpted abs and pecs, broad shoulders, and slim hips—a body as much at ease half-naked as in a suit. In fact, it was a body made to hang clothes on. And it was a body made to strip clothes off. As the water boiled, my imagination filled in the rest of him as he jumping jacked in front of me.

My imagination, it seemed, could be very generous.

He knew I was watching and took pleasure in showing off his body. Especially when he threw me a lascivious grin before dropping to the ground and pumping the long, lean length of him up and down in the classic missionary…er, push-up…position.

He definitely had stamina.

Something I was going to need as well. Two weeks of saying no to
that
would tax anyone’s endurance.

Mr. Cox’s—no, I wouldn’t call anyone Mister out here…Gary’s tent flap had opened, and he was sitting under it now, cross-legged, watching Chris—and watching me watching Chris, his desire and envy palpable in the gray dawn.

Pity panged my heart. What would months of being told no by
that
feel like?

Just the way Gary acted in Chris’ presence, the way his eyes were always on Chris whenever the two were anywhere near each other, made his infatuation with Chris way too clear.

Gary wasn’t some teen on the East Coast, 3000 miles from Hollywood, mooning over his favorite movie idol. He wasn’t even some grip on the idol’s set who would go home alone at the end of each day to watch his unobtainable heart throb in favorited scenes over and over on hi-def TV pretending he was the one being whispered to, being kissed, being made love to.

No, Gary worked, ate and lived 24/7 in the shadow of a man he clearly adored. Near enough to steal a touch or two, but if Chris wasn’t interested, his heart might as well be an unattainable 3000 miles away. Surely love that suffered rebuke after rebuke wasn’t a healthy love.

Or was he always rebuked?

I studied Chris, pumping away still, my imagination supplying a body beneath him whose face transformed from mine into Gary’s. Chris’ vigor didn’t falter. The face became Reena’s and Chris pumped as enthusiastically over her as he had over Gary and me.

Was it possible Chris swung both ways?

Would I care if he did?

His set done, Chris rolled over and reached for his toes, stressing his flexibility. Grabbing his arches, he slowly pulled his head to his knees.

Strength, stamina, flexibility.

I caught my lower lip as the water in the kettle over the fire boiled insistently, a wisp of steam rising.

Friction between his butt and the ground tugged at Chris’ shorts when he stood. His waistband slipped low across his hips, revealing a hint of crevice between the firm swells of his cheeks. I caught my breath, only to scowl immediately after, wondering why a peek of plumber’s crack was affecting me so.

Not bothering to pull his shorts up first, Chris disappeared into his tent.

Only then did I remove the boiling water from the stove, my every move followed by Gary’s deep and disapproving frown.

When the three of them emerged at last, ready for the day’s filming, they were each dressed in crisp but sensible safari attire. The only concession for the cameras Gary and Chis made was the snug fit of their shorts and shirts. Obscenely snug, I would have said, but my bet was that the hordes of fans would vote not obscene enough.

I served a breakfast of coffee, eggs and bacon, finishing off with sliced bananas and mangoes. “Enjoy now,” I reminded them. “The fresh stuff won’t keep long in the heat.”

After breakfast, we loaded the two sets of camera equipment in the Range Rover, along with a handful of those ready meals, piled in and took off for pride country.

“You know where they are?” Chris’ tone sounded like it couldn’t decide between admiration and skepticism.

“I heard Brutus
whuffing
last night. They’re that way”—I pointed toward the low-hanging sun”—about a mile in.”

“Brutus?”

“The adult male. I sent video of the pride—about 15 minutes’ worth—to introduce them. You didn’t watch it?”

The charm of Chris’ sheepish expression looked a bit too practiced to be genuine.

“I did,” Reena offered from the backseat. “There’s also three lionesses and two cubs in the family.”

“That’s right.” My smug smile was short-lived.

“Too bad the cubs aren’t younger. Chris and a baby Simba—the fans would eat that up. Just think of the Facebook shares and photo tweets that would draw in the publicity before we even air. How close do you think we can get him to Brutus?”

“If you’re hoping Chris’ll be able to prop an arm around him in a buddy shot, that’s not happening. He’ll—you’ll—be lucky to get within 20 feet. These guys might be 98% lazy and boring, but they’re 100% wild.”

“Defensive much? You’d think we were talking smack about her baby in public.”

I slammed the SUV to a stop so I could turn around and face Gary directly. “Unless you can puddle hop your way out of here before then, you’re my guests for the next two weeks. I can either help you make this TV show or I can lead you around in circles for the next 14 days. I suggest you leave that attitude of yours in your tent back there. Are we clear?”

“Only if yours will be there to keep it company, Miss Priss-with-a-stick-up-her—”

“Gary.” Chris silenced him with a weary warning before addressing me. “Look, we’ll cool it on the personal and snide stuff, but you need to bring it down a notch or two as well. We know where the money shots are and, believe it not, the other animals we’ve worked with have been just as wild and just as dangerous as your lions. If you want us to extend professional courtesy to you, then you need to do the same for us. You might be surprised to find I’m more than just a pretty face.”

Of course I knew that. I’d seen that pretty body of his as well. But if he wanted me to believe he was more than a plastic Hollywood smile… “How about this—I’ll stay open to you proving it?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gary smirking in the backseat. Reena looked only mildly interested in the whole conversation. I figured Gary for just being pleased his boyfriend and I were arguing. Reena I couldn’t read at all.

As for Chris, I was in a good way guardedly surprised at the tease of backbone he’d shown. Until— “Agreed,” he said. “And I’ll stay open to you being a person I need to prove it to.”

Too bad. We’d almost had a moment there
.

Biting back the scowl that threatened, I put the Range Rover back in gear.

Why again had I agreed to this?

We’d been to Africa before to film the elephant episode. We’d spent time on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, staying with a local tribe of Chagga, who made much of their living these days playing Sherpa and shuttling tourists up and down the mountain. Those had been some beautiful, stunning vistas to backdrop us. Maybe we could do a gorilla episode later in the rainforests—Tarzan’s jungles. Here in Zambia, the parched savanna might be what audiences expected when they thought about
Born Free
or
The Lion King
, but it was far from cinematic. It wasn’t even as if there were herds of other animals around save for the few we’d seen between the airport at Zambezi and our camp. If millions of hoofed beasts still roamed Africa, they weren’t doing it here. Although the lions had to be eating something, I supposed.

Maybe Dee would surprise me yet.

Right now it just felt as though the producers were desperate to get something on the air. That they hadn’t progressed beyond the simple, bare concept they’d been pitched—a celebrity lives two weeks at a time with dangerous animals, people and situations.
Lions
had simply been a checkmark on their list.

Reena, of course, would make the place look amazing. Better yet, she’d make
me
look amazing. She could create onscreen magic like nobody’s business given the equipment she carried and the time she had to frame and film. I was proud of the work done, the work we’d do this season.
Living With…
was showcasing me as a rugged action hero. Someone at home in dangerous situations. It was making me organic and believable to producers. A firm identity I wanted to continue to parley into even higher-dollar movie roles. Maybe even a persona that would translate directly onto the screen at some point. Maybe even imbue my upcoming Atlas role with.

That
was what I was ultimately after.
Living With…
was just my path there. And “Living With Lions” merely a stepping stone along that path. But we did have an hour to fill, and right now it was looking like a whole lot of nothing to fill it with.

Dee eased the SUV to a stop and threw it in park. Looking around, I couldn’t see what made
this
a better spot than a half mile back or a half mile ahead. She seemed confident, though, as she climbed down from the driver’s seat and we all followed her out.

“It’ll be a quarter mile on foot,” she said. “There’s a rocky outcrop where they’ll hang that’s pretty rough on tires. One spare is all we have and I’d like very much to not have to use it.”

We shrugged into our backpacks and helped Reena with the equipment bags. The air rifle, presumably that could be loaded with the tranquilizer darts housed in the small case Dee grabbed, and the revolver holstered at her shapely hip didn’t escape my notice.

Nor did they escape Reena’s as she filmed snippets of us getting ready to pack our way in. A pretty woman carrying an assortment of firearms with the natural comfort Dee had with the weapons was the stuff of ratings. Whether or not she could use either weapon effectively remained to be seen.

“You wouldn’t have a reason to dart one of the lions, would you? Fit them with a transmitter, do some kind of physical exam? Maybe you and I could each have a turn shooting them?”

She cocked her head and stared at me like I was speaking Swahili. No, Swahili she would probably understand.

“No darting,” she said at last.

“Look, you’ve got to give us something—”

“No, I don’t.
Normal day-to-day activities
is all I have to give you. By contract. I’ve spent far too long building up a trust with my pride.
They
are my priority. Not making
you
look macho or bad ass. And you know what lions do most of the day? They laze around and sleep. If we’re lucky we’ll get to follow them on a hunt or two. If you thought you were going to get more out of this, that’s your problem, not mine.”

“Maybe you can afford to be out here soaking up grant money,” Gary snapped, “but we’re on a tight deadline. Entertainment doesn’t just make itself.”

Dee shrugged off her backpack and rested it by the wheel of the Range Rover. “Fine. Go out and make it yourself then. I can guarantee at least a couple of minutes of entertainment if one of you is attacked.”

“Moron,” Reena stage-whispered at him. “If you’re going to poke her, be sure I have a camera in my hand first.”

“Reena’s right,” I put in. “If we can’t get an hour’s worth of footage from the lions, the rest’ll have to come from us. So hold those thoughts, Dee. You may have to re-play them for the camera later.”

The disgust she threw at me was palpable, but I met her look for look and shrugged. “It’s Hollywood’s reality. Or does that sacred contract of yours prohibit that too? If not, pick up your stuff and let’s go.”

From her glare, it was clear she didn’t like being told what to do. No wonder she worked out here alone. Probably wouldn’t allow any competition—in the workplace or in bed. There was a difference between having enough balls to make a woman interesting and having too much, which, ironically, turned them into a bitch. Made them infuriating. I didn’t need that kind of grief.

Even if my own balls were telling me otherwise. Telling me that attitude amped her low-grade desirability into full-bore sexy, making me want her even more. She was like bacon or cigarettes. If she was that bad for me, then she had to taste pretty damn good. The inverse law of attraction.

So here I was stuck out in the wild, blessed with a woman who tempted me in every physical way possible but who would be bad news if I touched her, the woman who was my only failed seduction to date, and a hyper-jealous man I had no attraction for but who would bed me at the drop of my briefs.

It was going to be a long two weeks.

And the African heat wasn’t going to help.

With a sullen quirk to her mouth, Dee shrugged back into her backpack and picked up the rifle. Without a word, she stalked off, and we followed across a quarter mile of hardpan that gave way to a rocky outcrop. When she slowed, my heart started to race.

There was a rush unlike any other being around dangerous animals. Their unpredictability was an intoxicant, forcing a hyper-awareness, a constant vigil. Wild animals had a sixth sense that let them know the moment your guard was dropped. And it was that moment they invariably chose to attack. Never when you were ready for them. Never when you were prepared.

And no one—not me, not Dee, not the guy who was eaten by the grizzlies he was studying in Alaska nor the Australian wildlife expert speared by a ray when he was swimming with them—no one could ever be 100% vigilant. Especially when a natural complacency built up over time. A trust both in your abilities and the animals’ behavior. A belief, maybe, that you were different—or they were.

Because it was in that one unguarded moment they could gut you.

People could do it too. A very few quite literally, but most metaphorically. Gut your friendship, your bank account, your trust, your heart.

Give me the literal over the metaphor every time
.

The first of the big cats I saw was a lioness stretched on her side on a rock ledge, her tail twitching slowly in the sun. She knew we were there; her open eyes were fixed right on us. She just didn’t think we posed enough of a threat to bother rising.

“Should I be insulted she’s not getting up?” I whispered to Dee.

Her lips quirked into a half-smile and she snorted in a smothered, quiet way so as not to alarm the cats.

Yes, cats in the plural as the slow twitch of another tail caught my eye. It was another lioness, this one on the ground to the right of the first, lying behind a stand of brush. From behind the same brush, two half-grown cubs appeared, padding closer for a better look.

Dee motioned with her hand, and we all crouched low.

A warning
whuff
from their mother stopped them, but didn’t bank their curiosity as they watched us.

Dee was scanning the rest of the area. The third lioness and Brutus were still unaccounted for.

“Could they be hunting?” I asked.

From behind an outcrop to our left, half my answer came strolling, rubbing his great mane and cheek along the rocks, seeming to stress his nonchalance.

“He’s marking,” Dee said, her voice low, “and doing it openly, making sure we know this is his territory.”

She
whuffed
then, a soft and deep sound. Brutus pricked his ears and, reassured by Dee’s familiar presence, yawned in a great display of fangs and teeth and an impressive bite radius. If he was trying to intimidate, he was doing a damn fine job.

“Sweet!”

Beside me, Reena was capturing Brutus’ welcome on the handheld she’d pulled out as soon as we stopped. Her voice was equally low and she was smiling, in her element now.

From around Brutus’ rear, the third lioness appeared. To my layman’s eye, she looked older—thin with a wise but haggard face, her eyes set back in deep, sad hollows.

“Nana,” Dee said. “The matriarch. How she goes, the pride goes. Brutus is just a figurehead. It’s Nana’s good side you want to stay on.”

We stayed crouched while Nana gave us the once-over. Apparently we passed muster after Dee
whuffed
her reassurances at them again, because Nana then ambled over to the cub twins and greeted each of them nose to nose before dropping and rolling in the dust between them. Big paws slowly paddling the air, squirming her back into the dirt, she enjoyed her dust bath as Reena filmed, clearly happy with the turn the morning had taken.

Her bath done, Nana lay contentedly on her side with the cubs sprawled beside her, while Brutus stretched beside his rock.

Dee gave them a few minutes more, then rose slowly. “We’ll set up here. Just no sudden moves or loud noises. I talk to them, so they’re used to that, but I don’t know how they’ll react to several new voices and new bodies around them.”

“You only have the one rifle,” Gary asked. “Shouldn’t we all be armed?”

“Probably,” Dee agreed. “What weapons did you bring?”

“I assumed you—”

“Not in my contract. Plenty of safari shops when you came through Lusaka on whatever airline you flew in. And there’s at least one in Zambezi. You can always drive back there.”

“But we’d lose a day for filming!”

“I said
you
not
us
. Or are you somehow necessary here for the filming? So far it seems a pack mule could handle your contribution.”

Reena snickered behind her camera. It was true Gary had an inflated sense of ego about his job role, but he was indispensable in the planning stages. Usually. Outfitting us with rifles was an oversight I could understand, however. There had been three others on the bear set with us. And we were in an underwater cage with the sharks. So far, we hadn’t needed to pack our own protection. Well, of the firearm variety anyway. I could always rely on Gary to stay on top of the condom supply no matter where we landed.

Right now, though, it looked like I wouldn’t be needing either type of protection. Dee spoke to the lions and
whuffed
at them, and after a few minutes they seemed to ignore us, although I wasn’t so naïve as to believe they forgot about us. They did, however, seem comfortable with us, just as I soon stopped thinking about petty arguments and focused on the wonder of being within yards of these beasts who were anything but the withered, mange-eaten specimens my cynicism had expected.

Sitting beside Dee, who was idly occupying herself by filming us filming the lions, I took a moment to consider what a remarkable achievement Dee had managed out here alone gaining the trust of this little pride. That took dedication…and guts. Aside from her sharp tongue and obvious dislike of me, was there anything about her that didn’t keep making her more attractive? Hell, even that deep
whuffing
noise she’d make every now and again to comfort the lions was kind of feral and sexy. Maybe it called to the ancestral cave man in me. Whatever, the whole package of her was a distraction, splitting my attention between her and the lions as the day progressed.

The adult lions barely moved as they lazed around the rocks, keeping an eye on us. The cubs, though, had energy to spare, sneaking up behind the adults and batting at twitching tails, pouncing on one another, mock fighting, and being typical pre-teen nuisances until they curled up together around noon for a nap.

“Caesar and Cleopatra,” Dee had introduced them. “They’re fraternal twins.”

“Their mother is…?”

“Portia, the one behind the makenge bush.”

“Which makes the old lioness Nana…”

“The cubs’ grandmother. She’s mom to both Portia and Sheba, the one up on the ledge.”

“And Brutus?”

“Found the pride a couple of years ago, right after game wardens discovered the pride’s old lion had been killed by poachers. Brutus is the father of the cubs; otherwise, he would probably not have let them live.”

“I didn’t think poaching was a big thing anymore.”

“It depends on the season, what part of Africa, what regimes are in power, how much political unrest there is, and how much corruption’s in the civil sectors. Overall, though, it’s too easy and too lucrative to not continue attracting way too many folk looking for a quick buck. Luring an elephant or rhino out of a protected habitat into the sights of some rich hunter’s rifle isn’t some rare, one-off event. It’s a way of life for a whole lot of people who just haven’t been caught yet.”