Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar) (2 page)

“Maria will show you to your room,” Mrs. Kirk said. “I have to meet Dr. Kirk at the club later. I need to get ready. We were hoping you would join us?”

“I would love to,” I answered a little perplexed since I had no idea what kind of club she was talking about or how to get there.

“We’ll take my car,” Mrs. Kirk said. “See you out front at seven. By then I am sure that Heather will be home as well. I sure hope she will be. You never know with her these days. Young and always on the run. Going back to college in a few days. She has been spending all summer with her friends. You know how girls are when they are nineteen. Going to major in history, I think. At least that is what she told us last week." Mrs. Kirk laughed lightly. "The week before that she wanted to do interior decorating. Something about creating her own business, I don't know. I can't keep up with young people these days. They have so many possibilities that we never had when I was young. But it's okay that she lets some of her steam off before she settles down. Her father and I just want her to marry well." Mrs. Kirk took at quick glance at her wristwatch. "Ah. Look at me I am babbling along. I really should be getting myself ready. See you outside at seven."

Chapter 2

I felt like a king once I followed Maria into what was going to be my room for the next year. It was bigger than my old living room and had a spectacular view over the water on the one side and the city on the other where the sun was about to set in an orange explosion of colors I had never seen in my life.

Maria put down my bag on the floor that she had insisted on carrying even though I told her I could do it myself. She was a strong woman who had taken the bag in one hand and carried it all the way up the stairs to my new bedroom with a huge smile on her round face. The bed was made with tons of pillows and on top Maria had put four towels for me to use.

“Dirty laundry goes in the basket in the bathroom,” she said and gave the door to the bathroom a gentle push till it opened enough for me to take a peek at the marble ballroom behind it.

“Okay, thanks. I will try and remember that,” I said.

I wasn’t what you would call a neat person back then. A lot has changed since, but I remember my dad never being able to enter my room because the clothes on the floor would get stuck underneath the door. My excuse was that I didn’t have a mother to teach me these things, but reality was that I was just too lazy. And where I came from, nobody cared how my room appeared. My dad just gave up coming to my room after some time. He did that with a lot of things since my mom died. Gave up. Sometimes I felt like he even gave up on me. Maybe it just hurt him to look at my face because I looked so much like her. Sometimes when I think back on it I think that it might have been a relief for my dad to get me out of the house and send me across the Atlantic. Everything about me seemed to irritate him, and ever since my mother’s death, it was like he avoided looking into my eyes. He avoided me.

It was quite a change for me. All my childhood I had been an extremely loved child. My parents adored me. I was the child they had been waiting for for many years. And they had almost given up the hope of getting their own child, so they had adopted a girl from Brazil many years before I was born. Then, my mom became pregnant completely unexpected. Naturally they were thrilled to have a child of their own, so they spoiled me rotten to the big grief of my older adopted sister whom they almost forgot existed. To this very day I have no contact with her. She left the house as soon as she turned eighteen a couple of years after our mom died and never looked back. My dad never managed to keep in contact with her. I can’t blame her for hating me. I was their love-child, everything was made so easy for me and everybody always said I was born under a lucky star. I believed them until my mom became seriously ill. After that everything changed.  

 “Who are you?”

The voice from the doorway brought me back to the present.  Maria had left me and in entered a stunning woman about my age. She had long, blond, straight hair that reached to the middle of her back, the most perfect set of big green almond-shaped eyes. Her make-up was flawless and emphasized the color in her eyes. Even though I liked girls to be natural, I thought it looked good. Her face was beautifully sculptured and she wore her hair down the way I preferred women to.

“I am Chris,” I said and threw her one of my irresistible smiles that I always used to get the girls' attention.

“I’m Heather,” she said and sat on the bed.

I started unpacking my bag and put my jackets and t-shirts on hangers. I was determined to change my ways. I wanted to be a new man in this new country. From now on, all my clothes would be in a closet preferably on hangers or nicely folded. It would last about a week, I knew that, but at least I wanted to give it a try. These people didn’t know me and I really wanted to give out a good impression. 

“So, you didn’t know I was coming?” I asked while putting my jeans on a shelf. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to use them much around St. Augustine. It was simply too hot for jeans in this place.

“Sure I did,” she answered with a smile as perfect as her mother’s. “I was just making conversation.”

“So what is it like, living in this mansion? Can you ever find each other?”

Heather laughed, letting out a sound that didn’t match her feminine charisma. It was too rough for a girl like her. “Why would I want to find anyone? There is only me and my parents here.”

“I see your point,” I said and emptied my bag. I hadn’t brought much because I wanted to buy new stuff while I was there. I wanted to bring it home and be the cool guy.

“So you will be going to med school at University of Florida in Jacksonville?” Heather asked.

“That’s the plan.”

“You’re going to be a doctor like the old man?”

“Yes. I thought I might be able to do something with kids, maybe be a pediatrician or something. Work in a hospital with seriously ill children. Something like that.” I couldn’t say I had enjoyed the first three years of med school in Denmark; it had been a lot of hard work. Luckily for me, I had my photographic memory to help me out. That made it a lot easier, but I still didn't enjoy it much. The only thing that helped me through was the thought of being able to one day cure someone like my mother. Maybe save someone from death so their kid wouldn't lose them and go through what I had gone through.

Heather smiled and it made me feel uncomfortable. Like she didn’t believe me. Like she thought I was only saying that to impress her. I wasn’t. That was the only way I could ever become a doctor. That was the only way I could stand the thought of ending up in the same profession as my father. I knew he wanted me to take over his practice but that wasn't until he retired. Until then I was going to travel helping people in need around the globe or help sick children.

“That’s what everybody says in the beginning,” she said still wearing that smirky smile that I didn’t care for. “Everybody wants to save the world. Then they realize how much money they can make from doing other stuff and they throw all their ideals overboard. At least that is what my dad usually says.”

“Is that why he is an eye surgeon? Because that is where the money is?” I asked.

“Is there any other reason? All he does all day is remove cataracts from old people’s eyes so they can see better and don’t need their glasses for reading or driving around in their big cars. He doesn’t even have any contact with the patients at the clinic. The nurses prep them for him and all he has to do is show up for surgery and do his thing. It takes him about five minutes to do it and it costs the patient twenty-five hundred dollars. He can do about four patients an hour. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he makes a lot of money.”

That was a lot of money, I thought to myself. My own dad was just an ordinary physician with a private practice and he made decent money, enough for us to live a rich life in Denmark. Enough to make me among the wealthiest kids in high school. Enough for my dad to be able to buy me a year at the University of Florida. Money had never been a concern to me. In that way I was still spoiled.

“So do you know how to play that thing or do you just carry it around to impress the ladies?” she asked, pointing at my acoustic guitar. I had taken it out of the case and put it in the corner of the room.

My beloved guitar. My only friend when I was lonely. I picked it up and sat on the bed. I started playing gently one of my latest love songs and started singing. The laments of my guitar was soon inflamed with love and broken promises. Heather listened while tilting her head. She got the look in her eyes that I knew too well. The look women always got when I started playing. They simply loved it. It was the oldest trick in the book, but it worked every time. I closed my eyes and let the words and the notes float out of me. I had played that thing ever since my mother died. It had been hers. Like me, she was a lover of music and literature. She used to play the very same guitar for me at night or even sometimes in the afternoon when she thought we were getting too serious and needed a song to lighten the air. She hated when the air was heavy in the house, as she called it. She used music for everything. Whenever I needed to be cheered up. Whenever my dad got too serious and talked too much politics during dinner, she would suddenly leave the table and grab the guitar and start playing. “We need a song,” she would say, and that would always make my dad laugh. He never could hit the notes right but he always used to sing along with all his heart. Needless to say he never sang again after my mother’s death. But I did. I picked up the guitar a couple of days after her funeral and just started playing it. I soon learned I had inherited my mother’s great musical skills. She could pick up any instrument and begin to play. So could I. And I could do it by ear. I had never taken any lessons nor had a teacher. I just knew how somehow. When I had just started playing I had been too shy to let anyone hear my songs or even my playing, but throughout high school I realized that people liked to hear me play and sing, and little by little I had gotten used to it. I still felt like I bared my soul, but that was what gave it its authenticity. That was what people enjoyed so very much about my music.

When I was done, Heather clapped her hands. “Wow. That was really good.”

“I do my best,” I answered with a timid smile. Heather was definitely an interesting girl, I thought. But I also sensed that I had to be very careful with her. Heather was the type who was used to getting things her way and that could become a problem eventually. I didn’t want to get into any trouble and break the trust of the nice people that had taken me into their home. I had to keep her at a distance.

“Just don’t play that thing in front of my parents,” she continued. “My dad thinks any music besides classical is for the poor and black.”

Heather got up from the bed and walked towards the door. “See you at dinner later,” she said. “You are going to the club with us, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then we can pick up the guitar a little later. I have some friends that I’m hanging out with. Maybe you want to join us? They would love to hear you sing like that. We will probably just drive to the park and sit by the water and smoke a little, if you know what I mean?”

Chapter 3

It didn’t seem to get any colder even after the sun had set. I had watched it from my room in awe of how wonderful Mother Nature was that she could paint such colors in the sky. As I stepped outside the house in my new set of clothes that I had changed into, I felt the warm humid air hit my face like the air from a hairdryer. It was a strange feeling, one that I had never encountered before in my cold country, and I found that I really liked it. I enjoyed the heavy balmy air that surrounded me. But yet again I came to realize that I was wearing too warm clothes.

Soon Heather joined me in the driveway where we waited for her mother to bring out the car. As expected, she looked gorgeous walking out of the heavy wooden front doors. Aristocratic and elegant in her short black dress. Seldom had I met anyone so confident and graceful. She wore a thin little bracelet with white pearls around her right ankle. It added glamour to her movements when she walked towards me. She smiled while her hair moved in the evening sea breeze that brought the smell of salt to us from the ocean not far away. I was getting anxious to get to the beach as I smelled and sensed the ocean air. Back home I had picked up wind-surfing while still in high school and for years that had been all that was on my mind from the moment I woke up. How were the waves? How was the wind today? Some days I would skip classes just to go to the coast and get in the water while the wind was still strong enough. The problem was the water was always cold in Denmark so I had to wear a suit. That wouldn’t be a problem here.

“So, Pretty-Boy. Are you ready to meet the high and mighty doctor?” Heather grinned.

I nodded. I was actually looking forward to finally meeting him. I had heard a lot of great things about him from my dad. He had a huge name in medical circles and was highly esteemed for his research. “One of the best eye surgeons in the states, if not the best,” my dad had told me. So it is easy to say that I was expecting a great man.