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He didn’t even hesitate. “What I’m doing now. I’d help the villages. I’d work with UNICEF, raise more money, raise awareness, become an activist and help anywhere I could.”
The sun was just beginning to set when Wolf took a crowbar to the wooden crate, splintering it into medium pieces. Together they gathered some twigs and small branches from a tree near the rocky outcropping.
They put off starting the fire until it was late, eating a half sandwich each and a little of the fruit. And just as Wolf was about to strike the match to light the fire, he looked up and saw Alexandra crouched right next to him, calm, trusting, and he felt as though someone had reached into his chest and ripped his heart out with a violent yank.
What if they couldn’t get out of here? What if they ran out of water? Food?
His gaze searched her face, and yet there was no panic in her eyes, no anger or resentment anywhere in her beautiful face. She was more than a good sport. He loved her adventurous attitude almost as much as he loved how genuine she was. How real. She was, he thought, reaching for her, that girl he’d been looking for, the one that reminded him of home.
Wolf cupped her cheek and Alexandra closed her eyes. Just that one touch melted her. Just that one touch made her want incredible things.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. His eyes were just as endless as the sky above them and even darker.
He wanted her. She felt his desire, felt the need. It was basic and raw. And yet she waited, waiting for him to make the first move.
He touched her mouth with the tip of his finger, gently, lightly stroking down so that her lips burned and tingled, now so sensitive.
Down his fingertip went, over her lower lip to trail down her chin. He traced her jaw and then up to her right earlobe and back across the flushed curve of her cheek.
She was trembling as she stood there, trembling beneath his slow, unhurried touch. She wanted to be caught in his arms, dragged close and kissed until her head spun but he had a different script in mind.
“Kiss me,” she breathed, unable to stand it.
“So impatient,” he mocked, lowering his head and dropping a brief kiss against her mouth, catching the corner of her lips and the swell of her upper lip.
The brush of his mouth against hers made her belly flip, sending rivulets of fire and ice through her veins.
Shivering, she took a step toward him. “Kiss me again,” she urged.
Lifting her up, he carried her to the door of the plane, where he stripped off her clothes and then his and made love to her on what was left of the plane.
Afterward, they stayed inside the plane, and Wolf used some of the blankets from the stash he’d been taking to the village—one for a bed, another for a pillow and the last to cover them.
She lay sleepily against his chest, thinking his body fit hers perfectly. He was hard and strong where she was soft. Stifling a yawn, she thought there’d be no one else, no one that would ever make her feel like this.
Alexandra woke to the feel of Wolf’s lips and beard-roughened jaw kissing the back of her neck.
“Good morning,” he said.
Sighing contentedly, she scooted closer. “Good morning.”
But he wasn’t staying in bed. He was getting up. “I’m going to try the radio again. Somebody’s got to find us soon.”
It was harder to pass the time the second day, at least until Wolf remembered the books, paper, small chalkboards and chalk in the supplies he’d been flying to the village.
With the chalkboards and chalk they began their own version of Twenty Questions. They took turns writing questions down for each other and then they’d turn their chalkboard over and the other would have to answer. Some of the questions were random—what’s your favorite color, what’s your Chinese zodiac sign, what size shoe do you wear—while others were far more revealing.
“How did you get the name Wolf?” she asked, flashing him her chalkboard. “It’s not Spanish or Irish.”
“If you were a true fan, you’d know the answer.”
She rolled her eyes. “Members of your fan club get the details in a newsletter?”
He laughed appreciatively. “It’s a shortened version of my name. I was christened Tynan Wolfe Kerrick. A casting director convinced me to drop Tynan and then the e off Wolfe.”
“What did your dad call you, then?”
“Tynan.”
“And your mom?” she persisted.
The corners of his mouth tilted, and he smiled mockingly up at her from beneath his dense black lashes. “Trouble.”
They both laughed and then he held up his board. Why Hollywood? it read.
“I’ve always loved movies,” she said. “I was crazy about them as a kid. And not just a little bit but wildly, passionately. It’s one of the ways my family helped me cope with losing Mom. They took me to movies every weekend in Bozeman. We didn’t have a lot of theatres, so sometimes we’d see the same movie four or five times.”
“You have a good family,” he said gently.
She nodded thoughtfully. “I do.”
“Do you remember your first movie?”
“Disney’s The Little Mermaid.” She smiled shyly. “I remember I cried for Ariel when she lost her voice. And then I cried again at the end, when she and Prince Eric got married—” She broke off, remembering not just that day but all the movies, all the trips to the theater. The way you crunched popcorn and stepped in sticky soda on the way to your seat. The dramatic darkening of the theater as the lights went out. The swish of the curtains opening. The clicking sound the projector made as the movie ended.
She lifted her eyebrows. “I even remember the first movie I saw you in. I was fifteen. You were playing a soldier and you died—” she took a quick breath “—and I cried then, too. And now look at us, stranded here in the middle of nowhere!”
“It’s not nowhere,” he answered gravely, mimicking her response from yesterday. “It’s Zambia. Africa.”
She sat nestled in his arms as the sun set, the savannah painted a stunning blood-red, and then the sun disappeared and the horizon turned dark. Not long after, a lion roared in the distance.
Alexandra scrambled to her feet. “I think it’s time to light that fire.”
“I agree.”
Later, as the fire burned, they played their Twenty Questions again, this time without chalkboards since it would be too hard to see. “How old were you when your mom died?” he asked.
Alex leaned forward, pressed her chest against her knees. “Five.”
“Are you like her?”
She shook her head. “My brothers say no. They said Mom was sweet—” She broke off, laughed and then took a quick, sharp breath. “I miss her. Being the only girl in my family was hard.”
Wolf leaned against one of the red seats from the cockpit and watched her face as she talked. Her face was so expressive in the firelight. Her eyes shone and her mouth curved, twitched, moved, and he thought she just might be the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
“Mothers are special, aren’t they?” he said, grabbing a stalk of dry grass and breaking it off. He rubbed the tall brittle grass between his thumb and finger, twirling it around as though it’d soon take flight.
“I wish I’d been older. Wish I knew her better. Sometimes I?
??m angry with my brothers because they had so much more time with her. Brock was a senior in high school. Practically an adult.” Her eyes filled with tears. She blinked and quickly pushed away the tear. “I was just starting kindergarten. And—” she pushed away another tear “—I don’t really remember her. I remember The Little Mermaid, but I don’t remember her. How’s that fair?”
“It’s not,” he said gently.
“Sometimes I think everything would be so different if my mom were alive today.”
He heard the wistfulness in her voice. “How?”
She shrugged. “Maybe I’d be a different person.”
“But why would you want to be different? You wouldn’t be you—and you’re perfect as you are.”
Her head ducked and she stared at the fire and then she lifted her head, smiled shyly. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” His gaze held hers, and as the tears dried in her eyes, he knew he hated seeing her cry. He’d do anything to keep her from crying. “So what makes you happy?”
She wrinkled her nose, laughed. “Snow,” she whispered. “It reminds me of the movies. It changes everything. Makes simple things beautiful.”
And maybe that was her magic, Wolf thought, standing up and holding a hand out to her. She made simple things beautiful, too.
Alexandra was so hungry that night she had a hard time falling asleep. Every time she’d start to doze off, her stomach growled. It was a relief when she did fall into a proper sleep, a deep sleep with a good dream, and she was still in that dream, a place of muted color and muffled sound, when she felt a gust of cold air blow over her.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty, time to wake up.”
Slowly, sleepily she opened her eyes, struggling to focus. “Wolf?”
He was standing outside the plane and he was smiling broadly. “Help has finally arrived.”
She sat up so fast she banged her head on the side of the plane. “Seriously?” she demanded, moving to her knees to peek around Wolf. And there was help. A Luangwa park warden in a dusty Land Rover.
She let out a cheer. “We’re saved!”
The Luangwa warden had been authorized to drive them to Lusaka, where a massive search-and-rescue party was being organized. They stopped at one of the lodges en route, where they both showered and had a quick meal before continuing on to the capital city.
