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A low curse split his lips as he looked up into the night sky. He supposed his reluctance to be a father stemmed from his need to not be tied down. To preserve his freedom at all costs. The dysfunctional nature of his own family. But presented with the facts, he was surprised to discover absolute clarity that stemmed from someplace deep inside him. Maybe it was biology, maybe it was because this baby was his flesh and blood, but he knew that no matter how bad the timing, no matter what state his dismal marriage was in, this was a responsibility he could not shirk. He and Diana were going to have to make this work.
A knot formed in his stomach. His wife had taken a piece of him with her when she’d walked out of their apartment that night, proclaiming what they had dead. Now she was about to learn what it was like to be bound to a person forever with no hope for the future. Because that was his plan.
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS STILL smoking hot at eight o’clock at night as the sun sank behind the skyline of the central African capital Diana had been posted to, blazing a fiery path as it scorched everything within its reach. She put up a hand to shield her eyes as she left the hospital with her armed escort after her second day of work and walked the short distance to her hotel. She was normally good with heat, loved it in fact, but since she’d arrived here, the heat wave that had racked the country had been beyond anything she’d ever experienced. Sweltering and bone-dry, it invaded every cell, sucking out all your bodily fluids along with it.
Which would have been manageable if she hadn’t been pregnant and losing hydration to the ever-present nausea that continued to plague her. The work had been even more emotionally draining and physically taxing than she’d imagined. She’d been posted here to treat patients at the hospital and clinic who had been directly or indirectly injured in the violence between the rebels and the armed self-defense groups battling over the city. Although the arrival of international forces had stemmed the violence for now, there were still random acts of aggression taking place on civilians, and the fallout from the hostilities had provided a steady stream of patients through the hospital doors.
She had performed surgery today on a sixty-year-old man who’d stumbled upon a grenade that hadn’t been defused and almost lost a leg, done a cesarean section on a young mother and helped the other doctors work through dozens of patients suffering from everything from malaria to respiratory and skin infections. All of it had been performed in an emergency room that lacked much of the high-tech equipment she was used to, requiring instinct and ingenuity on her part to make do.
She knew what she’d seen today would haunt her for a lifetime. And that was just one day in the life of this besieged city. It was enough to break your heart, something her supervisor had counseled her about. “You need to keep your professional detachment,” he’d told her. “Even more so than you would normally do. You are going to see things here that will affect your perspective forever. Which will test your belief in your fellow man. You’ve got to move past it.”
The gleaming facade of the Lione Hotel loomed in front of them, sparkling a burned-gold color in the dying rays of the sun. She smiled her thanks to her escort and arranged to meet him the next morning. If it seemed incongruous for a five-star hotel to still be operating in this city after what it had endured, it should be noted things weren’t working entirely as usual.
There still wasn’t hot water when she went to take a shower in her lovely whitewashed room with its four-poster bed, nor was the AC working particularly well. Wanting only to drink and sleep, but knowing she had to eat for the sake of the new life growing inside her, Diana went down to the restaurant and ordered a light dinner. She managed to eat her salad and half the chicken before she gave up and took her tea out onto the terrace, which seemed to be cooler than the poorly air-conditioned restaurant.
At least the air moved out here, she thought, sinking into a chair at a table by the pool.
The terrace was deserted except for a man leaning against the facade of the restaurant smoking a cigarette. She focused her gaze on the smooth surface of the oval-shaped pool, a jewel in the center of the perfectly landscaped space. It looked heavenly. Almost good enough to inspire a trip to her room to get her bathing suit, but even that was too much energy in her current state. She sank back in the chair and looked up at the dusky sky and the different placement of the stars on this side of the world.
The man dropped the butt of his cigarette to the concrete, ground it under his foot and went back inside. The night blanketed her in silence. Her eyes fluttered shut. Exhaustion reached out to claim her with greedy, grasping hands. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, three, four minutes, when a sixth sense made her open her eyes. A man strolled from the shadows of the building, dressed all in black. A bolt of alarm zigzagged through her, penetrating the fog she was in. Move, her brain told her. But by the time she got to her feet, her hands balled at her sides ready to engage, the tall figure had stepped into the light, not ten feet from her.
