Maun, Botswana, 1989
Susan sat alone at the bar, nursing her third vodka and lime, wondering what madness had brought her to this Wild West saloon in the middle of Botswana.
It wasn’t because she’d seen the writing on the wall at her dreary copywriting job in Johannesburg when James had mentioned there was a position going here.
There were far more salubrious places to further a career than this dorp, with its perpetual dust, its heat haze shimmering above battered Land Cruisers and pickups, and the smell of spilled beer, sweat and avgas drifting in whenever the door swung open.
Catching the appreciative eye of a khaki-clad stranger jostling through the crowd with a handful of Castle Lagers, she sent him a sultry look as she adjusted her cleavage. He wasn’t bad-looking. Mid-thirties, perhaps—a little older than herself—dressed in the ubiquitous bush gear that failed to distinguish hunters from safari guides, or the pilots servicing the safari boom, shuttling tourists between camps in the flooded Okavango Delta like a taxi service.
She watched him dispense his alcoholic burden. Sweat darkened the cloth between his shoulder blades. Two days’ stubble. Floppy, dirty-blond hair. Funny how she was always attracted to the same type.
She ought to have learned by now.
“Susan?”
She swung around, disappointed. Hunter Dude had looked as though he was heading her way, but someone else had cut in.
“James!” Of course she’d known she’d bump into her cousin within a day of arriving, but his timing was less than perfect. “What a surprise!”
“What are you doing here, Susan? You should have let Verity and me know you were coming!”
“Oh, I’m not visiting. I’m here for good.” Susan curved her lips into a secretive smile, not just for James’ benefit, for she could still see Hunter Dude from the corner of her eye. And he definitely had his eye on her too.
“The job on the Okavango Observer you told me about,” she clarified at James’s questioning look. “I was already sick of life in the big smoke, and when you mentioned the reporter’s job, I acted on a wing and a prayer and decided to come home.”
“Impulsive as ever. But Maun has never been home, has it? Not after we were kids in Serowe?”
“No, I meant Botswana in general. I’m a bush girl at heart.” Susan picked up her vodka and drained it. “I’m hoping I’ll feel the same in a month.”
“You and me both. And, of course, I hope so much that Verity will feel the same, soon, too!” said James, looking momentarily stricken as he signalled to the barman for another vodka for her and three beers for himself.
“It’ll come back quick smart for you. You grew up here,” Susan said. “Verity might be a harder nut to crack. Especially after what happened to Saskia. I wondered if they’d both be on the first plane back to Australia after that ghastly attack. Sorry, I should have asked how Saskia is. God, I’m hopeless.” She took another sip, then added, “Though I did know she’s okay, otherwise Angie would have told me. I gather the cousins have become firm friends at St Anne’s. Of all the coincidences. Who’d have thought?”
“And who’d have thought you were old enough to have a fifteen-year-old daughter at all, much less one going to the same boarding school as Saskia.” James looked about to say more when a shout from the back of the bar pulled his attention away. “Sorry, Susan, I’ve got to get these to the thirsty throng. You okay on your own for now? Waiting for someone?”
Susan smiled. “Always waiting,” she said, dressing up the painful truth with a flippant laugh.
Like maybe Hunter Dude next, she thought, as James disappeared into the crowd.
But Hunter Dude had vanished into the jostling mass, so her gaze roamed over what other possibilities this frontier saloon might yield. Overall, the prospects were far more to her liking than the suits who congregated at the bars she used to frequent in Jo’burg.
Her eye settled on the khaki-clad back of a man of decent height, broad-shouldered, sleeves rolled to reveal biceps that made her insides quiver. Dirty-blond hair. No, not Hunter Dude, but—
“Lady’s bounty!”
She stilled, poised for him to turn, ready with her best smile. But he was making a play for some ridiculously young blonde backpacker by the look of her—yes, you could spot them a mile away—brandishing a carved elephant he’d no doubt picked up for a song from one of the traders. In answer to the girl’s unintelligible question, as she squealed with delight, he said, “Yes, of course I carved it,” accompanying the lie with a theatrical wink.
She should have known it was him by the performance, if not by the words themselves.
Heat flooded her body. Red-hot rage. Shame.
Every emotion under the sun except any that were good.
Goddamn womaniser, Starky Willis.
She should have known she’d bump into him on her first day in this godforsaken dump.
It was why she’d come here, after all.
Not on impulse.
Not on a wing and a prayer.
No.
She’d come here for something far more calculated.
Vengeance.
* * *
