Vain (The Seven Deadly, #1)(22)

I watched him work. “Are you expecting me to open your door for you?” he asked, his thick accent shocking once more.

“Do I look like I expect you to open my door for me?” I bit back.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Then why stand there?”

“It would be presumptuous of me to just sit inside your jeep without you, don’t you think? Possibly rude?”

His calloused hands unexpectedly rested over the now tight straps and he looked at me for longer than I considered comfortable, studying me, but just as suddenly walked to the passenger side door as if just remembering himself and opened it for me without a word. I climbed into the jeep and watched him close the door behind me before walking the front of the vehicle and hopping in.

“How old are you?” I asked, turning toward him after buckling in.

“Twenty,” he said succinctly.

He was quiet as he started the jeep and sped through the almost impossible jumble of pushy taxis waiting for passengers. I admit I white knuckled it until we met open road.

“It’ll take an hour to get to the city capital,” he yelled over the rumbling engine and whipping wind. “Kampala is a busy city, Miss Price, and I’d rather not stop, but I suspect it will be our only opportunity to eat before the long journey back to Lake Nyaguo.”

“I ate just before we landed,” I lied.

If I was being honest, I was afraid to eat anything other than what was prepared at Masego. Damn that Dr. Ford.

“If you’re game to go straight through then so am I.”



And that was the last thing Dingane said to me almost the entire journey.



The silence afforded me astonishing views of an unbelievably attractive country. It also gave me time to come to terms with how much my life was going to change and just how dramatic that change would be.

Four hours is a very long time. Long enough to ponder my very physical reaction to my driver and what it was going to mean to live and work with him. I decided it was just a tenacious chemistry, that I was not without self-control. Oh yeah, you’re the queen of restraint. I turned toward him and drank in his lean, muscular figure.



Oh. My. Word.





CHAPTER SEVEN



“That’s Lake Nyaguo,” Dingane said, startling me. “Masego Orphanage is just north of this lake. Charles owns the land we drive through now.”

“How much does he own?”

“Approximately five thousand acres. He owns the land north of the lake as well as south and his property lines go east from there.”

“Why did he buy land in Uganda?” I asked, more to myself than to Dingane.

“Why not?”

“Fair enough,” I conceded.

Dingane sighed in exasperation. “This is his life’s work. He wanted the land to accomplish it. Surprisingly, land in this part of Uganda is inexpensive.” He smirked.

Half an hour later, we’d rounded the east side of the blue lake and were on a straight red dirt road. “Masego is just five minutes up this drive,” he stated.

My throat dropped to my stomach and I tried to swallow the sinking feeling away. “What’s it like?”

“It is beautiful. It is horrifying.”

The breath I’d been holding for his response rushed out all at once.

“I feel I must prepare you,” he continued.

I gulped. “Prepare me for what?”

“For the children here.” An unexpected gleam came to his eyes and I could see how much he loved them just by speaking of them. “Some will be deformed.”

“Deformed?”

“Maimed.”

“I know what you meant but why?”

“Do you know nothing of our facility?” he asked impatiently, briefly narrowing his eyes my direction.

“I know nothing. I know only that it is an orphanage.”

He breathed out slowly. “We are too close to begin explaining now. Charles or his wife, Karina, should explain it all to you when you arrive. I don’t have time. I’ve spent the entire day driving to fetch you and I need to catch up on a mended fence at the northeastern edge of the property line.”

“Thank you...for fetching me,” I oozed out.

He squirmed in his seat and I could tell I’d made him uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. He wanted as far away from me as he could possibly get and that confused the hell out of me. He didn’t know me at all.

In the distance I spied a long, tall fence surrounding what I assumed was Masego. As we approached a very sturdy, heavy-looking gate, I recognized the word Masego on a shabby, falling sign.

“What does Masego mean?” I asked.

“Blessings.”

I studied him. “You’re a man of few words, Dingane of South Africa.”

This surprisingly made him fight a smile and it shocked me. He quickly shook it and mumbled under his breath and out of the jeep to open the gate. His muscles flexed beneath his shirt as he dragged the heavy wooden barrier and I sat up a bit in my seat to watch him. Night was quickly coming and the jeep’s headlights magnified just how beautiful he was. He was surprisingly tall for an African. Six-foot one, maybe two. Then again, what the hell did I know of Africans?

He jumped back into the jeep and steered us through before getting out once more and closing the gate behind us. I cursed the setting of the sun, wishing I could stare at him unabashedly once more.