Wildfire Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Susan Lewis

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Everything in Rhiannon’s life is perfect. Her career is on the up and Oliver, the great love of her life, has just asked her to marry him. The future couldn’t look better.

  But their married bliss soon starts to evaporate when Oliver’s power-crazed boss decides that Rhiannon is an unsuitable wife. And when American billionaire Max Romanov, engaged to supermodel Galina Casimir, turns his charm on her, Rhiannon is overcome by the intensity of her feelings for this enigmatic man who proves to be a challenge too hard to resist.

  Until the web of passion becomes more and more tangled and threatens to destroy a love that consumes like wildfire . . .

  About the Author

  Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of twenty-seven novels. She is also the author of Just One More Day and One Day at a Time, the moving memoirs of her childhood in Bristol. Having resided in France for many years she now lives in Gloucestershire. Her website address is www.susanlewis.com

  Susan is a supporter of the childhood bereavement charity, Winston’s Wish: www.winstonswish.org.uk and of the breast cancer charity, BUST: www.bustbristol.co.uk

  Also by Susan Lewis

  Fiction

  A Class Apart

  Dance While You Can

  Stolen Beginnings

  Darkest Longings

  Obsession

  Vengeance

  Summer Madness

  Last Resort

  Chasing Dreams

  Taking Chances

  Cruel Venus

  Strange Allure

  Silent Truths

  Wicked Beauty

  Intimate Strangers

  The Hornbeam Tree

  The Mill House

  A French Affair

  Missing

  Out of the Shadows

  Lost Innocence

  The Choice

  Forgotten

  Stolen

  No Turning Back

  Losing You

  Memoir

  Just One More Day

  One Day at a Time

  Wildfire

  Susan Lewis

  To Gary

  Acknowledgements

  I must first and foremost thank all the staff at Ngala Game Reserve in the Kruger National Park, most particularly Ian Boyd, for the fun, excitement and invaluable help I received during one of the most fascinating and enjoyable trips I have made for research. My love and thanks also go to Glenn A. Baker and Mark Leonard for their unique Australian humour which gave such inspiration to the story. I should also like to thank Karen Lane for her wonderful introduction to South Africa and for the lovely time we had touring the wine regions and exploring Table Mountain.

  I extend more love and thanks to Kay and Ted Stern who helped me so much with the Los Angeles part of the story; also to Jo Conner and Rose Fleury who helped me with background research. I also acknowledge and thank Sondra Krakower who gave me the benefit of her expert advice regarding Galina’s mental instability.

  My thanks also go to Stephen Kelly of De Beers for his guidance through the world of diamond dealing; to the management of La Mamounia Hotel in Marrakesh; to those who assisted me at the Hotel Grand Chalet in Gstaad and to Gerrie Pitt at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles.

  ‘YOU WILL BE like a shadow. They’re going to see you, but they won’t know who you are. You’re going to follow them and carry out the instructions I give you. You’ll begin by providing me with a detailed dossier on the woman. I want to know everything there is to know about her, no matter how trivial it might seem to you. Someone over in London has already been to work, the results are there, in that file. It’s pretty straightforward, but I want more. The woman and three others will be flying out of London at the end of the week. You’re going to leave New York tomorrow and be at the woman’s destination when she gets there. The arrangements are made, you can collect your ticket at the airport.’

  Randy Theakston’s sharp grey eyes remained on the man who had spoken, even though he had stopped. He was a small man with a large face and a gaze that was as impenetrable as the bodyguard that flanked him. The millionaire philanthropist, as Theo Straussen liked to be known, had made use of her investigator’s services several times in the past. The only difference now was that her assignment was taking her beyond the shores of the United States.

  Randy was excited by the prospect, though nothing in her demeanour showed that. She was well schooled in the art of taciturnity, a must for someone in her profession. Her hair was grey, like her eyes, her middle-aged face blended easily in a crowd and her manner was as unimposing as her height. The only feature about Randy Theakston that might possibly get her noticed was the expensive cut of her otherwise unremarkable pants suit.

  ‘Where is the woman heading?’ she asked when Straussen showed no inclination to continue.

  Straussen’s lichen-green eyes narrowed, giving Randy the impression he was laughing. ‘Some place in Africa,’ he answered. ‘The details will be with your ticket.’ He took a fat Cuban cigar from the corner of his mouth and rested it on the ashtray in front of him. ‘Oliver Maguire’s movements over the next couple of weeks are taken care of,’ he said. ‘Right now he’s here in New York, so you don’t need to concern yourself there. Besides, I know all there is to know about Maguire. What I need is the low-down on her.’

  Randy nodded, then, as though asking how much luggage she should take, she said, ‘Will I need to carry a gun?’

  Straussen’s full-lipped mouth curved in a grandfatherly smile. ‘It shouldn’t be necessary,’ he answered, ‘but we’ll see you have one anyway.’

  ‘OK,’ Randy said, putting down her pencil. ‘Then there remains only one question – the woman’s name.’

  Straussen picked up his cigar and waited for one of his henchmen to strike a match, ‘Her name’, he said, ‘is Edwardes. Rhiannon Edwardes. She’s a journalist,’ he went on, palming away a cloud of smoke, ‘so don’t get too close, ’cos the last thing we want is her getting wind of the fact she’s being watched. Just observe and report back is all you do for now. Any more than that, I’ll let you know.’

  Chapter 1

  ‘THIS IS SENSATIONAL,’ Lizzy murmured.

  Her eyes were shining in a way they hadn’t for some time now, her arms were resting on the side of the jeep, while her short, curly blonde hair danced in the breeze. ‘It’s even better than I imagined,’ she said. ‘I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere that’s made me feel quite so . . .’ She was shaking her head, searching for the right words, until her dark-blue eyes began to sparkle and lifting the brim of Rhiannon’s safari hat, she whispered an outrageous account of how she was feeling through the mane of Rhiannon’s fiery red hair. As they laughed, the open-topped landrover bounced over a jagged h
ole in the track, bumping their heads together.

  Still laughing, Rhiannon straightened her hat and using the back of the seat in front to prop up her feet, she turned to survey the endless tangle of African bush, while thinking of how she too, now Lizzy came to mention it, was experiencing some particularly exhilarating surges of sexual abandonment. There was a very definite potency to the primitiveness of their surroundings, an hypnotic perfume to the wild aniseed and dry earth that curried the air. The setting sun inflamed the honeyed shades of the distant horizon, turning the forest of spiked, skeletal branches black against the sky; the primeval call of the wild was like an erotic chant on the senses.

  ‘You sure it’s not the proximity to old Androcles there that’s getting to you?’ Rhiannon whispered, nodding towards Andy Morrison the chief-ranger and joint-owner of Perlatonga Game Reserve whose land they were currently exploring.

  ‘Who?’ Lizzy blinked ingenuously, then smiled warmly to herself as she recalled the unmistakable throb of passion in Andy’s voice when he had spoken about the lions earlier. As if he wasn’t gorgeous enough with his ranger’s sun-bronzed body, his sun-bleached hair and those positively indecent blue eyes! But when one added to that the seriousness he attached to his work, his deep and genuine love of the animals and the intense emotion that darkened his eyes and tensed his body when he spoke of them, he was, at least as far as Lizzy was concerned, the embodiment of every wicked fantasy she’d ever had – and some she was just getting acquainted with.

  Lizzy’s eyes slid over to Rhiannon’s and the two of them grinned as, tossing her glorious hair back over her shoulder, Rhiannon gave a sigh of utter contentment.

  ‘Zebra crossing,’ Hugh quipped from the raised seat behind them as a zebra sprang out of the bushes and dashed across the path.

  Everyone groaned with laughter as Andy slowed the jeep so they could try capturing the swiftly disappearing animal with their expensive cameras before it was obliterated completely by the prickly dry foliage and dwindling light.

  ‘So come on then, Andy,’ Hugh challenged, swinging the video camera down from his shoulder to rest it on the seat between Jack, the sound guy, and himself, ‘you can tell us. Are they white with black stripes or black with white stripes?’

  Andy grinned. ‘You got me there, mate,’ he answered, easing the jeep forward again.

  ‘Are you managing to get much?’ Rhiannon asked, holding her hat in place as she turned to where Hugh was once again shouldering the video camera and training the lens on just about anything that moved. ‘Surely it’s too bumpy to get anything worthwhile.’

  ‘Cinema verité,’ Hugh grinned through his dense, silver-streaked beard.

  Twisting round further so she could see Jack, Rhiannon winked, then turned quickly back as Andy brought the jeep to a standstill again. Elmore, the tracker, had got down from his seat on the bonnet and was standing in front of the vehicle, listening, sniffing the air and squinting through the twilight. He disappeared for a few minutes, leaving everyone waiting silently in the jeep, until returning from the thickening shadows he muttered something to Andy, then loped around to the back of the vehicle and sprang up behind Hugh and Jack.

  ‘Looks like we got ourselves a couple of lionesses,’ Andy explained, his Australian accent as mischievous and – at least to Lizzy’s mind – as sensuous as his cobalt-blue eyes. ‘So, you recall what I told you when we started out?’ he went on. ‘No standing up, no sudden movements or noises and for God’s sake don’t even think about getting out of the landie. They might look like great big cuddly old pussy-cats to you, but to them you look like tonight’s barbie.’

  Melanie, the teenage-spotted man-eater, as Lizzy had dubbed her, who was sitting beside Andy on the front seat, laughed a touch too loudly at Andy’s attempt at humour, causing Rhiannon to smother a laugh of her own as Lizzy glared at the girl. Looks like an interesting night ahead, Rhiannon was remarking wryly to herself.

  ‘Do you give the animals names?’ Melanie asked as Andy put the jeep back into gear.

  ‘Officially no,’ Andy answered. ‘We’ll go in quietly,’ he continued, inching slowly forward. ‘If it’s the beauties I think it is then you folks could be in for something of a treat.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to cock your rifle, Andy?’ Melanie asked, managing to deep-throat the last few words as she leaned forward to where the Bruno .375 was clamped across the base of the lowered windscreen. As her fingers performed a blatant caress of the barrel, Andy allowed his eyes to linger a moment on the small, cone-shaped breasts beneath the clinging nylon of her polo-neck. Behind them Lizzy bristled and turned to Rhiannon, who was already grinning.

  ‘I’m going to fucking kill her,’ Lizzy muttered. ‘No, I mean it,’ she said when Rhiannon started to laugh. ‘I’ve had just about all I can take of that little tramp with her teapot tits and sebaceous gland disorder . . .’

  ‘Sssh, she’ll hear you,’ Rhiannon warned, her brown eyes dancing.

  ‘I couldn’t give a flying fuck what she can hear,’ Lizzy grumbled, grudgingly keeping her voice low, while turning to gaze at the shrubs and trees as the landrover moved from the track and began to plough steadily through the orange light of the bush.

  Fifty or so metres in, after a muted exchange with Elmore, Andy slowed to a halt and peered through the almost impenetrable density of thorny acacias and mopane trees. ‘There she is,’ he murmured, pointing straight ahead.

  Five pairs of intense, eager eyes followed the direction of his arm, straining to see through the knotted limbs of the bushveld.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Rhiannon breathed, lowering her feet to the floor as she caught the movement of a huge sandy-coloured beast where it lay panting in the long grass some ten or twelve feet away.

  ‘Can you see it?’ Lizzy whispered excitedly. ‘Where? Where is she?’

  ‘Right through there,’ Rhiannon answered, pointing.

  ‘There,’ Hugh repeated, taking Lizzy’s head between his hands and facing her in the right direction. ‘Do you see her?’

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ Lizzy chanted in disbelief. ‘That is a lion.’

  ‘Lioness,’ Melanie corrected her, keeping her eyes straight ahead and a trembling hand on Andy’s muscular forearm.

  ‘Didn’t you say there were two?’ Rhiannon asked softly, after smothering a laugh at the way Lizzy’s hand made a chopping motion behind Melanie’s neck.

  ‘Reckon there’re more than that,’ Andy responded, starting up the engine and reversing back a little. ‘We’re going to circle round to the other side; should be able to get a better view from there.’

  Rhiannon glanced back over her shoulder to check that Hugh had the camera running, then signalled to Jack to put a mike on Lizzy to record her reactions.

  A few minutes later they were in the clearing, watching in total thrall as a dozen or more lion cubs of varying size and age frolicked and tumbled in the grass under the watchful eyes of five magnificent, though rather sleepy-looking, lionesses. It was hard to get a grip on the reality of being so close – close enough to hear their laboured breath and smell the sour stench of their bodies.

  Rhiannon and Lizzy laughed softly as a lioness batted one of her annoying offspring with a giant paw, somersaulting him back into the midst of his siblings, where he picked himself up, shook himself down, then bounced back into the attack on his mother.

  ‘It’s the Perlatonga Pride,’ Andy told them, his voice husky with emotion.

  ‘Where’s the male?’ Lizzy asked.

  ‘There are three males,’ he answered. ‘They won’t be far away. Probably sleeping off their banquet. Look.’ He pointed away to the left where the twisted bones of a stripped, bloodied carcass were just visible in the fading light. ‘See the horns?’ he said. ‘It would have taken all five of these girls to bring that old buffalo down. There are more bones over there, seems like they’ve had themselves a regular feast.’

  ‘Is it true that the lionesses do the hunting?’ Lizzy wondered.
>
  ‘For the pride, yes,’ Andy replied. ‘If the males aren’t part of a pride, they hunt for themselves. Look up.’

  Everyone tilted their heads towards the crimson sky.

  ‘Vultures,’ Rhiannon murmured.

  Melanie shivered and wriggled in closer to Andy, dropping her hand to his thigh.

  Andy either didn’t, or pretended not to notice as he turned to watch Hugh train his lens on the speckled heavens, capturing the ominous circling of the avine predators.

  ‘Uh, oh, seems like we’re on the move,’ Lizzy murmured as first one, then two more lionesses rose slowly to their feet.

  As Andy turned, a smile of almost paternal indulgence curved his lips. ‘Think you’ll find they’re telling us that the show’s over,’ he said. ‘The girls are tired, they’re going to find somewhere a bit more private to rest up.’

  As the lionesses ambled away into the sanctuary of the darkening bush the cubs trotted along after them, getting under their feet and pouncing on each other as they rolled in the dust. It was hard to believe that these playful little creatures would one day become the most dominant and ferocious beasts of the wild.

  It was a while after the last one had disappeared into the shadows before Andy restarted the landrover. As he did so Elmore spoke to him from the back and turning to look in the direction Elmore was pointing Andy started to laugh.

  ‘Come on little fellow,’ he said, as a bewildered, bleary-eyed little cub spilled out into the clearing. ‘You’re going to get left behind.’

  ‘Oh God, he’s so cute!’ Lizzy laughed as the cub cocked his head inquisitively in their direction. ‘How old would he be?’

  ‘Around twelve weeks,’ Andy answered.

  ‘Oh, he’s coming over,’ Melanie squealed, making a dive across Andy’s lap to hold her hands out to the cub.

  Tipping her swiftly back into her seat, Andy turned to check that none of the others had been tempted to do the same.

  ‘Surely a little thing like that won’t do me any harm,’ Melanie pouted.