Wildfire Page 9
Oliver smiled. ‘I certainly think so,’ he said as Rhiannon spotted Lizzy struggling with a suitcase and shouted for one of the men to go and help. Then turning to Doug, his eyes dancing with humour, he said, ‘Weren’t getting any ideas there, were you?’
Doug’s sun-weathered face broke into a grin. ‘Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?’ he responded. ‘By the way,’ he went on as they started to stroll across the grass, ‘did you know, Andy’s gone and got himself hooked on the blonde? He even asked her to stay.’
‘No kidding,’ Oliver said, looking across to where Lizzy was climbing into the jeep. ‘Seems like she turned him down, though.’
‘Are you surprised? She doesn’t even know the bloke, except in the carnal sense.’
Oliver’s smile was sardonic. ‘Still, I thought she might have given it a shot,’ he said. ‘She’s been pretty lonely since her husband died – lonely enough to try it on with me a couple of times.’
Doug’s eyebrows went up. ‘You ever give it a test drive?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Well, take it from me it handles pretty well,’ Doug told him. ‘Does Rhiannon know about her coming on to you?’ he added after a pause.
‘What do you think?’ Oliver answered.
Sighing and laughing, Doug said, ‘Well, Andy’s going to be a tough one to be around for the next few days, now he’s been given the old heave-ho. Not something he’s used to. Heck, he’s never asked a woman to live with him before, not as far as I know, anyway. It’s usually them asking him.’
‘Where is he?’ Oliver asked.
‘Up at the airstrip dealing with the punters who came in on the early flight.’
Oliver nodded, starting to smile as Rhiannon came towards them. ‘Everything OK?’ he said as she slipped into the circle of his arm and walked with them towards the jeep.
‘Seems to be,’ she answered. ‘Did you get through to New York?’
‘Still a bit early to try,’ he replied, seeming almost deliberately to be avoiding Doug’s eyes.
‘So where is it from here?’ Doug asked as they arrived at the jeep.
‘Johannesburg tonight,’ Rhiannon answered. ‘Durban tomorrow and Cape Town until the weekend.’
‘Well, have a great time,’ Doug smiled, holding out his hand to Oliver. ‘Keep in touch, mate. And if there’s anything else we can do,’ he said to Rhiannon as she kissed him on both cheeks, ‘any more information you need for your programme, just let us know.’
They arrived at the airstrip a few minutes later to find the plane revving up ready for take-off. The guests it had flown in were already being ferried across to the camp, murmuring or gasping in awe as the jeeps paused alongside a couple of spotted hyenas lying watchfully in the grass at the edge of the runway.
‘I take it Andy didn’t come back to the camp?’ Rhiannon whispered to Lizzy.
Lizzy shook her head. ‘Not as far as I’m aware.’
Rhiannon looked over to where Andy was now, talking to the pilot, his thick fair hair blowing about in the wind. ‘What are you going to do?’ she said.
‘God knows,’ Lizzy responded. ‘I don’t want it to end like this, but I don’t know what to say to him.’
‘He’ll probably have calmed down by now,’ Rhiannon said comfortingly as the jeep came to a halt beside the plane.
To Lizzy’s relief Andy was smiling as he turned towards them, then laughing at something the pilot shouted down to him, he came across to help transfer the luggage.
At last, after tossing the bags up to Hugh and Jack and going through the manly ritual of slapping backs and shaking hands as they said their goodbyes, he turned to where Lizzy was standing. Her heart twisted when she saw the laughter die in his eyes, but forcing herself to keep smiling she started towards him.
‘Andy, I . . .’ she began.
‘They’re waiting,’ he interrupted, holding her away as she leaned forward to kiss him.
‘Will you just listen to me!’ she cried, shouting to make herself heard above the roar of the engines.
Digging a hand in his pocket he pulled out a scrap of paper. ‘Here,’ he said, pushing the note into her hand.
Lizzy looked down at it flapping about in the wind. Then screwing it up she lifted her eyes back to his face. ‘Andy, this has meant a great deal to me,’ she told him.
‘They’re waiting to go,’ he repeated, turning his back on her and waving to the others who were watching out of the windows.
Lizzy looked at him, wanting to say and do a hundred different things; but realizing it was hopeless she turned away and started to mount the steps. She had almost reached the top when she felt his hand take hold of hers.
‘This is the closest,’ he said, the paleness of his face reflecting the effort it was costing him to admit it.
Their eyes remained on each other’s for some time as she realized that he was telling her this was the closest he had come to falling in love. Her voice was barely more than a whisper as she said, ‘I’m sorry.’
His mouth pursed at one corner, then swallowing hard he glanced out across the plains for a moment, before turning abruptly back to his jeep.
It wasn’t until the plane was taxiing along the runway that Lizzy realized she was still clutching the scrap of paper he had given her. Unravelling it she looked down at it and felt a quick surge of emotion in her heart as she read what he had written. ‘I’m a guy who’s no good with words,’ he said, ‘but I think you know how I feel.’
‘What is it?’ Rhiannon asked, laughing because Lizzy was.
Lizzy showed her, rolling her eyes in a vain attempt to play down how much Andy’s feelings were affecting her.
Rhiannon’s eyes were dancing as though she were about to start teasing, which indeed she was until suddenly the warmth began to trickle from her smile and a curious unease started to steal through her veins. She couldn’t imagine where it had come from, for there was certainly nothing sinister about those few short words nor about the man who had written them. Yet there was no mistaking the fact that a cold shiver had gone down her spine at the prospect of Lizzy ever returning to Perlatonga.
Still managing a smile, she handed the note back, then turned to look past Oliver out of the window. The concern was so fragmented and elusive that it was impossible to explain it logically and never having experienced this kind of intuition before she was as baffled as she was unnerved by it. They had spent a wonderful three days at Perlatonga, her memories, she knew, would only be happy ones, so why on earth should the idea of any of them returning cause her to shudder? Except, of course, she would be devastated if Lizzy left London which, she thought wryly to herself, wasn’t only disgustingly selfish, but also totally irrelevant, for the loss she would feel were Lizzy to go didn’t connect at all with the oddness of the feeling she was experiencing regarding the game reserve.
Deciding in the end to put it down to the quirk of a tired mind, she closed her eyes and allowed her thoughts to merge with the drone of the engines. She was just drifting off to sleep when she suddenly remembered Oliver’s stolen credit cards and found herself wondering if it was mere bad luck that they had been stolen twice in the same month, or if it was in some way related to the recent theft of his BMW and discovery of some kind of fraud at his bank. Only a fool wouldn’t tie the events together, but it was horrible to think that Oliver was being targeted in some way, especially when the credit cards had, on both occasions, either disappeared or been tampered with at the very point it would cause him the most embarrassment.
‘Did you remember to cancel the cards?’ she asked, sliding her hand into his.
‘Oh hell!’ he muttered, closing his eyes in exasperation. ‘I knew there was something. I didn’t mention it to Doug either, I got caught up on the phone and it went clean out of my mind.’
‘We’ll do it when we get to Johannesburg then,’ she said, snuggling in more comfortably and deciding that to worry about anything now was simply a waste of time and effort.
Chapter 5
THE SANTA ANA winds were blowing – gusting short, trecherous bursts of warm air through the Malibu Canyon; nature’s fuel to an arsonist’s flame. Huge tracts of the countryside were still, three years on, scarred by the horror of the fires that had blazed out of control for over fourteen days and caused so much fear and heart-break and destruction. So too had the floods that had raged terrifyingly through the county, devastating homes and lives and dreams. And then there was the earthquake, that dreadful, never-to-be-forgotten morning when freeways, skyscrapers, parks, hotels, million-dollar homes and entire families had literally been shaken loose from the earth’s surface.
The Romanov estate had, by some miracle, managed to escape California’s plague of disasters. It sat there on the bluff, intact and apparently invulnerable, twenty-two acres of prime Malibu real estate. Through the dense oaks and Monterey pines that overhung the impenetrable boundary walls one could snatch an occasional glimpse of the sprawling gardens, but the main house that was a vast, white, colonnaded villa, with two grey-domed towers amongst its myriad russet roofs, and high-topped feathery palms standing like sentinels around the secluded forecourt, was well protected from idle sightseers and over-zealous lenses. With its thick, perfectly smooth walls, enticing floribunda arches, hidden courtyards and stairwells and magnificent view of the Pacific, it was a splendid and glittering testimony to the two brothers who, more than fifty years ago, had arrived in New York along with many thousands of others fleeing the genocidal regimes in Europe, and had gone on to create one of America’s leading publishing empires.
The Romanov headquarters were still in New York, a giant obelisk of industry and power on 54th and 5th that controlled half the newspapers in the land, as well as scores of glossy and specialist magazines that catered for every imaginable taste or craze or political bent. But though the seat of power remained on the East Coast, where the Romanovs had an equally luxurious but totally different kind of estate, the main family home had, for the past twenty years, been in Malibu.
Maxim Aleksandr Romanov had inherited the major shareholding in Romanov Enterprises some ten years before at the age of thirty. Having graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Business School just prior to his twenty-fourth birthday, he had spent the next six years working his way up through the ranks of the family business until his grandfather’s death had catapulted him from the lowly position of vice-president, futures and holdings, to Chief Executive, Romanov Enterprises International. Max had been ready for his new role, both his grandfather and his great-uncle had been grooming him for it since he was old enough to remember, and the steadily increasing price of the stock, as well as the numerous acquisitions and takeovers of the past ten years, had proved just how worthy an heir Max was. Romanov shares had multiplied at least tenfold in value against an economic backdrop that had often been far from favourable – and Max’s wife, Carolyn, had produced a son and heir to continue the Romanov dynasty.
The architectural style of the family house, as well as the inconsistent nature of the many Romanov publications, had both added considerable fuel over the years to the speculation regarding the Romanovs’ roots – not more so than now, for in this climate of political correctness it was quite simply obligatory for everyone to be labelled according to their birth. Meaning that in the past two years alone, Max had been described variously as Russian-American, Italian-American, Polish-American, Hungarian-American and even, on one startling occasion, native-American. He never attempted either to confirm or deny his origins, for he had been raised by his grandfather who’d delighted in keeping the world guessing and who had adhered until the day he died to his own personal maxim of ‘tell ’em nothing, they’ll make it up anyway’.
And make it up they surely did, especially over these past two years, when Max had heard himself described as anything from ‘a billionaire publishing magnate whose royal lineage was most evident in the disdain of the Slavic looks he had inherited from Czar Nicholas II’, to ‘a coke-snorting procurer of innocent young girls whose virtue was auctioned off to the highest bidder during riotous and depraved weekend parties at the Romanov estate’. He had also read about the harem of naked women who comprised his household staff, always at hand to satisfy his every whim and those of his guests; and of his connections to a number of the world’s more dubious, not to mention criminal, organizations. Something else he had learned about himself was that he was the bastard son of a Hungarian whore who had escaped the country during the ’56 revolution by using what talents she had to procure a safe passage to the West from the Russian invaders.
There was, of course, an element of truth to every story. He was indeed a publishing magnate, though not quite a billionaire; his dark and finely chiselled features were most definitely Slavic, for both his parents were Russian – though neither, as far as he was aware, could boast a single drop of blue blood in their veins. He had, on countless occasions, taken cocaine and several of the parties he and his wife had thrown at the Romanov estate had, it was true, well and truly pushed the envelope. The naked women were not on his household staff, though they were, albeit indirectly, on his payroll. And his mother had been a whore to the Russian army which was how she had managed to make her escape through Hungary nine months before Max was born. Her desperate bid to flee the terror of the NKVD meant that all Max knew about his father was that he was an officer of the Red Army. He also knew that both he and his mother owed their lives to the exiled Countess Katerina Casimir, who had received his mother in London, nursed her through her difficult pregnancy then sent her and her infant son on to New York where Max’s grandfather and great-uncle had long ago given up hope of ever seeing their family again.
Countess Katerina’s deeds of kindness, coming from a woman who was as aristocratic and Catholic as the peasant Romanov brothers from the Arbat were Jewish and – in their impassioned youth, Bolshevik – were acts that no member of the Romanov family would ever forget. Over the years a strong bond had formed between the two families as they, along with many others throughout Europe and the States, committed themselves to helping their fellow countrymen escape the continuing nightmare of communism and start new lives in the West. Though the older generation were all dead now and the reign of terror had finally collapsed, the Countess’s granddaughter, Galina Casimir, and Max Romanov, continued to do what they could as an exhausted and crippled Motherland limped, bewildered and afraid, from the ashes of one of history’s most heinous regimes.
The fact that Max was rich and powerful and remained obdurately silent over the private details of his life would, ordinarily, have been exciting enough for the press, but the fact that a little less than one year ago he had been at the centre of the notorious Murder to Mishap trial was what kept the press hounds hard on his tail these days. No one, it seemed, could discover why the New York District Attorney who was prosecuting the case had suddenly accepted that Carolyn Romanov’s death had been an accident, when Max Romanov was known to have confessed to the killing on the very night it had happened. Hell, the gun had had his prints all over it and police investigations had uncovered no other presence in the house, so it was obvious he had killed his wife. And right up to the fifth week of the preliminary hearings the DA had refuted Romanov’s claim that the shooting had been an accident. A murder had been committed and it was the District Attorney’s job, on behalf of the people, to see that justice was done. But then, just five weeks into the preliminaries, the DA’s office had suddenly announced that it was now satisfied that the killing had indeed been an accident and all charges were being dropped. What new evidence had come to light to disprove foul play no one had ever been able to find out. What a great many wanted to know, however, was whom Romanov had succeeded in paying off, or who the victims of so
me kind of political blackmail were who had enough power to get this case dismissed.
As for the libellous insinuations that Carolyn hadn’t been the first to meet her death at Max Romanov’s hands – or at least at the hands of those Max employed – these were something he chose to ignore. As were the slanderous labels of ‘Porn King’ or ‘Baron of the Bimbos’ or ‘Sex-Slayer of the Innocent’. Since three of the several dozen magazines published by Romanov were categorized as adult, it was only to be expected that a certain amount of feminist spleen would be vented in his direction – particularly since his wife had met such a violent end. And the thousands upon thousands of sexual deviants who had written to him as a result of the brief though explicit public airing of his own sexual preferences, as well as the salacious details of what actually went on at the Romanov estate – well, Max could only hope that writing about it was working it through their systems. If not, he had shipped the whole lot over to the nation’s good pal, Oprah, who would no doubt find something more useful to do with the letters than he would.
Smiling to himself as he read Oprah’s eloquently penned thank-you note, Max absently reached out to wipe the egg from his three-year-old son’s chin. Aleksandr howled in protest and continued to howl until he realized his father was watching him, when his cheeky little face broke instantly into a grin.
‘You should tell him off, Daddy,’ Marina, Max’s eight-year-old daughter, informed him. ‘He’s a naughty boy. You’re a naughty boy, Aleks. You shouldn’t scream like that.’
Aleks looked at his father, whose heavy black brows were lowered in an attempt to look ominous. ‘Aaaarrrr!’ Aleks roared, pretending to be a monster.
‘You’re not funny, Aleks,’ Marina told him, with a precocious flare of her nostrils. ‘He’s not funny, is he, Daddy?’
‘No, he’s not funny,’ Max assured her, eyeing his son purposefully.