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They enjoyed an aerial view of the 741-foot single drop as they approached, the tumbling water creating a beautiful but deafening symphony.
“Do you want to eat lunch first?” Marc asked as they unbuckled their seat belts and waited for the rotor blades to stop spinning.
“Yes, please.” She wasn’t particularly hungry. If she had to eat, better now than later. The inward ride had been smooth, but the weather in the country could turn in a minute. It was better to get back on the helicopter with her food at least partially digested, if it had to make a reappearance.
“Good.” He grabbed both the picnic basket and the cooler—she let him since he seemed to feel the need to demonstrate his strength—and headed to a table and two chairs under a large parasol. “This way.”
The furniture was the basic, sturdy kind found in cheap restaurants and she smiled at the thought of the billionaire ‘roughing it’.
A wasted thought she realized seconds later when he opened the lid of the basket and took out a folded white linen tablecloth.
Without being asked, she reached out and helped drape it over the scratched table top.
It was only the beginning.
She watched, her eyes almost popping out of her head, as he took out napkins, silver cutlery, crystal glasses, bone china plates, small silver salt and pepper shakers, and an ice bucket.
And, from the number still left in the basket, it appeared as though the housekeeper had packed twice the number of utensils they needed.
Why?
“Did you ask for all of this?”
“Yes,” he replied without a hint of apology.
Despite knowing that he’d had his favorite spirits and bottled water shipped over, Dawn had found him a refreshing change to some of the rich folk she’d encountered in the past.
Maybe not!
Although, she had to give him a little kudos for not insisting that one of the maids accompanied them just to serve the meal.
When he took out a packet of sterile wipes and passed it to her, she asked feigning shock, “Aren’t we washing our hands with bottled water?”
“You could, if you want to,” he said, reaching in the insulated cooler bag for a bottle. “It might be too cold, though.”
“I was only joking.” She passed the packet back and quickly swabbed her hands with the wipe. “Let me help you unpack.”
The lobster salad, butter lettuce leaves and Kalamata olives had been packed on the top, so that they were chilled but not ice cold. At the bottom and closer to the ice packs were bottles of grapefruit and watermelon juices, more bottled water, a packet of ice cubes and a magnum of champagne.
“Champagne?” she questioned, as he placed the water and fruit juice in the bucket and dumped half the ice cubes on top of them. “One misstep near the falls and you’re history.”
“It’s for the return journey,” he replied, starting to expertly arrange the food on two plates.
She hadn’t expected him to serve her, nor had she planned to serve him. She was glad that she hadn’t offered though, because she would not have arranged the food in quite as appetizing a manner as he was doing.
“Grapefruit or watermelon?” she asked, trying to make herself useful.
“Watermelon.”
She filled his glass with the vividly red juice, but opted for a mixture of the two juices for herself. She’d had both before and found the grapefruit too sour and the watermelon too sweet for her taste.
“Why the champagne for the return journey?” she asked.
“To celebrate our first trip to Kaieteur.”
Our first trip...
Was there going to be a second?
Maybe he’d meant to say his first trip—he had said that he might bring his sister at a future date.
Then why did the idea of them coming here again at some future date make her feel suddenly too warm?
To distract herself from the ridiculous thought, she turned her head and let her eyes rove their surroundings.
There was a raw beauty to the setting: the leaves of the plants were the largest, the most fragrant and the darkest green she’d ever seen.
“This is the perfect picnic spot,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It’s breathtaking.”
Something in his voice made her turn her head sharply.
He was looking straight at her and for a moment the last word hung in the air.
It took every ounce of strength Dawn possessed to keep her face composed as she took one of the now stacked plates as he offered it.
Glad for something to do, she immediately tucked into the creamy salad.
Though it was a necessary requirement of the woman’s job, Dawn once again marveled at Mrs. Sinclair’s skill in producing meals with exceptional finesse. Marc, who must be used to fine dining at its very best, always polished off larger amounts of the food than Dawn did at mealtimes.
The texture of the lobster was perfection, so unlike the rubbery consistency Dawn achieved when she cooked it at home, trying and always failing to pinpoint the exact moment when it went from undercooked to perfectly done. Inevitably she always left it a minute or two too long.
Eating well was a pleasure she’d discovered on this trip and she had already decided that she needed to do more in the kitchen when she returned home. She doubted that she would fork out the money for the same high quality of food the billionaire enjoyed, but going forward she would do more than just throw ingredients haphazardly together.
The large umbrella above them didn’t fully deflect the heat, but Dawn was grateful for its protection as they ate. It was bizarre to think that although they shared the same world, there were countries where the fierce sun that blazed down on her and Marc right now wouldn’t even be visible to the inhabitants.
“It must have been tough adjusting to the weather in the UK after living over here,” Marc said, seeming to almost read her thoughts.
“It was.”
The miserable weather had been the least of her problems.
Being forced to move back to the UK to live with her aunt and uncle would have been a blessing, a chance to have parents again, if her aunt had made an effort to disguise the fact that she’d never wanted or particularly liked children.
Dawn had been living with her grandfather, slowly adjusting to the reality of her new life without her sister and parents, when it had been disrupted again. She’d enjoyed her first term at secondary school and was tentatively making friends once she’d realized that she hadn’t been recognized as the sole survivor of the country’s most talked-about unsolved murders.
She had been dragged away in the middle of the school’s Christmas holidays without a chance to say goodbye to her classmates when the trustees of her father’s estate rightly decided that the monthly allowance paid for her upkeep should be paid to her grandfather and not her aunt.
She gave a slight shake of her head to dismiss the bleak memories and looked up to find Marc staring enquiringly back at her.
Realizing that her answer had been too brief, she explained, “I arrived three days before Christmas. It was raining and bitterly cold. I hated the holiday for a long time.”
“I’m sorry,” Marc apologized, his eyes somber as if he had an inkling of the hell she’d gone through each time the holiday had come around.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “Spending the day with Alicia and the children at the orphanage makes me look forward to it now.”
He must think that having a conversation with her was like stepping over a minefield. Every time they had a casual chat, even about something as banal as the weather, it seemed to somehow go wrong.
This is why Dawn kept her past a secret.
The weight of it was heavy enough for her to carry; she never willingly burdened others with it.
As close as she felt to Alicia, she’d never revealed that ugly part of her history. It would have served no purpose other than to sadden the woman and make her treat Dawn differently.
As Marc had done ever since he’d found out.
***
They remained silent as they finished eating, the call of birds and the rustle of leaves providing a soothing, acoustic backdrop.
By the time Marc revealed dessert: small, gooey triple chocolate brownie squares, the silence had mellowed.
“I’ll have to go on a diet when I get back to the UK,” Dawn said with a smile, stretching lazily after polishing off a second of the sweet treats.
“You don’t need to diet.”
“I do, if I want to do my job properly,” she replied.
“You’re not going back to...” he began but let his words trail off when she widened her eyes and gave him a hard stare. As if realizing he almost stepped completely out of line, he got abruptly to his feet and held his hand out to her. “It’s time to explore. First let’s see if the pilots would like the rest of this.”
“I don’t need your help,” she warned, but took his hand instead of demonstrating that she was perfectly capable of getting to her own damn feet.
The words were issued more to squelch any thoughts he harbored that she would allow him to interfere in her life once the assignment was over. She’d chosen her profession and accepted the risks that came with it. She didn’t need him worrying about her and trying to fix her up with a ‘regular’ job. That would be her idea of torture.
“I’m not sure that they’ll accept it.” He looked doubtful that the men would accept the leftovers.
“Few Guyanese pass on a free meal,” she assured him, surveying the still-chilled salad. She was glad that he’d suggested giving the food to the men. It would have ended up in the bin. It always bothered her to waste food when there were millions of people dying from starvation all over the world. “Especially when it’s been well cooked and presented as nicely as this.”
As pilots the men would enjoy a higher standard of living than most in the country, but unless they had some religious or other objection to eating seafood, Dawn knew that they would welcome the treat.
Her hunch was right. When she glanced discreetly over her shoulder as she and Marc walked up the path to the waterfall, she saw that the men hadn’t waited until they were out of sight before diving into the hamper.
As they approached the falls, the thundering of water grew louder and louder, heightening Dawn’s anticipation. The aerial view of the waterfall had been spectacular, but now she felt both its energy beneath her feet and its roar in her ears like an incessant heartbeat.
The path ended at a flat, natural protuberance of rock that had been carved out by nature to provide an excellent vantage point to view the clear, dark brown water as it rushed to the edge and hurtled downwards in a milky white spray.
She and Marc stood silently watching, like worshippers to a pagan god.
If felt as though she was standing on the very edge of the world, both wonderful and terrifying at the same time. All that separated them from certain death were a few feet of moss-covered rock.
She knew that the sight and the sound, and the moist, hot, verdant smell would be burned indelibly in her mind...and Marc with it.
She’d never felt smaller, more insignificant, more fragile or more...alive.
As she stood spellbound for what seemed an eternity, her life flashed by in sharp perspective.
She’d been a fool to spend the last twelve years cursing Fate.
Life was a gift she’d been given and she’d let tragedy suck the joy from it instead of grasping it with both hands.
She was a survivor, not a victim.
It was time to start acting like one.
Having experienced life’s unpredictability, she’d already planned for every eventuality, including her own death. Alicia and the orphanage’s children were her beneficiaries. She’d often tried to imagine how shocked the woman would be at the substantial legacy she would receive.
Until now Dawn hadn’t given much thought to the fact that the money might be cold consolation to Alicia who seemed to regard her as a little sister. Neither had she really considered how her death would affect the orphans whose lives had already been marred by misfortune and adversity.
Instead of bemoaning her sister’s death, it was time to honor her memory.
Star had been always concerned about the plight of the less fortunate. Her dream of becoming a pediatrician had died with her and for the past year Dawn had toyed with the idea of keeping that hope alive by offering a yearly, full scholarship in her sister’s name to a deserving young female medical student for the study of pediatrics at the University of Guyana.
Fear that the scholarship would garner unwelcome interest and dredge up the lurid details of the past had held Dawn back.
But no longer.
She would deal with that, if necessary.
The past week, if nothing else, had proven that she was so much stronger than she’d realized.
She’d feared going back to Rosewood.
She’d thought that she would either turn to stone or dissolve into a gibbering mess if she’d even so much as drove past the building. In those first horrible moments as her feet had felt encased in cement, she’d thought that her fear would be realized, but not only had she survived entering the house, she had found some healing within its walls.
If she could survive that she could survive anything.
It was time to open up to life’s possibilities—including giving in to the attraction that throbbed between her and Marc like a heartbeat.
She knew he wanted her—it was there in those clear green, expressive eyes of his. And that blatant desire had awakened something inside her that kept her up at night, aching and restless.
They could have no future together, not with the threat of her past deeds coming back one day to haunt them both.
All she wanted was one night with him.
If she was honest, she’d wanted it since she’d googled him and found an old article in a trashy woman’s magazine that had dubbed him ‘Mr. One Night of Pleasure’.
Three women had been interviewed for the article and they had all attested to the aptness of the nickname.
None had regretted the experience.
They’d had their chance to experience pleasure at the hands of the billionaire.
Tonight would be her night.
Her cheeks warmed at the thought and she moved closer to the edge of the rocky ledge, wanting the healing spray to cool them and take away the last vestiges of lingering fear, pain and regret.
*****
