“Hey, Harper, wait up!”
Derek pivoted and his heart lurched at the sight of Gwen striding toward him. Her long red braid hung over one shoulder, her bright amber-colored eyes shone like jewels in the morning sunlight. She wore clean khaki shorts and a pink polo-style shirt.
The bandages on her wrists were the only sign of their ordeal, though he didn’t doubt she sported a headache, as he did. The determined set of her mouth claimed the boss lady was back in charge.
“Good morning, Gwen. I’m headed to see Tito’s cousin. Care to join me?”
Her expression softened with a smile. “I’d like that.”
Boss lady turned friend? He liked it.
They walked through the village, waving hello and calling out greetings. They entered Al’s house to find him and Tito sitting at the table eating their breakfast. Tito smiled and Al rose and slowly came to them. “Mr. Derek. Miss Gwen. I’m so happy to see you!”
“You’re looking better,” Gwen said as she reached to take his pulse.
“I’m glad to see you up and about,” Derek replied and gave Al a hug as Gwen released the man’s wrist. Al thumped him on the back.
Derek couldn’t express how grateful and relieved he was that Al seemed better than the last time he’d seen him. Derek pulled back to look into the man’s brown eyes. “Do you feel well enough to travel to Kampala to see the race?”
Al shook his head. “Not this time.”
Though disappointment spiraled through Derek, Al showed no sign of regret. The man’s quiet acceptance of life’s circumstance’s humbled Derek. “I’m sorry, man. I know how much you were looking forward to seeing Tito race.”
Al shrugged. “There will be other times. You and Tito will both win.”
“Yeah, I’ll give it a shot,” he replied, without any real heat in his voice.
His desire to run, to win, lacked any conviction. He’d never felt so apathetic about a race before. The last twenty-four hours must have affected him more than he’d thought. In the wake of being kidnapped, a marathon seemed so unimportant.
They chatted with Tito for a few minutes before heading back to the clinic. Derek told himself he should go for a run, get ready for the race, but he just couldn’t dredge up any enthusiasm.
“What’s that frown for?” Gwen asked as she slipped her arm through his.
Surprise and pleasure unfurled in his chest at the gesture. “I was just thinking I should take at least one more training run before Moses and I head for Kampala.”
“Ah,” she said.
He studied her pensive profile. “Just ah? No lecture on the dangers of the bush? No demands that I not go alone?”
One side of her sweet mouth rose. “No.”
“You don’t care anymore? I’m wounded.”
She squeezed his arm. “I care, but you’re a big boy who knows the dangers out there. I trust you’ll take the right precautions.”
“You trust me? Be still my heart,” he quipped, needing to keep things light. Her words were like sweet honey to his soul because she didn’t give her trust easily.
She stopped to stare at him, her expression serious. “Yes, I trust you. In fact, I like you. You’re a good guy, even if you don’t believe that.”
His heart began to pound in an unsteady bang. “Why wouldn’t I believe that?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
He scoffed. They’d already covered this ground. “I’m going for a run. I’ll be back later.” He stalked away and told himself not to feel bad for the flash of hurt he saw in her eyes.
Gwen watched Derek and Tito take off down the path and disappear into the thick underbrush. Derek’s powerful legss pumped with grace and his whole body moved forward in such a rhythm of beauty. A sad cloak descended on her shoulders. He was still running.
She told herself to let it go. She didn’t need the headache. But the constant way he dodged anything even remotely personal about himself nagged at her.
She busied herself with the clinic but in the back of her mind the problem of Derek stayed close to the surface.
Sometime later as she showed a young mother the benefits of diaper cream, her mind had a moment of clarity, like the flash of a camera, catching a single second in clear form. Putting her mind on hold, she finished up with the woman and her child before telling Ethan she needed a break.
Once outside, she let her mind go back to the night that she and Derek had spent tied together. Something he had said struck her now as an important insight into the pain she sensed in him.
Hey, we’re your typical American dysfunctional family. Workaholic father, overcompensating mother and insecure kid. Enough said.
At the time, all she’d been able to think about was how she’d have given anything for his childhood. Compared to hers, his was a dream, a fantasy that would never have come true for her.
But now she realized he’d revealed to her the source of his wounds.
Dr. Harper was a workaholic. He stayed in the clinic for long periods of time, never took vacations and rarely came home on holidays. And she’d only been at the clinic for three years. Obviously, Dr. Harper had been doing this for a long time.
Gwen kicked at the red dirt. She didn’t know Mrs. Harper well, though she could see she was kind and giving. Gwen could imagine Mrs. Harper probably tried to make up for her husband’s flaw by overcompensating, as Derek put it.
But Derek insecure?
He sure got touchy when she’d told him she thought he was a good guy.
He claimed he didn’t “do” relationships.
She snorted under her breath. She didn’t “do” relationships, either, so who was she to judge.
Except that…she’d told Derek of her past in the hopes of healing him.
And God had healed her enough to allow Derek’s touch to be a comfort rather than a source of fear.
Fear had controlled her for too long. She bent her head to ask God for His forgiveness. She wanted God in control of her life. Only Him.
A shiver started in her soul and worked its way outward. For the first time she wanted to have a relationship. A relationship with Derek.
But how could she if he didn’t let her in?
Derek threw his pack into the back of the jeep. He was going to buy Moses another van as soon as they got to Kampala to replace the one they’d left at the rebel camp. He doubted the rebels would take the trouble to return it.
“Have a good race,” Joyce said.
She stood with Craig and Ned watching him get ready to leave. All three of them had come out of the clinic to see him off. Only Gwen was nowhere in sight. Not that he expected her to say goodbye after the way he’d treated her earlier. He’d pushed her away in self-defense.
“You guys take care. I’ll see you in a few days,” he said with a wave before climbing into the passenger seat. Tito sat behind Moses. The youth’s knees were drawn up almost to his chest because of the limited legroom.
Moses started the engine just as the back door opened and someone slid into the seat behind Derek.
“Okay, boys let’s go.”
Derek jerked around and stared at Gwen. She gave him a cocky grin and adjusted her wide-brimmed cotton hat more securely on her head.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Going to Kampala. What’s it look like?”
“You’re needed here.”
“I’ll be coming back with Moses. I need to pick up some more supplies that we’re running low on.”
He didn’t like the idea of her not safely tucked away at the clinic. After their ordeal one would think she’d be a bit more wary of leaving. But as he’d discovered, Gwen was a strong woman with a mind of her own. A mind he admired greatly.
He forced his attention to the scenery. He’d made this trip before but now he saw it in a different light. He saw the goodness of the people, the hardships the Africans endured. And he saw the way he had taken his life and the luxuries in it for granted.
He loved the way the different trees grew. Some in clusters, dense and tightly packed with thick foliage. The occasional lone tree, majestic in its simplicity with its canopy of leaves offered precious shade.
“Look,” Gwen exclaimed, placing a hand on his shoulder.
He was taken more with the warm, gentle pressure of her palm than the sight of the animal that stood stock-still in the middle of the wide grasslands. “Looks like you.”
She hit his shoulder. “Excuse me?”
He chuckled. “I mean the coloring. He’s red-and-white.”
She made a noise in the back of her throat and sat back.
“That is a kob,” explained Moses.
“Looks like an antelope,” Gwen commented.
“Similar,” Moses agreed.
The kob stood tall and proud as he watched them drive by. His long ringed horns had sharp points that Derek imagined could impale their vehicle clean through if it wanted to.
Derek glanced over his shoulder at Gwen. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
She eyed him for a moment before giving him a smile that curled his toes. He blinked as she sat forward again and began to ask Moses questions about other wildlife they saw.
Derek loved the little bursts of delight she gave when Moses slowed the jeep down so she could see a warbler that landed on the branch of a bush beside the road. And when she pointed to a tree that sat perched on the top of a grassy hill.
“Baobab tree.”
She giggled. “Looks like it was ripped from the ground and put back in upside down.”
Derek chuckled. He never would have thought to describe the jumble of spiny bare branches pointing haphazardly in the air in such a vivid way.
She asked Derek about the race, about the other people he might know who were competing. The genuine interest in her eyes felt good and he found the time passing all too quickly.
Once in Kampala, they parked near the hotel where Derek would stay for the night. The race started at sunrise. A bus would pick him and the other competitors up an hour before dawn. Derek couldn’t wait to take a real shower and sleep on a real mattress.
He grabbed his things from the jeep. “Thanks for driving me in.”
Moses nodded and they shook hands.
Gwen stared at him for a moment, her eyes big and unreadable. “I know you’ll do well.”
He shrugged off her words. “Thanks. I’ll try.”
She stepped closer and took his face between her slender, strong hands. “No, really. I believe in you.”
His breath caught somewhere between his lungs and his heart. No one had ever said that to him before. He didn’t know what to say. Then she knocked the wind right out of him altogether when she went on tiptoe and pulled him closer. Very gently she pressed her lips to his.
The kiss was sweet and touching and over way too fast.
She stepped back.
He stepped forward. “What was that?”
“A good-luck kiss?”
There was such uncertainty in her beautiful eyes that he couldn’t stop himself from capturing her face in his hands.
“This,” he said as he bent closer, “is a kiss.”
Then he kissed her deeply. She curled her fingers into his shirt and tugged him closer. He slipped one hand around her head to cup the back of her neck. He wanted to wipe away the memories of her past and create memories of their own.
Moses’s and Tito’s chuckle snapped Derek back to reality.
What was he thinking? Memories of their own? He didn’t do commitment. Or relationships. He never wanted to have to choose between his own wants and those of someone else. He didn’t want to disappoint anyone, most of all Gwen.
He broke the contact but couldn’t help the sense of male satisfaction rippling through him at the dazed and flushed expression on Gwen’s pretty face.
She blinked. “That was definitely a kiss.”
He tugged on her braid. “I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Be careful,” she said before turning away and climbing into the front seat of the jeep.
He stood there on the sidewalk, watching the jeep weave into the congested traffic and thought about the look in her eyes as she’d said be careful. Her words weren’t a bossy command or even those of a manager to an employee, but rather words of affection.
As if she really did care.
Oh, boy.
He didn’t know what to do about that. He dreaded seeing that hopeful, eager look in her eyes that said she wanted forever. He’d been down that road once and the pain he’d caused had cut him deeply. He didn’t ever want to hurt Gwen like that.
Inside the hotel room, he showered and changed, but he didn’t find himself enjoying the accommodations as he thought he would. The room was a standard room. No frills, just a bath, bed, table and chairs. Like any other room in America. Only he wasn’t in America. And there were villagers full of people who had no water.
Something had to be done.
I believe in you. Gwen’s words. A balm to his soul.
A logical voice inside his head said to stay out of it. He’d made enough of a mess as it was trying to help. But his heart told him to step out in faith and figure out a better way.
He went to the lobby and asked the hotel concierge for directions to the Ugandan parliament. He hadn’t been able to break the dam down himself, but he sure could use his clout as Executive Director of Hands of Healing to at least get an audience with someone who could help.
The parliament building was closed when he arrived. He’d have to wait until after his race to make an appointment. A few more hours wouldn’t make a difference, he told himself as he walked through the evening rush of people in the heart of Kampala.
But it would.
He returned to the parliament building, took a seat on the steps outside the huge wrought-iron gate and waited for daylight.
“You’re back?”
“Good morning to you, too, Ned,” Gwen replied without turning to look at the doctor. Instead she continued to scrub the already clean examination table.
When she and Moses had returned to the village the night before it had been late and she’d gone directly to bed without saying hello to anyone. But she hadn’t slept much.
Her thoughts kept replaying those last few moments with Derek. The stunned expression in his green eyes when she’d told him she believed in him, almost as if that was the first time anyone had said that to him. But surely his parents had.
Oh, and then that kiss.
Not the chaste kiss she’d given him, which had seemed pretty good until he’d captured her mouth again. Her lips still tingled. The best part had been that she hadn’t felt afraid.
“You should be at the finish line,” Ned stated as he came to stand beside the table. He wore the green surgical scrubs he was fond of and a straw hat on his balding head. His brown eyes regarded her with worry.
Gwen gathered up the rags. “I’m needed here.”
Ned’s hand shot out to still her. She stared at the place where his pale, delicate surgeon’s hand touched her forearm and felt…just the cool temperature of his skin.
She blinked, confused. For too long the mere touch of a male human made her skin crawl and produced the need to back away.
But now that didn’t happen.
The awakening knowledge that she was truly healed sent joy cascading through her. She wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time. She wanted to tell Derek because it had started with him.
The joy subsided a bit. She contemplated Ned. “Why should I be at the finish line? Derek didn’t ask any of us to be there.”
Ned regarded her with a stern gaze. “You matter to him.”
She laughed off his words. “Hardly.”
“Listen.” Ned took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I’ve watched the way he has tried to get your attention from the first day he stepped into the clinic. I’ve seen the way he watches you when you aren’t looking. Since we’ve been here, he’s worked hard to earn your approval. I watched the way you’ve grown in the last few weeks. You’re less rigid and more spontaneous. You smile more and even laugh. You blush when you talk with Derek. Moses told me about how protective of you Derek has been. And about the kiss.”
She sucked in a breath as heat crept up her neck. Her mind struggled to process what was happening. Not only was Ned talking in long, complex sentences, but the things he was saying…she hadn’t realized she’d been rigid. Or that she blushed. Or…any of it.
Had Derek really been watching her?
“You should be at that finish line when Derek crosses it. That would mean the world to him,” Ned finished.
It would mean the world to her to see him accomplish his goal.
“Okay.” She could be spontaneous. “Okay!”
Derek paced the outer office of the Honorable Grace Okuman. After having been sent from office to office trying to find the right division to hear his case, he’d been directed to Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.
The door opened and a woman stepped out. She had shoulder-length dark hair and was dressed in a navy business suit, with a skirt. Her mocha skin was smooth and very few wrinkles lined her intelligent eyes as she smiled, showing even white teeth. “Mr. Harper, please come in.”
Derek entered and she closed the door behind him. The office was furnished in an understated collection of mahogany furniture. A large desk dominated one side of the room. Shelves filled with volumes of books lined the walls. Two wingback chairs sat facing the desk.
The woman indicated for Derek to take one of the seats as she went around behind the desk and sat in a cloth-covered task chair.
She steepled her hands on the desk. “What can the Ugandan government do for you today?”
Having explained the issue of the blocked river to everyone he’d met with this morning, he was surprised she didn’t already know. “The river that runs through the province of Moswani has been barricaded by the rebels. The villages along the river have been without water for many months. I know exactly where the blockade is and have come to you to ask for your help in freeing the water.”
She nodded her head in contemplation. “Yes, we had heard there were issues with the river.”
Derek gritted his teeth. “Issues is putting it mildly. People are suffering. Something needs to be done.”
“I agree with you,” she said. “You must understand that our government has many such issues to deal with and we only have so many resources. The fighting in the north takes a great deal of our manpower.”
“But the fighting is now spreading. Surely, you can help the people of Moswani.”
“It’s not as simple as that. The Moswani people want their independence from the Ugandan government.”
“I don’t believe that’s true. All the people we have treated over the last two weeks are not looking to break from Uganda.”
“Ah, yes. You are with Hands of Healing. Our government is very grateful for the work you do.”
“Thank you, but what the people need is the water from the river. At the site of the dam there is a small armed force.”
She regarded him steadily for a moment. “You say you can pinpoint where these rebels are located?”
“Yes. In fact, I have a map,” he said and from the pocket of his shirt pulled out the folded race map. He spread it out on the desktop.
“This is a race map,” she stated and stared at him quizzically. “Why are you not running in today’s race?”
“Because this is more important,” he stated simply.
She gave him a pleased smile. He showed her on the map where he and Gwen had entered the dry riverbed. “The blockade is a few miles upstream.”
“Can I have this map?”
“Yes, please take it. Will you help us?”
The Honorable Grace Okuman stood. “Yes. We will deal with this. You can expect the water by the day’s end.”
He pumped her hand enthusiastically. “Thank you.”
“The Ugandan government thanks you.”
Derek left the parliament building with a light step. He couldn’t wait to tell Gwen.