Safari Moon (3 page)

He could see her clearly, her perfect oval
face framed by long strawberry blond hair swirling around her
shoulders. She had a tiny waist but he always liked the picture he
mentally kept of her, the one where she wore shorts, her slim legs
accented by a pair of hiking boots and thick wool socks.

Even now with all the commotion outside his
office, the thought of Nyssa--ethereal, strong, an IQ much, much
higher than his own--was daunting. He’d never taken her
intelligence and her common sense for granted. Until a year ago
she’d always been driven, a workaholic like himself. She’d been
friends with a lawyer in New York City. Nyssa was an up-and-coming
Wall Street wheeler dealer. Then out of the blue she threw her job
away. A job that at one time had been more important to her than
anything or anyone else.

He’d talked to her over the phone, and she’d
told him the days were too intense. Life wasn’t fun. The two women
closed up shop, Nyssa turned in her blue chips, Candace her legal
briefs and they both flew home to Oregon. But he always knew she
hid her real reasons for leaving.

With the help of another cycling business,
they began an off roads bike touring company. Last time he’d talked
to her she’d been on her way to New Zealand with a group of
twelve.

He’d never seen a woman in as good physical
shape as Nyssa. And, as usual, he didn’t know how to argue with her
when she informed him she had to ride more often so she’d be ready
for the next trip. He couldn’t understand what motivated her
anymore.

Now as he thought of the mess he was in, he
recalled some of her lectures to him.

“Someday, Solo St. John, you’re going to
wish you weren’t so single minded. You’ll wish you’d looked past
the surface looks of a woman to see what’s underneath. You'll be
sorry you don’t have a clue as to how a woman thinks and
feels.”

Trust Nyssa to foresee the future.

When they were in college, when he was as
driven as she was, he had faith in her. She was able to pick out
the serious coeds, the ones who wanted to tie the knot from the
ones who were out for a good time. She was shy and studious. If
there was one thing about Nyssa Harrington he knew, it was that
she’d never been able to let loose and have a good time.

So, of course, he didn’t understand the
drastic change in lifestyle she’d made a year ago.

Always dependable Nyssa. The one person he
could count on had become unpredictable.

“Nyssa...” He left the window and the view
he’d contemplated for the last hour. He’d never gone so far as to
think he might understand the workings of a female brain, but she
did. She was a woman and if anyone could tell him what to do next,
she could.

He crossed his fingers and prayed she wasn’t
out of town on some long, tedious bicycle trip then hastily dialed
her number. If she was in town, she’d be at the bike shop in the
mall. Thank the stars for Nyssa.

The phone rang several times before a very
polite male voice identified the shop.

“Is Nyssa there?”

“Miss Harrington,” the male voice said with
a slight disapproval that echoed in the tone, “is with a customer.
May I help you?”

“I need to talk to her right away. Have her
call Solo as soon as she’s through. She knows the number. I’m at my
office.”

Did he hear animosity reverberate over the
phone lines or was it his over-taxed emotional system? Possessive.
That was how the man sounded to him. As soon as he identified
himself the voice on the other end of the line shifted from polite
to a jealous male animal.

“If I can help you, there’s no reason to
interrupt Nyssa’s schedule. She plans on a ride this evening, and
I’m sure she’ll be with customers all afternoon.”

“Tell her it’s Solo. I’m sure she’ll return
the call.”

“And what message should I give her?”

“Just make sure she knows I called.”

Solo was having difficulty maintaining a
civil mood. He let the receiver drop loudly into the cradle of the
phone before he plopped down in his chair.

Solo covered his eyes with his hand. Women
up to his ears filled his front office, and he had a photo shoot to
get off the ground. His gaze fell on the Observer. The paper seemed
to open all by itself to the want ads. The ad was big, bold, and
very obvious. Where was his best friend, Nyssa?

"Wanted: Willing. Eager. Able women to take
pictures in exotic locations. Matrimony in mind. Wimpy, shy women
need not apply."

His grandfather had done it this time.

Chapter Two

Nyssa Harrington looked up from her crouched
position on the floor of the bicycle shop with a bright smile on
her face.

Within a few minutes, she’d be off on an
evening ride around the outskirts of Bend before heading into the
hills. After the heat of the day cooled, the arid dry temperatures
of summer in Central Oregon were quite pleasant.

When she finished this ride, Nyssa would be
one step closer to tip-top condition. Her clients counted on prime
performances from their leaders, and she didn’t intend to let them
down. Her Cycle the World Tours had guided vacation trips all over
the world.

On a normal day the riders biked fifty to
one hundred miles on varying terrain. After showers, they dined on
the most delicious food each country had to offer and slept in the
most expensive hotels.

“Just call me Ms. Fix-it,” she said with
satisfaction. This was one bike no one else in the shop could put
together.

With a smile she pushed off the hardwood
floor of what she hoped would one day be the best little bike shop
in Bend. She was prepared to test-ride the new bike around the
block, a very long block, which she knew would take at least
fifteen minutes to negotiate. Another hour-or-so and she’d close up
shop.

Life was certainly worth living.

When she saw her fiancé walk across the
room, a definitive scowl on his face, she stopped smiling.

“You had a message,” Robert said and he
looked pointedly at the phone. “A prank call.”

Nyssa gave him a curious stare. Robert had
been her fiancé for one day, and already he assumed an air of
possessiveness she didn’t think she could live with. Organized,
handsome, and on the go --he was everything she’d left behind when
she fled New York and Wall Street. Nyssa knew why she'd agreed to
marry Robert. He was the direct opposite of Solo St. John. She
hoped Robert would help her forget Solo.

“You didn’t write the message down.”

“Of course not. Why on earth would I? It was
St. John.”

Nyssa tuned out everything when she heard
the word Solo. Solo St. John. No. Not now, after she’d gotten on
with her life, after she’d cataloged and filed him far enough away
from her heart never to hurt her again. She felt a strange quiver
in the pit of her stomach. Only one person ever made her feel this
way.

Solo--the man who had been her best friend
for the past ten years.

“Please, Lord, don’t let him call back and
don’t let me return his message.”

The strange quiver turned into a long drawn
out shudder.

She placed her hand over her stomach as if
the solid presence of her fingers would stop the upheaval. Breathe
deep and slow, relax. She would marry Robert and they would live in
his condo in the hills. She would do her thing and Robert could do
his. The game was set up, the rules decided, and at this stage she
didn’t want to throw in a wild card.

Solo St. John was a wild card. He was larger
than life, a rugged outdoorsman. He was always ready to go off on
an adventure at the flip of a coin. That’s what he called his
life--an adventure. And oh, how she’d liked the adventures he’d
taken her on. Solo, the center of her life and subject of all her
romantic fantasies since the first day she saw him, attracted her
like no other man could. Except as a study partner and confidant,
Solo didn't know she existed.

A small tremor of panic tinged her voice.
“Tell me you’re joking. It wasn’t really Solo.”

“I’m joking,” Robert looked at her
strangely. “I didn’t say the name Solo,” he told her straight
faced. “Solo doesn’t strike me as a name for a mature adult.”

“It’s a nickname,” Nyssa said stiffly.
“Steven Oliver Lawrence O’Neil St. John. And some number after
that.”

“I’m not impressed. Am I to believe Solo is
the grandson of Colonel St. John?” The way Robert said the name
made Solo sound like a mass murderer, “And a friend of yours? An
old flame?”

She shook her head wildly.
“A friend,” she tried not to sound breathless. For understandable,
personal reasons she had to get Solo and old flame out of the same
sentence before Robert had time to contemplate the implications. “I
told you about him. Remember? Once in a great while he calls. And
he, umm goes off on another adventure.”
He
pops up when I’m the most vulnerable and creates chaos in my
life.

The last time he caught her on the rebound
from a job, he plopped her on a Lear jet and flew her to the
Galapagos Islands to take pictures of turtles. He didn’t give her a
chance to buy sunscreen before they were baking in the tropical
heat of a tiny island, counting baby turtles as they wandered onto
the beach. Afterwards, the minute he deposited her in her flat in
the city, she made a vow--she would no longer let him sweet-talk
her into an adventure of any sort. She promised herself, too, she
would never succumb to this preposterous infatuation to Solo St.
John, who was too cavalier and too handsome and too...Lord but the
list just kept going on. He was just…too...

Nyssa wheeled the bike to the front display
window no longer eager to cruise around the block. Her thoughts
were absorbed in her past, memories she hoped to long ago vanquish
because they hurt too much to remember. More often than not when
she slipped over the edge into melancholia the tears would start to
fall. Solo St. John did not deserve any more tears and she decided
she wouldn’t cry again.

The first time she’d met him, she was
sitting in a carousel with her study group when he ran in, late,
breathless, and rakishly disheveled. For one fleeting moment her
heart stopped. After that she’d done her best to ignore him, but
he’d have none of it. He would coax her from the library and have
her eating ice cream cones in the student union before she ever had
a chance to say no. He knew what pushed her buttons, and he’d have
the argument over with before it ever began.

She was afraid of the effect he had on
her.

She had goals, ambitions, and the desperate
need to prove herself to the world. And so did he. But the
differences in how they went about it put them at distinct and
separate ends of the spectrum.

He was debonair and suave.

She was cautious and shy.

Life to him was a game to be played at the
fullest, nothing left out. He wanted to see and experience the
entire world before he was forty and he was half-way there.

She wanted to travel too. But it wasn’t the
same.

As the years passed she learned that beneath
the first glimpse Solo gave the ordinary person, there was an
intense passion for life and a gentleness few people possessed.

The longer she knew Solo, the more she came
to respect him and his attitude toward life; the more of an enigma
he became. And the deeper she fell.

She was young and innocent. Without
realizing the direction her romantic fantasy went, he became the
center of her world. Even more confusing, she found herself
fascinated by the air of mystery that surrounded him. To an
impressionable country girl, Solo St. John seemed like a potent
combination of Carey Grant, Spencer Tracy, and James Dean.

One day she’d put the puzzle together.

He played at college yet he had a remarkably
easy time with his classes, never once earning lower than a perfect
four point. Where she spent hours at study, he simply read the
books and listened to the lectures. Although he could afford the
finest clothes, he seldom wore anything but blue jeans, a T-shirt,
and of course his well-worn sneakers. He hated being singled out,
yet by his very nature when he entered a room heads turned.

Solo was always starting out on some new
adventure that inevitably would lead him into some harrowing
situation. How he escaped them with the seat of his pants still
intact was a puzzle. Often times though, he didn’t, and at those
times he would call from some exotic local--begging--coaxing her to
bail him out.

Well, not this time. That was all in the
past; she had her future to look forward to now. As of yesterday
she had a fiancé to think about. The very definition of fiancé
forbade her any contact with Solo St. John.

She bypassed the front display and wheeled
the bicycle onto the street, ready to ignore the phone call and the
request that she call back.

But the cell phone hooked to her belt began
ringing.

As she stopped mid-stride in the middle of
the sidewalk, her breath caught in her throat. “I will not answer
that.”