Her Perilous Wolf by Julie Steimle (best e book reader TXT) 📕

All the chills, all the worry, all the stress shot through her with one hard thought. Audry stiffened. “No.”

He frowned, eying her. “Why not? He is a monster.”

The others nodded.

She shook her head vehemently, shivers of indignation rushing through her body. “No. No, he isn’t. He showed me what he was when he realized I had found out. And he warned me to stay away from him, for my safety. He warned me.”

“What?” Juma lurched away.

“You are joking,” Sefu exclaimed.

Audry vigorously shook her head. She pulled up her bullet. “My good luck charm, as you call it, came from his leg. I dug it out when hunters were trying to kill him. And he’s been trying to protect me.”

Luis translated, his words causing ripples of surprise through the group.

“Well… that’s unusual.” Juma glanced to the witchdoctor who also stared in surprise. “He already showed you—and did not try to eat you?”

“No.” Moaning, Audry hung her shoulders. Rick? The worst he ever did to her was tease her about being a vegan. She could not imagine him hurting her—though one moment did come to mind. It was the morning after Hogan had tried to rape her. But that moment—both of them really—was the fault of Daisy’s pheromone enhancing balm. Rick was having an attack of hormones, not hunger.

“Were you alone with him?” Juma asked, bringing her back to present.

She shook her head, groaning. “No. My cousin was with me.”

“Ah…” Juma nodded sagely, thinking that was the reason. “Then he protected you. Two against one.”

Audry decided the conversation was done. Two against one? Rick had taken on a cougar and survived. If he truly had been a savage monster, he could have killed them both and dumped their bodies in the ocean. However, she was comforted that Juma did not think she was crazy. But of course, he was a superstitious fellow, and she had just seen an African witch with a mouth on her neck.

“There are lots of African legends about girls who are too picky about bridegrooms. They end up marrying hyenas and lions, or ogres,” Juma murmured, somehow continuing on that last thought. “You do know the best solution in your case, right?”

She shook her head, noticing Sefu and Luis snicker.

“Get married,” he announced, grinning. “I am game. How about it?” He extended his arms, waiting for her to jump into them, kind of.

She shook her head at him again, folding her arms around herself, smirking. “Nice try, Juma. But again, no. You know I just got out of a bad relationship. I don’t want one right now.”

His friends laughed louder, this time at him.

But Juma did not take it badly. He merely sighed as the others continued to chuckle. “Ok… but, you don’t want to die lonely, do you?”

Rolling her eyes, she rose from her seat. She was done with this silly game. “I said ‘no’, Juma. Marriage is a very important commitment, and though I like you very much as a friend, I am not ready to bind myself to anyone yet.”

“That’s not so,” Juma called after her, sounding hurt. “Twice you were ready to marry. You told me so. I even met that last one—Hogan. What makes you like him, but not me?”

She frowned, sighing. What could she say? She just did not have those feelings for him. “I don’t like him. I didn’t marry him. We broke up.”

“You loved him once,” Juma declared, not letting this go. “What did he have that I do not?”

She turned to leave.

Juma followed her. “I know why you left him. You told me what you learned about him. He was a wicked man who left a trail of lovers behind him. But I am not like that. I would be loyal to you forever. I love you, Ife.”

Shivers went through her. He meant it. But she shook her head. “I told you why. As much as I like you, Africa is your home, and America is mine. I cannot stay here forever.”

“Then how about I go to America with you?” Juma offered. His voice trembled.

She closed her eyes. “And take you from Africa, which needs you?”

“Africa needs you,” he suggested.

Audry shook her head. “No. Juma. Africa does fine without me.”

“I disagree,” Juma replied, stepping around her to meet her eyes. Everyone was watching. “You helped this village. And I emailed you because I knew we needed you to help end the poaching. You are my good luck. Without you, we do not do as well.”

She shook her head.

“Consider it, Ife,” he said earnestly. “I’ll give you time. I just want you to be happy. And I believe you came to Africa to find your life.”

Shivers whipped down her arms.

“You were so unhappy when I saw you come off that airplane,” he said. “But Africa does you good. Stay with me, Ife. My Jabari, stay in Africa.”

Shaking, Audry stepped back. It was true that she had fled home. It was true she was unhappy. And Africa always seemed to rejuvenate her. Perhaps Juma was right. However, perhaps the reason she had not been attracted to Juma was that he wasn’t a dangerous man, not in the way Harlin or Hogan were. Indeed, Juma would never harm her—and she had always been attracted to dangerous men. And that included Rick who was the ultimate of dangerous.

“I…” She sighed, closing her eyes. “I’m tired. I need to go to sleep.”

He stepped back, nodding. “Ok, Ife. You take a rest. But please think on it. I am sincere.”

She nodded.

But when she slept that night, Audry noticed that several of the village’s warriors remained awake, guarding her tent—and the dogs came in and curled up next to her, instinctively protecting her.

Chapter Seven

Vicky disliked her cousins. But that did not matter much, as they equally disliked her—though they were thoroughly ashamed of Audry.

Doris and Henry Bruchenhaus arrived at the hotel together, coming to the society party dressed to the nines in clothes they probably would only wear once. Such a waste. The second they saw Vicky in her knee-length red dress (the one she used for special occasions as it was silk and the priciest thing in her closet), they smirked with dry gazes.

Vicky merely smiled back.

Their older sister, Samantha Lydia, and the eldest of the cousins, showed up a little later than her brother and sister with a well-dressed man on her arm—probably to show her grandmother that she did not need her intervening hand when it came to relationships. Vicky noticed Samantha Lydia was in designer everything—and her beau was probably a model. At least that was the way he stood—handsome and cut, but bored. The older Bruchenhaus cousins would all spend their evening looking down their noses at her. Samantha Lydia did not even look at her. Vicky long understood that most of her Bruchenhaus-related cousins considered the Williams family so insignificant that they were forgettable. Her cousins were only bothered by the fact that their grandparents did not forget them. They often said ‘It would have been so much nicer if their grandparents simply left the Williamses out since… who would want them?’

“Do you think Lillian will be here?” Doris asked Henry, now ignoring Vicky who was standing with their grandmother while the elderly woman waited anxiously for all her single grandchildren to arrive. Their grandmother had insisted they all come—possibly on threat of losing inheritance, though Vicky had not gotten such a threat. Her parents merely though it would be a good idea to humor their grandmother once in a while. They were most likely disinherited anyway.

Henry shrugged with such a gaze of ennui on the scene as he replied about Lillian, “Probably. The drinks are free.”

Doris snickered, hand covering her mouth in a manner of one who thought she was being demure. She just looked snide.

Admittedly, Lillian Taylor was an embarrassment. She always got heavily drunk at parties and did stupid things which often ended up in tabloids. One time, years ago, she had gotten so drunk at a Junior League party at the Plaza Hotel that she stripped naked and swam in the Pulitzer Fountain with a few of her friends. That was back when she was in high school. She had been arrested for indecent exposure then. Her parents had been mortified.

 “Is Vincent Van Goh going to be here?” Vicky’s cousin Keith Stephenson asked as he strolled up with his two brothers.

Vicky rolled her eyes. “The artist?”

“He’s no artist,” his brother, Brian, murmured right beside Keith, chuckling.

“Your fool brother,” the third one, Nicholas chimed in, as if she hadn’t already known they were mocking her brother. All three were each a year apart, Nicholas the oldest and Keith the youngest. Keith was barely in college—still baby-faced.

Casting him a look, Vicky replied, “Vincent is out west doing business for Grandpa.”

“It would have been better if he came here,” Grandma Bruchenhaus said, sighing as her eyes took in the three more-favored grandsons. “I’m not getting any younger. I need more grandbabies.”

Nearly all of them rolled their eyes, though Doris averted hers. She had two children from a previous relationship—unmarried—but hardly anyone mentioned them. Their grandparents wanted her married the most and probably had threatened her with loss of inheritance.

“What about that airhead, Audry?” Keith asked, peeking around on tip toes as if it would make him able to see her better. He was already tall. “Is she going to be here?”

“That airhead, as you like to call her,” Vicky snapped with dirtiest look, “has a Masters degree and is working toward her PhD.”

“But where is she?” Nicholas asked, ignoring the rest.

“She’s back in Africa,” Henry muttered.

They all looked to him. He blinked back, unconcerned.

“How did you know?” Vicky asked. “Audry hardly told anybody.”

Henry shot her a scathing look. “Vincent Price spilled the beans.”

Vicky rolled her eyes skyward. They were always so lame when talking about Vincent. She figured they were jealous. Despite all the favoritism toward John Bruchenhaus’s family (the eldest child and would-be heir)—Vincent was the favored grandchild merely from not having a scandalous reputation. Vicky could tell Henry was worried Vincent would get a larger inheritance than the rest of them. 

“What a shame,” their grandmother murmured. “She was closer to marriage than any of you kids. And Doug married so well. His wife is from the Smett family.”

All of her cousins restrained groans. The Smett family was old money and also old acquaintances of the Bruchenhaus clan. But Jean was no heiress. Most of her Smett cousins thought it was ridiculous that Jean took a career as nurse, just like Doug choosing to be a phlebotomist—then a hospital lab technician. Their only other cousin who married ‘as well’ in the eyes of their grandparents was Genevieve, John Bruchenhaus’s eldest daughter. She married Owen Busche—an affluent family oddly connected to her aunt Clover whose own family were hippies. 

Vicky sighed, shaking her head. Doug was lucky Jean was normal and not as vain as her wealthy relatives.

“How did that fall apart?” Samantha Lydia looked to Vicky with a snide kind of grin. Samantha Lydia hated Audry the most. Not because Audry had any sort of favor, but that the last time Audry spent time at a family event—winter skiing—Audry dumped black paint on Samantha Lydia’s fur trim coat, which had been