Read Online Ivory by Tony Park - Free Book Online

derided his Portuguese looks and Rhodesian accent. He never lost a bout, and eventually won acceptance. But if his dark hair and eyes and olive skin were a liability in barracks, they were an asset in the local pubs and nightclubs where the young marines went in search of drink and women.
    As Alex gazed up at the hotel from the water, imagining even more ambitious renovations and expansions, Danielle walked out of thehotel’s foyer. When Alex was a boy a uniformed African doorman had opened heavy brass and glass doors. Now Danni picked her way through charred beams and fresh new lumber. She wore a pink T-shirt and green cargo pants and carried a bulging backpack on her shoulders.
    Mitch got up from the deckchair he’d been lying in, under a palm tree in the garden. Alex swam to shore.
    Alex had met Danni while shopping for fresh fruit and vegetables in the marketplace at Vilanculos. It was her smile that had drawn him to her. He’d helped her pick some tomatoes and translated for her. The stall keeper had wanted to charge her tourist prices, but Alex had bargained him down firmly and, in the end, paid for the purchase despite her protests. She told him over Manica beers at a beachside bar that she’d left Ireland a month before her thirtieth birthday. Tired of being nagged by her mother and aunties about marriage, and bored with her job as a partner in an accounting firm, she’d chucked it all in and gone in search of adventure and herself.
    Danni had come to the island that day. A week later they were the last people propping up the beach bar after the other men had turned in at what passed for a reasonable hour on Ilha dos Sonhos. The rest of the gang were going deep-sea fishing early in the morning, but Alex would spend the day like most others, painting and renovating yet another hotel room.
    It had been oppressively humid all day and the night was no different. Lightning marbled the dark sky and Danni moved out from under the thatch as the heavenly drums sounded.
    â€˜Come inside, you’ll get wet,’ Alex said as the first fat drops started cratering the white sand.
    â€˜Not on your life. This is my first ever tropical thunderstorm and there’s no way I’m going to watch it from under cover.’ She spread her arms and looked up. ‘It’s warm. Warm rain!’ She was grinning with wonder.
    The storm came with the noise and ferocity of a waterfall and Alex had let Danni drag him first into the downpour and then into the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. She’d gone in still clothed in blouseand skirt, but he’d peeled them off her as they stood, waist deep, and kissed.
    â€˜Come to bed with me,’ he’d said into her ear over the patter of the rain.
    â€˜Now, just slow down there a minute and let me think about that, mister. We’re both single, over twenty-one, and you’re the most handsome man I’ve ever met – plus you own your own hotel and island . . .’
    The bond between her and Alex had grown and she took to sharing his suite on the top floor of the hotel most nights.
    Nothing was said, but Mitch would have been blind not to know that Danni was more than just a guest on the island. It made his drunken pass at her at a beach
braai
unforgivable.
    â€˜No, Mitch!’
    Alex had heard Danni yell from the gloom beyond the bar and had left his seat and run into the night. She had collided with him and he’d wrapped his arms around her.
    â€˜God in heaven, that man’s a pig,’ she’d said, breathing deep to calm herself.
    â€˜Fucking bitch tried to come on to me, then called red light,’ Mitch said when Alex challenged him.
    â€˜I want you to apologise to her, Mitch.’
    â€˜I got a better idea. How about you fucking share her around, Alex.’
    Alex’s first punch had broken Mitch’s nose and, although the American had later split his eye and left him with bruised ribs, he’d