Read Online Ivory by Tony Park - Free Book Online Page B

she’d heard, on the mainland, of some crazy white men who were fixing up an old hotel, and hitched a ride on the boat to come have a look for herself.
    Alex was wary of visitors. He had had Danni search Sarah’s clothes and backpack thoroughly while Sarah had downed cane spirit and Coke at the bar. Heinrich had been working on an outboard motor outside the boathouse, still tinkering and cursing as the sun went down; Sarah, half cut, had wandered down, drink in hand and offered to take a look. The German had scoffed, but said, ‘Be my guest.’ In fifteen minutes she’d had the motor purring.
    Later, while Danielle had been tapping on her laptop in the gutted restaurant, Sarah had moved her bar stool closer to Alex and run her hand up the inside of his bare thigh.
    Danni had been hinting at marriage for a while. Alex had told her he wanted her to stay on the island – indefinitely – but that he couldn’t contemplate anything more permanent until he had finished renovating the hotel and become a legitimate businessman, something he fullyintended on doing. Things had cooled between them and it had been two weeks since she’d slept with him when Sarah arrived.
    When Danni had caught them kissing she’d shrugged the incident off, telling Alex that since he couldn’t commit to her, then he was free to sleep with anyone he wanted to, and that the same counted for her.
    He hadn’t believed her and now, seeing the set of her mouth and the bulging backpack, it was clear she wanted an all-or-nothing relationship.
    â€˜It won’t be the same without you here, you know.’ He reached out and touched her warm cheek with the backs of the fingers on his good hand. ‘Come back and visit any time.’
    She took his other hand – the one which had been maimed and scarred in the explosion – and lightly kissed the remaining digits, one at a time. ‘Come find me if you ever grow up, Alex.’ She smiled to show there was no animosity in her words.
    â€˜Break it up, you two.’ Sarah’s broad Australian accent was as different to Danielle’s as her temperament and zest for life.
    Alex smiled, consoling himself privately with the thought that at least he wasn’t losing both of the women in his life. Until he looked at Sarah. She hefted a rucksack over one shoulder and carried a day pack in her left hand.
    â€˜What the . . . ?’ Both these women had shared his bed last night.
    â€˜Danni told me she was leaving. I’ve still got more of Africa to see and I asked if she needed a travelling companion.’ She came up to Alex as Danielle stepped to one side, raised herself on tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth. ‘Bye, Captain Hook. It’s been a blast.’

4
    T he routine of shipboard life had calmed her. She had never felt so relaxed in her life – nor so bored.
    Jane ran up the companionway steps two at a time, and when she reached the monkey island, the deck around the ship’s single funnel, she was perspiring and breathing hard. She turned and ran back down. In London she swam three nights a week and was a keen rower on the Thames. There was a small gym for the crew on board the
Penfold Son
, but she had never been a gym junkie. She found them smelly, claustrophobic places, and the ship’s was no different.
    There was very little of the cargo freighter’s deck that was accessible to her as a passenger. The ship was massive, but she was confined to walking around and around the superstructure. She was beginning to feel like a caged rat. There was a small swimming pool below decks, but there wasn’t really enough room to get up a good rhythm, or do laps. The stairs, as she had learned, were an unforgiving place to exercise. Twice she’d slipped during rough seas and scraped her shins bloody on the hard steel. However, now the days at sea had turned into weeks she moved easily with the rocking of the massive