Moonflower Read online

  Sophie let out a choking sob and a tear slid down her cheek. ‘Why didn’t you just pick up the phone?’ she asked him.

  Reuben drew her head to his chest. ‘I realise now I should have done that. But I didn’t want to make what might have sounded like empty promises to you over the phone when I heard you’d resigned. I wanted it all squared away before I spoke to you. I wanted to get back here and propose to you in person, not over the phone.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through?’ Sophie asked against his chest. ‘I was so sure you’d moved on and I couldn’t carry on here without you. Too many reminders everywhere.’

  ‘I can make it all better, Sophie,’ he said, and with a finger beneath her chin, he kissed the tears on her cheek, then her mouth, tasting the saltiness on his tongue.

  He drew away. ‘I would go to the ends of the earth for you, Sophie. I realised that when Sara told me you’d resigned. No question about it.’

  Then came the reaction Reuben had hoped for; had imagined many times as voices had droned on in boardrooms, or at night in the stillness of his penthouse apartment.

  With a cry, Sophie flung her arms around his neck and rained kisses on his cheeks, his chin, his lips.

  Reuben took her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers, sliding his tongue over hers, drinking deeply at the well of passion his parched brain had dreamt of so often in past weeks.

  Sophie pressed her body to his, moving her hips against his hardness. He drew away from her to watch as desire flared in her eyes.

  She pulled his shirt from his waistband and raked gentle fingers over his back, around to his muscled belly. Fingernails moved along his sides, making him shiver with pleasure.

  Reuben was sure she had no idea how tightly strung he was. He stepped away from her and grabbed her hand. ‘Come,’ he said, heading for her vehicle.

  They raced along dirt roads until they came to the hikers’ cottage. They jumped out and, still holding hands, ran for the door. There was no ritual or delay as they pulled, tugged and threw off their clothes. And then they stood in front of each other, not touching, and Reuben felt overwhelmed by her beauty, her vulnerability, the way she stood before him, unashamed, untamed.

  He reached for her and she came to him, her movements unhurried. Just close enough for her nipples to tickle and tease the hair on his chest. Her belly brushing his hardness, moving away, brushing again.

  He lifted her in his arms. She looped long legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, head tipped back. Hungrily, he sucked one hard nipple into his mouth, then the other. She moaned and he felt a spurt of heat and wetness against his belly and thought he would climax against her right then and there. But, sensing his urgency, she moved away from him, going to lie on the bed, her legs open to him, arms held out.

  Reuben entered her deeply, and buried his face in her hair.

  ‘My moonflower,’ Sophie moaned as he quickened the movement of his hips.

  He would like to have said it, but he could only think and, you, my wild creature as he exploded at the urging of her hips.

  When they eventually lay entwined in each other’s arms, utterly spent, Reuben ventured, ‘You haven’t answered my question yet.’

  ‘What question was that?’ Sophie asked, dreamily.

  ‘The marriage one.’

  ‘I thought I just did,’ Sophie said, playfully kissing his chest. ‘And what an answer it was.’

  She ran a finger across his lips, replaced the finger with her tongue, flicking it provocatively over their fullness.

  ‘Sophie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You need to say it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, rubbing her thigh against his hip. ‘I think I should get you back for not having phoned while you were away. Making me stew out here. I think that calls for some retribution.’

  She followed the line of soft, brown hair that ran down his belly, moving lower to nibble the inside of a thigh. Reuben drew in a sharp breath, the sight of his growing member tangled in her copper hair almost driving him out of his mind.

  He reached down to explore this new sensation when she sat up suddenly, a serious look on her face. ‘Before I answer, Reuben, I need to be sure that Reuben Manning, a man who has spent his entire adult life clawing his way to the top of the corporate pile, would be happy to settle down on a farm at the tip of Africa.’

  Reuben made to speak, but Sophie quietened him with a finger to his lips. ‘I know you love me, Reuben. I know that. But will you still be happy out here with me in a few years? Will you be able to cope with the quietness, the lack of pace and stimulation you’re used to in London? I need to be sure, Reuben, because if you change your mind in a couple of years, I don’t think I’d survive it.’

  He sat up and put his arms around the woman who filled his mind, his every sense. ‘There’s nothing sudden about my decision, Sophie. In fact, I don’t think it was entirely unexpected. The corporate world was never my first choice. My mother was right. I did want to be a vet. But I showed an unusual aptitude for economics and strategy, and things seemed to move too quickly to call a halt and change direction, but it never gave me any deep satisfaction.

  ‘I might not have been able to admit it to myself at the time, but buying this farm was perhaps the beginning of my escape from it all.’

  Sophie touched Reuben’s cheek.

  ‘I’ve found that satisfaction, that fulfilment here, with you. Mark and my parents were right. I haven’t felt this sort of contentment since I was a boy running around the moors. The satisfaction I’ve felt every day after spending a morning out in the bush, surrounded by all this beauty and the animals… I could never have imagined all this as a boy.’

  A wide smile spread over Sophie’s face at the obvious joy in his voice.

  ‘And then it just struck me the other day. I was sitting in another board meeting to do with the merger, and thought: You own a game farm, Reuben. With zebras and wildebeest and Sophie wants to reintroduce the endangered Cape Mountain Leopard. And it’s one of only a few places that still boasts renosterveld…’

  Sophie beamed at him.

  ‘And before you get carried away,’ he told her. ‘Don’t think this place is going to be quiet any time soon. We still have bontebok and jackal to settle in. There’s a four-year ground-breaking research project ahead, and my plan includes several noisy, rambunctious kids running around this farm. And a few dogs.’

  Sophie began to laugh. It was a light, bubbly sound, like water rippling over river stones.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly. Then, ‘yes’ again. ‘Yes, yes, yes. My answer’s, yes, Reuben Manning. I’m going to marry you and I’m going to love every minute of it.’

  Reuben’s eyes glistened as he cupped her cheek against his palm. ‘And to make sure you do just that, Sophie Kyle, I will dedicate the rest of my life to furthering that mission.’

  Epilogue

  Reuben and Sophie were married two months later, and the farm wore its best colours for a week of celebrations.

  Just as Sophie had expected, the Kyles and Mannings were as happy as a tribe of elephants at a watering hole. Mark and her brothers were in each other’s company almost constantly, and Ruby and Sophie’s mum hit it off immediately. On the surface, Reuben’s father was very different to her own more gregarious sire, but the men had more important things in common: like their deep love of family and their all-consuming care of their wives and offspring.

  Mr Solomon put Sophie’s bouquet together, of course.

  Roses the colour of apricots, and just as sweet. ‘Once you fall in love with this place, you’ll never leave,’ he’d told her the morning she and Reuben had left for Brits to find the right animals to bring the farm back to life.

  Deep red roses like the dying embers of an African sunset; taken from the same bush from which he’d picked a rose and stepped into her path one day. 'You're going to have to stop doing that, Mr Solomon. My heart might give
out!' she’d admonished. And the old man had said: 'There's nothing wrong with your heart. Trust it, you hear me?’

  Delicate pink like the rose she’d pressed and still had from the day he’d told her that the rose had, ‘never asked the sun why it shone, or demanded to know why the rain came in its own time. She only found her feet in fertile soil and bloomed because it was her nature to do so.'

  Yellow roses from the plant he’d saved and nursed into the magnificent bush it was today. ‘They said it was dead. Near the back porch. Wanted it pulled out. “Throw it away,” they said. But I wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t dead. I knew that. Could see it straight away. It had been tested with bad soil and poor light and still it survived. So I moved it here.’ And it had thrived.

  South African jasmine. ‘Our version of the sacred flower of Kama, Hindu god of love,’ he’d told her.

  But the centrepiece of the bouquet, and the most spectacular by far, was the large, intoxicating face of the moonflower.

  ABOUT LEIGH ARCHER

  Leigh, who writes romance novels set in her native South Africa, has always had a great love affair with Africa’s wild, open spaces, the intensity of its people and sunsets. Her love of storytelling began as a child when she spent every spare moment of her childhood playing barefoot in golden grass, watching meerkats, tracking Eland spoor and dreaming up heroes and heroines exciting enough to stand out in the all the beauty and drama of the African landscape.”

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  Get in touch with Leigh:

  Website - http://leigharcher.yolasite.com

  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Leigh-Archer/299910886869499

  Twitter - https://twitter.com/LeighArcherBook

  Tirgearr Publishing - http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Archer_Leigh

  OTHER BOOKS BY LEIGH ARCHER

  UNTAMED SAFARI SERIES

  The Alpha Match, book 1

  Released: May 2015

  ISBN: 9781310594106

  Conservationists, Caro Hannah and Ben Duval, must work together to introduce endangered African wild dogs to a reserve four years after their love affair ended badly. But the challenges of their work pale beside the personal obstacles they must overcome to bring closure to the traumatic events of four years before, or reignite a passion hot enough to set the African bush on fire.