Full Circle (8 page)

For Kayla, time became split into tiny fragments. The day's every nuance could be extracted and examined. She saw the dust motes dance in light from the narrow rear windows. She tasted the waxy oil used on the wall panels. The salesman whistled a rambling tune as he pinned Adam's trousers. Kayla recalled playing with her dolls on the same ancient Persian carpet while her mother sat in the chair where she was now, talking with her father as the salesman stood him upon the same stool that Adam used.

Kayla had always assumed she would grow up and find a man just like her father. She had thought the pimply-faced young men of school would one day vanish, and in their stead would be her prince. Then it was university in America, and young men with brash voices who spoke of the money they would earn or the power they would wield, and how Kayla would fit so beautifully into their futures. Ambition was their calling card. Their intelligent gazes and strong features and easy confidence proclaimed that they had been born to claim the future.

Her last year at school, Kayla had begun fearing that her chance at any true passion had been whispered on a night when she had not been listening. Or perhaps her life's mate had smiled at her at one of the endless stream of parties, and she had been too preoccupied to see, and any meaningful dreams had been buried with her mother.

Then a classmate had shared plans of a year in Africa. She was going to work for Oxfam on their Fair Trade project, helping small farmers gain a greater share of the revenue from their products. The next day, Kayla had signed up for what she thought would be a sort of working vacation. Instead, she had found a passion worthy of investing her life.

Or so it had seemed, until the man she thought she knew had walked away with her project's funding. And broken her heart in the process.

Which had brought her home. To this. Sitting in her mother's chair, watching a stranger walk to the changing room and hand his new clothes back through the curtain.

She blinked away the sudden stinging and smiled as the salesman returned with a silver tea service. She cleared her throat and asked, “How do you take your tea?”

“I have no idea.” Adam swept aside the red-velvet curtain and reemerged in a new shirt and slacks. “I don't have much experience with drinking tea in a shop.”

“You'll find there's not much difference from drinking it anywhere else.”

“Very funny.” He sat on the seat next to hers, the tiny round table between them. Just as her mother and father had once sat. Kayla had loved to pour the tea, setting the silver strainer over the cup just as she did now . . .

“What's wrong, Kayla?”

Kayla felt the harmonies of planets in parallel orbit, just from Adam speaking those three quiet words. She knew tension had redrawn the angles of her face. She knew her chin had jutted in a fashion that made her look old. And her lips were tightly compressed. She had seen the expression often enough in her mirror over the past ten months.

Kayla needed both hands to steady the pot and pour the tea. “I was thinking of Africa.”

Adam took the cup, let her add milk, declined sugar. “Tell me where you are.”

Perhaps it was the way he spoke that last word. Where you
are
. Where her life is
now
. Not in the past. This very moment. She set down the pot, and said the first thing that came to her mind. “I drink a lot of tea in Africa. The water isn't safe unless it's boiled, and even boiled it still tastes horrid. So I drink tea all day long. All Westerners do. Tea or coke or bottled water, and sometimes the shipments of water from Europe don't come through. Our office has its own filtration system, and then we boil the water hard and use tea to mask the flavor.”

She stared at the rear window and the tiny walled garden beyond. The intensity of Adam's gaze sent her soaring away, back to a world of yellow heat and eternal dust. She was there, and yet intensely here as well.

“Kayla.”

She started. “Sorry. I was . . .”

“Away. Tell me what you are seeing.”

“East Africa is in its third year of drought. The lack of rain dominates everything. All the trees around the cities have been chopped down for fuel. There is electricity a few hours each day, but the poorer families can't afford to use it, especially for cooking. The pennies they earn go for food. If there's any money left over, they send one child to school. Sometimes the eldest, sometimes the brightest. Whoever is lucky enough to shine. The others work. Everybody works all the time, and hopefully there's food to eat and money left over for the one lucky child to study.”

She saw herself walking the yellow road from the compound where many of the Europeans lived to the project's offices. The compound was on the airport road, about a mile and a half closer to Dar es Salaam than the offices. She often walked the road in the cool of early dawn. If she missed her walk, it meant no exercise that day, because later the heat grew overpowering. The hour between night and day was very special. There was little car traffic, but the road was nonetheless very full. Children fortunate enough to go to school walked with their books and wooden tablets, for no family could afford the luxury of writing paper. The children who herded goats or the family cow watched the students with carefully blank faces, revealing neither envy nor the hopelessness of a life forever denied them. The dust was not so bad then, and the sky was awash in a gentle light. One of Kayla's tenets was that every family involved in her project had to place all their children in school. She was very strict about that. It meant she could walk the road and smile at the children, and feel that she was making a difference in other small lives.

She heard herself say, “The youngest children gather fuel. But as I said, there aren't any trees left. So they gather animal dung and thornbushes. And old bones. There are bones every-where now. The fields are full of dust and animal carcasses picked clean. Fires of cow dung and thorn brush and dried bones give off an amazing aroma. I know it sounds horrid. But the smell is like some exotic spice. This morning I finally got round to unpacking my suitcases so I could give everything a proper wash. The smell took me straight back. It is in everything. Even my hairbrush.”

Kayla stopped then. The words dried up entirely. For she had another image, one of Geoffrey entering the offices. He had always taken a taxi from the hotel where he had lived to the project. Geoffrey liked to say he wasn't above helping the unwashed masses, but he needed a proper start to the day. He was fastidious in his dress and almost foppish in his manners. But his smile and his charm and his incredible looks had been enough to mask the distance from which he had viewed life in Africa. Or so it had been, until that morning.

Kayla blinked and slowly came around. Adam watched her with an impossible patience. Impossible that a haircut and some new clothes could change him so much. His face looked leaner, his manner more polished. She felt a sudden desperate urge to claim he was just another thief, just another liar. Just like all men were bound to be.

Because to do otherwise would be to accept what her heart now whispered. That Adam was not merely different. Nor was he just a friend. The way he looked at her now invited Kayla to bridge the impossible divide and enter the forbidden zone. The zone beyond the walls that, up to now, she had called protection. The temptation hovered in the air between them, sparkling in the sunlight upon gossamer wings of invitation.

She whispered, “We really should be going.”

chapter 9

T
hey took a taxi back to Adam's residence, his purchases piled on the seat between them. He hurried up to his room, dropped off the gear he was not now wearing, then returned to the street fearing she would use the interruption as an excuse to change the subject. When he settled into the old Mercedes, he asked, “Who was the guy who broke your heart?”

Kayla started the car. “His name was Geoffrey Rambling.”

“A name like that, he had to be British.”

“Extremely. We met in Nairobi. I was down for a conference. He claimed to have been a consultant to the ministry of finance, sent there by his UK bank.” She put the car into gear. “Daddy's board insisted that I hire a qualified business manager.”

“They financed your project?”

“Oxford Ventures hoped to use my work as a centerpiece for a new ad campaign. Daddy has always been big on giving back to the community. The way he put it to the board was, ‘We now operate in a
global
village.' ”

“Very smart.”

“Not smart enough to keep their money safe.”

“So you hired Geoffrey and he stole from the project. How much?”

Their rumbling passage down the gravel drive nearly masked her words. “Over six hundred thousand pounds.”

As they climbed the company's front stairs, Adam asked, “How long do you have? Before you go back, I mean.”

Kayla heard the quick hesitation, and knew he had started to ask,
we
. How long do
we
have? “Daddy's birthday is next Friday. I'll stay for that.”

Adam kept his face carefully impassive. “So, eight days.”

“Yes.”

“You can't stay for Christmas?”

As soon as the front doors opened, the receptionist said, “Ms. Austin, your father needs to see you immediately.”

“Thank you.” Kayla faced Adam. “I shouldn't stay even this long. But it would mean so much to Daddy.”

“I see.”

“Ms. Austin, your father was most insistent.”

Kayla excused herself and walked to the chairman's suite. She entered her father's office in a wavering state. Her carefully constructed intentions that included no room for another man, the ones she had assumed were both binding and permanent, had new fault lines.

Her father was seated behind the desk, which was uncommon when there was a guest in his room. Peter Austin liked to treat all visitors as distinguished guests, employees included. Normally he led them to the sofa and saw to coffee, settling down only when they were comfortable. Yet now he sat ensconced behind his beechwood desk, his weary features creased into a frown. “She is here, Joshua. Ask her.”

Joshua was seated across from him, his own anger very evident. “Give us your impressions of this Wright fellow.”

Kayla walked to the chair normally reserved for Mrs. Drummond when there was a meeting that required minutes. But she did not sit down. Instead, she stood behind it and rested her hands on the back, as though placing a shield between her and the room. “He was very grateful that Daddy is giving him a chance.”

“Not enough, I'm afraid.” Joshua's gaze did not waver. “We seek insight into his character.”

Kayla said, “Adam Wright is a real gentleman.”

“Correction. He is an
actor
.”

“Was,” Peter said. “I believe you once did some amateur theatrics yourself.”

Joshua flushed. “That was in college, as you well know. This man is a so-called professional, though the word scarcely fits the nonsense he portrayed.”

“Do you mean to tell me you would have refused payment if someone had offered you a professional gig?”

Joshua crossed his arms. “I seek data. Your daughter has a singular ability to see to the heart of matters.”

Not with Geoffrey Rambling
, she silently corrected him. “Adam was completely uncomfortable with spending money, even though it was given to him specifically to kit him out.”

Joshua erupted. “Really, Peter. You gave him money from the company accounts?”

Peter waved that aside. “So the man is miserly. Given what the company faces, I'd say it is a distinct advantage.”

“Until we know more, I must insist that Wright not be permitted access to company matters.”

“Don't be absurd, Joshua.”

“Absurd, am I? What if he is another spy?”

“You have no evidence any such spy exists. Or even that mvp is after us.”

“No, but I'm looking. It's only a matter of time before I ferret them out.”

Peter sighed his exasperation and picked up the phone. “Mrs. Drummond, be so good as to ask Adam Wright to join us.”

When he entered the chairman's office, Adam was greeted by a scene strong as a warning light. Peter Austin frowned mightily at something on his desk. Two chairs were drawn up to the desk's other side. Joshua Dobbins occupied one. Kayla stood behind the other, her fingers playing nervously on the back. She would not meet his gaze.

“You have him here, Joshua,” Peter said. “Do get on with it.”

The finance man said to Adam, “I want to know what proposals you intend to put forward.”

“You gave me thirty days.”

“Indeed you did, Joshua,” Peter agreed. “You told me that yourself.”

“If the man is half as good as you claim, he will not have arrived here empty-handed.”

Adam confirmed, “Actually, I have been studying several possibilities since I met with Peter in Washington.”