Alina turned one page with a fingertip. “So the day’s theme is philanthropy with tannins.”
“I support tannins,” Graham said.
“You support attention,” Alina replied.
“They pair beautifully.”
A laugh moved around the table, light enough to ease something in my chest.
Nick looked up from the clipboard one of the rangers had handed him. His gaze found mine across the veranda, passing through sunlight, conversation, and every careful assumption the guests had built around us.
He didn't smile. He didn't linger long enough to expose either of us.
Still, his eyes did what his hands couldn’t in front of everyone.
Still with me?
My fingers tightened around the mug.
For the next twenty-four hours.
“Departure in fifteen,” he said, voice carrying cleanly over the table. “Two vehicles. “Elias and Daniel will take the second vehicle,” Nick said. “Two guides, two routes, no improvising.” Stay with your assigned vehicle during transfers. The estate is private land, but the road crosses open reserve for the first eleven kilometers.”
Graham lifted his hand. “Are we expecting trouble between here and the wine?”
“No,” Nick said.
“Comforting.”
Nick’s attention shifted to him. “That wasn’t permission to wander.”
Naomi made a delighted sound into her coffee.
The drive to the estate took us beyond the routes we had followed all week.
Two open-air vehicles rolled out from Mara Khaya in tandem, tires kicking fine red grit from the track. Nick drove the lead jeep, with me beside him in the front passenger seat because the universe remained committed to my personal development. Naomi, Graham, and Alina filled the row behind us, while Cufflink and Owen rode with Elias and Daniel in the second vehicle.
The morning expanded around us, cooler than the afternoons but already bright enough to make the thorn trees throw sharp shadows across the track. Acacias thinned into stretches of tawny grass, then gathered again around dry washes where the soil dipped and deepened. The air carried crushed leaf, hot stone, and the edge of dust lifting under the tires.
Nick drove with one hand on the wheel. The other rested near the gear shift, loose until it wasn’t. He answered Naomi’s questions about the corridor project with the same measured clarity he used for animal tracks and perimeter risks, but every few minutes, his attention returned to the mirror, the verge, the second vehicle, me.
Nick Mercer could make care look like procedure until a woman with too little sleep and too much memory started seeing the seams.
The estate appeared after a final bend in the track, tucked into a shallow valley where the wilderness softened without becoming tame.
A long gravel drive ran between low stone walls and silver-green vines trained along dark wires. Beyond them, the land rose into ocher hills brushed with scrub, and farther still, mountains held the horizon in blue-gray folds. The main building had been built from pale stone and timber, its roof low and broad against the sky. White umbrellas shaded a terrace that looked out overthe vines, and glass doors opened into a cool interior where bottle-lined walls caught the light like amber and green water.
It should have been civilized.
The wild kept pressing at the edges.
Dry grass hissed along the low wall. A pair of swallows cut under the eaves. Somewhere behind the cellar, water moved through a narrow irrigation channel with a soft, persistent run that made the heat seem less absolute.
Nick pulled to a stop beneath an Acacia that had been allowed to grow exactly where it wanted, one branch leaning over the drive like a lazy arm.
“Wait,” he said before anyone could unbuckle.
Every buckle in the vehicle remained untouched.
