A Delicious Mistake Read Online Free Page A

found that they were closer than
ever. They weren’t just childhood friends. They were brothers in the truest,
deepest sense of the word.
    As
a boy Benjamin had thought his world had just come to an end when the Huttons
announced that they would no longer be spending half of the year in the
Serengeti, as they had done for decades. The stays had become too strenuous for
David Hutton, who had recently suffered a stroke that had left his left hand
and leg partly paralyzed. For as far back as Benjamin could remember, the Huttons
had visited their Game Lodge in Tanzania once a year, staying for a period of
four to six months to escape the gray winters of England. To know they wouldn’t
return had been heartbreaking and earth-shattering for Benjamin, and he had
thought Luke felt the same. Benjamin had even found little Sarah crying out
near the gates. He had sat with her, not touching her, merely watching out for
her and guarding her as he had always done. But he had known that for Sarah and
Luke—and for him—the end of those visits had seemed like the ending of the
world. At the very least, it was the end of their world, and there was
no denying that.
    But
Luke hadn’t been able to stay away. As soon as he was old enough and out of
college, he had moved back to Africa and the Serengeti in order to take over
the management of the Game Lodge his family had owned for generations. But
Sarah and her family had remained in England. Benjamin tried to be happy with
what he had with Luke. The tough, often frustrating, and always demanding job
of protecting their land and its cultural and natural treasures from adversity
and threat—whatever those may be—had become a lighter load just because they
were blessed with the chance of working side by side.
    Feeding
off his friend’s returning serenity, Benjamin sat back in the passenger’s seat
and relaxed. He allowed the green of the Serengeti plains to give him peace as
it seeped into his eyes and skin and blood.
    Luke
suddenly broke the silence. “I think we should go now.” Benjamin looked
sideways over to him. “Back to the area where I found the trap yesterday, and
you can head back into town to check out those rumors.”
    Benjamin
sat up. “What about the rest of our morning patrol?”
    “I
dare say, this calls for our immediate attention.”
    Rubbing
the back of his neck, Benjamin mulled this over for a few moments. He didn’t
like the thought of leaving some of the areas unchecked for the day. But their
patrol was meant to find any trouble and deal with it. They had found trouble,
and it needed to be dealt with.
    Finally,
he nodded. “All right then. Let’s go back to base camp and I’ll take another
Jeep.”
    Luke
flashed him a grateful smile.  “We’ll take care of what we saw the day
before. That’ll be good.” Benjamin nodded. He didn’t particularly like delaying
action, either.
    Luke
drove back to the garage that hosted all of the ranger vehicles. Benjamin took
his rifle from the back of Luke’s Jeep and jumped into another Jeep. They met
right outside the garage, their vehicles side by side, each ready to drive in opposite
directions that would hopefully lead somewhere useful to their cause.
    “I’ll
meet you back here at dusk,” Luke said. “We’ll regroup then.”
    “Be
careful,” Benjamin advised.
    Luke
nodded and gave him a wink. “Always, brother.”
    Reaching
out, Luke stretched out his hand to grab Benjamin’s forearm in a brotherly
hold. He held the grasp for a moment, then let go and gave a wave. A moment
later, he drove off, his face set in a firm, unforgiving expression. He looked
like a man with a mission.
    Benjamin
hoped one of them—well, ideally, both of them, but he didn’t dare hope
for that much—would come up with something. A small worry nagged at him
that perhaps he should stay with Luke. But Luke knew this area as well as he
did. Luke had grown up here. So what was he to worry over? It was not like this
would be the last