Rhodesia Read Online Free Page B

Rhodesia National Gallery. The National Archives' galleries are very worthwhile, and the Robert Mcllwaine National Park with its game reserve — it'll prime you for Wankie. You'll want to see the aloes and cycads at Ewanrigg Park and Mazoe and the Balancing Rocks."
    Booty and Ruth worked him over with questions. Nick decided they asked extra ones to hear his baritone and watch the moustache wave up and down.
    The "get-acquainted" dinner, in a private dining room at their hotel — Meikles — was a thorough success. Masters brought three of the big young men with him, resplendent in dinner jackets, and the stories, drinking, and dancing lasted till after midnight. Gus Boyd distributed his attentions properly among the girls, but he danced most often with Janet Olson. Nick played the part of the correct escort, talked mostly with the eight girls who had joined them in Germany, and felt an unusual resentment at the way Masters and Booty got along. He was dancing with Ruth Crossman when the two said good night and left.
    He couldn't help wondering — all the girls had separate rooms. He sat glumly with Ruth in a lounge divan with whiskey-soda nightcaps. Only brunette Teddy Northway was still with them, dancing snugly with one of Masters' men named Bruce Todd, a bronzed youth who was a local soccer star.
    "She'll take care of herself. She likes you."
    Nick blinked, looked at Ruth. The dark girl spoke so rarely you forgot she was with you. He looked at her. Without the dark-rimmed glasses her eyes had the misty, unfocused gentleness of the nearsighted — and made her grave, even features quite beautiful. You thought of her as quietly lovely — never disturbing — not to be disturbed?
    "Who?" Nick asked.
    "Booty, of course. Don't pretend. She's on your mind."
    "The girl I'm with is on my mind."
    "Okay, Andy."
    He escorted her up to her room in the east wing, paused in the doorway. "I hope you had a nice evening, Ruth. You dance very well."
    "Come in and close the door."
    He blinked again and obeyed. She turned off one of the two lamps the maid had left on, pulled wider the drapes that gave them a view of the city's lights, and poured two Cutty Sarks and added soda without asking him if he wanted a drink. He stood admiring the two double beds, on one of which the covers had been neatly turned down.
    She handed him a glass. "Sit down, Andy. Take off your jacket if you're warm."
    He slowly removed his pearl-gray dinner jacket and she hung it matter-of-factly in a closet and sauntered back to stand in front of him. "Are you just going to stand there all night?"
    He took her slowly in his arms, looking into the misty brown eyes. "I guess I should have told you before," he said, "you're beautiful when you open your eyes wide."
    "Thank you. Lots of people forget to look."
    He kissed her and discovered her firm-looking lips were astonishingly soft and pliable, her tongue bold and shocking amid little gusts of woman-and-alcohol breath. She molded her trim body against him and after a moment one padded thighbone and leg-and-knee fitted him like a jigsaw-puzzle fragment inserted in the correct slot.
    Later, as he removed her bra and admired the magnificent body extended on the smooth white sheet, he said, "The damn fools shouldn't, Ruth. And please forgive me"
    She had been kissing his ear, on the inside, and she made a little gulp before she asked throatily, "Shouldn't what?"
    "Forget to look."
    She made a little snorting sound like a chuckle. "I forgive you." She ran the tip of her tongue up his jawline, around the top of his ear, tickled his cheek, and he felt the warm, moist, shivery probe again. He forgot all about Booty.
* * *
    When Nick stepped out of the elevator into the spacious lobby the next morning, Gus Boyd was waiting for him. The senior escort said, "Andy — good morning. Hold it a sec before we go in to breakfast. Five of the girls are in there already. Rugged darlings, aren't they? How do you feel after the