She had sat for well over two hours without moving, and the need to do so was an almost unbearable affliction. Every muscle in her body seemed to quiver with the craving for movement. Her buttocks were numb, and despite being advised to do so she had not emptied her bladder before they had gone into hiding, for she had been embarrassed by the masculine company and still too nervous in the African bush to go off alone to find a private place. She regretted her modesty and her timidity now.
She was staring out through the eye slit in the rude grass structure of the hide, down a narrow open tunnel the gun bearers had meticulously cleared through the thick bush, for even a tiny twig might deflect a bullet flying at 3,000 feet a second. The tunnel was sixty yards long, paced out so that the telescopic sight of the rifle could be zeroed on target precisely.
Without moving her head, Claudia swiveled her eyes toward where her father waited in the hide beside her. His rifle was propped in the "V" of a branch in front of him and his right hand rested lightly on the stock. He needed to lift it mere inches to his cheek to be aiming and ready to fire.
Even in her physical discomfort, the thought of her father firing that sinister glistening weapon made her angry. He had always filled her with violent and conflicting emotions; nothing he ever did or said seemed to leave her untouched. He dominated her life, and she hated him and loved him for it.
Always she was trying to break away, and always he drew her effortlessly back. She knew the main reason she was still unmarried at twenty-six years of age, despite the way she looked, despite her own singular achievements, despite having had countless proposals—at least two from men with whom she had believed herself in love at the time—the reason for all this was the man who sat beside her. She had never found another to compare with her papa.
Colonel Ricardo Monterro, soldier, engineer, scholar, gourmet, multimillionaire businessman, athlete, bon vivant, lady-killer, sportsman—how many descriptions fitted him perfectly and yet did not describe him as she knew him. They did not describe the kindness and strength that made her love him, nor the cruelty and ruthlessness that made her hate him. They did not describe what he had done to her mother that had turned her into a discarded alcoholic shell. Claudia knew he was just as capable of destroying her if she let herself be run down by him. He was the bull and she the matador. He was a dangerous man, and therein lay most of his appeal.
Someone had once told her, “Some women always fall for real bastards.” She had immediately scoffed at the idea, but then thought about it later and came partially to accept it. The Lord knew, Papa was one. A great rumbustious bastard, with all the charm and flashing golden-brown eyes and shining teeth of his Latin origins, he could sing like Caruso and eat all the pasta she could heap on his plate. But although he had been born in Milan, the greater part of him was American, for Claudia’s grandparents had emigrated to Seattle from Mussolini’s Italy when Ricardo was a child.