To Taste The Wine by Fern Michaels

Author:Fern Michaels [Michaels, Fern]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-7582-6810-5
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2011-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The night crickets chirped their last song before dawn. Cockatoos and English sparrows received the melody and harmonized with the rainbow-colored parakeets who called to one another through the still morning air. Dawn, pink and mauve, spread over the low hills, painting the countryside from its artist’s palette.

Chelsea slept fitfully in her garden house sanctuary, dreaming of promises broken and vague betrayals. When she finally tore herself from sleep, forcing her eyes to open, she was breathing laboriously as though running from her night terrors. For a moment she lay perfectly still, aware of a presence in her room. Her eyes widened, fingers reaching to draw the light sheet up to her neck, inching as far back against the bedstead as she could. “What do you want? Who … who are you?” Chelsea demanded through her panic. How long had this … this person been watching her as she’d slept? She had to be the largest woman Chelsea had ever seen, bigger even than Harlow or Quaid, awesome and frightening with her chocolate-brown skin and piercing black eyes. Chelsea’s eyes dropped to the woman’s hands—long, graceful hands, large, with long, long fingers and short, tapered nails that were stark white against her skin. One of those hands could cover Chelsea’s face and wrap around her ears. The woman’s well-shaped head was close-cropped, tight curls of burnt sienna hair, with a long, lovely neck. Shoulders wide and powerful, body lean and athletic. Chelsea didn’t know whether she was more intrigued or frightened.

“I am Tingari.” Her voice was husky, melodious, and she smiled as she spoke, showing larger, strong teeth.

“What are you doing here? Why were you watching me?”

“Tingari sleep. Mitjitji sleep, Tingari sleep.”

Chelsea frowned; none of this was making sense. “Do you mean you often sleep here?”

The woman laughed, a deep, lusty sound. “Mitjitji needs a bed. I, Tingari, am woman of the desert, can sleep anywhere.”

A sigh of relief escaped Chelsea. At least this black Amazon understood adequate English, and she seemed to speak it fluently enough. “Where do you belong? Do you have a home? What do you do?”

Tingari lifted her arm, long as a tree branch, and extended it toward the door. “Everywhere is home to a woman of the desert, whatever pleases. I work when there is work, if it pleases me.”

“How do you live? How do you eat?” Chelsea’s fascination grew, and without being aware of it, she crept slowly out from under the covers.

“People of the desert forage and hunt. It is called yiwara. People of the earth live from the earth. Now it pleases to work.”

“You want to work for Mr. Kane, is that what you’re saying?”

“I hear there is new white lady here, Mitjitji, you. You sleep outside Boss Kane’s house.”

To Chelsea this last sounded like a judgment. “It’s a temporary state of affairs,” she explained defensively.

“And this means?” Tingari asked, her black, deep-set eyes fixed on Chelsea, waiting for an answer.

“It means I’m going to marry Mr. Kane, but until then I stay out here to protect my good name.

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