“Oh,” I spit out intelligently. “What-what does Dingane mean?” I sputtered, still unable to remove my stare from his face.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, apparently no longer humoring me and bending to pick up the luggage I’d only just realized I’d dropped.

“I can get that,” I said stupidly, reaching toward the floor. What is wrong with me? I’m the one who strikes men dumb! Not the other way ’round!

“I already have them. Follow me,” he ordered, standing to his full height.

I swallowed the embarrassing five-minute loss of sanity and began to follow him like a meek mouse. I didn’t feel like myself, didn’t feel like Sophie Price. Wake up, Sophie. I picked up my head, remembered who the hell I was and met every stride he strode. We were neck and neck and I could tell this surprised him by the way he spied me from the corner of his eye. I kept my face neutral. Eat that, Dingane.

He lead us to a white beat-up jeep and I stopped just short of visibly balking. He threw my bags with little care into the exposed back and began to strap them down.

I watched him work. “Are you expecting me to open your door for you?” he asked, his thick accent shocking once more.

“Do I look like I expect you to open my door for me?” I bit back.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Then why stand there?”

“It would be presumptuous of me to just sit inside your jeep without you, don’t you think? Possibly rude?”

His calloused hands unexpectedly rested over the now tight straps and he looked at me for longer than I considered comfortable, studying me, but just as suddenly walked to the passenger side door as if just remembering himself and opened it for me without a word. I climbed into the jeep and watched him close the door behind me before walking the front of the vehicle and hopping in.

“How old are you?” I asked, turning toward him after buckling in.

“Twenty,” he said succinctly.

He was quiet as he started the jeep and sped through the almost impossible jumble of pushy taxis waiting for passengers. I admit I white knuckled it until we met open road.

“It’ll take an hour to get to the city capital,” he yelled over the rumbling engine and whipping wind. “Kampala is a busy city, Miss Price, and I’d rather not stop, but I suspect it will be our only opportunity to eat before the long journey back to Lake Nyaguo.”

“I ate just before we landed,” I lied.

If I was being honest, I was afraid to eat anything other than what was prepared at Masego. Damn that Dr. Ford.

“If you’re game to go straight through then so am I.”

And that was the last thing Dingane said to me almost the entire journey.

The silence afforded me astonishing views of an unbelievably attractive country. It also gave me time to come to terms with how much my life was going to change and just how dramatic that change would be.

Four hours is a very long time. Long enough to ponder my very physical reaction to my driver and what it was going to mean to live and work with him. I decided it was just a tenacious chemistry, that I was not without self-control. Oh yeah, you’re the queen of restraint. I turned toward him and drank in his lean, muscular figure.

Oh. My. Word.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“That’s Lake Nyaguo,” Dingane said, startling me. “Masego Orphanage is just north of this lake. Charles owns the land we drive through now.”

“How much does he own?”

“Approximately five thousand acres. He owns the land north of the lake as well as south and his property lines go east from there.”

“Why did he buy land in Uganda?” I asked, more to myself than to Dingane.

“Why not?”

“Fair enough,” I conceded.

Dingane sighed in exasperation. “This is his life’s work. He wanted the land to accomplish it. Surprisingly, land in this part of Uganda is inexpensive.” He smirked.

Half an hour later, we’d rounded the east side of the blue lake and were on a straight red dirt road. “Masego is just five minutes up this drive,” he stated.

My throat dropped to my stomach and I tried to swallow the sinking feeling away. “What’s it like?”

“It is beautiful. It is horrifying.”

The breath I’d been holding for his response rushed out all at once.

“I feel I must prepare you,” he continued.

I gulped. “Prepare me for what?”

“For the children here.” An unexpected gleam came to his eyes and I could see how much he loved them just by speaking of them. “Some will be deformed.”

“Deformed?”

“Maimed.”

“I know what you meant but why?”

“Do you know nothing of our facility?” he asked impatiently, briefly narrowing his eyes my direction.

“I know nothing. I know only that it is an orphanage.”

He breathed out slowly. “We are too close to begin explaining now. Charles or his wife, Karina, should explain it all to you when you arrive. I don’t have time. I’ve spent the entire day driving to fetch you and I need to catch up on a mended fence at the northeastern edge of the property line.”

“Thank you...for fetching me,” I oozed out.

He squirmed in his seat and I could tell I’d made him uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. He wanted as far away from me as he could possibly get and that confused the hell out of me. He didn’t know me at all.

In the distance I spied a long, tall fence surrounding what I assumed was Masego. As we approached a very sturdy, heavy-looking gate, I recognized the word Masego on a shabby, falling sign.

“What does Masego mean?” I asked.

“Blessings.”

I studied him. “You’re a man of few words, Dingane of South Africa.”

This surprisingly made him fight a smile and it shocked me. He quickly shook it and mumbled under his breath and out of the jeep to open the gate. His muscles flexed beneath his shirt as he dragged the heavy wooden barrier and I sat up a bit in my seat to watch him. Night was quickly coming and the jeep’s headlights magnified just how beautiful he was. He was surprisingly tall for an African. Six-foot one, maybe two. Then again, what the hell did I know of Africans?

He jumped back into the jeep and steered us through before getting out once more and closing the gate behind us. I cursed the setting of the sun, wishing I could stare at him unabashedly once more.

When we drove the small distance to what looked like a clustered village, droves of little children with dark faces and white teeth came bounding up before the jeep had come to a complete stop.

“Dingane! Dingane!” they all shouted as they raced around to his side of the jeep.

My door was clear of children and I could remove myself easily, but Dingane had a tougher time of it. He began laughing, further bewildering me. When he could free himself, he began shouting in a bizarre tongue. I studied his face and saw perfectly straight, perfectly beautiful teeth shining in the most perfect smile to the crowd of children around him.

That’s when I saw them, noticed what Dingane was trying to prepare me for. Children, all ages, missing arms, eyes, parts of their faces, even legs. I held back my gasp and met Dingane’s eyes. They were warm and full of understanding but for the children only. He looked at me sternly and his eyes conveyed what he wanted me to do.

I looked down on them, half-smiling, trying so very hard to look sincere when all I wanted to do was run and lock myself away from their terribly shocking faces. I had never in my life thought humans could endure such physical damage and survive.

Dingane held his hand out toward me and introduced me to them, finally using a word I recognized: my name.

“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie,” I kept hearing over and over as the children tested my name on their tongues.

“Hello,” I greeted them shyly.

I was overwhelmed and incredibly and most surprisingly sad for them but had no idea what to say or do. They stared at me, smiling, when finally a young boy approached me and touched my clothing. I stood still. This was an invitation to all of them to surround me like they had Dingane and they enveloped me. They pulled on my clothing speaking animatedly in a language I knew nothing about. They forced me to their height where I could fully take them in. One little girl’s right arm was missing below her elbow, another little boy was missing a leg below the knee, another girl had some sort of bandage wrapped around the left side of her face. The injuries went on and on, but they didn’t seem to care or remember they had no arms or legs or faces. They carried on, smoothing my clothing over with their tiny hands or running their fingers over my hair. One little girl told me in English that they all found it to be soft.

I fought tears and tried to keep in mind that if I started bawling in front of the small creatures before me that they would have no idea what it was for.

I was swallowed by children but could still hear a booming man’s voice come from the direction of the largest dwelling on the complex. I say dwelling, but it was far from that. It looked like a large open run-down building made from very old wood.

“Dingane, where is our prisoner?” the man’s voice cracked across the grounds making the children scurry from my side and glue themselves to his. “Yes, yes, you’re all very excited to see our newest member, but let’s all calm ourselves.” I stood. “Now, where is she?”

The man was tall but not as tall as Dingane and he was middle-aged. His salt-and-pepper hair laid flat against his head but was rather full for someone I pegged for being around sixty.

“Ah, our latest victim!” he jested, yet the words still made me more nervous than I already was.

He approached me and threw his arms around me, picking me up in one motion and swinging me playfully from side to side before setting me right again. “You must be the infamous Sophie Price! I’ve heard many things about you, child!” he said in an accent similar to Pemmy’s.

“All good I hope?”

“No, not all good,” he stated honestly, making me blush. I peered Dingane’s direction for his reaction, but his face was stoic. “But that is neither here nor there. It has brought you to us and that is all that matters. Second chances. I’m all about second chances.”

I could tell Charles was the type to find the good in everything. I wasn’t quite settled on whether or not I would like him. I was peculiarly leaning toward liking him and that amazed me. I looked to my left again and noticed Dingane had already started making his way toward whatever fence he claimed needed mending.

“Ah, she’s here!” a female’s soft voice exclaimed.

I looked to my right and noticed a woman with burgundy, shoulder-length hair. She was also in her sixties and she was beautiful. I could tell she was the type of woman who, in her prime, would have had all the boys running around like imbeciles. A kindred spirit.

“Hello!” she said, extending her hand.

I grabbed it and she tossed me into her arms for the kind of hug I’d never once gotten from a woman but was so desperately in need of. It was the kind of hug a mother gave her daughter. I know, I’d seen Sav’s mom give her them many a time.