Proud Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Maybe because pre-lions I had been in-practice socially, interacting with people daily, most of whom had my same interests and goals.
    But I had been removed from those personal interactions for a few months now. Emails and texting and Facebook conversations didn’t really substitute for direct human contact. I was out-of-practice, insecure and making a bitch of myself because I was desperate to get approval and respect from these three of society’s beautiful people.
    The sad part was that I knew what I was doing and why, that I detested both my need for that approval and my behavior to get it—and yet I couldn’t stop myself from feeling or trying. It was like the real me on the inside was watching this fake me on the outside heading for a train wreck, and no matter how much I yelled, the train just kept coming.
    The cocky grin Chris flashed at me in the lamplight simultaneously made my skin crawl and sent an electric shiver through me. And when he winked at me right before stretching his arms wide, emphasizing the breadth of those shoulders and the perfect sculpting of that magnificent chest, I couldn’t decide which I wanted to do more: slap that arrogance right out of him or throw down with him and let him take me however he wanted me.
    Which action I would have followed through on was moot, though, when Reena emerged from her tent, camera in hand, filming eye candy for Chris Corsair fans, while Gary, once again, sat under the rolled-up flap of his tent, watching me watching Chris.
    It took an act of will to tear my attention from Chris’ beauty ritual, especially knowing some of the upcoming exercises, but this whole situation was unhealthy. Pouring a cup of the coffee I’d just brewed, I clipped my .38 to my belt and went for a walk, timing it so Chris would be done by the time I got back.
    He gave me a funny look when I returned. If he wasn’t a skilled actor, I would have said he looked hurt.

CHAPTER 8

Chris
    Damn it. Why was Dee ignoring me so infuriating? It couldn’t be as simple as wanting most what I couldn’t have. I wasn’t that simple. And if I was consciously debating whether it could be that or not, then it couldn’t be I was subconsciously harboring that behavior, could it? Of course not. There had to be something more there.
    I stared at her across breakfast trying to figure it out.
    I still didn’t have an answer when we packed into the Range Rover and struck off, the anticipation of a hunt infusing us with a building excitement we each tried to temper in our own way.
    We rolled slowly past where we’d turned off to park the SUV yesterday just as the sky began to brighten. Another mile further on and we broke out of the brush to an incredible sight. The peep of sun over the eastern hills highlighted an expansive vista—a large swale of wetlands, half-dry in this heat but with large pockets of standing water, teeming with herds of zebra and water buffalo and varieties of antelope I couldn’t name.
    “How close can we get?” Reena asked, her handheld already whirring away.
    “Close,” Dee assured her. “But the herds will be here every morning. The lions won’t.”
    “Where are they?” Dumb question. I didn’t need Dee’s eye roll to tell me that.
    Still, she humored me. “We were on that escarpment yesterday”—she pointed back the way we’d come, to the northwest—“so probably somewhere between here and there right now. If we spot them, we might not have time to focus up the tripods. Depends on how close they are and how much time they take getting here.”
    Reena nodded her understanding.
    Dee’s instincts were dead on. Within 15 minutes, she pointed a few dozen yards to our right. “Sheba.” Then, “Portia…and her cubs!” Something had amped up Dee’s excitement.
    “That’s good, right?” I asked as she and Gary set out the dual tripods while Reena kept track of the lionesses with her handheld.
    “It means Portia is teaching the cubs to hunt. They might