A Wedding in Africa (The Africa Series) Read online

  A WEDDING IN AFRICA

  Shirley Carnegie was born in the West Midlands but lived most of her life in London. Her passion Africa was inspired by her husband’s experiences of a childhood spent in colonial Africa and war torn Rhodesia, and their travels across the country she grew to love as her own.

  The Africa Series demonstrates Shirley’s unique ability to transcend the limits of an individual literary genre and explore the world of storytelling in the widest possible sense.

  A ShadowPassingis an historical novel. It chronicles the war of independence that led to the formation of Zimbabwe. SonsofAfricais a high action thriller set against the backdrop of the Zimbabwean Government’s genocide of the 1980s. AWeddinginAfricawill satisfy those readers who enjoy the twists and turns of a typical romantic novel.

  Shirley and her husband, Andrew, now live in rural Shropshire with their two dogs and two cats.

  A WEDDING IN AFRICA

  Shirley Carnegie

  © 2011 by Shirley Carnegie All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recoding or by any information storage or

  retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of quotations in a review.

  ISBN 978-1-4466-0485-4

  For my mother Jean

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lacey Van der Zyl took a deep breath as she entered her father’s Cape Town office. She felt like a schoolgirl who’d been summoned to the Headmaster’s study after some minor misdemeanour. She was twenty seven years old, yet she still felt like a naughty child when she was with him.

  Her father, Jasper, was sitting behind a large leather-bound desk, shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow, silk tie slightly askew and a big, fat Cuban cigar clenched between two fingers. He glanced up at her and nodded, gesturing to the seat in front of the desk with his cigar. He then carried on reading his papers.

  Lacey sat and waited with her notebook open in her lap. Privately, she wanted to drag those stupid documents away from him, so that he might actually notice her sitting there like an idiot. But she didn’t. She was already a huge disappointment to her father. She didn’t want to keep reminding him of that fact.

  ‘Got a nice little job for you,’ Jasper declared eventually, rearranging his huge bulk in his chair. ‘I’m sending you to Mpumalanga Province up by the Kruger National Park.’

  Lacey jotted down the name. ‘Great! What’s the job?’ she asked, excited at the prospect of travelling to one of South Africa’s most beautiful regions.

  ‘I want you to interview a guy called Tate Maddox. He owns tens of thousands of acres of prime land up there. He’s got one of the most lucrative tropical fruit plantations in the country, as well as vast stretches of pine and eucalyptus forests. And that’s before you count the income he gets from his global investments. This guy is rich,’ Jasper tapped the tip of his cigar into an onyx ashtray and leaned across the desk. ‘I mean seriously rich – exactly the sort of person our readers want to know about.’

  ‘What do we know about him? I mean, what sort of person is he?’ Lacey scribbled her notes in shorthand, studiously avoiding the cloud of cigar smoke that wafted into her face.

  ‘What sort of person?’ Jasper snorted. ‘A seriously rich person, that’s what sort of person he is. A serious money-making machine. But a bit of a loner by all accounts. There was talk a few years ago of a major bust-up between him and his older brother, but no-one knows what it was about. Seems they haven’t spoken since.’

  ‘It must have been pretty serious if it caused a major rift between two brothers. Do we know what happened?’ ‘No-one knows for sure. Rumour has it there some kind of problem with one of the maids, but that’s just gossip as far as I know. Main thing is that Maddox doesn’t usually do press interviews, so it’s a major coup for our magazine. And we’ve got young Mortimer here to thank for that.’ Lacey turned as the door opened and her fiancé sauntered in. ‘I was just telling Lacey how you managed to get us an interview with the elusive Mr Maddox.’

  Mortimer Schutte smiled smugly and took a seat next to Lacey. ‘It was no mean feat, I can tell you. Maddox isn’t the easiest of guys to do business with. He guards his privacy like a lion.’

  ‘So why did he agree to this interview?’ Lacey asked. ‘Surely he’s not going to want some magazine journalist poking around his home if he likes privacy.’

  Mortimer glanced at his fiancée and, as always, was struck by her beauty. Emerald eyes looked back at him from a heavy curtain of dark lashes as she fiddled with the top of her pen in that cute, girlish way she had. The African sun filtered in through the window blinds and lit her shoulder-length, copper-coloured hair with flecks of fire. Yes indeed. She certainly was a stunner. Exactly the kind of woman he’d always wanted.

  Mortimer stretched his legs out in front of him and smiled in a slightly self-satisfied kind of way. He was chuffed that he’d managed to pull off such a good scoop for the magazine. It helped cement his reputation as a big player in the company.

  ‘Maddox has just finished building some up-market safari lodges on his estate and he wants to advertise them to tourists. This article will give him a chance to show them off. I reckon they’re going to make him a fortune.’

  ‘It sounds like he’s already got a fortune,’ said Lacey, irritated by the way that Mortimer aped her father’s mannerisms, right down to the way he lolled in his chair. ‘I can’t see why he needs to bother making even more money.’

  Her father and fiancé exchanged quizzical looks and Lacey felt her spirits tumble. ‘You can never have too much money, my girl.’ Jasper practically growled at her. ‘Haven’t I managed to drum that into you by now? Besides, it’ll be a great feature for the magazine. All you need to do is get yourself up there and find out what he’s doing. With a guy like Maddox, you can bet your life it’s going to be pretty damn impressive. Mortimer – get someone to arrange her trip. Piet and his crew can fly the plane.’

  ‘Will do, sir.’ Mortimer leapt to his feet, eager as ever to please his boss and mentor

  – his future father-in-law. He knew a lot of people saw him as Jasper’s son and heir in all but name, and he’d been determined to prove himself worthy of that title since he joined the Van der Zyl publishing house. Now, just three short years later, not only had he managed to rise to number two in the organisation, he’d also secured the hand of the boss’s daughter in the process. Not bad, all things considered.

  Mortimer was also planning to be the perfect son-in-law when he and Lacey were married. He’d expect her to drop all this nonsense about wanting to be a writer, of course, which would probably cause a bit of a rumpus at first. But there was no way that he was going to work alongside his own wife. Luckily, Jasper agreed with Mortimer’s ideas on the role of women in the Van der Zyl family. They’d both decided that Lacey was going to have her hands full looking after the house, raising the next generation of Van der Zyls and doing all the other things that normal wives did. She’d have no time for girlish dreams about writing novels and all that sort of thing.

  All Mortimer had to do now was convince his fiancée he was right! Lacey breathed a long, deep sigh of relief as she cruised along the Mpumalanga Road in her BMW 4x4. She was free at last. Free from her life in Cape Town. Free from the endless rounds of dinner parties, society luncheons and celebrity events that filled her every waking moment. And free, although she could hardly bear to admit such thoughts, from Mortimer and her father. Now, for a short time at least, she could just relax and enjoy her homeland.

  The escarpment she was driving on followed the lin
e of a deep valley. Below her, the Sabie River cut through the trees and meandered along rolling savannahs, thick with golden grasses. In the distance the Drakensberg Mountains provided a spectacular backdrop to the African plains.

  Lacey tucked a stray hair into her ponytail and pushed her sunglasses further up her nose. It was so unbelievably beautiful here - hard to believe that all this belonged to just one man. Tate Maddox. The man she’d come to meet.

  Even though she knew she’d have to write the same old stuff about this guy that she always wrote for her father’s celebrity lifestyle magazine, at least this time she’d be out in the African bush, not in someone’s fancy penthouse apartment in Johannesburg or imposing mansion in Pretoria. And this time, rather than just finding out about the pampered lives of the rich and famous, she might be able to learn more about the real Africa and its people.

  She’d also get to spend a bit of time on her book. It was a romance novel set in eighteenth century Africa and it was her lifelong dream. Her great passion. There was one point when she’d almost abandoned the dream - it was hard to keep going in the face of Mortimer’s teasing and Jasper’s complete indifference - but she’d kept on with it. She never bothered to talk about it anymore. What was the point? No-one really understood how much it meant to her. And everyone said that she’d easily get it published, even if it was complete rubbish, simply because her father was a major player in the industry.

  But Lacey wasn’t going to go down that route. No way. She was going to find a publisher of her own, perhaps in London or New York. Someone who wasn’t influenced by the Van der Zyl name. That way, her novel would stand – or fall – on its own merits.

  But first she was going to have to concentrate all her creative energies on the guy she was here to interview; find out as much as she could about Tate Maddox and his wealth and status. That was her job. It was what she was paid to do. And she did it well.

  She knew she was a huge disappointment to her father in every other respect - more so since Michael - but at least this was one way she could make him proud.

  Her father hated having her working on the magazine, but even he had to admit she was a good journalist whose features were popular with the readers. Eventually, grudgingly, he’d let her keep the job – on a strictly part-time basis of course. And both he and Mortimer had stressed that it was going to be a temporary job. Nothing more. It would end on the day she got married - because no-one wanted to see the daughter of Jasper Van der Zyl actually earning her keep!

  Lacey glanced at the clock on the dashboard and grimaced. She was three hours early thanks to the speed and efficiency of travelling by private plane and finding a BMW waiting for her on the runway when she landed. She’d toyed with the idea of stopping off for coffee, but decided against it as she didn’t want the bulk of her journey to be at the hottest time of the day. And so she’d pressed on, hoping her unexpected arrival wouldn’t inconvenience her host too much.

  Just up ahead, Lacey spotted the turning that led into Tate Maddox’s estate. She pulled into it and followed a track flanked on both sides by purple jacaranda trees. Down below, the Sabie River sparkled like a string of diamonds in the sun. It was truly magical and Lacey’s excitement grew when a fabulous house came into view.

  So this was it. Matshana. Tate Maddox’s home. She’d read about it and seen pictures of it while she was doing her research, but she could never have imagined how incredible the house was in real life. It was a vast, single-storey building crafted in rainbow sandstone that had been polished until it gleamed like marble. The roof was traditional African thatch sculpted into conical spires and resting on wooden poles cut from Matshana’s own forests.

  A little overawed, Lacey pulled up at the front of the house and switched off the engine. As she climbed out of the car she could smell the heady perfume of the bougainvillea on either side of the steps leading up to the porch. She was also aware of the fact that there was no-one here to meet her, and she cursed herself for not calling in advance to tell them she was going to be early.

  ‘Hello! Anyone there?’ No reply.

  She climbed the steps to the front door.

  ‘Hello?’ Total silence.

  The front doors were flung open to make the most of the occasional breeze. Lacey called again before stepping over the threshold into a magnificent safari-style reception area cooled by overhead fans. On the other side of the room, an archway opened out into the garden. Embarrassed to find herself creeping around in someone else’s house, Lacey made her way across the room and out into the sunshine.

  A wide veranda spanned the rear of the property. Resting both hands on the teak railings, Lacey paused to marvel at what must surely be the most beautiful gardens she’d ever seen. Pretty palm-fringed paths meandered through the flowerbeds. To her left, a wooden walkway followed the curve of lawn to a swimming pool that had been sculpted out of natural granite – complete with its own waterfall.

  And the view! From its high vantage point the house looked out across the wide open plains of lowveld Africa. Suddenly, Lacey understood why her father, who was himself a wealthy man, had been so impressed by the kind of money that could buy something like this.

  Matshana was more than just rich man’s private estate. It was paradise. Lacey couldn’t imagine why Tate Maddox would want to turn such a perfect home into a tourist attraction. It was obvious he didn’t need the money. It was just pure greed in her opinion. If she had a place like Matshana she’d love and cherish it, not go building on it to rake in yet more cash. But that’s what seemed to motivate rich men – at least the men she knew! And she simply couldn’t understand that kind of mentality. She never could and she never would – no matter how much her father tried to drum it into her.

  She sat down in one of the big, squashy chairs and pulled off her hat. A few damp tendrils of hair clung to her forehead, which she wiped away with the back of her hand. It was hot, and she was tired and dusty from her long journey. Now all she wanted was to meet her host, get the formalities over with, and then hopefully grab a cool shower.

  But where was everyone? Surely the place couldn’t be totally deserted? Suddenly, as if to answer her thoughts, she heard the sound of a man’s voice and the tinkle of a woman’s laugh. It came from the far side of the house. Nervously, Lacey stood up and tugged her wide-brimmed sunhat back on to her head. She then took a deep breath and went to meet the man who, hopefully, was going to tell her and her readers exactly what it felt like to own a place like this.

  ‘Tate Maddox – you are impossible!’ Tilly Du Preez squealed in frustration and stamped an elegant, kitten-heeled designer shoe on the ground. ‘Why can’t you just agree to come to my party? It’s going to be amazing! Daddy’s invited everyone who’s anyone.’

  Tate stood under the outside shower and let the cool water rinse the soap from his body. ‘Come on Tilly. You know full well I’m busy. I don’t get a lot of time for parties.’

  Tilly made a little moue with her mouth and cast a sulky glance at Tate. ‘That’s what you always say, but this is a special party. It’s my birthday party. Not just any old party!’

  Tate smiled. ‘You’ll have plenty of friends and admirers there. You don’t need me there as well. Now be a good girl and pass me that towel.’ Tilly picked up the towel and handed it to Tate. She pointedly avoided peeking over the sandstone wall that obscured his body from the waist down, but it wasn’t easy. It was bad enough that he wouldn’t agree to come to her party, but standing there naked while he took a shower, with only a little wall between them, was enough to drive a girl crazy.

  And Tate Maddox certainly knew how to drive a girl crazy! Tate stepped out of the shower with the towel wrapped around his waist. He rubbed his hair dry with another towel, which he then tossed on to the garden chair next to Tilly.

  ‘It’s not easy trying to talk to you when you’re having a shower,’ Tilly moaned. ‘How am I supposed to persuade you to come to my party when you’re scrubbing mud out of your hair
?’

  Tate laughed. ‘Sorry about that, Tilly. I was pretty mucky. I’ve been planting saplings all day and I’ve now gone and left myself short of time.’ ‘Short of time for what?’ ‘I’ve got some journalist coming to stay. She’s going to do a feature on the lodges for some swanky city magazine. I thought I’d better spruce myself up a bit. You know – show willing and all that.’

  ‘That’s more than you’d do for me,’ Tilly grumbled. ‘And I’m amazed you’re going to let someone come and stay with you on your precious Matshana. And a journalist at that! She’s obviously got something I haven’t got …’

  Tate laughed again. He pulled Tilly to her feet, wrapped his arm around her shoulder and planted an affectionate kiss on top of her head. Tilly giggled, delighted by this small gesture of affection from the man she adored.

  They were walking back to the house when Tate stopped abruptly and snapped his brows together in a disapproving frown.

  ‘Miss Van der Zyl, I presume,’ he said, fixing Lacey with dark, questioning eyes. ‘You’re three hours early!’ It took Lacey several seconds to fully appreciate the handsome man standing in front of her. Actually, he wasn’t just handsome – she’d met plenty of handsome men before. Mortimer was handsome, for example. No. This man was … utterly, undeniably gorgeous! A sort of unreal, movie-star gorgeous.

  Lacey’s gaze took in his dark hair, all wet and spiky, and the tantalising sheen across his tanned torso. Even the fine sprinkling of hair on his chest and forearms was still damp, which Lacey found irresistibly attractive. And those eyes. Steel grey with flashes of flint. Surely this man wasn’t for real? Surely this wasn’t the Tate Maddox she’d come to interview?

  She gulped, conscious of the rapid beating of her heart and the guilty flush that stained her cheeks. And the man wasn’t alone. His hard, muscular arm was draped over a glamorous blonde who was clinging on to him as though her life depended on it. Even worse - the man was naked, apart from a towel! Naked and with a beautiful woman under his arm.