Page 36 of Shielding Instinct

Yeah, she was fine. Kids needed more stuff.

“Yes?” Lucky’s grin was bright and comfortable. He seemed like a young man who didn’t have a care in this world. “We go? Climb in, and Lucky will take you through the St. Croix jungles. You’ve been here before?” As she and Daddy Johnson shook their heads, Lucky said, “Then you are in for a treat!”

“Petra,” she said in case anybody cared.

“Herb.” Before she could ask his preference for where he sat, he stepped in front of Petra and climbed into the front.

Okay then.

They started off.

“Petra, are you here on the island for work or fun?” Herb asked.

It seemed from his tone that he wasn’t really interested in her but anxious to open the conversation so he could start telling her about himself.

“Work,” she said. Petra was loathe to tell strangers what she did for a living; it made for all kinds of complicated conversations, so she had a travel persona she’d worked on with her friend Avery, the romance editor. In this role, Petra was an author who traveled the world coming up with ideas for her novels. She wrote under a pseudonym that she didn’t tell because yes, she was quite famous. And what with this day and age, social media and all, she wanted to maintain her privacy.

“Yeah?” Herb said. “What business are you in?”

“Author.”

“You wrote a book? What’s your genre?”

“Books. Women’s adventure fiction.”

Okay, the look he sent her was uncalled for. What in the world?

“And what qualifies you to write about adventure?” he asked.

“Well, Herb, I’m here on a jungle safari, aren’t I? I can certainly use this experience for fodder in a future plot.”

“I wish to be in your book, Miss Armstrong,” Lucky said. “If you write about me, would you sign it and send me a copy?”

“I can do that.” Petra wished she were going to write a story so she could send it to Lucky. That would have been fun.

“While you write made-up stories,” Herb said. “I’ve lived through some harrowing experiences that are movie-worthy.”

Here we go.

Herb had turned almost all the way around in his seat and was playing with the pendant of his necklace. It was colorful enough that she had spotted the same necklace on each of the family members and wondered if they had had some kind of special event where they wore them to be unified, maybe an adoption or a renewal of vows that would include the kids.

But if they were sentimental, why wear them to the tidepool?

Herb lifted the pendant and rubbed it over his lip like a fidget toy.

Petra wished he’d let it hang so she could get a good look at it. There was something niggling in the back of her mind that really wanted to see the design. Something that made her think of that shiver through her system when Petra told Hawkeye she hoped the adventure part of this trip was over.

Put it down, Petra thought as hard as she could.Let me see it.

“One time, I was in Malai, and there was a coup attempt. A moped was winding through the crowd slow enough that I was able to grab the guy’s shoulder and jump on behind him. Scrawny man. No match for me if he wanted to fight. He was terrified.”

“Imagine that,” she said dryly. Malai, wasn’t that Hindi for clotted cream?

“I grabbed his shoulders and hung on tight so he knew he couldn’t throw me. He took off, weaving his way through the crowd, and didn’t stop until he ran out of gas. There I was on the side of a dirt road, unable to speak the language, with what money I had in my pocket and the city ablaze.”

“Wow. That does sound harrowing.”

“My wife, Jenny, too. She’s hadrealadventures she could write about. She’s an adventure racer. They go out and run a hundred miles over all terrains and in all climates all over the world. These are races that are by invitation only. She’s not fat. That’s all muscle on a short frame.”

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