Natalie closed her lips tightly at that, trying to forget her fears and her giant headache. He was pretty much as she had assessed him : cold, tough, competent. As far as she was concerned silence was golden. She would not be seeing him again after this flight. Obviously she was not his sort of person. Maybe she should have come in khaki shorts and knee-length socks, the old python dropped around her neck?
She looked at his hands, long and lean, brown, looking away quickly when he flashed a glance at her as if he could feel her appraisal. It made her heart leap but she wasn't about to scare herself with him. She was scared enough by this swiftly moving toy he called a plane. He had disliked her on sight, and the sooner she got out of his sight, the better.
It took all Natalie's courage to look down out of the window but she did it, fascinated in spite of her fears by the changing landscape of Kenya.
They were flying over a lake where flamingoes rose like a pink cloud only to sink again to their feeding, and she turned her head to watch as long as possible. She would have loved to ask where the where but of course she was not now on speaking terms with her pilot, a state of affairs that seemed to suit him very well. Kip Forsythe looked vaguely thunderous when she stole a glance at him and she dared look again. The road ran like a red ribbon below them and she peered down, watching the grassland, the billowing tree tops and the strange red road.
'It's treacherous in the wet season, sticky mud that makes driving well nigh impossible. In the dry season, it produces cloud of dust like a red fog,' he said tersely. 'The red earth,' he translated when she looked at him in surprise. 'It's not only drunk who see pink elephant¡ they're down there right now if they cared to step forth and be recognised.'
'Pink?' she looked at him with surprised interest, quite sure he wasn't joking. His tanned face was too severe at the moment to make her imagine that. He was still annoyed with her.
'The watering holes,' he explained briefly. The go into a muddy, wet hole and come out pink.'
'Are the elephants in madembi?' As he had decided to talk to, she thought it very politic to assist a little.
'A few. They don't like change, however, and the eat too much to hang around when buildings are going up almost daily.'
'The result of the prosperity brought by the Kabala Dam,' Natalie mused.
'Partly, and I expected it will get worse. Plenty of animals have suffered.'
'How awful!' She merely voiced a thought but apparently he took it to be some sort of personal insult.
'People live here too, Miss West,' he informed her coldly. 'Have you ever seen a hungry child?'
'Plenty, Mr Forsythe,' she snapped. 'I don't go around with my eyes permanently closed. We can't alter the things we get on film. We just show it as it is. Once in a while we manage to show up a few injustice too. That makes people jump!'
'Oh, Gabriel Basoni is just going to love you, Miss West,' he murmured drily. 'Any skeletons in his cupboard and you're just the lady to find them.'
'I'm here to do a job, at the request of the Madembi government. This is not a prying mission.'
'But anything your flashing green eyes see, the camera will follow,' he assessed astutely. 'Remind me to duck.'
'You're fairly safe,' she pointed out tartly, amazed that she had flashing green eyes. I'll never see you again. I work hard all the time.'
He gave her a wry look
'Yes, ma'am! Time will tell.
Natalie looked away, back out of the window. He infuriated her with his air of supreme self possession, his aura of power. She felt just as ill as ever but there was one thing at least----she wasn't really scared now; well, not too much. Temper was useful at times and he could certainly make her temper rise.
'How's your nerve?' he asked after a minute, his voice back to quite darkness.
'I'm perfectly alright!' she bit out the answer expecting another taunting interlude.
'Then I'll give you a treat. It may restore your cool composure.'
He put the plane into a dive, not a steep dive but a long shallow one that seemed to be bringing them dangerously close to the ground very quickly. Natalie's hands clenched together tightly, her teeth biting painfully into her lip, a wave of thankfulness flooding over her when he levelled off at tree top height.
'Good girl,' he said softly. 'No screams, no attempt to wrest the controls from me. For that you get your treat. Look straight ahead.'