CHAPTER 6

After settling theaccounts with the innkeeper and going to the train station to purchase the tickets for tomorrow, he had no more business to attend to. Still, Dariux planned to walk all afternoon. He didn’t want to return to the room. If he was going to maintain his sanity, he had better keep his distance from Kalli for the remainder of the mission.

Fortunately, tomorrow they were going to London. They would be staying in a big hotel, with a multitude of rooms. No chance of them having to share a room. He would make sure of that.

For a few moments, he let himself fantasize about how it would be like to bed his colleague. Was it really so bad to satisfy each other’s needs? It would be like eating a meal or scratching an itch. Just a physiological need that was being neglected during the length of this mission.

But just as he thought it, he knew it wouldn’t be that simple. Already, Kalli was talking about emotions. Love. He had no interest in love. Having never experienced it, nor been the object of it, he found it an alien and dangerous concept. From all he had read, it was a volatile force. Uncontrollable, unreliable, and most of the time detrimental to the person who suffered it. Almost like a disease. Why on earth were people trying to rekindle that emotion in humanity?

That brought a stab of guilt. Another unwelcome emotion. He might not have outright lied, but he had misled Kalli about his beliefs regarding this study. The fact was, he was in the anti-love camp. If anything, he wanted to find proof that love wasn’t necessary for the survival of humankind. Or at the very least, that there were better alternatives. That Kalli seemed to have found a link between sexual relations between humans and the generation of the ‘love hormone’ was another reason to stay away from her.

He had meticulously cultivated his mind and crafted his life to be free of sentimentalism and all other base emotions. He believed in logic, reason, and order. Giving in to desire now might be tempting, but it would bring a plethora of complications he just wasn’t willing to take on.

In a few short weeks, he would be back in his home environment with Elena. She was good at satisfying his needs and making him comfortable. All of this would be left behind. In the past. In more than one way.

He just had to keep his penis in his pants.

He had wandered away from the town’s high street and was currently on a track that ran alongside a river. There weren’t that many houses around here, and everything was quiet and peaceful. Maybe he would spend the rest of the afternoon here, away from people and their dramas.

Taking refuge under a big tree that had grown next to the water, he lay on the grass and closed his eyes. The dappled sunlight and the breeze soothed his overactive mind, and soon he was dozing off.

The high-pitch scream of a child splintered the quiet peace of his retreat. Jumping to alertness, he appraised his surroundings. A small girl a little upriver was pointing to the water and screaming. What had happened? Had another child fallen into the tumultuous river? He turned his attention to the water and saw a little yellow head barely sticking out. Not a child, but a dog. A young one. He couldn’t determine the breed of the puppy, but it was small.

The little head bobbed in and out of the water, the puppy’s frantic pawing barely able to keep him afloat. The girl continued screaming and running along the bank after her puppy.

“My puppy! Help!”

He looked from the girl to the unfortunate dog again. His logical brain quickly calculated the distance and the speed of the river’s current. The puppy was being dragged farther and farther, and its ability to stay afloat was decreasing. Grimly, he concluded that his chances of saving the animal were less than nothing. If he jumped into the water, he would risk his life and the dog would most likely still drown.

He opened his mouth to inform the child it was a lost cause when the little girl darted past him and ran into the water. Her frantic mother was running down the road but was much too far to reach her in time. No time to think, he plunged into the water after her and grabbed her by the waist before the current could drag her down. Her sodden dress made her heavy, and she would have sunk to the bottom in another second.

She twisted and screamed in his arms, unappreciative of his efforts to protect her. “No! My puppy!”

Her eyes were two big pools of despair from which fat tears were dropping. Grief contorted her pretty face. With a muffled curse, he set the girl on the bank and launched himself into the turbulent water after the accursed puppy.

The icy embrace of the water was enough to rob him of breath. He could not believe he was risking his life to attempt to save a dog that could probably not be saved. But the girl’s agony had compelled him to do something.

Slicing through the water with powerful strokes, he chased after the dog, which was barely visible a few yards away from him. He was close, but the current kept dragging it out of his reach. Swimming with the current, he let himself drift farther down than the dog, and then cut across to intercept him.

The little furry body slammed into his neck and the desperate puppy clawed at his face, trying to hold on to him as the only solid thing in a liquid world. Cursing again as he swallowed the muddy water, he pushed the dog higher on his shoulders. As if understanding what was required of it, the puppy draped itself on the back of his neck and curled its tail around him, scarf-like.

With the puppy finally settled, he swam back to the shore. The mother had finally reached the girl and was hugging her and screaming at the same time. The girl barely listened to her mother’s scolding, all her attention on the puppy. He finally reached the bank and walked out of the water, removing the dog from its perch on his neck and lowering it to the girl’s outstretched arms.

“Thank you, sir! If it weren’t for you, Blossom would have drowned.”

“You are welcome. But in the future, you must not wade into a river to save an animal,” he said to the child.

“That’s exactly what I told her, sir,” the distressed mother said.

“But I had to do something! I couldn’t just let Blossom drown.”

“You would have drowned too and still not been able to help your dog.”

“But I had to try! You were able to save her.”

“But I am stronger and not wearing as many layers of heavy cloth. You would have sunk to the bottom like a rock.”

The mother visibly shuddered and then, as if snapping out of a nightmare, addressed him again in a more normal voice.

“I have no words to thank you, sir, for saving my daughter and her dog. Our house is just around the corner. If you come with us, I will find you some dry clothes to wear before you catch your death by a chill.”

Dry clothes and warmth were urgent. He was shivering. The river water was freezing, and the colder temperatures of the approaching evening seeped through his wet clothes to chill his bones. But he just wanted to go back to his own room.

“No, thank you, madam. I appreciate the offer, but I will go on my way. Keep that dog on a leash. Next time he decides to jump in the river, there might not be someone around to fish him out.”

With that, he nodded to the woman and child and turned to go. The girl’s indignant words “Blossom did not jump! She fell while chasing a duck,” followed him as he turned to make his way to the inn.

His only desire at that moment was to get out of his wet, cold suit and into a steaming hot bath. At the very least, the cold water had dampened his ardor, he thought with wry amusement. With luck, by the time he got back, Kalli would have already bathed and then they could have the evening meal after his own bath and retire for the night. They had an early start tomorrow, so it would behoove them to go to sleep early.

One thing nagged at his conscience while he shivered all the way to the inn, though. He had acted irrationally. He had risked his life and well-being for the unlikely chance he could save a dog and avoid a little girl’s grief. That was most out-of-character for him, who was always logical, dispassionate, and analytical.

Not that he wouldn’t bother to save a dog’s life. He liked dogs. But it was stupid sentimentality that had made him risk his life in the face of such poor odds.

But when he had seen the misery on the girl’s face, and the terror in the unfortunate puppy’s eyes, he could no more ignore them than he could have willfully made his heart stop beating. It worried him, this sentimentalism. He didn’t know what was happening to him. This place was changing him, and he didn’t like it. The faster he could complete this mission and get back to his life, the better.

Entering the inn, he met the curious gaze of the innkeeper, who took in his sodden garments and immediately informed him a hot bath would be forthcoming. Thanking him, Dariux took the staircase to their room, his only goal to get out of his wet clothes and get warm again. His whole body was shaking with cold by the time he reached the room, but he still had the presence of mind to knock and announce himself.

Kalli bid him entry from inside, so he inserted the key in the lock, turned it, and stepped inside. Then stopped dead in his tracks.