Free Noble Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 3) by Phoenix Sullivan Page B

crowding in. I held up the remaining two bottles for Mark to choose from. Unsurprisingly he chose the larger. It was clear he’d developed a special affinity for the little rhino.
    “I thought losing these babies to the wild was why you were raising them in the first place.”
    “That doesn’t make it easy. They’ll take a piece of my heart when they go. I do know some people don’t attach like I do. I can think about being like them, strive to be them, but in the end, I know I’ll never be them. I’m not wired that way.” I watched the way Mark settled beside the little rhino and tipped the bottle to her eager mouth—all ease and confidence and delight, chuckling at the way she squeezed her tiny eyes shut as soon as the milk began to flow.
    “It’s a compliment to you really,” I added as Nyota suckled at the bottle I held.
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. Me already knowing I’ll be sorry to see you go.”
    “I think,” he said, very distinctly, “I’ll be sorry to be going. I might even wish—” He shook his head, apparently realizing too late what he was saying out loud.
    “If wishes were zebras,” I finished for him.
    “I’m guessing that’s one of those traditional Dutch-African sayings?”
    On top of those admirable physical qualities, why did he have to be smart and funny too? I wondered how often Fate missed the mark—right person, wrong place, wrong time. Couldn’t she have tried a little harder?
    It could have been awkward between us after that, but it wasn’t. Not even for the 30 minutes after all our charges had finished their milk and treats and were napping and we had only each other to talk to.
    “Why did you do it?” he asked. “Take them in when you know it will break your heart to release them?”
    I shrugged. “How could I not? Isn’t a broken heart better than a dead heart?”
    What nerve I struck, I didn’t know, but he went very still at that. “Isn’t it better to not feel so deeply?”
    “Better? It would mean making different choices, interacting with people and animals—even the rainforest and the plantation—differently. But then that would make me a different person. I don’t know whether that different person would be better or not. Do you think she would be?”
    He thought about the answer, deeply and sincerely, as though it were a personal demon of his he struggled with. “No,” he said at last. “I think not feeling would give you a hard edge, and there are too many hard-edged people—male and female—already in the world.” He took a deep, confessional breath. “Like me.”
    “You?”
    My surprise caught him off guard. “I don’t connect with people—my patients—on the level I should.”
    “Are you saying you don’t care about them?”
    “Of course I care!” That sounded defensive. “I just force myself to care intellectually not emotionally.”
    “Don’t you need that separation as a doctor? I would think that’s what gives you the ability to help your patients make the hard choices.”
    “I think a good doctor needs a healthy marriage between the two—heart and intellect. I’m told I could do with a little more heart at the bedside.”
    “You seem to be connecting pretty well with Tamu. Lots of genuine smiles and laughter and patience there.”
    His mouth quirked, and I couldn’t stop the flash of memory of just how kissable those quirking lips could be. “It’s different out here. None of this is my job.”
    “My father once told me it takes three things to run a plantation: mind, heart and intuition. A mind to manage all the business of negotiations and logistics; intuition to time the seasons, plantings and harvesting and to ensure the balance of wild and tame on our mountain; and heart to deal with all the people we rely on to make our business a success.”
    “I’m sorry I never got to meet your father. He sounds like an amazing man.”
    “He was also a very warm and principled man. A man who was the same on the job as he was