Tempestuous Eden (26 page)

Craig had to catch himself, catch himself hard.

He heard someone laughing, distant, outside himself. But it was he himself. He was sure Blair must think he was cracking up. Was he hysterical? About to laugh until he cried? That was how he was feeling. It was so ironic. So pathetically, damned ironic.

He squelched the laughter that was bubbling up inside of him. He might as well agree; he was definitely going to see Huntington. And maybe, just maybe, in the few days remaining them, he might store up more sweet memories to take with him and cherish.

“All right, Blair,” he said gravely. “I’ll turn myself in to your father.”

Blair stared into his eyes, fascinated by the brown stars that streaked against the lime, creating the illusions of yellow and gold. She was astounded that he had capitulated so easily. It couldn’t be real.

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes, of course,” he said impatiently. “I don’t think you can accuse me of being a liar.”

No, strangely, she couldn’t accuse him of being a liar. When he made a promise, he stuck to it.

“I have a question for you.” He interrupted her thoughts quietly.

“Yes?” She felt a little numb, as if a trophy had just been thrown onto her lap and she wasn’t quite sure what she had won.

“What happens then?” Craig knew he shouldn’t be pushing the charade. He was twisting a knife wound deeper and deeper before his victim was even aware of the first plunge. But as soon as this ordeal was over she was probably going to hang him anyway. Throwing all caution to the wind, he decided to take it all the way, and the hell with eventual consequences.

“You and I. Us. What happens then?” He was looking at her blandly, demanding an answer.

“W-well,” Blair stuttered. “I—I don’t know exactly. It’s going to depend. I don’t know what you’ve done, who you’ve been involved with. There is a good possibility that you will have to serve some time in prison.”

“Are you going to wait for me?”

There was no hedging around with Craig Taylor; he asked his questions bluntly, questions that left her fumbling for answers, frightened, unsure, praying she had the strength she now tried to convey to him.

“Yes.” She didn’t really need to fumble for an answer. She loved him, and she had borne hard times before for love. Yet even the sweet love of the past was nothing compared to this all-consuming emotion. She could stand up to anything, she believed. He was putting himself in her hands, trusting her, promising her. The least she could do was promise in return to be there, through whatever, when the chips were down and he needed her. “Yes,” she repeated, believing firmly in his love considering the enormous step he was willing to take for her. “Yes, I will wait.”

“What if your father disapproves? He isn’t going to be happy about his daughter and a criminal.” Lord, Craig wondered, what was the matter with him? But he wanted the answers now, and it really didn’t matter if he allowed the devil to niggle him on to have the next few days with Blair. He had, as the saying went, already cooked his goose. Charbroiled, as a matter of fact.

“Andrew Huntington doesn’t control me,” she answered serenely.

Now, that one was really worth a good laugh, Craig thought dryly, but he contained himself. His devil was in complete control. “Think about it, Blair,” he warned, stalking toward her with his cat’s tread. “Think about where you’ve come from, where you’ve been. Your family, your circle of friends. I’ll be an ex-con. Will you be able to handle that?”

“Craig,” she said firmly, and the woman who had broken with the thought of spilling his blood was gone, replaced by the fighter, the assured, cultured Blair who knew her own mind, who had won beyond doubt what he had thought to be a nonexistent heart. “I have never worried about what was. The important thing is that you’re willing to start over. My father is my family; he loves me, he will accept you. He is also a man to judge a person for what he is, not what he was. And my true friends will be your friends. Yes, if you mean what you say, I can handle anything.”

In a way Craig felt like kicking himself; he was humbled by her steady declaration, humbled by the beauty of the inner woman. But then again, he knew he would have changed nothing to hear her words.

He reached for her, large hands, powerful hands, hands that could break wood and brick, trembling. His fingers touched her hair, followed the delicate contours of her face. “Blair …” he whispered.

Then she caught his hand and stopped him.

“No, Craig, please …” she beseeched him, and there was once more a hint of tears in her eyes.

“I thought you loved me.”

“I do love you.” She held the hand that had touched her with such reverence with both her own. “But I’m still afraid of what’s going on. We need to get to a large city fast; I’ll put through a call to Washington.”

Craig pulled his hand away impatiently. “I said I’d turn myself in to your father when I returned you. That’s still a few days away, two and a half to be precise.”

At first Blair was merely puzzled, then she felt the dark cloud of doubt and dread spreading through her. Was this just another clever ploy? A ruse for Craig to entertain himself while time inexorably passed?

“What difference does it make?” she demanded sharply. “If you’ve made the decision to turn yourself in, why not do it now?”

Craig didn’t answer right away. He moved into the galley and dumped the pot of cold coffee down the drain and set about making another. Once it was set upon the flame, he turned back to her, a man with a decision made. Smiling slightly, he traced a calloused finger delicately down her cheek, making no effort to come nearer. “Blair,” he said with a deathly quiet that both pricked her skin and convinced her immediately of his sincerity, “it’s imperative to your safety and perhaps that of others that we not move toward inhabited land until we reach Belize. I swear to you that when we get there I will go to your father with you. You have to accept that for now. There’s nothing else I can tell you, nothing else that I can do.”

Blair stared at him for several seconds, but she knew that was all she was going to get. She knew the closed and determined set of his hard features. Her eyes fell first. “I guess there’s not much I can do myself then, is there?” she asked softly.

“No, not too much,” Craig replied. “But you can keep on trusting me.”

Blair shook her head slightly, as if still considering the notion of trusting at all as sheer lunacy. “I guess I am trusting you.”

“You can do one more thing,” Craig suggested.

“What’s that?”

“Tell me that you love me again.”

“I love you, Craig,” she whispered, then admitted, “but I’m not happy about this, not at all. We should be hurrying in.”

“We can’t.” He reached out to take her into his arms but she went rigid against him. “Craig, please.”

He released her immediately, but not with anger. His eyes held a deep and strange regret. “I think I understand,” he murmured. She trusted him, but she couldn’t control the doubt planted in her mind by the fact that she had been kidnapped by him. She wanted to see him turn himself in, which would be the end. Charade—which hadn’t been his fault at the beginning—all over. But he couldn’t be sorry. He had come to find out what love was, what it entailed, the joy, the pain. He would never regret that the intensity of his emotion had been returned, even if only for a brief, shining moment between them.

“Why don’t you make breakfast, or is it lunch, now,” he suggested, that deep sadness and resignation in his voice coming through despite his smile.

Blair nodded; Craig disappeared up the ladder.

It was a remarkably undramatic end to the very special time when two people had just declared their love.

But it was the way it had to be.

Blair turned her attention to the task of feeding them both. Would everything really turn out all right? she wondered. She wanted so desperately for it to be so. So desperately that she didn’t dare allow her mind to whirl away and question all that happened, all that had been said.

She would stand by him, she would be there, she would wait forever and a day.

But there was something else wrong; she could sense it. At times there had been an almost satanic twinkle to Craig’s eyes, but then, at other times, they had been hard, self-mocking, haunted ….

She bit into her lip as she worked, worried, but feeling a strange jubilation. She was in love, and the man she loved had said that he loved her in return. And she believed him. She didn’t question his sincerity.

T
OPSIDE CRAIG LIT A
cigarette moodily and stared out at the perfect, clean calm of the sea.

She was definitely going to be ready to kill him when she knew the truth.

But he did love her; God, did he love her, and in loving he was discovering all sorts of new facets to his own personality. But had it been so terribly wrong to need to hear things in return. To grab whatever chance he had?

Somewhere along the line he had to convince her that the loving was true. It wouldn’t be easy, but she did love him. And wasn’t forgiving a part of loving?

She was going to be mad.
Understated, Taylor,
he told himself with a wince. She was going to be more than mad. Furious. Sizzling.

The question was, would she ever simmer down enough to care whether she loved him or not?

Today and tomorrow—that was all that he had left. By midmorning of the third day hence he would be meeting Huntington at the dock in Belize … unless something went wrong, which it wouldn’t.

He glanced around the peaceful cove where they had found refuge. They could stay here today, he thought. Despite the storm and the morning he had run aground, he was ahead of schedule. The wind, if nothing else, had been with him.

“Breakfast!”

He glanced up from the position he had often taken by the mainsail to see Blair smiling up at him. Smiling in return, he hopped back to the deck and followed her down the ladder.

“Brunch.” He corrected her with a smile as they sat down together to ham and eggs.

“Brunch,” she agreed with a half smile.

He watched the little furrow in her brow as she pensively sipped her cup of coffee.

“Tell me about it,” he suddenly commanded.

“About what?” she asked, glancing at him guiltily.

“Whatever it is you’re thinking,” he told her with a broad grin. “First you’re smiling like a sly cat, then you’re frowning as if just asked the meaning of X squared equals Z minus four.”

“I was worrying,” Blair admitted, and her frown deepened as she gazed reflectively upon his handsome features. His hair was long, creeping over the collar of his perpetual blue work shirt. Come to think of it, it was odd that he had started shaving so meticulously since he had first arrived at the Hunger Crew compound. That first day he had worn a stubble, as if he didn’t care. He hadn’t shaved yet today, but he had every other day of their voyage, and today he had been busy calming her.

She shrugged mentally. So what if he had come a little grubby looking. Habits did go with environment. And if he had come from the brush … where had he come from?

“What are you worrying about?”

“What? Oh!” Blair dismissed her ponderings on his personal habits and went silent, wondering how to voice her misgivings. She gave up a roundabout approach and asked bluntly, “Craig, how serious is this going to be? I mean, considering that I’m not going to press kidnapping charges.”

He was as silent as she for several minutes and a feeling of dread slipped back over her. “Backing out already, huh?” he finally asked wiping his mouth with a brush of his napkin and tossing it to his quickly cleaned plate.

“That’s not at all what I said,” she reproached him huskily. “I want to know what we’re going to be going through. I think I have that right.”

“You’re asking me if I’m a petty thief, a murderer, or just your run-of-the-mill terrorist?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking,” Blair said, reaching nervously for a cigarette but keeping her eyes on his.

He took a long sip of his coffee, the mask that guarded his emotions and thoughts so well making his face hard and cold. He set his cup back down on the table, cradling it with his massive hands, and sighed. “Petty thief, no. Kidnapper, you answer that one. Murderer, well, I was in a war, so I can’t guarantee it, but as far as I know I’ve never taken a human life. Run-of-the-mill terrorist, not run-of-the-mill I hope, and not a terrorist. My prison term should not be a lengthy one.”

He clicked off his answers as if he were reading an invoice, his tone vaguely resentful. He watched her as he spoke, then rose abruptly and moved toward the ladder, leaving her sitting stunned in his wake. She snapped her mouth shut, seething. Here she was, trying to help the man, and he bit into her like a caged rat when she asked for the particulars. A man who supposedly loved her.

The same thing, but running along a different track, seemed to be on his mind. “I thought you loved me,” he suddenly snapped.

“I do!” Blair exclaimed, feeling her temper bristle at the sound of his voice. “At least I thought I did,” she continued coldly.

“Damn it!” Craig started back for her, visibly annoyed.

“Two and a half days, Blair, and then you will have all your answers. Can’t you give me that much? There must be a million topics of discussion, but your mind is on one track only.”

“That’s understandable, don’t you think?”

He shook his head fervently. “No. We’re heading into trouble, and today we have a calm sea.”

Trembling slightly as she felt him bend beside her, Blair picked up her coffee cup and swallowed a sip of the hot liquid. But his eyes were on her, they seared through her, they commanded that she turn to him.

“What do you want from me?” she whispered nervously.

“I want today,” he stated blandly. He took the coffee cup from her hands and set it on the table, then drew her up into an embrace.

“No—” Blair began, but she didn’t get anywhere. He claimed her with an all-encompassing kiss, crushing her to him, winding his fingers into her hair with a demanding urgency. “Craig—” she protested breathlessly as he broke away, showering the top of her head, her cheeks, her neck, with butterfly kisses. “Craig …” Her voice trailed away. It was senseless to give him vocal denial when she melded to him, her arms sliding around his neck, her fingers light and soft against its nape. She started to talk again, whispering against his cheek, savoring his scent that was clean and natural, that of the air and of the sea. “There’s so much to be worked out yet,” she told him, scrambling desperately for reason as he continued an all-out assault on her senses, finding the hollow of her throat with hot lips even as she spoke. “I mean … I want to see you turn yourself in; I want to know what we’ll be up against.” She was talking all right, but her words were making little sense, not when they were uttered brokenly and interspersed with the soft moans he was eliciting. His tongue had found her earlobe, and along with the effect of the moist warmth of his breath she was reeling under the impact on her flesh, a touch that surely tingled through her like mercury, until she felt like hot wax, waiting to be molded to his form.