Tempestuous Eden (36 page)

“Thank you, Miguelito!
Muchas gracias!”
she called after him, gently fingering the petals of the dying flower. There were definitely rewards in life, even if the rewards didn’t dispel the terrible loneliness she had thought would dissipate, but instead grew stronger with the passage of time.

“Blair!”

She glanced up to see a frazzled Kate calling to her. “Coming to the stream?” Kate asked.

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me from it!” Blair laughed.

Minutes later the women were walking along the jungle path together. “You know,” Kate confided with emotion, “I’ve been so wrapped up with myself since I’ve seen you, that I’ve neglected to tell you how worried we were! Doc and I were both in a raw panic. We raised a stink you wouldn’t believe. Brad,” she admitted huskily, hesitating just an instant at the sound of her new husband’s name, “was the only one able to keep us calm. And he did it without ever admitting a thing! I should have known though, right from the start, that it was a safety move. The story appeared in so few papers! And considering who you are …” Kate’s voice trailed away uneasily, and then she produced a rueful grimace. “Actually I had another thought myself.”

“Oh?” Blair queried. They had reached the stream and she could see and hear the cascade of the waterfall as she stripped off her sweat-soaked clothing. Washington in spring, with its cherry blossoms and cool air, already seemed a lifetime away. “What was your thought?”

“I thought you had run off with Craig.”

“Kate!” Blair gasped, her face flushing hotly and the gnawing pain that continually chewed upon her heart flaring to violent action “Don’t be silly!” she stuttered. “I barely knew him then.”

She paused, aware of how ridiculous her statement sounded. Kate, she was sure, had been aware of just how well she had known Craig. Blair allowed her hair to fall over her face as she feigned intense preoccupation with the zipper of her boot. “Kate, you know I would never have done anything like that—just disappeared without some type of an explanation. And I’d never do anything like that to Doc! I wouldn’t leave him short.”

Kate was already splashing into the water. “I kind of knew that,” she said, sighing with blissfully closed eyes as the stream enveloped her with coolness. “You’re the most thoughtful and responsible person I know. It was just that in this case I thought you might have lost all sense of reason. I mean, I could have completely lost my head—”

“Kate!” Blair protested. “What a thing for a newlywed to come out with! What about Brad, Mrs. Shearer? You are married, remember?” she added dryly.

Kate opened an eye, unperturbed by her friend’s pursed-lip scolding. “I’m married, not blind!” She sighed suddenly. “Very married, and I love Brad with all my heart and I miss him like crazy! But don’t try to tell me Craig isn’t an incredible man.”

I’d never try to tell anyone that,
Blair thought with a rush of pain. Aloud she murmured dryly, “Incredible.”

“And just think,” Kate continued, soaking her hair in the water, then opening her eyes wide, “you had him pegged from the very beginning. He was a dangerous man. A spy!” She shivered deliriously. “Thank goodness he’s on our side!”

“He’s not a spy,” Blair protested, for what reason she didn’t know, except that it was bad enough knowing she would spend her life worrying over any incident the U.S. became involved in without giving Craig that particular title. “He’s a diplomat,” she explained weakly.

Kate arched a dubious brow. “You forget who you’re talking to,” she murmured dryly, then smiled. “Oh, well, I can imagine he can be very diplomatic!” She chuckled diabolically, then winced and shivered. “Are you coming in or what? Believe it or not, I’m freezing!”

“Yeah,” Blair muttered, casting both boots aside and shimmying from her clothing to plunge into the water. When she emerged to the surface, she saw that Kate really was freezing. Goose pimples were fighting with her freckles for supremacy on her skin. “Get out of here!” Blair ordered with a chuckle. “I want to swim around a bit and you’ll be an icicle by then!”

Blue lips trembling a hundred miles an hour, Kate stubbornly shook her head. “I don’t like leaving you.”

“Kate, the place is all clear now!” Blair informed her firmly. “Believe me,” she added dryly. “I would have never been allowed back if this area wasn’t safe.”

“Okay,” Kate finally agreed, knowing Andrew Huntington and certain that Blair’s comment was not without wisdom. “I won’t make you insist a second time!” Her teeth still chattering audibly, Kate emerged in a streak from the water and burrowed into her towel, then hastily jerked into her fresh clothing. Shaking her head slightly at Blair’s resistance to the chill water, she called gratefully, “I’m on my way back. See you later.”

After Kate disappeared through the trees, Blair began to regret having told her friend to leave. She wasn’t frightened in the stream, but being there alone she was plagued by memories. She could almost hear the haunting echo of her own laughter on the air, a haunting echo of a night when she had loved happily and shamelessly beneath the waterfall, as uninhibited as Eve with her Adam. Despite the chill of the water her body flashed with heat and she swam furiously to dispel it, finally perching beneath the waterfall to catch its jolting spray upon her face.

Nothing helped. It was as if the essence of Craig Taylor were somehow forever captured in the private world of the stream.

No, it was more than that. His essence was forever captured within her heart … and within a body that could not help but ache with memories of a passion that knew no equal.

Blair was totally unaware that she was being observed. A branch rustled lightly from the shore, but to her it was no more than the natural rustle of the early evening.

But, in truth, more than a haunting essence of Craig Taylor hovered near the stream that night. The man was there himself, in the flesh, undaunted now by the fact that he watched her with pure male appreciation, delighting in the tanned cream of her skin, the firm slope of silky breasts, the graceful movements that turned her supple frame to a picture of glittering beauty.

He smiled as he observed her, completely relaxed. He made no effort to talk to her, but neither did he turn away until she rose with naked splendor from the water, moving with the innate sensuality that always drove him a little nuts. She dressed in khaki-green fatigues and started down the path to the trees.

“Employ any means, huh, Huntington?” he murmured to himself. “That, old man, is exactly what I intend to do.”

He turned from the stream then; he had a few preparations to make before he carried out his plans for the night.

Dinner for the Hunger Crew was a lighthearted affair that evening. The day before their return Blair and Kate had purchased a number of “gourmet” canned goods and Huntington had sent the workers a case of a very fine vintage burgundy. Everyone knew that Blair had been whisked away for her own safety, although no one but Kate knew that she had been as much in the dark as they while it was all going on. The conversation inevitably turned to the excitement of her disappearance. Blair hedged all questions the best she could, making no reference to her time aboard
La Princesa
in the jungle rivers.

“Well, you know,” Dr. Hardy admitted, “it didn’t go so badly when Brad was still with us.” He smiled with affection and apology as Kate winced a little. “It won’t be forever,” he mumbled, tousling his crew worker’s hair. The fire was dying slowly while they all sat around in a tight little circle, friends as those sharing such a situation could only be. He glanced back to Blair after Kate smiled in return. “But, boy, did we miss you and Taylor! I sure do wish you could have brought that man back with you. I’ll never be able to replace him.” The doctor sighed heavily. “As I said, thanks to Brad we were all right for a while. He kept us calm, and he kept us working. But then when he was shipped out, and Kate followed, we really wound up in a hole.” The doctor sniffed with great indignity. “They sent us an insipid little do-gooder. Wanted to change the world without chipping a fingernail.”

Blair and Kate both laughed at Tom’s uncharacteristic disgust. “What happened to him?” Blair asked.

“Hightailed it out of here in two days! Said he wasn’t in shape for our kind of manual labor.” He tossed a twig onto the embers of the fire and the crackle joined the murmur of grunted agreement from the others. “Yup,” Doc said slowly, nodding his grizzled head, “sure am glad to have you back, Blair, and you, too, Kate. Of course”—he smiled conspiratorially to Blair—“Kate was really on an illegal leave. But since it was to become an honest woman, I can only applaud! Pity I can’t get that Taylor back here.”

Blair smiled through clenched teeth. “Pity,” she agreed.

Moments later yawns started to become audible within the group. As if on cue they all scrambled to stiffening legs and rose, sheepishly grinning at one another.

“Boy,” Kate said with good-natured disgust. “We are a pack of live wires! Nine o’clock and we’re dragging our tails!”

“Bet it wasn’t like that in Washington!” Dolly teased.

“I don’t know,” Kate said mournfully, “I wasn’t there long enough. Just enough time to get married and get to see my husband of three hours fly away!” She smiled. “At least here I feel like sleeping!”

Both Blair and Dolly chuckled sympathetically. “How about you, honey?” Dolly quizzed Blair. “Lots of late nights and excitement, huh?”

“Ummm … sure,” Blair responded, hoping Dolly was unaware that her smile was as dry as a desert. Well, she had had lots of late nights. They weren’t due to excitement though, but to a lack of ability to fall asleep, like Kate. But unlike Kate she wasn’t sure that being back was going to help her. She was probably going to lie awake, wondering just how long it would be before she could press her memories of Craig into a far and mist-enshrouded corner of her mind. “Good night!” she said cheerfully to both Dolly and Kate, waving as they split and moved toward their respective tents. Kate, she decided, might worry, but Kate was an eternal optimist. She would dream of Brad, but her dreams would be good, they would be plans for a future sure to come.

Blair lit her kerosene lamp and pulled on a white cotton gown. She curled into her cot and plumped her pillow thoroughly while convincing herself, halfway at least, that she was exhausted and that sleep would come as soon as she hit the pillow.

But she didn’t sleep. Her mind went immediately to Craig. Or did it? she wondered. Could your mind turn to where it always was in some measure? She clenched her teeth tightly with self-disgust. So much time had passed. Still her every waking moment was filled with thoughts of Craig. She could function, think, and work, but no matter what she was doing, he was always there, in the back of her thoughts.

It had been almost three months since she had seen him last.

Since she had driven from his house, determined that it be forever.
Okay, Madame Psychologist,
she mocked herself,
why do we continue to plague ourselves against all reason? I know this is best, I know it, I know it, I know it …

Then why did it hurt her so badly to know that Craig had been in Washington and hadn’t called her? She had told him no and he had accepted. And if he had called her, he would have received only another no. Because she didn’t have Kate’s strength, she couldn’t be his wife and allow him to leave, she couldn’t live on faith.

With a muffled and impatient oath she turned off her lantern and buried her face in her pillow, groaning aloud with disgust. She had thought that the jungle would bring her to an acceptance of reality, but instead her memories seemed to multiply. She could sense Craig at the stream, hear echoes of his laughter by the orange glow of the dying campfire. It was unfair, she thought with resentment, that after suffering her crazy tortured mind all day she couldn’t just turn it off like the lamp and seek a modicum of peace.

She plumped her pillow again and shifted position.
Maybe,
she told herself,
just maybe I go over and over all this because I have a slight suspicion that I might be wrong.

No.
A voice cut in vehemently. She thought of the debilitating fear that had swept over her when she believed the emergency phone call from Kate had been about Craig. She thought of the way her heart had ceased to pound, how she had lost her breath, how the world had gone black. No, Kate could do it because Kate hadn’t been through it before. And Brad was not quite in the same position as Craig. Brad would also eventually rise to a position where he would use his strategic reasoning from the vantage point of a desk.

But I would see Craig,
Blair thought, finally making the positive admission.
Not steadily. And I still don’t think I could ever marry him. I wouldn’t want to know when he was coming or going.

How ridiculous,
she chastised herself. Neither of them could ever abide such a relationship. Which put her back to square one. Or did it? Oh, God, if she loved him enough, maybe she could bear anything, learn to control the fear.

Except that I’ll probably not see him again. It’s been three months. He didn’t try to call me. He’s probably already involved with someone new.

Suddenly she was angry. Here she was, three months after their parting and thousands of miles away, still pining for a glimpse of him. And he might very probably be in the arms of another woman at the very moment.

She simply wasn’t going to do it anymore, she simply wasn’t.
I will get over him,
she promised herself, and then she mentally repeated the words over and over again, as if she were counting sheep. Allowing her mind to shout was the only way to protect herself from the terrible, gut-wrenching pain of a picture of him being even touched by another.

Anger somewhat eased pain. And when she repeated the sentence long enough, she did eventually sleep. Physical exhaustion and the jet lag that was still catching up with her both took a toll and she found the release she sought.

Her anger was her first emotion as she began to wake in what seemed just seconds after she had finally fallen asleep. Who would disturb her? she wondered furiously, after all she had gone through to sleep. Her eyes opened, desperately trying to focus, and then she blinked furiously. There was a movement in her tent, a whispered rustling of sound, which was what had woken her. She opened her mouth to demand to know who was there, when a hand clamped firmly over it.