Margo Maguire Read Online Free PDF Page B

aberrant talents.
     
    At the edge of the meadow, not far from the lake, was a dead chestnut tree. It was tall and thick, and its trunk held one of the best Apis mellifera colonies Sam had ever seen. Over the past four years, he hadstudied every aspect of the hive in a number of different locales and had been considered an expert in the field—before his experience in Sudan.
    Sam looked up and took a deep breath of pure, free air. He would never again take for granted the sight of the sky and the clouds, of the birds winging across broad, open vistas.
    Before his mind could lock on to thoughts of the filthy pit where he and his colleagues had been chained to the walls, Sam turned his attention to the chestnut tree. Its branches were perfectly configured for the platform Sam would build—a perch from which to observe and photograph the bees. The bee project consisted mainly of observing and making notes. He would take photographs and make a number of drawings, of course, and probably track the foragers as they collected pollen. There’d be a few specimens to collect, but Sam doubted that he would need many.
    And in the evenings, while the bees slept, he would look for ways to disprove the existence of Ravenwell’s ghost.
    His fleeting thought that Ravenwell and its lands were haunted had been merely a jest. Sam didn’t believe it for a minute. Just because he’d been physically drawn to Lilly Tearwater did not mean there was some enchantment about the place.
    She was a compelling woman, beautiful and exotic, and Sam had merely been taken by the pure, feminine sensuousness of her face and form. Just because he could appreciate her did not mean that anything else had changed. As much as he might wish otherwise, he knew what would happen if he actually touched her.
    Which he would never do.
    He was here for only two reasons. To finish his research and to win one hundred pounds.
    Winning the wager would be easy. Somehow, Miss Tearwater, or someone in her employ, was using a clever ploy to make her visitors believe that Ravenwell was haunted.
    Sam slipped his rucksack from his shoulders and sat down on the ground near the chestnut tree. Pulling his field glasses from the pack, he surveyed the meadow and saw that he had a clear view down to the lake, a view that would be even better after he’d built a perch up in the branches of the chestnut tree.
    There were boats on the water, carrying fishermen mostly, and a few boaters enjoying the morning sunshine. He saw no bathers, though there was a stretch of beach divided by a grouping of large black rocks. The far side looked like an excellent secluded spot for bathing in the raw, as he and his brothers had done in their wild youth.
    Growing up in exotic locations all over the globe, Sam and the other Temple boys had been hellions. It wasn’t until they’d reached their twenties and entered their chosen professions that any of them had begun to settle down. And now that he was an adult, with a sedate, conventional career ahead of him, Sam would not be diving into any public lake without his clothes.
    With that thought, he found Lilly Tearwater once again on his mind.
    He looked back and saw her in the distance, walking up the path toward the inn. The magnification of his field glasses gave him a good view of her, dressed in her simple blouse and skirt. She wore nohat, and her hair was wildly curly, though she had managed in some mysterious, feminine way to secure the soft mass on her head, off her shoulders.
    He could easily imagine that lustrous hair flowing freely in lush curls across her bare shoulders. It would brush the tips of her breasts when she undressed to swim on the private section of beach…
    The unbidden thought shocked but pleased him. It had been a very long time since he’d thought of a woman the way any normal man would. Still, he had no business thinking of Miss Tearwater in such vivid terms. She was merely the proprietress of Ravenwell and the woman he was