Patricia Potter Read Online Free PDF

ear for languages and could easily slide in and out of the rough sea speech with its heavy emphasis on descriptive curses. His mother had been Canadian, and he spoke English as well as his native German, and during his travels picked up French and Spanish as well as a smattering of other languages. It was that talent, he knew, that had brought him to the attention of Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, German intelligence.
    His gaze turned from the sea and found three figures on the beach ahead of him. His heart lurched with sudden pleasure and anticipation, and despite the pain in his leg his steps hurried as he moved toward them.
    Meara’s wind-tossed hair was even more glorious here as the sun seemed to center all its attention on catching each strand and painting it with a particularly splendid red-gold fire. Her profile was toward him, and as she had been on the yacht, she was smiling, her lips curved whimsically as she surveyed a crumbled tower. She wore a simple green dress which molded her slender body and which, he knew, deepened the emerald green of her eyes. She was barefoot, and long, slender legs bent comfortably behind her. Her lap was full of loose grains of sand, and her hands were caked with wet sand as she looked, her head cocked in mock dismay, at the fallen tower of a not very elegant sand castle. Absorbed in her task, she was oblivious to his presence. She was, he thought quickly, the most delightful sight he’d ever encountered.
    “Enemy cannon?” Michael queried seriously and had the satisfaction of three faces looking quickly up, all of them flashing with welcome.
    Meara shook her head wryly, but her eyes sparkled with warmth and mischief. “More like faulty construction techniques.”
    Michael smiled slowly as he looked at the three of them. Tara’s blond hair, like Meara’s, was damp with sea air and fell in tangled curls down her back as a seven-year-old face looked up at him with the open delight of a child confident that everyone was her friend.
    Peter jumped to his feet politely. “Perhaps you could help us, sir.” Despite the courtesy, there was an eagerness in his voice, even a touch of hero worship.
    Leave! Every cautious, sensible part of him emphasized the command. Make an excuse and leave.
    But nothing inside him obeyed. His gaze caught Meara’s, a flow of energy and awareness passing between them with aching intensity, holding both of them motionless, neither able or willing to break the spell that enveloped them.
    “Will you, sir?” Peter’s insistent voice intruded.
    “Willya?” chimed Tara.
    “Will you, Commander?” Meara’s request came softly, an irresistible plea dancing lightly in the air.
    “I’m a sailor,” he demurred with a disarming modesty. “I doubt my architectural abilities are any better than yours. Now if it were a ship…”
    Meara looked down at another tower that was just now tumbling down. “They can’t be any worse,” she observed. Then she noticed the cane and the leg he had favored this morning, and she looked suddenly chastened. “Perhaps your leg…”
    She sounded concerned and self-reproachful, and the warmth in him deepened. It had been a long time since anyone had cared, and he wasn’t exactly sure how to react to it. He was a prisoner of that warmth, of hers and of his own. With a certain grace despite the obvious stiffness of the one leg, he lowered himself, feeling strangely out of place in so informal a position. He had never played in the sand before, had never really played at all. But all of a sudden, it seemed a very appealing pastime, especially when he saw the delighted approval in Meara’s eyes. When her hand accidentally brushed his, the warmth became an ache that seeped throughout his body.
    He had more skill than he thought, and his suggestions, based in part on the castles he had seen in Europe, produced under eager hands a very superior product, an elaborate European castle with towers and turrets and double