Tempestuous Eden Read Online Free PDF Page B

attractive “brush” outfit. Craig was a wild stimulation that she couldn’t deny, and she was automatically responding as a female.
    Merely sound tactics, she assured herself. If she was entering a battle of wiles with this man, the better her tactics and ammunition, the better her chances of emerging the victor. She wasn’t a politician’s daughter for nothing.
    Her hands suddenly went clammy and she sank to her sheet-covered cot. Her marriage—which she had entered into with the natural enthusiasm of any young bride—had gone from happiness to tragic misery so fast that it had taken up to now, and the presence of Craig Taylor, for Blair to realize that she had never been this affected by a man before. She had socialized a bit after Ray’s death, and indifferently accepted good-night kisses, but had never been stirred as she had by the sound of Craig’s voice and the sight of his lean body and magnetic eyes. She had never even been so stirred by Ray Teile….
    He was just a man, she told herself sternly.
    He wasn’t just a man.
    But stirred or not, she wasn’t a naive innocent herself. She was an experienced widow. She wasn’t sure why she was going to battle with Craig, but she was. They were skirting each other carefully now; the depths of their diplomatic war would have to surface later.
    Impatient with herself, she stood purposefully and grabbed soap, towel, and clothing—the best she had with her, a tailored blue cotton shirt and her least worn out pair of jeans—and hurried out of her tent across the compound.
    Kate was still busy ladling out food. Unable to resist, Blair caught her friend’s eye. “I’ll be waiting for you at the stream!”
    Kate rewarded her with a good-humored grimace.
    The sound of the water was soothing, as was the wild and colorful beauty of the foliage and the small jagged cliffs that bordered the stream. Blair could almost feel the water against her skin as she approached the embankment—and stopped short.
    Someone had reached the stream ahead of her.
    A pile of dirty clothing lay in a neatly bundled ball beneath the outstretched arm of a sturdy oak. Upon the branch rested a clean pair of blue jeans and a tan cotton shirt similar to her own.
    Craig.
    She didn’t see him in the water, but she knew it was he without even recognizing the dirty clothing. Her senses sent out an alarm that warned her it was he. Slight shivers began to play havoc, rising from the base of her spine to spread to every limb. Her mind was working entirely on its own, imagining his golden torso emerging from the water in glistening masculinity, his hips, as sturdy and trim as the oak.
    Oh, Lord! she chastised herself, backing away from the stream with self-annoyance. She had been in the brush too long.
    No, it wasn’t that. He was unique.
    And it wasn’t her imagination anymore. His sandy head, darkened by the water, emerged, his hawk-rugged features, then the broad, matted torso gleaming bronze from the shimmering stream just as she had imagined.
    Yellow, impaling eyes caught hers. A slow grin crept into sensuously full lips. “Coming in?” he called.
    Blair shook her head, but she ceased backing away. If he had already seen her, she wasn’t going to run like an adolescent.
    “When you come out, Mr. Taylor, I’ll go in,” she called. “I guess we forgot to tell you the protocol. Ladies get first dibs on bathing facilities.”
    “Sorry,” he shouted in return, staying in the water respectably to his waistline. Still, the thick brush of sandy hair that covered his chest thinned as it approached his navel, and continued, presumably extending in a narrow line until it thickened again in parts concealed by the water. Blair found with irritation that she was having difficulty maintaining eye level contact—hers wanted to follow that enticingly suggestive line of damp, coarse curls. He walked closer to the shore and for a second Blair feared he would walk boldly out.
    But he didn’t. He had simply