To Love a Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

with the rest of the guys. Some of them can’t so much as see a woman on the street without getting all het up.”
    “I know.” Sam’s reply was thoughtful. “She’ll have to be kept out of their way—kept confined to her tent, maybe. Riley could sort of watch over her—he won’t be affected.”
    Frank guffawed at this. Riley Bates’s lack of interest in the opposite sex had been a standing joke for all the years they’d known him. Scuttlebutt had it that he’d stepped on a mine in Korea and had his vital equipment blown off. Maybe true, probably not, but either way the man was a hell of a soldier, and in a situation like this that was all that mattered.
    “Good idea. But she’ll have to leave the tent sometime—you know, call of nature and all that.” Frank lowered his voice slightly, suddenly sounding embarrassed.
    Sam grinned, his teeth a white flash in the darkness. He felt better knowing that he wasn’t the only one to be reduced to blushing adolescence by the presence of a woman in their midst. “She can go—with Riley as escort,” he said. “Do him good.”
    Both men chuckled at the irresistible picture this conjured up, and they were still grinning as they reached the camp. The small circle of tents was quiet. Frank yawned widely, clapped Sam on the back, and went off to bed. Sam made a quick tour of the camp, making sure that the men assigned to guard duty were awake and alert, then turned in.
    Sunlight filtering through the open tent flap woke Lisa the next morning. She stretched, yawning, her eyes sleepily blinking open. Despite her various aches and pains, she felt as relaxed and contented as a cat in the sun. She hadn’t felt this good in years, she marveled, not since before she had married Jeff. What was responsible for this delicious sense of well-being? What . . . ?
    Suddenly Lisa became aware that, beneath the blanket, she was completely naked. Her hand slid down disbelievingly to confirm the fact and encountered a faint stickiness on her abdomen and thighs. She blanched. Hazy memories of a hard, driving male body danced in her brain. Dear God, what had she done? She hadn’t—please say she hadn’t practically raped a total stranger. Snippets of her actions of the previous night played like first-run movies in her mind. Her paling face turned a bright tomato red. How could she have been so—so totally shameless? To beg him to make love to her, to touch him as she had done . . . !
    Lisa closed her eyes, groaning. Whatever had possessed her? That she, usually so cool and reserved, could have behaved in such a way was crazy. And with such a man! A common soldier, for God’s sake! But she knew, with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, that it was true.
    Lisa groaned again, pulling the blanket up over her head in an effort to keep out the world. What must he have thought, be thinking of her?
    Finally a slow anger began to build. Maybe Sam wasn’t as innocent in all this as she’d first thought. After all, he’d given her two injections that she knew of, and no telling how many more! Who knew what had been in them? Maybe he’d deliberately doped her up, hoping for that kind of reaction. Anyway, she hadn’t been in her right mind last night, that much was certain, and he must have known it. Taking advantage of her in such a way was—was downright loathsome!
    A soft footstep on the ground directly outside her tent brought her head shooting out from beneath the blanket. Despite all her rationalizations, her face turned fiery crimson, and the hands clutching the blanket to her shoulders were unsteady. Any second now she expected to see that all-too-familiar shape step through the flap. But what did thrust through was only a head, and it was certainly not the arrogant black-haired one she was expecting. This one was balding on top, the glossy circle surrounded by a graying fringe, and the eyes that met hers were brown instead of the cobalt blue she remembered with such