"That's a mercenary all over," Stan Mitchell smiled, strolling to the tall young man who called him father. He flung an arm about the slim shoulders and hugged Larry. "You've plenty of time for love affairs, my boy. You've got to work hard and become a fine doctor. That's what we'd like to see, eh, Wade?"
Eve saw the glance that passed between the two men and she knew that Larry would never be told that the tall, lean mercenary Major had fathered him. Later on she learned herself from Moira Mitchell that while Wade had been stationed with the regular army in Malaya his wife had badly neglected the baby boy, and [184-185] upon Wade's return to England he had flung her out of his life, acquired custody of his son and placed him in the care of his cousin and her husband. It had seemed easier, better for the child to be called Mitchell, and to think of the couple as his parents. The years had gone by, until the moment had slipped away for telling him the truth. Wade didn't want him to know the truth, that his mother had been a tramp who had cared more for a good time than her husband and child.
Larry loved and respected the Mitchells, and they in their turn had grown to think of him as their very own son. Wade would do nothing to alter that . . . the complex pattern of fate that brought love and pain and wasn't to be struggled against. It had its way with everyone, for good or bad, and watching Wade at the lunch table, looking the same and yet looking so attractive in his well-cut grey suit with a speckless white shirt and dark grey tie, Eve felt a surge of happiness so close to tears that she had to bite hard on her lip in order to hold them back.
She reached out instead and touched his hand, as if to make sure of his reality, and she saw Larry glance at them as Wade carried her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Eve met Larry's eyes and silently begged him to understand that it hadn't been her wish to hurt him, but the love she felt for Wade was so strong, so irresistible, so hungry after all the waiting, the hopeless build-up of feeling that he must be dead because he didn't attempt to find her again.
But he had been hoping for his freedom . . . searching for it with the help of a lawyer, and when it came into his grasp he had been unable to stay away from her any longer. She smiled into his eyes, this man who had [185-186] saved her life more than once, and who had now saved her heart from being closed to glowing, joyful love . . . the love she had thought lost somewhere in Africa.
After lunch she and Wade slipped away into the garden, there to kiss and to talk of the future . . . their future together on his fruit farm on the edge of the desert.
"You'll love the smell of citrus and desert winds," he said. "At dawn, and at the fall of dusk. I've recently bought a pair of Arab horses and we'll ride, Eve--we'll take long gallops across the sands and enjoy all that sense of freedom together."
"It will be heavenly--oh, Wade, I thought I'd never see you again, never hear your voice, never see this deep line in your cheek when you smile at me." She reached up and drew her fingers down his warm dark face. "You sent me away from you--you told me to go and marry a man my own age. What made you come to your senses? What made you realise that our kind of love couldn't be torn out of the heart as easily as that?"
"Riding alone in the desert," he murmured. "Wanting you there beside me with the desert sun shining on your foxfire hair, and needing you in my arms when the moon shone across those sands and turned them to silver and sable. God, how I wanted you! When Larry wrote to me about you, I was staggered--he's my boy and I was tempted to be noble and let him have you. But you're mine, Eve!" His arms tightened possessively around her. "I brought you through the jungle and saw you safe aboard that plane--mine, my own darling deb, with spirit and courage and so much warmth of heart. You belonged to me--to me, and I was lonely as hell. I had to come and get you. I figured that Larry's only a [186-187] boy and with him it's only calf-love, but with me, it means my very life. I want you! I must have you!"
"You have me, Major." Held close and hard to him beneath an apple tree, she smiled, then suddenly reached up and plucked an apple. "May I tempt you with this, darling?"
"I don't need an apple to be tempted by you, lady." And tilting back her head he laid his lips on hers in a kiss whose piercing sweetness and desire she would remember all her life. The apple fell to the grass as she curved her arms about his neck and held him close to her . . . for always.
The End.
Time of the Temptress Page 16