Again there was nothing to see, nothing to hear.
But she knew the feeling. It was an extra sense that most people did acquire at one time or another—a sense that was almost a certainty, warning that eyes were watching them….
“What is it with me lately,” she murmured impatiently to herself. Perhaps her imagination was simply working overtime. She was suspicious of every action of Craig’s, she was imagining herself being watched. Annoyed with herself and her lack of rational thinking, she quickly finished buttoning up, slung her towel over her shoulder, and followed Kate’s path back toward the compound. Her thoughts turned back to the fact that poor Doc would be waiting for her all-clear before heading down to the stream for his own bath.
But she was being watched, and not by a happy observer.
Craig was part of the whispered rustle of the brush again—a voyeur in pain. It had been bad the first day he had come upon her, but nothing compared to the misery he felt now. He knew the woman now, he longed for the total person—the mind, spirit, and essence of her—not merely her tantalizing body.
He spent his entire time frozen in the foliage with his every muscle taut, his mouth a grim line.
Too much of this will drive me over the brink, he thought bitterly. God! And the woman couldn’t possibly imagine that her every movement was a study in fluid grace, that her simplest motion was a lesson in sensuality. He tried to close his eyes each day as she rose like a Venus from the water, drops cascading down the tanned silk of her flawless skin, sometimes hovering with enticement upon a rose nipple, then falling like crystal prisms. But closing his eyes didn’t help. Her form was ingrained upon the lids—beautiful full breasts, firm above the slender midriff, hand-spandable waist, and slimly shadowed hips. Shadowed, wonderful, mysterious … beguiling.
She didn’t know the torture her daily bath inflicted.
But he had to follow her to the stream, just as he had to watch her constantly.
Usually it was easy. They worked closely in the compound, and once he knew her itinerary for the day, his “baby-sitting,” as he had once termed it, was a breeze. The vacation the chief had promised. And it hardly bothered him to watch her as she worked. He enjoyed it. He felt he came to know her more each day by watching as well as talking during the evenings. He loved to see the concerned, serious knit to her brow when confronted with a problem, the smile slash her face with infinite warmth and beauty when she worked with the children.
Actually he loved watching her at the stream, but that was part of his misery. He cared too much for her to spy on her unawares; he wanted to see her so, free and easy in the water, but he wanted her to know that he was there. He wanted her revelry to be with him, for him.
It could be so, he told himself, then gritted his teeth harder. She was Huntington’s daughter; he was on an assignment. And for the first time in his life he couldn’t grasp pleasure for the easy sake of pleasure. He didn’t dare define what he was feeling, but it was there.
And he could control himself, so he would. He wouldn’t repeat the mistake he had made the very first day—that of allowing himself to be seduced out of control by the sweet trust that she seemed so willing to give him.
And so he was doomed to unhappy voyeurism. She had to be watched at the stream. If there were to be an attempt at abduction, this would be the perfect time and place. She was often alone here, far from the others, far from the compound.
Taking a deep breath, Craig followed her back through the quickly falling darkness to the compound. Right at the outskirts he changed his pattern, appearing to come from the opposite direction. He managed to reach the fire with her simultaneously.
“Hi,” he greeted both her and Kate, but his eyes were for Blair. He made no attempt to hide his admiration, but he was glad she didn’t know the extent of that admiration.
Blair smiled, wondering how he could show so much with his extraordinary eyes while still showing absolutely nothing.
“Coffee?” Kate was the one to return his friendly greeting.
“Surely, thank you.” Craig accepted a steaming tin from her and ruffled her hair. Blair was surprised at the jealousy the meaningless companionable little gesture created within her. Not a spiteful jealousy—Kate was her friend and dead honest. It was a peculiar spurt of envy; she didn’t receive enough of Craig’s touch herself to feel generosity with his bestowing it on another.
The moment was over quickly. Craig turned back to Blair. “May I presume on dinner this evening, Ms. Morgan?”
Blair shrugged but she couldn’t conceal her wry smile. “We can all presume on dinner this evening, Mr. Taylor!” she advised him.
“I think that’s my cue to exit!” Kate said with a smile. “Two at the old cooking pot are company, three are a crowd!”
“Kate!” Blair and Craig both protested at once. “Don’t be silly,” Blair continued. “We’re eating mush out of a pot! Not dining at the Four Seasons!”
“I don’t think it really matters does it?” Kate asked in her usual straightforward manner. “Besides I have to find Dolly. She wants to instruct me in a new vaccine before dinner. Enjoy the mush.”
Blair watched Kate walk away with dismay. Was it so terribly obvious that she and Craig enjoyed each other’s company alone? Or as alone as it was possible to be in the compound. It was true that the group all ate together, but as if by anonymous decision Craig and Blair were discreetly left to their own devices. It was strangely similar at times to being prime patrons of an elegant restaurant. Although they didn’t have the intimacy of a candlelit table in the corner, they did have the intimacy of the jungle’s shadowy darkness and the filtered light of the fire’s amber glow.
“May I?” Craig requested with a formal inclination of his head and gesture toward the “mush” pot. Blair shrugged with a smile and followed him. He prepared her a plate of watery stew with great care, a wry smile on his sensuous mouth.
Blair was silent until they were seated beneath the tree that they had both inwardly claimed as their spot. Then she went for a straight answer to the question that had been plaguing her since she had spoken with the doctor.
“I hear you speak five languages fluently. That’s quite a talent. How did you come to be so proficient?” She stared straight into his eyes, alert to any inflection they might carry.
His eyes carried nothing; they returned her level stare. “I like languages,” he said with a rueful smile. “They come easy to me.”
“But five!”
He shrugged. “No great feat really. I grew up in southern California, so I picked up Spanish from the Mexican kids in the neighborhood. I had an Italian grandmother, and if you have Spanish down, Italian is easy. A lot of differences are only in accents.” He smiled again. “I spent two years in Germany with the military, so I didn’t really learn the language, I absorbed it.”
“Go on,” Blair prompted, determined. “With English in there, you’re only on four.”
Craig hesitated for a fraction of a second, a hesitation missed if one happened to blink, which Blair did. She was suspicious and he knew it, but at the moment, training was serving him well. She had no idea what a strain it was to keep his easy grin plastered to his face.
“French,” he announced aloud. He was versed in a smattering of the language, but it wasn’t one he would call fluent.
However, knowing that she quizzed him with a pegging instinct, he couldn’t calmly announce that his fifth language was Russian. There hadn’t been any Russian kids in southern California.
“Oh?”
She wanted an explanation for the French. Now he was sorry that he had helped Tom Hardy with the letter, but at the time the man had been so perplexed, wondering if they were about to be saddled with a German correspondent, that Craig had seen no problem with helping the doctor out of his difficulty. Guilt over his role with an operation as responsible as the Hunger Crew often nagged Craig; he tried to justify his existence within the compound whenever possible.
�
�I traveled a lot,” Craig said simply. “You know that. I just liked French, so I took it as a language elective in school. Hopping in and out of France with a pack on my back, it was easy to improve on the books.”
It was amazing, Blair thought, that a man with such hard, severe features could have a smile that dazzled and held one spellbound. As had been happening all the time they had spent together, her reservations began to dissipate beneath the warm glow of that smile. He laughed now, moving closer to her, his face just inches from her own, his breath caressing her skin. “I guess I’m just an aging hippie. I wanted to spend my life wandering the globe, and I had the money to do it. So I did.”
“That’s nice,” Blair murmured. The reasons for her third degree were quickly slipping from her mind, as if she held a rope that spun crazily and ripped from her fingers without leverage to stop. When he moved toward her like that, she didn’t worry about a future, she didn’t worry about the past of the man. She was struck by immediacy, wanting only to feel the thrill of his full lips against hers again, feeling a warm desire burn from deep within her and spread, a desire to complete what he had curtailed a week ago, an impulse to forget all else and throw herself at him, demanding to know why he held back, demanding that he assuage her fears that he didn’t want her as she wanted him.
He was caught just as she was. The spinner of spells, spellbound. Alone, they were still within vision of the rest of the crew, but it seemed of minor importance. Her lips were slightly parted so near his, moist, inviting. He knew their feel if he were to move. He knew the sweetness that her mouth would offer. A whisper away … just a whisper …
He had the power, Blair thought vaguely, the power to make her breath quicken from a mile, to race her blood, to shatter her entire frame with trembling. Indeed, still not touching, he had the power to move the elements. The fire danced, the stars seemed to tremble, even the earth began to move.
“Damn!”
Suddenly Craig’s arms were around her, but it wasn’t with tenderness or desire gone crazy. The earth was moving, and Craig Taylor was not the perpetrator of the action.
“Quake!”
She heard the word shouted from the fire. Then she was rolling in Craig’s arms, and the earth beneath them was trembling violently. They rolled and rolled, even as her mind spun, and then she knew why. The tree they sat beneath, their tree, was careening downward, crashing to the ground not a foot away.
Voices were screaming in the night. Pandemonium set in. Explosive fear pounded into Blair’s mind. There had been tremors before, many since she had first set foot in Central America, but nothing like this. The rumble went on and on, the sound of the brush falling throughout the jungle was that of a cacophony of drums.
Beneath her she could feel the parched earth cracking.
But above her she could feel Craig. His body covered hers, his broad hands laced over her head, sheltering her. There was tension in him. Along with the vibrations all around her she could feel his heart galloping along with her own, strangely giving a sense of security against all odds.
Tents jiggled and collapsed, and the rumble went on. In the heavens the stars jerked dizzily, like images displayed out of sync on a movie screen. The rumble rose to a roar.
And then ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
“Are you all right?”
Craig’s face, strained, harsh in the darkness, hovered over hers, the pressure of his cradling fingers on her head intense.
“Fine …” She gasped, and then he was on his feet, drawing her up, gripping her hand and racing to the compound center.
There he released her hand. The authoritative power in him was unleashed. He was in control, his voice, calm, firm, was commanding the crew into action with swift assurance while also checking for injuries.
Thankfully, bruises, scratches, and fear were the only physical results among the assembly. It hadn’t been a quake after all, Craig announced, but a very healthy tremor.
And they weren’t a group of easily panicked people. The quick note of control in Craig’s voice had them instantly in reciprocated calm. They were moving with brisk efficiency to pick up the damage.
But it was still Craig giving the orders.
“Juan, Kate, get into the village with the first-aid kits. Dolly, get set for any severely wounded. Blair—” His eyes lit upon her.
“I’ll go with Juan and Kate,” she volunteered in interruption. “I know the children the best—”
“No!” His command, even for the situation, was startling. The yellow of his eyes had never seemed more brilliant, more like a dangerous blaze that could sweep out of control. Then the fire was hidden so quickly that it might not have been. His voice softened. “You need to be here, Blair, with Tom in the med tent. If any of the kids come in hurt …”
Blair wasn’t given a chance to agree to or to refute his command. His voice went on for a second with further, all-encompassing instructions, and then, like a football huddle, they broke, all running off in separate directions to carry out their assignments.
Into a night that seemed to go on forever.
First on order for those remaining in the compound was the reconstruction of the tents. Craig, as usual, had matters well in hand. He asked for assistance to reorganize the med tent first so that Doc and Blair could get going with preparations. The rest of the reconstruction he could handle himself. Working alongside him briskly as the med tent was restored was the last Blair was to see of him at close quarters for quite some time.
The night and the days that followed were insane. The devastating action of the earth had been only a tremor, but in the village the destruction had been great. Flimsy walls had fallen; many had been left homeless.
But thankfully, no casualties had occurred. Blair treated a multitude of cuts and bruises, wincing each time an injury was so severe that stitches had to be sewn into young flesh, but the worst injury that had befallen anyone was a set of broken toes on a young lad, snapped by a falling shelf. Dr. Hardy was able to patch him up fine. The tremor had been far more violent farther north, near the base of a long-dormant volcano. Any extra help received in the country would not come their way; it too would go to the north.
It took them two and a half days of almost round-the-clock work to get back on even footing. And then, when things were caught up, they were disoriented.
It was always hard to understand the resiliency of the people. One day their homes had been in shambles—the earth itself had heaped ravishment upon what the war had left them. But they merely picked up the pieces as they had so many times before. They accepted help, they said thank you with sincere appreciation, and then they forgot and went on.
It was nightfall of their third day of whirlwind confusion when Juan returned from the village with news that the last hut had been rebuilt.
And Blair’s last little patient had been released that afternoon. New supplies had arrived; all were stocked away.
It was incredible to suddenly have nothing to do. Nothing but go back to their usual schedule that was once so grueling, now so easy. Three hours a day for leisure now seemed like a fabulous vacation.
“It’s as if it never was,” Blair told Tom with disbelief, shoving back a lock of damp hair as they finished up in the med tent at almost five o’clock. She glanced past the raised tent flap, knowing she would see Craig at work lifting, hauling, or building in the compound. He was always close. She was never without the warm feeling of his presence, his energy, close to her. Yet he might as well have been miles away for all the chance they had to talk.
She caught sight of him carrying food cartons, still tirelessly busy. Frowning, she turned back to Doc. “I don’t know what to do with myself,” she told him lamely.
“Take a bath,” he advised with a chuckle as he surveyed her wilted form. “And hurry! I want to get down there myself.”
Kate, Blair discovered, had already been to the stream and was happily reclined before the fire with a book, cigarette, and cup of cof
fee. Loathe to disturb her, Blair hurried along on her own, enjoying the water, but still bathing quickly. With the emergency over, she was finding time to think, and thinking reminded her of the day she had been so sure she had been watched.
Funny though, all through the days of recovery from the tremor she had had that same uncanny feeling. But, then, Doc had told her that Craig watched her. Silly, he had been too busy to watch her. All his strength and wit had been working at top capacity, focused on the task of rebuilding and restoring order.
And yet he had always been close. He had appeared almost as if by magic each time something was needed.
But it would also be silly for Craig to watch her by the stream. Why watch covertly what could be yours if you said the word?
But then again, she wondered dryly, why did he never say the word? Or had he been about to? She didn’t know. At least natural catastrophe had kept her from her reeling heart and mind for the last few days. But now they were back to square one. And she was finding herself overwhelmed by a sudden shyness. The man, the enigma were overpowering. She was at a loss.
Brooding, she headed back only to have her mental dilemma halted immediately by the appearance of the very enigma she pondered.
Craig was waiting for her on the path.
“Hello.”
“Hi,” she returned with a guilty smile. Did he know that she was plagued by thoughts of him constantly? That the last days, watching his caring, watching his competence had increased the feeling she hedged in her heart, drawn her even more irrevocably into his web?
“We finally have a night,” he told her.
“Yes.”
“I’d like to share it.”
“So would I,” she committed softly. He took her hand, and they returned to the compound together.
Craig was calling the tune, Blair realized, but she was glad of it. Their relationship had taken a turn again. She was still inexplicably wary, and he still sensed it.
But the time of hands off, of building friendship had come to an end. They were back to the simple but stark attraction of that very first evening.
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