Read Online Tempestuous Eden by Heather Graham - Free Book Online Page B

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