Tempestuous Eden

by Heather Graham

“I’m not!”

  “You were; you told me so.”

  “I was infatuated,” Blair said, protesting as she felt the furious thumping of her heart and praying her denial would be strong enough to keep herself from being read by his searing, leonine eyes. “I fell in and out of love equally quickly, Mr. Taylor. A sexual attraction,” she said coolly, giving him a bitter, dry smile. “I’m sure I was just one of many for you.”

  “Really?” Craig no longer seemed angry at all, merely fascinated by the conversation. He drew away from her and rested an elbow on his bent knee. He grinned with a secret mirth. “Go on, Mrs. Teile,” he urged her. “I’ve never had my character analyzed by a psychologist before.”

  Unnerved by his sudden turnaround and certain that he mocked her, Blair batted her lashes while she struggled for a suitable reply. “You don’t need a psychologist to tell you your behavior was purposely deceitful, Taylor.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Craig said, the dancing fire in his eyes belying his humble tone.

  He was mocking her again, Blair thought furiously. “You’re a lying con artist. I don’t care what government you work for!” she charged him.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Craig repeated. He grin broadened, a devil-may-care, enticing mask of amusement. He was sure now, sure for both of them, sure about the rest of their lives. And yet he couldn’t make offers yet, no promises. He had to go. Leave tomorrow. All he could do tonight was take and pray and talk. And for the first time in his life, he feared not coming back. He wanted so much, so badly. A shiver hit him. He wanted a life with his princess, the woman who stared at him now, outraged by his behavior. She truly was a princess tonight, an American princess, breathtakingly regal in the empire velvet, her breasts heaving slightly, intoxicatingly, with her agitation. Her fine features were as light and lovely as crystal. But unlike crystal, they were strong and vibrant, characterized by the power of the mind he loved so dearly that lurked behind them. Forget tomorrow, win her tonight, make her wait … take tonight.

  “I don’t love you, Taylor. I don’t give a damn about you. I never did. Can’t you get that through your thick, uncrackable skull?” she demanded.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am!” Craig rejoined with a start. He had to cajole her from anger before anything else. “Only because you’re right, my love.”

  “I’m not your love,” Blair snapped, “and I no longer care to allow you to amuse yourself at my expense. I—”

  “Then don’t amuse me,” Craig commanded, his voice growing tense while a wistful, nonmocking smile appeared on his features.

  “What?” Blair murmured, riddled with new confusion.

  “Don’t amuse me,” Craig repeated softly, his head lowering once more toward hers. “Thrill me,” he directed, “tease me, torment me … kiss me.” His voice was a rasp of velvet caressing her as the warmth of his breath caressed her cheeks. His eyes held hers as if by magnetic power, as if she were drowning in compelling golden suns, pulled by the force of gravity, unable to look away. She seemed paralyzed as his lips descended ever closer to hers; her body was cold, as if frozen to immobility. Then his lips finally touched hers and the cold was dispelled as liquid fire seeped through her. His kiss was a brush of lightness, a slow savoring as his tongue moved to outline her mouth, tasting the nectar as might a wine connoisseur before giving vent to indulging in a fine bouquet.

  Blair was startled, stunned, simply too astounded to protest at first, taken as easily as a deer frozen by oncoming lights. Then she had no chance to weigh choice, to raise the objections she knew made so much sense, the denial that would save her so much pain and self-reproach later.

  His warmth permeating through her held her to his will as surely as the trembling cold that had besieged her. His touch brought her to that plane where there was no time or space, no need for conscious thought. It was their world, the one she came to only in his arms, the cloud where all that mattered was sweet sensation and nothing could be wrong because it was right to yield to him. The only course was to be with him, to bask in the comfortable and yet wildly erotic, blood-racing, tantalizing security of his possessive presence.

  His lips came down harder on hers, moving slowly, sensuously. His hands came to her chin, tilting it to adjust her face to his languorous assault. Blair shivered as his tongue grazed along her teeth, and her lips parted to his, moist and warm, issuing unspoken surrender and invitation. She was barely aware next that she was standing, her arms curling around his neck with urgent need, her body arched to his with exquisite torment as the kiss became deep and driving, electrifying and consuming. Time indeed had no meaning; Blair heard nothing but the rustle of velvet, felt nothing but the rugged play of his muscles beneath her touch, knew no scent on the night air except that of crisp and clean masculine essence.

  “They must be out on the terrace.”

  The pleasant drawl of her father’s voice drew Blair slowly but surely back to the present time—and space. And back to the humiliating realization that he had done it to her again—seduced her against her common sense.

  Her hands fell from his shoulders and she jerked away. “Damn you, Taylor,” she hissed, aware that her father and George Merrill were stepping out onto the terrace. Her words came in a vehemently irate whisper. “Don’t do that again! I told you, I want nothing more to do with you! Go kill yourself and leave me in peace!”

  She was quaking, she knew, torn into pieces. Still, within the gamut of emotions that raged inside her, not the least of which was heartache for what could never really be, she fought a fierce battle for momentary composure and won.

  “Hi, Dad,” she waved cheerfully, shaking off the arm that Craig brought to her elbow, ignoring the seething anger in his eyes and moving quickly past him before she could hear his sharp reply. Blair rushed straight to Andrew Huntington and hooked her hand through his elbow. “Craig and I just came out for a little air, but you know, it’s getting chilly out here.”

  “Good.” Merrill laughed boomingly as Huntington viewed his daughter through narrowed eyes. “They’re about to light my cake—it was rude of them to find so many candles, huh, Andrew?—and I wanted you two there.”

  “Wonderful!” Blair enthused, a falsely bright smile in place. “Let’s go in.”

  “Yes, let’s,” Craig said sardonically from behind her. He was able to catch her arm and detain her before the group passed into the ballroom.

  “I’m not through with you yet,” he hissed quickly into her ear, drawing a new spasm of shivers from her.

  She unobtrusively wrenched away and hurried inside, sticking close to Merrill and her father. You are through with me! she thought, pain outweighing anger with the finality of what she must do. Because I won’t be taking any more chances of running into you again.

  It was a good resolve. A firm resolve. She felt as if she were amputating a part of her body, but she meant it.

  But it was also true that when Craig said he wasn’t through with her, he wasn’t through with her.

  Sixty-odd candles on Merrill’s cake had just been blown out when Blair once more felt Craig behind her. He gripped her elbow with a certain nonchalance that clearly indicated he assumed her his private property, but he didn’t address her. He spoke to her father. “Mr. Huntington, the chief wishes to meet with you privately after the festivities have died down.” His voice lowered although his tone remained casual. “The president has arrived, sir, and something crucial has come up. I’ll be more than happy to see Blair home for you.”

  “Oh. Fine,” Andrew agreed before Blair could get her mouth open. He smiled at Craig, unaware or not caring that Blair was clearly wishing she could tape her own father’s mouth shut at the moment. What was he doing to her? she wondered desperately. Throwing her straight to the lions? And then she understood. Of course, he was throwing her to this particular jungle cat. He believed that she was in love with him; he would do everything in his power to throw them together. He was her father; he would give her the world if he could.

&nbs
p; “Dad,” Blair said, trying to stand her ground without making a scene. “I’ll wait for you. I came with you, I don’t mind if I wander around a bit—”

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” her father said dismissively, “but that’s silly. You two go on ahead. Oh”—a little twinkle in his eyes made a fine mesh of the grooves surrounding them—“I won’t wait up for you.”

  “Dad—” Blair half-wailed, but he had moved away already; he didn’t understand. He thought her merely angry, and that she and Craig could talk things out. And of course she was angry. But anger wasn’t the problem. It was difficult to retain a hurt anger if that emotion was directed at someone loved. Loving encompassed so many things. Among them, forgiving—and she was already forgiving Craig. With a little bit of humor she could almost admit that Craig had been a clever manipulator and that she really couldn’t blame him for the stories he had woven under the circumstances.

  But she couldn’t afford to laugh, just as she couldn’t afford to love. Her father just didn’t understand the deep-rooted fear she lived with.

  “Even if he were obliging, Blair, I wouldn’t let you hide behind your father.”

  Startled from her thoughts by the very man who spawned them, Blair made a subtle attempt to wrest her elbow from his grip. He wasn’t letting go.

  “Taylor,” she enunciated with a low growl. “I can get a cab. I don’t want you to take me home—”

  “Fine,” he snapped back, “because I’m not taking you home.”

  Her elbow jerked; she was being propelled toward the ballroom doors.

  She could have done something. But her options were limited to making some type of scene, and she hated to be conspicuous or create scenes. And then again, there was the possibility that it would have gained her nothing anyway.

  She did nothing; she attempted nothing. She clamped her lips together and accepted his assistance into his silver-gray Porsche that the valet produced at the hotel entrance.

  All right, Taylor, she thought dispiritedly. We’ll talk tonight. We’ll have tonight. I’ll even admit anything that you want.

  But it can’t change the future.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BLAIR HAD ASSUMED HE would take her to his apartment, and she had also assumed that his apartment would be close to Capitol Hill. But as she sat stone-faced and silent beside him as he drove, her listless resignation gave rise to curiosity.

  He was heading for the Beltway, and once on the Beltway, he headed south. She watched uneasily as they circled D.C., well aware that they would shortly be reaching Virginia.

  She finally broke her silence. “Where are you taking me?” she demanded acidly. “I hope you know that it’s kidnapping if you take me over a state line against my will.”

  He gave her a swift, unappreciative glance. “We’re going to my home.”

  Blair dryly raised a brow. “I don’t believe you live this far out.”

  He shrugged. “I have a town house near Merrill. But it’s not my home.”

  They both fell silent again and Blair began to grow more uneasy as they passed the Alexandria exits. Just when she was about to protest in earnest, he pulled off the Interstate. They followed a dark and lonely road as seconds ticked by, then drew into a drive that led to an attractive, unpretentious, split-level ranch house that was lit as if awaiting their appearance.

  Blair tried to open her own door, but she couldn’t handle the unusual upward-swinging Porsche door. Craig came around to help her instantly, impatient with her efforts to avoid his courtesies.

  “You’re acting like a sulky kid, Blair,” he said caustically, helping her from the car despite her desire to avoid him.

  “Excuse me,” she drawled sarcastically. “I’ll try to act like a sulky adult.”

  He dropped her arm with an oath of annoyance and walked up a path bordered by a handsome rock garden. Twisting his key in the lock, he pushed the door open and turned back to her. “Mrs. Teile?”

  Blair swept by him into a large, airy living room, pleasantly paneled in white oak, a fireplace of natural granite offsetting the light tone of the wood. A modular sofa sat before the fire, an inviting fur rug covering the floor space between them. A stereo was to the left of the room, a small portable bar to the right.

  It was a masculine but comfortable room, and Blair was suddenly sure why he had brought her here. His town house, she was sure, would be cold and austere—lifeless.

  This was what he called home. She could tell by the rows of record albums filling the stereo cabinets that he was a music buff, by the bookshelves that filled the wall opposite the fire that he was an ardent reader. All the handsome knick-knacks that graced hardwood end tables and various shelves gave credence to his love of travel and other cultures, other places ….

  “Okay, Taylor,” she said briskly, aware that she was falling in love with the house that proclaimed the man, that she would love to comb through the books, through the albums, that she could be perfectly content curling into a corner of the immense couch with a book as snow fell and a fire blazed, that it was just such a place as she too would love to call home. “We’re here. Did you want to talk? Or did you just want to go to bed? If so, just say it. You don’t have to waste time with any clever schemes. I’ll go to bed with you.”

  “Stop it, Blair!” he hissed behind her, his hands rough and angry as he took her wrap. “That isn’t the way you talk and it isn’t the way you are. Sit down and get comfortable. Take your shoes off if you like. You’re not going anywhere for a while.”

  Blair stared at him a moment, then shrugged and kicked off her heels, never once losing a challenging eye contact with him. “Okay, Taylor, my shoes are off and I’m not going anywhere.”

  Aggravated annoyance hardened his craggy features. “Will you please quit calling me Taylor? And sit. You look like a caged lion.”

  “Princess, Tay—Craig,” she corrected herself obligingly, “not a lion.”

  “Will you sit, damn it!” he grated.

  Shrugging again with the casual indifference she had determined to wear as her shield against his onslaught, Blair sat, curling her feet beneath her on the huge sofa. She watched as Craig shed his jacket and opened his tie. He expertly stoked up a fire, holding a silence. Satisfied with his efforts at the fireplace, Craig rose, dusted off his hands absently, and walked over to the portable bar. “What would you like to drink?”

  “I don’t want a drink.”

  “I think you should have a drink. You tend to be a little more honest with your tongue loosened.”

  Blair sighed and shrugged once more. “Martini, with an olive.”

  A moment later he brought the drinks to the sofa, handed her one, and sat beside her, uncomfortably close. The angle in which he perched left his left hand resting on the sofa close enough to touch her neck. His knee brushed her thigh. “Want a cigarette?” he offered.

  “No, thanks. I quit, remember?” she said acidly.

  He raised a brow. “Well, I was good for your health if nothing else,” he muttered dryly. “All right, let’s get past the petty stuff. I’m sorry I deceived you, although it was necessary to a certain point. I never intended that you should feel I was making a fool of you. I knew you would be furious, but I was scared myself. I wanted you, Blair, and for that brief span of time, I knew I had you. I probably would have said anything to feel you in my arms. Can you understand that? Maybe not,” he answered himself a little bitterly. “I might not have understood myself three months ago. But I am in love with you, Blair, and I’ve discovered myself capable of all sorts of things because I love you.”

  He had stopped speaking, and Blair found herself helplessly staring at him. Her chemistry seemed to have come alive within her body; she was shaky, as if composed of molten liquid. He did love her; he really did love her. She had longed to believe it, and yet feared it. It would have been so much easier if she had never seen him.

  He was waiting; she was supposed to say something, but if she opened her mouth, he would
know that he had become her world, and then he would persist, and it would be terrible, because he wasn’t the type of man you could ever hope to change. And anyway, why would you try to change what you loved? And could you still be loved in return if you tied a noose around a man’s neck? If you took his lifelong work and forced him to make a choice? Surely it would all be a disaster. But if he persisted with his life, she wouldn’t be able to handle it, she would die a little every time he left; she would become a shrew, a witch, a basket case.

  “I think I will take a cigarette,” she said nervously.

  He shook his head, commenting briefly. “Not if you’ve really managed to quit. And a cigarette isn’t going to help you. You have to face this sooner or later. I love you, Blair, and I believe that you love me. I want to hear you talk, I want to know if you forgive me, I want to hear you say that you love me.”

  “I forgive you; I love you,” she said woodenly, well aware that she was about to cry. It had been easier to love a criminal, a criminal could reform, could atone, and live. Sweet Jesus, all she wanted him to do was live!

  His golden lion gaze never left her. She was convinced more than ever that there was something extra to his vision, that he really had the power to sear through to the soul, rob the heart with his eyes. His brow began to furrow now; his fingers tensed against his glass and the rear of the sofa. Her tone had perplexed him.

  “When are you leaving again?” she asked bluntly so that he could no longer be perplexed.

  The question was a bull’s-eye. His jaw tightened, making the cast of his chin hard and impenetrable. He blinked before answering. “Tomorrow.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s it?” He suddenly sounded furious. “Just ‘oh?’”

  “What did you expect me to say?” Blair snapped back. “All right, please don’t go!”

  “I have to—”

  “So what did you bring it up for?” Blair demanded. “I knew nothing I had to say would matter, so why bother? You have to go, go. But Christ, Craig, don’t ask me to wait for the pieces to be flown back in a box. I can’t, I just can’t, I can’t!”