Tempestuous Eden by Heather Graham

—whatever that was. He turned the flame of his kerosene burner very low and began to shed his clothing meticulously, placing his boots right to left beneath the cot on the hard earth floor, rolling his socks, neatly folding his shirt, jeans, and briefs.
    Everything was in easy reach, but nothing was indispensable. In his line you never knew when you were leaving.
    Naked, he stretched his length onto the cot and punched his pillow into a headrest. He crooked an elbow against the canvas wall and placed one hand behind his head; with the other he lit a cigarette from the packing case beside the cot that served as a makeshift dresser.
    Inhaling slowly, he stared unseeing up at the angled, army surplus green that was his roof. This whole thing could be classified only as stupid, he thought, bitterness mingled with regret. He had expected a princess, a spoiled little girl.
    He had found a woman. Both feet firmly on the ground, intelligent, possessed of humor, character, wit, and a soundly reasoning mind. For the life of him, he couldn’t begin to understand why the old man refused to discuss the situation with her. Classified, he reminded himself wryly.
    Craig sighed deeply with a long exhalation of smoke. He was going to try one more time: In three hours he was due to send a communication, and an idea had taken formation in his mind. If those damn eggheads would only listen. But it was the old man, and even higher echelon personnel, who would make the decisions. And now that he knew what Huntington had at stake, he couldn’t really blame him. Too bad he couldn’t communicate his own seething emotions through Morse code. Don’t worry, sir. There’s no way in heaven or hell I’d let anything happen to her. Sounds a little crazy, I know. I’ve only been around seventeen days, but I think I’ve fallen in love with your daughter. I say think, of course, because I’ve never really had time to find out just what love is. But I’ve never met such a woman, sir. She makes me shake, sir. Me, sir — can you imagine me shaking?
    The guys in Special Services would love relaying that one, he thought with a brief and dry laugh.
    But there was something about Blair. She made him think about a home he could come to every night, sipping wine and discussing their days before a fire, waking up together, seeing her beautiful, bright face each morning, creating a family, a haven.
    “Your machine is faulty,” he told the powers that be in an unheard whisper through the night air. “Wrong man for the assignment.”
    He had thought that all along, at first with annoyance, now with something akin to pain. This woman whom he was falling in love with was going to hate him when she discovered what was going on. And it hurt like hell.
    If he could only tell her. But what if the old man were right? Too much was riding high. The welfare of too many people.
    Especially hers. Better to have her hate him and know that she was safe …
    When she first entered the tent he thought he was hallucinating, that he had been thinking about her so much she had appeared in his mind’s eye.
    She stood hesitantly just inside the tent flap, her slender form straight, very proud. In the glow of the kerosene flame her hair was like a rich, dark wildfire in the night, framing the lovely contours of her face. Her eyes, mercurial green emeralds, swept his form briefly, registering his naked state, but unblinking. Her lips were slightly parted, still moist from his hungry kiss.
    Blair stood motionless, watching him from the doorway. She saw little reaction. His eyes went blank for a second, his cigarette froze in midair, the smoke caught in his lungs, but then he was looking at her with a calm, unspoken query, his yellow eyes alert, the smoke released normally. He made no attempt to cover his body, so bronzed and tautly strong and perfect against the stark white of the bleached sheets, and so there was one involuntary reaction to her presence that she couldn’t help