White Hot Holidays 13: Adam & Evil Read online

  Samuel wasn’t the first hopeful to catch her father’s eye, though admittedly he was turning out to be the hardest to shake loose. What neither man seemed capable of fathoming was that the year was 2006, not 1506. She didn’t want an arranged, polite marriage, where the husband ruled supreme and the wife smiled and hosted dumb tea parties. She wanted passion and emotions, a meeting and merging of the soul and mind—the very things that Samuel, so like her father, could never give.

  Samuel Adam was powerful in the publishing world, a rising star that would never dim. He made deals that affected many lives and raked in money using his Midas touch. He was handsome and dominant, controlled and together. He was everything a woman should want in a husband, but also all the things Julia knew from the experience of growing up with a man so much like him, didn’t really make for a happy marriage.

  Her mother had died alone and embittered. It was no way for a woman to leave this world.

  Deep down inside, there was an untypical part of her that still held on to the elusive dream of finding happiness with a man, but over the years that part had shrunk to a point of nonexistence. Or it had, anyway, until death came knocking.

  Here in the middle of the ocean, with predators just a bite away from killing her, life flashed before Julia’s eyes and smacked her upside the head with its ironies. She needed to survive. She still had a lot of things left to do. Samuel wasn’t the one to do them with, but he deserved to live too.

  Just when the hope of survival all but deserted her, just when she thought it was time to succumb to the fatigue, a small spot of…something…snagged her peripheral vision. Was it? Could it be?

  “Oh my God,” Julia breathed out.

  “What?” Samuel asked. His tone was urgent. “Are you all right? Have you been bitten?”

  She blinked. His voice sounded almost…well, human. Just a small hint of emotion, yet detectable nevertheless. Perhaps that happened to robots in moments of extreme duress.

  “No,” Julia assured him. “I’m fine.” A smile enveloped her full lips as she jerked her head to the right, indicating what lurked just a few miles away. “We’ve found land.”

  * * * * *

  Everything in Samuel Ian Adam’s life was perfectly ordered and under his firm control. It’s the way it had always been, it’s the way he had envisioned it always being. When he told someone to jump, they asked him how high. When he issued a command, it was obeyed immediately and without question. When it came to matters of business and winning, not even his boss, William Cameron III, thought to gainsay him.

  Sam preferred the status quo. He relished order and logic. He thrived on being the smartest, the calmest, the most methodical and calculating.

  And then she came along.

  When his business mentor had asked him to fly down to Costa Rica and collect his only child for the holidays, Sam immediately recognized that the task was no ordinary quest. William’s sole heir was unmarried, Sam was still a bachelor. It was, logically speaking, a good marriage match. Sam would run Cameron Publishing, William would retire, and Julia would be well taken care of. Completely sound reasoning.

  Nothing about Julia Cameron was sound, let alone reasonable.

  Just getting past the Costa Rican estate’s butler had been a lesson in restraint. When Sam had announced to Jorge that he’d been sent to collect Julia by William, the servant had feigned no working knowledge of the English language. Sam had proceeded to trump that ace by requesting Julia’s presence en espanol. All that had earned him was the door getting slammed in his face.

  Sam’s teeth gritted from the insult, but he hadn’t given up. He knocked on the double doors again. And again, and again, and again.

  From the moment the irritating female with the bouncy red curls had thrust open the doors and clapped blue eyes on him, Sam had understood this task would be no easy feat. He should have received the message at some point during the Jorge incident, but nothing could have prepared him for one Dr. Julia Elise Cameron.

  A half-empty bottle of Chianti in one hand, a dying plant in the other, and an expression on her face that said somehow in her strange world those two things went together, she calmly asked him, “Who the fuck are you and why are you breathing on my doorstep?”

  She was crass and rude, obnoxious and sarcastic. She cared more about her plants than people and thought nothing of dismissing him as an inconsequential weed that needed ripped from her garden. She was everything he didn’t want in a wife. Sam had never been angrier.

  Or more intrigued.

  Given Julia’s general surly temperament, his arousal toward the tiny woman was baffling. She might not have been short exactly, but when standing next to his own six feet and three inches, she barely made it up to his chin.

  It wasn’t Julia’s looks that caused him to covet her, though she was certainly beautiful in an exotic sort of way. She had bright blue eyes that spoke of an angelic side she was far from possessing, red hair as fiery and vibrant as her take-no-prisoners attitude, skin as creamy and translucent as a doll’s, and a body with bumps and curves in all the right places.

  And yet it wasn’t her level of attractiveness that was pushing his buttons and getting under his skin. It wasn’t her money or even the key she wielded to Cameron Publishing. Sam almost wished it was one of those things. It would be easier to admit to. Much easier than acknowledging it was the she-beast’s I-am-independent-woman-hear-me-roar demeanor that had his cock so hard.

  He was swimming in a pool of sharks and still had a hard-on. He wished that particular part of his anatomy would roll over and play dead because he wasn’t in the mood to have it bitten off. No, Julia would enjoy his newly emasculated state with a bit too much relish. He wouldn’t let her get away from being beneath him in a bed that easily.

  Rigidly and devoutly old-fashioned, Sam long aspired to marrying the twenty-first-century version of June Cleaver. June had made for the perfect wife. Ward and the kids had always been her uppermost concern. Supper was prepared and ready when her man came home from a long working day. She was docile and submissive, smiling and cordial—everything a wife should be.

  Everything Julia wasn’t.

  “I can’t believe it!” Julia announced, her excitement uncontrollable. Sam blinked, his thoughts clearing. “Land, ho! Land, ho! Land, ho!” she rejoiced.

  Her girlish giggles forced him to swallow a bit excessively. She was more than beautiful when she laughed so exuberantly. She was downright gorgeous.

  There went his damn cock again. He frowned, not at all happy with his body’s reaction to a woman who could give prickly lessons to a cactus. Another two miles of swimming and at least he wouldn’t have to worry about his dick becoming a shark banquet.

  “I see it,” Sam confirmed. “Hopefully it’s inhabited.”

  Another two miles and they’d reach land. After that they’d search for food and civilization.

  And after that he’d fuck Dr. Julia Elise Cameron out of his system…literally.

  Chapter Three

  “I don’t believe this!” Julia wailed, enraged hands flying every which way. “We swam for days. We defied all the odds—not to mention multiple flesh-eating predators—only to meet with long, hideously torturous deaths via starvation and dehydration!”

  Sam sighed. A bit dramatic, perhaps, yet to the point.

  “Look at this place! It’s barren! Completely and utterly dried up!”

  He couldn’t deny her words. Somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean they might be, yet they had managed to find refuge on the one small dot of an island lacking a lush, tropical landscape. The place resembled the Sahara more than a jungle.

  “Don’t you have anything to say, beer-boy?” Julia gritted out. Her nostrils flared as she stalked toward him, soaked red hair flinging madly. She put her arms out in front of her and walked like Frankenstein’s monster—or a robot, he wasn’t certain which. “Does death compute?” she asked in a computerized monotone. “Does death compute?”

&nbs
p; Despite the horrible circumstance they were currently in, or the fact that William Cameron III’s daughter was a modern-day Nellie à la Little House on the Prairie, Sam found her imitation of him slightly amusing. Enough so that he had to snort at her.

  “Yes,” he replied in the same droid monotone. “It does compute.”

  Julia’s eyes rounded. Her mouth went agape. And then she did something he wished she hadn’t—she threw her head back and laughed.

  He grunted. When she was happy, she looked far too beautiful for his peace of mind.

  After the plane went down and swimming for their lives became grim necessity, Julia had been forced to shed all her clothing, except for the shirt and transparent g-string she was wearing. Standing on dry land, the wet, white cotton plastered against her, nothing was left to Sam’s virile imagination. Her large breasts were capped off with big, stiff nipples, and her red pussy hair had been trimmed into a small, barely there, triangle.

  Sam coughed into his hand and glanced away. He looked to the sky and mentally counted to ten, trying to dampen his quickly arousing spirits.

  “Touché,” Julia chuckled. “So one of my father’s clones possesses something resembling a sense of humor. Who’d a thunk it?” She shook her head and grinned. “I certainly didn’t think so when he telephoned to say you were coming to San Jose to, and I quote, ‘retrieve’ me.”

  Sam’s eyebrows rose as she gave him her back. Julia was busy visually scanning the horizon, but he was preoccupied with what she’d just said. And with the full, round, slightly sunburned bottom that now faced him. Jesus H. Christ.

  He shook his head to clear it. In a nutshell, Julia had known he was coming for her, which explained her nasty behavior at the front doors to the estate. Sam also got the feeling that he wasn’t the first suitor William had sent down to Costa Rica—a fact that made him feel a jealousy he didn’t have the right to.

  Julia’s head cocked to the left. Her nose began to twitch as it made sniff-sniff sounds. Sam frowned, uncertain what to make of such bizarre, primitive behavior.

  “I smell Saccharum Officinarum,” Julia announced.

  She sniffed again, letting her nose lead her off to the left toward hilly terrain. She resembled a hound dog ferreting out prey. Frustrated, and beginning to wonder if Julia’d been raised by a pack of wolves with outrageously delicious bodies, Sam ran an agitated hand through his damp hair and followed.

  “Saccharum Officinarum?” he bellowed. “What the hell is that? Where are you going?”

  Julia stopped in her tracks. She hesitated, then whirled around and looked at him dumbly. “Did you just raise your voice to me?”

  Sam’s nostrils flared. “Yes. I did,” he bit out, his temper boiling just below the surface. Everything was getting to him—she was getting to him. Costa Rica. Jorge. The plane crash. Swimming with hungry sharks. Being stranded on a deserted island with Julia the she-wolf. Her luscious ass, ripe nipples, and the teasing shadow of pussy hair he could faintly make out…

  The woman could conjure up pieces of his personality he’d thought never to unleash on another. “You were sniffing the air and you’re insane!” he yelled. “Your father is insane! Everybody with the last name of Cameron is, in fact, insane! And what the hell is Saccharum Officinarum?”

  Her lips hitched up into a half-smile. She studied him as one would a non-representational piece of art—not certain what she was looking at, but somewhat intrigued by it. He could only grunt at her. The woman was odd.

  “Saccharum Officinarum is the scientific name for sugar cane,” Julia said with uncharacteristic patience. “I can smell it and I’m going to find it so we don’t starve to death. Come on, Samuel.”

  The dominant alpha male in Sam wanted to provide for Julia, not the other way around. Yet surprisingly, and contrary to his Leave It to Beaver-ingrained belief system, he found himself impressed by and proud of the sexy botanist.

  He clamped a hand to his forehead. Surely he had taken a fever. She was burrowed under his skin further than a giant, blood-sucking tick. Next she would try to possess his soul; she would dance around a campfire as she ripped it out with forceps in hand and a sinister smile on her face.

  She was evil. Wicked, vile and Satan-spawned.

  He needed to fuck her so bad his balls had gone blue.

  “Fine,” Sam growled, scowling at her. “Let’s go find it.”

  His muscles tensed as he prepared to hunt. He would make it out of the jungle with his mind still intact. And, come hell or high water—most likely hell—Julia would become his June. If he was honest with himself, he’d considered her to be his before he’d even set off for Costa Rica to acquire her. Sam had no intention of devolving into one of those tree-hugging, soft, beta types in the name of peace… Julia would have to do that. Oh he’d be considerate, even give in to her wants when he felt it logically appropriate, but that was where the line in the sand would be drawn.

  She might not realize he’d staked a claim on her yet, but she would soon enough.

  “By the way,” he told her, his gaze continually straying back down to what he wanted to brand, “Call me Sam.”

  * * * * *

  The part of the island they’d swum up to was a barren no-man’s-land, but just over the hill lay paradise. A luscious, tropical landscape bursting with banana trees, sugar cane, coconuts and assorted vegetation and wildlife beckoned with their untainted scents and sounds. Julia breathed deeply. The life inherent to the jungle habitat was intoxicating.

  “God, this is beautiful,” she whispered aloud, not really talking to anyone. “This is the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Leafy, green plant life. Birds painted from vibrant colors. The sounds of monkeys screeching, calling out to each other in an intricate language their kind understood.

  Julia sensed Samuel—Sam—staring at her so she blinked and turned away. She wasn’t certain what to make of the man and therefore didn’t know how to behave around him. Usually it was a simple matter of being as bitchy as humanly possible until the would-be suitor scurried off. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, ditching Sam wasn’t even a remote possibility. She hadn’t been able to shed him even before the plane went down. Now?

  “I better make us a shelter,” Sam announced, inclining his head westward. “A thunderstorm is imminent, maybe just a few hours off.”

  Julia followed his line of vision. Indeed, he was correct. Black clouds had coalesced over the ocean, barely audible cracks of thunder heard in the remote distance. A storm was coming—and it looked like a bad one.

  “I’ll help you,” Julia insisted.

  “It would be far more helpful,” Sam said firmly, “if you gathered us together a few days’ worth of food instead. We don’t know how long the storm will last. It could be days.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you trying to make a bitch out of me?”

  “A what?”

  “A bitch.” She waved a hand. “You know, one of those female types who cook, clean, and listen to every word a man says as though it’s the gospel truth.” Her chin notched up. “I don’t cook, I don’t clean, you don’t know jackshit, and I am perfectly capable of building a shelter.”

  His leopard eyes flared, then raked over her body. She shivered despite her efforts not to be affected by him. He kept staring at her intimate places in a way that made her think he coveted them. Men like him typically preferred sticks with boob implants, not voluptuously built women.

  “Eventually I will make a ‘bitch’ out of you, as you so eloquently put it,” Sam told her in his usual calm tone.

  She gasped.

  “But not right now. At this moment we need two things—food and shelter. You are the botanist. It only makes sense for you to collect the food, as I don’t recognize anything around here other than the bananas and coconuts.”

  Julia hated to admit it, but the man had a point.

  “I do, however,” Sam continued, “recognize the bamboo and the fact I have a knife to cut it do
wn with.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “How did you get that past security at the airport anyway?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t. Another passenger did. I found it when we were in the water scavenging for food and kept it just in case this situation arose.”

  Very resourceful. There went that damn sense of admiration toward him again. Even amidst a crisis, Sam had been thinking ahead.

  “Oh all right, damn it,” Julia relented. “I’ll give in and be the bitch this time,” she grumbled. She stomped off deeper into the jungle. “But next time it’s your turn, Mr. Adam.”

  Chapter Four

  They located a cave, scared out the local wildlife, and claimed it for their own use. Sam hadn’t finished tying the last knot on the makeshift bamboo door when the storm erupted, bringing a torrential downpour with it. He quickly built a small fire inside the tiny alcove, but not enough to warm her chilled bones. Cold and shivering, her shirt and panties still drenched, Julia searched for something—anything—that could double as dry clothing.

  She sighed, defeated. Unless Sam knew how to make bamboo dresses, she was screwed.

  “Take your clothes off,” a husky voice said from behind her, “Before you catch a cold.”

  Julia’s blue eyes widened. Her heart pounded against her breasts. “I-I’ll be all right,” she stammered out, refusing to face him until her breathing returned to normal. “Just give me a moment.”

  Silence ensued as her teeth chattered. She could feel Sam’s stare boring into her back, flicking over her ass cheeks.

  “If you can’t take care of yourself properly, Dr. Cameron,” Sam told her, “then I’ll be forced to take matters into my own hands.”

  She whirled around to face him. Sweet lord, he was staring her down like he was a leopard and she was his lunch. His dark hair was still damp, the color in strict contrast to the jade of his predator’s eyes. His tanned body was covered in only the boxing shorts he’d had on under his jeans when the plane went down, his erection stiff and poking against the material.