The cove she was hiding in, and that he was heading toward, was strewn with boulders.
The swimmer moved with lazy, rhythmic grace, right up to one of the larger rocks. He placed two large hands on the rock and pulled himself out of the water in one strong, seamless motion.
Sadie blinked, then tore her eye away from the viewfinder. She no longer needed the vivid clarity of the telephoto lens to see that the man was naked.
She looked through her camera again and adjusted the focus. He was as naked as the day he was born. He sat on the boulder, brushing the hair from his face and wringing it out in a ponytail at his back.
Well, heck. The guy’s shoulder-length, dark blond hair was almost as long as hers. Sadie pushed the zoom on her lens closer, aiming it at the top half of the man. She almost dropped the camera when he came into focus. He was huge, and it wasn’t an illusion of the lens, either. His shoulders filled the viewfinder, and when he lifted both hands to push the water away from his forehead again, his chest expanded to Herculean proportions.
Sadie noticed then that the guy wasn’t even winded from his swim. His broad and powerfully muscled chest, covered with a luxurious mat of wet, dark hair, rose and fell with the steady rhythm of someone who had merely walked up a short flight of stairs.
Who was this demigod of the woods?
Sadie zoomed the lens of her camera even closer, on his face. She didn’t recognize him from town. She’d been back in the Pine Creek area for only a few months now and had gone into town only six or seven times for supplies since returning, but she would have remembered such a ruggedly handsome face on a man his size. She definitely would have remembered such startling green eyes framed by such a drop-dead gorgeous face.
His jaw, darkened with a couple of days’ growth of a reddish-blond beard, was square, stern, and stubborn-looking. His neck was thick, with a leather cord around it that dangled an odd-shaped ball of some sort over his chest.
Sadie zoomed the lens out again until his entire body filled her viewfinder. His stomach was flat and contoured with muscle. He had long, powerful-looking thighs, bulging calves, and even his feet dangling in and out of the water looked strong.
The man could have been made from solid granite.
And he was turned away just enough to keep his modesty intact. Too bad. It wasn’t every day she was treated to such an exhibit of pure, unadulterated maleness. And despite her own sense of shame for being a blatant voyeur, Sadie wished he would turn just a bit more toward her. She was curious, dammit, and made no apology for it.
She liked men. Especially big ones, like this guy. Sadie was six-foot-one in her stocking feet, and she usually spent most of her time talking to the receding hairlines of the men she knew. Since she had hit puberty and shot up like a weed, Sadie had wished she were short. Like the heroines in the romance novels she loved to read, she wanted to be spunky, beautiful, and petite. And she was tired of having only one of those traits.
About all Sadie could say for herself was that she did possess a healthy dose of spunk.
She may have come close to beauty once, but a deadly house fire eight years ago had ended that promise. And no matter how much she had willed it, she hadn’t stopped growing until her twenty-third birthday. She was taller than most men she met, and every bit of her height was in the overlong inseam of her jeans.
She’d bet her boots that the guy on the rock had at least a thirty-six inseam and that he wore a triple-extra-large shirt he had to buy from the tall rack.
The vision in her viewfinder suddenly began to fade, and Sadie had a moment’s regret that it had all been a dream.
Until she realized that the viewfinder had fogged up.
Well, she did feel unusually warm. And she was breathing a bit harder than normal.
Wow. Either she was having a guilt attack for being a peeping tom, or she was experiencing a fine little case of lust.
Sadie didn’t care which it was, she wasn’t stopping. She used the back of her gloved right hand to wipe the viewfinder dry before she looked through it again.
The man was now laid out on the boulder, his arms folded under his head and his eyes closed to the sun as he basked in its warmth like an overfed bear.
Sadie suddenly remembered that she was looking through the lens of a camera. If this guy was willing to parade around the forest naked, why should she feel guilty about a couple of pictures? She just wondered where in her journal of fauna she should place his photo.
Probably at the top of the food chain.
Feeling pretty sure that the man had fallen asleep, Sadie snapped the shutter on her camera and quickly advanced the film. She zoomed in the lens and snapped again.
But just as she advanced the film for another picture, the man leaped to his feet in a blur of motion. And suddenly he was looking directly at the bushes where she hid.
Dammit. He couldn’t have heard that. Animals couldn’t hear the damn thing, and their lives depended on their ears.
Sadie sucked in her breath and held it; she wasn’t sure if she was doing so from fright or because she now had a full frontal view of the man.
She snapped the shutter down one last time and scurried backward to free herself from the bush. She foolishly stood up, then immediately realized her mistake when she found herself face-to-face with the giant, with only a hundred yards of water between them.
She couldn’t move. He was magnificent, standing there like a demigod, his penetrating green stare rooting her feet into place.
“Come on, Quill,” she whispered, her gaze still locked with his. “Move while you still have the advantage.”
He must have heard that, too, because he went into action before she did. He dove into the water and began swimming toward her.
Sadie snatched up her backpack and headed into the forest. She broke into a run as soon as she hit the overgrown trail and set a fast, steady pace toward home.
She grinned as the forest blurred past.
The swimmer didn’t stand a chance of catching her. He had to get to shore first and then find the trail as well as the direction she had taken. Sadie’s long legs ate up the ground with effortless ease, and she actually laughed out loud at the rush of adrenaline pumping through her veins.
This was her strength; there were very few people she couldn’t outrun. Especially a barefooted streaker who looked as if he outweighed her by a good sixty pounds. It took a lot of energy to move that much weight through the winding trail, ducking and darting around branches and over fallen logs.
Yes, her long legs would give her the edge this time, rescuing her from the folly of trespassing on a stranger’s right to privacy.
Sadie slowed down after a while, but she didn’t quite have the courage to stop yet. Only a maniac would have followed her, but then only a crazy person would be swimming naked in a cold-water lake.
So Sadie kept running, easing her pace to a jog.
Until she heard the branch snap behind her.
She looked over her shoulder and would have screamed if she could have. The man from the lake was fifty feet behind her. Sadie turned back to watch where she was going, the adrenaline spiking back into her bloodstream.
There was nothing like seeing a fully naked, wild-haired, wild-eyed madman on her heels to make a girl wish she had stayed in bed that morning. Sadie ran as if the devil himself were chasing her. She could actually hear the pounding of his feet behind her now, could practically feel his breath on the back of her neck.
She grabbed a small cedar tree to pivot around a corner, and that was when he caught her, hitting her broadside in a full body tackle. Sadie wanted to scream then, too, but he knocked what little air she had left out of her body. They rolled several times, and Sadie swung her camera at his head. He grunted in surprise at the blow and grabbed her flailing arms as they continued to roll.