Shadowed Paradise (22 page)

Now that she was being given the opportunity
to vent, Diane found it harder than she’d imagined. She, the golden
girl whose words rode trippingly off her tongue, was suddenly
having difficultly revealing the depth of her humiliation.

When Diane remained fascinated by the olive
in her drink, Jordan shook his head in mock disbelief. “You’re not
still obsessing on Brad Blue? Give it up. The man’s gone. There’s a
line a mile long waiting to take his place. In fact . . .” A
satisfied smile lit Jordan’s handsome features as an idea struck
him. “In fact, you might try for Garrett. He’s the one with the
megabucks, darling, not to mention a rising political career. Mrs.
Governor Whitlaw, how does that appeal?”

Jordan might have saved his breath. Diane
never heard him. “He sent back my gifts, the bastard. Every one.
They were delivered by courier this morning.”

Jordan leaned forward, eyes avid with
curiosity. “So tell me, darling, just what did you send Mr. Macho
of Calusa County?”

Slowly, ever so slowly, Diane raised her
head, a lock of shining blond hair falling over her forehead to
dangle enticingly in front of one eye. “Would you care to see
them?” she inquired huskily. “I’m afraid they’re scattered all over
the condo. Just where I threw them this morning. Want to take a
look?”

“
Don’t start with me, girl,” Jordan
warned with lazy indifference. “I’m immune, remember?” Which was
not quite true, but it was the image he took great care to project.
“I’m willing to listen to your woes, not become one of
them.”

“
God, Jordan, you’re such a shit!”
Diane exploded. “I can never tell what you’re really thinking, and
that pisses me off. It really does.” She glared at him over the rim
of her glass.

Lovell leaned forward, eyes alight with
salacious amusement. “Diane, my dear, do tell. What creative little
tokens of affection did you send Little Boy Blue?”

Diane’s spirits began to pick up. A game, a
dash of prurient nonsense was just what she needed. And maybe just
what Mr. Blasé Lovell needed too. A challenge, that’s what the man
was. A 24-carat tantalizing dare. Perhaps he wasn’t a lost cause,
after all. Tempting Jordan Lovell into bed could be the ultimate
sexual achievement. Proof she was still as good as she thought she
was.

Diane pushed aside her empty glass and leaned
across the small table until her forehead was only inches from his.
“Well,” she purred, letting her eyes roam from his perfectly
groomed silver-frosted brown hair, down his patrician forehead and
Roman nose to the inviting curve of his well-shaped lips, “the
first thing I sent was a bottle of Halston’s Catalyst. I thought
the sentiment appropriate.”

“
Appropriate maybe, but it seems to
have backfired,” Jordan replied unfeelingly. “The only reaction you
got was Brad moving in the opposite direction. Maybe you should
have tried one called Lust.”

Diane swore feelingly. “And then,” she
continued grimly, “I sent him a set of those fruit-flavored body
gels. You know . . . the kind you’re supposed to lick off.” She
projected her best come-hither smile across the scant inches
separating them only to find Jordan’s face as carefully blank and
unresponsive as ever.

“
Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried
it,” she murmured, repressing her annoyance. Mucho bragging rights
to the female who broke through Jordan’s highly polished veneer of
indifference. With the full power of her professional charisma,
Diane smiled directly into his eyes. “My offer’s still open,” she
purred.

Jordan smiled right back, his deep reserve
detectable only in the depths of his blue-gray eyes. “Tempt me,
darling. Who knows? The night is young.”

The pace of the game was increasing, Diane in
hot pursuit of her quarry. “You might like the beachwear,” she
suggested with a sultry quirk of her lips. “A shiny black penis
sheath guaranteed to get you arrested almost anywhere but the south
of France.”

Jordan grinned. “Tell me more,” he urged
softly. Appreciatively. Even as he damned her for getting a
reaction out of him. He was getting hard, and Jordan Lovell didn’t
let anyone have that power over him.

Diane’s amber eyes flashed. She was suddenly
more intrigued by her game with Lovell than by her rage with Brad
Blue. “What sent Brad over the edge,” she confided, “was the
handcuffs. Black leather with studs and a nice long chain. God, I
wish I’d seen his face when he opened it. They must have arrived
yesterday because the courier brought everything back this
morning.”

“
Were they for you? Or for
him?”

“
For me,” Diane admitted. “I thought he
might be intrigued by the opportunity to punish me for being
naughty.” Abruptly, she sat up, tossed back her hair. “He’s no
saint, you know. That man must have been everywhere and done
everything there is to do. What he sees in Mrs. Milk Toast, I can’t
imagine.”

“
Maybe you should have planned to use
the cuffs on him,” Jordan suggested. “And invited me to
watch.

“
Is that what you are?” Diane hissed
incredulously. “A voyeur? God, that’s sick!” And such a
waste.

“
No, darling, not really. But Blue’s so
overpoweringly macho I can’t help but savor the idea of seeing him
helpless.”

Their waiter, recognizing his customers’ body
language, hastened over to take their order for dinner. They had
finished their baked stuffed shrimp and were sipping Jägermeister
when Jordan said, “I don’t like many people, Diane, but I must
confess you fascinate me. You’re bright and feisty and know what
you want. And go after it with no holds barred. Maybe you want to
see if you can tempt me into bed to soothe your wounded ego, but
mostly you asked me here because I’m like a eunuch. Someone safe
you can talk to, someone you can bitch to and I’ll only admire your
style. So, dear girl, I’m going to give you a bit of advice.”

Diane opened her mouth to tell him what he
could do with his advice . . . and promptly shut it. If she’d
wanted to bitch to a silent partner, she could have vented to her
condo walls, as she had when she’d shattered Catalyst against a
wall mirror, leaving her living room covered with shards of silver
and glass and reeking of men’s cologne. She had stormed out without
cleaning up the mess and was now faced with returning to the almost
unlivable consequences of her temper tantrum.

“
You have to decide just how much Blue
means to you,” Jordan was saying. “Is it your vanity that’s hurt?
Or your heart? Are you simply angry, or do you actually want to
spend your life with the man? From what I’ve heard about Claire
Langdon, I’d say the Blue is ready to settle down, get married,
change diapers, the whole nine yards. Can you compete with that? Do
you
want
to compete with
that?”

Around them the polite chatter of the other
diners faded away. Beyond the bank of windows beside them, the
rolling green of the golf course had faded into deepening shadows
as the last rays of the summer sun dropped over the horizon. Diane
sat with her fingers clutching the small glass of Jäger, stunned by
the simplicity of Jordan’s assessment of her relationship with Brad
Blue. She’d been so hurt and angry she hadn’t thought about it at
all. She had simply reacted without analyzing why. No man left
Diane Lake . . . but did she actually want to marry him? No way.
She had a career to carve out. Chicago, San Francisco, L.A., New
York to conquer. Big cities, big time. And yet . . .

“
That wasn’t nice,” Diane muttered
sullenly. “I don’t want to think about it.”

“
I’m never nice, dear girl. That’s why
you like me.”

“
Oh, shit!” Diane tossed off her drink
in one long gulp.

Jordan immediately signaled for a refill. “I
think,” he offered, “that you should give it a rest for a while,
see what happens. While you give some serious thought to whether
you really want all the baggage that comes with him.”

“
I’ll think about it,” Diane conceded.
The protrusion of her lower lip in anyone else would have been
called a pout. On Diane Lake the look simply added to the seething
sexuality she projected in an aura around her.

They lingered a half hour dissecting mutual
acquaintances, then left the club, making their goodbyes in the
parking lot, each entering separate cars to return home alone.
Jordan Lovell III to a home in which no woman ever set foot. Diane
Lake to a high-rise condominium saturated with a scent intended for
Great Beginnings rather than Shattered Endings.

The blue pickup barreled down the straight
two-lane road as if Brad didn’t plan to stop ‘til they rocketed
into Lake Okeechobee eighty miles due east. Claire gritted her
teeth, knuckles white as she gripped her shoulder harness with both
hands. This was worse, far worse, than the night Brad had skimmed
the T-Bird through Golden Beach on their way to The Pelican for
supper. That Brad drove with the casual confidence of a
professional race car driver, spiced with the cool élan of the male
of the species attempting to impress a female, did little to
alleviate her terror. Tonight’s Brad Blue was dark and dangerous,
taking his mysteriously fed fury out on his truck, on Claire’s raw
nerves, on the drivers unlucky enough to be in his way.

When Brad boosted Claire into the pickup and
slammed the door behind her, he’d growled, “I have several thousand
words to say to you, but I’m going to feed you first.” He rammed
the gears into first. Tires spun against the shells in the
driveway, crunched, then leaped for the overhung tunnel of Virginia
Bentley’s private drive. As he shifted just as viciously into
second, he added, ominously, “No sense in curdling perfectly good
food.”

The glitter in his eyes, the grim line
of his mouth added to the barely leashed energy that filled the
cab, leaving Claire stifled, breathless. Verging on fright. He
couldn’t really be this angry because she had been putting him off.
Could he? It hadn’t even been a week since she had cooperated so
fully, so willingly, so—
dammit!
—aggressively in that memorable evening at
Palm Court. Just because she hadn’t jumped back in the sack the
very next night, or any of the five nights since, couldn’t have
gotten him this steamed. Surely?

Claire gasped as Brad floored the pickup,
squeaking past a horse trailer with only a few yards to spare
between themselves and an oncoming minivan. The van’s raucous horn
pierced the heavy humidity of the early evening air. She’d lost her
appetite several miles back, but she couldn’t help wondering why
they were jetting east into nowhere when all the restaurants were
on the Tamiami Trail or the gulf.

Claire swallowed her question as Brad passed
two more cars in the face of oncoming traffic. Even if they lived
through the next few minutes, there was nothing in this direction
but the Calusa River.

After a token pause at a stop sign, the
pickup shot across the last outpost of civilization, the entrance
ramp to the Interstate, and kept on going, leaving all semblance of
pavement, and the civilized world, behind. “That’s enough!” Claire
shouted. “I don’t know what point you’re trying to make, but you’ve
made it. Whatever I did—or didn’t do—I’m sorry. You can take me
home now.”

The pickup continued to fly along the road of
hard-packed dirt like a fast freight through a mountain tunnel.
Modern civilization gave way to Old Florida. The towering mass of
trees on both sides of the road made the Bentley driveway look like
a well-trimmed rose arbor. Dark pines rose above fan-shaped fronds
of cabbage palms, their slender trunks dwarfed by giant live oaks
whose branches formed a solid canopy overhead. Feathery willows
drooped above a carpet of spiky palmetto punctuated by the graceful
sway of ferns. Tree trunks and branches were scarcely visible under
rioting coats of wild grape, morning glory, and ivy. Spanish moss
dripped in long feathery tendrils from overhanging branches, nearly
brushing the windshield of the pickup.

It was a Florida Claire hadn’t seen before.
The real Florida. The jungle at the edge of the blank space on T
& T’s map of Golden Beach. The jumping off point for out back
of beyond. Primitive and beautiful. Fascinated, Claire relaxed her
grip on the shoulder harness, only to discover that Brad had
actually slowed down, a rapidly diminishing cloud of dust drifting
behind them.

The road ended abruptly in a tumble of
cracker shacks clustered on the bank of the river. Brad brought the
pickup to a halt in a tree-shaded parking area between a rusting
pickup and a Cadillac DeVille, a succinct statement about the wide
range of patrons to be found at Bud’s Fish Camp.

Leaving the motor running to keep the cab
cool, Brad inhaled a long breath, then leaned his forehead against
the steering wheel. “Dammit, Claire, I’m sorry. It’s been one hell
of a day.”

“
You should be apologizing to those
poor people back there on the road.”

His head rose from the wheel, his brilliant
blue eyes pinning her with that peculiar combination of superiority
and disgust perfected by the male of the species. “Well, I can’t,
can I? You’re all I’ve got. Come on, Claire. I’m a pro. I’m a
graduate of Uncle Sam’s Drivers’ Ed. Nobody was ever in
danger.”

“
Tell that to the family in the
minivan.”

“
Fine. Shall we go look for them?” When
his sarcasm fell into heavy silence, he pounded his fist on the
wheel, then wilted into a sigh. “Okay, okay, so I lost my temper.
You would too if an ex-boyfriend wouldn’t let you go.”

“
Really?” said Claire, eyes wide.
“Don’t you think you should have mentioned your inclinations
sooner?”