Shadowed Paradise (7 page)

“
He doesn’t strike me as anyone’s
toyboy.” She couldn’t have said that! Shades of lethal Manhattan
cocktail parties she’d thought long abandoned.

Odd. She’d almost swear Phil was choking back
a laugh. Her chocolate brown eyes gleamed.

“
That he’s not,” Claire’s boss agreed.
“Anyone who knows Brad Blue is aware that Diane’s riding for a
fall. Certainly, no one blames him for being caught by anything as
stunning as Diane Lake, but it’s only a matter of time before the
explosion comes. I just don’t want to see you caught in it. Diane
is not a very nice person.”

Having no idea what to say, Claire clung to
her original story. “Dinner’s really just a payback for the tow
truck, Phil. I know I’m not his type.”

Phil shook her head. “Never underestimate the
power of a downhome female, Claire. That’s what wise men choose
every time. And it’s just possible Brad’s finally reached the age
of wisdom. But in case he hasn’t . . .”

Phil steepled her hands, her poppy red nails
glowing against the cream linen suit. “I know you’re a grown woman
with a child, Claire, but I doubt you’ve run into someone like Brad
Blue before. You ought to know”—Phil paused, carefully examining
her nails before returning her shrewd gaze to Claire—“that Brad
Blue will expect more than dinner. A great deal more.”

Unblinking, Claire stared straight back.
“Believe me, Phil, he didn’t pay that much for the tow truck.” She
pushed back her chair and left the room, flag waving. As an exit
line it wasn’t all that bad.

Claire wasn’t prepared for the vintage
Thunderbird. Fire engine red with a white hard top, and not a day
under forty. She stared open-mouthed, leaning over the wooden
railing of the Bentley deck, as Brad, shading his eyes against the
westering sun, called up to her, grinning hugely, “Should I have
brought the pickup?”

Dazzled by the car, Claire had, at
first, failed to take a good look at the man standing beside
it.
Dear God, but he was
gorgeous
. Yet rugged enough to escape being a pretty
boy. His blond hair, tightly confined at the nape, was shot with
sun-bleached streaks of near white. He was wearing a sport coat of
French blue silk over white slacks. A silk tie in varying shades of
blue contrasted sharply with the sparkling white of his shirt.
Claire had spent an hour agonizing over how casual she should be.
Now she was glad she’d dipped into her wardrobe of expensive
resortwear left over from better times. Her flowing peach pants and
matching top decorated with openwork and hand embroidery was
timeless and elegant. The pantsuit had also been chosen for its
ease in climbing in and out of a pickup. It clashed quite horribly
with the shining red T-bird.

“
Come on up and meet Ginny,” Claire
called back, hoping the quiver she was feeling all the way to her
toes didn’t show in her voice.

As Virginia Bentley held out her hand to Brad
Blue, her gracious welcome was eclipsed by a small body that
hurtled past her, then skidded to a halt, his back pressed up
against his great-grandmother’s protective softness.

“
Hi,” Jamie breathed.

“
Hi, Jamie. How about introducing me to
your great-gramma? She signed a book for me once, but I was just
one of the crowd.”

Virginia Bentley hadn’t changed much, Brad
thought. There wasn’t a sign of gray in her cropped and curled
reddish blond hair. Her skin was flawless, betrayed only by age
spots on the slim hand she was holding out to him. She was still
petite, perhaps slightly more fragile. Her eyes were just as sharp
with intelligence, just as blue-green. Claire’s eyes.

“
Ah, but I do remember you,” Ginny
Bentley said. “Not the name, of course, but in a town that’s sixty
percent senior citizens, how many handsome men under thirty do you
think I find standing in line at the library for an autograph on a
romance novel? Believe me, Mr. Blue, I remember you
well.”

“
It’s a honor, ma’am.” He grinned down
at Jamie. “And genius runs true, I see. That’s a fine young man you
have here.” Bending down, Brad swung Jamie, shrieking and laughing,
in a mad arc toward the twelve-foot ceiling.

“
How’s the air up there, pal?” Brad
asked as he held Jamie over his head with apparent ease.

After Claire and Brad left, Jamie was
still grinning. Ginny Bentley sank onto the sofa, her eyes aglow
with possibilities. A live love affair beat a novel any
day
. Dear Lord in heaven, may this be the
right one. Don’t let him break her heart.

As the T-bird zoomed along in a glorious
splash of color only inches above the road, Claire recalled a time
when she would have been ecstatic to ride in a such a sporty
vehicle. But living dangerously had lost its attraction. Somehow
Brad Blue was too large, the car too small. She felt like an ant
trapped on a fast-moving assembly line. Her life, which she was
just beginning to rebuild, was suddenly hurtling out of control
again. The last time she’d had a date she’d still been young and
naive enough to believe that bad things didn’t happen to good
people.

“
You can stop braking now,” Brad said
kindly as they came to a stop in the parking lot of The Pelican,
Golden Beach’s finest seafood restaurant.

“
Sorry.” She bet Diane Lake just urged
him to go faster.

There wasn’t a restaurant in Golden Beach
that did not welcome diners wearing shorts, T-shirts, sneakers and
sand. Retirees, tourists and snowbirds—Florida’s name for part-time
winter residents—were, after all, the town’s major industry. Which
did not keep Claire from a feeling of well-being at the
surreptitious and appreciative glances they received as the hostess
ushered them through the main dining area and seated them at a
table on a wooden deck built on stilts some twelve feet above the
Intracoastal Waterway. It had been a long time since Claire had
turned heads. It was a nice feeling.

On second thought, they were probably looking
at Brad.

“
Is it too hot out here? Would you
prefer to eat inside?” he inquired politely.

“
Oh, no, the breeze is wonderful and
the sun a welcome sight after all that rain. Besides, I love to
watch the boats. Sorry. “I’m afraid I’m a child at
heart.”

“
I’m fond of children,” Brad replied
with a slow, significant flicker of a smile.

Claire felt the power of it all the way to
her toes. Thoughts of “Thanks and goodbye” shriveled and died.
Absurd as it seemed, she was going to hang in there and find out if
she stood a chance with this man.

Not more than forty feet away a powerboat
glided by, the thrum of its twin diesels nearly overpowering the
shrill call of the gulls, the squawks of the pelicans who looked so
awkward until they made their swift dives, plunging deep into the
waterway, coming up with a fat fish tucked in their pouches. The
good-size cruiser was outward bound, heading between the great
stone sides of the Golden Beach jetties, the only access between
the Intracoastal Waterway and the Gulf of Mexico for twenty miles
to the north or south. Directly below the restaurant’s deck was a
small marina, lined with a row of sleek sailboats and powerful
cruisers.

Nice. As dates went, this one rated an A-plus
so far.

Not a date. Payback
only
. She had to remember that.

After they ordered drinks, Brad leaned
forward, eyeing Claire expectantly. “Okay,” he said, “which long
story goes first?”

She shook her head. “Sorry. With Jamie’s long
story comes mine as well, and I don’t want to spoil the
ambiance.”

“
Okay,” Brad agreed lightly. “So what
do you want to know about me?”

Claire was ready for that one. “Tell me how
you got a color for a name.”

“
Now
that
,” Brad countered, “also opens a can of
worms. But I’ll give you the short version and spare you most of
the nasty family history.”

Their drinks arrived. One of the restaurant’s
rum specialties for Claire. Brad savored a long swallow of single
malt scotch on the rocks. “A little over forty years ago,” he
began, “at the height of the Cold War, my father jumped ship off a
Russian freighter somewhere north of Cuba. They were passing by a
shrimper out of Punta Gorda at the time. It was a close call, but
he made it. Dad’s mother was Lithuanian, his father Russian. He was
given political asylum, and some kind soul arranged a job for him
in Golden Beach because there’s a large Ukrainian population
here.”

At Claire’s incredulous stare, Brad added,
“Haven’t you noticed the onion domes on some of the churches? Not
quite St. Basil’s but they’ll do. Anyway, my father ended up
working cows for my grandfather Whitlaw. The cows didn’t care what
language he spoke. But a name like Yevgeny Blukovsky didn’t go over
well with the other cowhunters, so he became Gene Blue. A perfectly
logical choice but, knowing dad, I suspect it was his idea of a
good Russian joke.”

Claire stared blankly at the appetizer of
baked Brie that had just been placed in front of her. Not even its
topping of raspberry sauce and toasted almonds plus fresh melon,
strawberries and grapes could lure her at the moment. “Let me get
this straight,” she said slowly. “Your father was a Russian
cowboy?”

“
No cowboys in Florida, Claire.
Cowhunter is the correct term.”

“
Cowhunter. Right.” Claire raised her
eyes to the waterway. To the reality of a sailboat coming in,
baremasted, through the jetties, running on its auxiliary engine.
She really was sitting on the Florida coastline discussing a
Russian cowboy—correction, cowhunter—who’d taken his name from a
pair of blue jeans. Levi Strauss would have loved him.

Gene Blue
.
Okay, she’d bite. “So how did a Russian sailor manage as a Florida
cowhunter?”

“
Quite well, actually. He was a
university student who signed on the freighter with the sole
determination of making it to the U.S. He was so grateful to be
here he never seemed to mind working with his hands in a climate
more foreign than the language.

“
Did he stay a cowhunter?”

“
In a way. My mother was given a bit of
land by her mother’s family. Enough to run a few head, do pretty
well with a market garden. My mother did most of the farm work
while dad turned out to have a gift for wood. The finest custom
cabinets in Golden Beach were created by Gene Blue.”

“
Are they still alive?”

Far out in the gulf only half a rose-red sun
remained above the water, casting the western horizon into a blaze
of purple, pink, and gold. Brad’s eyes darkened with the fading
light. “No. About ten years ago mom and dad took their first real
vacation. Their Caribbean cruise offered a flight from Cozumel to
Chichen-Itza as an extra. Their small plane went down in the
jungle. No survivors.”

“
I’m sorry,” Claire murmured, but Brad
Blue, the person, was becoming more clear in her head. Beneath the
handsome façade, the charm and engaging humor, she sensed a
darkness. Personal tragedy, compounded by the melancholy of the
Russian soul, explained a good deal. But not all. What other
secrets lingered behind his charm and impeccable
manners?

Somehow the brie and fruit had disappeared,
and Brad, slowed by his role as storyteller, was just downing the
last of a dozen raw oysters. He gave her a wicked grin as he doused
the slimy crustacean with hot sauce, held the rough shell to his
mouth and slid the pearly gray mess down his throat.

Claire made a face. “As Jamie would say,
‘Gross!’”

Brad winked. “Good for what ails you,” he
assured her.

Somehow Claire doubted Brad Blue needed any
help in that department.

“
Your turn,” Brad urged. “You must have
something in your past that won’t put a pall on the
evening.”

“
No. I don’t.” There was no way she was
going to pour out the recent history of the Langdon family for his
amusement. “So why does your grandfather hate your
hair?”

Brad glared at a seagull that was swooping
low, obviously contemplating a run on the rolls that peeked out
from beneath a white napkin in a basket on their table. A quick
flip of Brad’s hand and the bird did a neat ninety-degree bank, the
tip of its yard-wide wingspan nearly clipping the deck railing as
it went off to find more amenable prospects.

“
Basically,” Brad said, “what old
Wade–-my Grandfather Whitlaw–-really hated was my father. Oh, in
the beginning he was impressed enough to offer him a job. Thought
he was a hero for jumping ship in the middle of the gulf.
And
noblesse oblige
is as much
expected from Florida cow kings as the European variety. But that
was before he found out his one and only daughter thought Gene Blue
was a hero too.”

Classic, Claire thought. Romantic enough for
one of her grandmother’s books.

“
I don’t know if anyone’s told you, but
Wade Whitlaw runs more cattle than any other rancher in Calusa
County. The Whitlaws were selling beef to Cuba before the Civil
War. Kept right on doing it straight through the Yankee blockade
too, particularly after they sold two years of beef to the South
for worthless Confederate scrip.

“
What it comes down to,” Brad
continued, tucking into his Mahi Mahi, “granddad is loaded. My
father didn’t have a dime. In the end, my mother, who was due to
inherit a hefty share of the cow kingdom, was told to give up the
slimy commie deserter or else.” Brad took a long swallow of his
second scotch. “She chose the
or
else
.”