Shadowed Paradise (9 page)

He made it all sound so plausible. So easy.
Unemotional.

Which simply wasn’t possible.

“
As for Diane,” Brad added, “I’m just
the latest on a long list, the modern-day equivalent of another
notch on her belt. “It’s a situation I’ll have to deal with.” He
shifted his weight on the hard wooden bench, and somehow they were
melded hip to thigh. Lust fogged her brain. “Believe me, Claire,”
Brad said in a voice that had dropped to a husky bass, “if I were
free, we wouldn’t be sitting on this damn park bench making polite
conversation.”

Was it possible Brad was feeling it too—this
rage of attraction that threatened to sweep everything before it?
Fool that she was, she’d like to believe it, but . . . she had to
keep her head, pride demanded it. “Twenty-four hours ago we hadn’t
met.”

“
And it’s going to take me longer than
that to extricate myself from my entanglements.” Brad traced an
index finger down Claire’s forehead, along the bridge of her nose,
coming to rest lightly against her lower lip. She could not have
been more aware of him if they were lying naked in bed. Each and
every nerve end dissolved in a sea of sparks.

Softly, Brad added, “I suppose what I’m
really saying is, ‘Will you still be around when I’m free? It won’t
be long, but I want the dust to settle so you’re not touched by the
fallout.” He stopped, took both her hands in his. “In plain
language, Claire, do you
want
to be around?”

She was going to do some dumb fool thing like
cry. Who was Claire Langdon to deserve a second chance at
happiness? Embarrassed, she turned her head away, pulling loose a
hand to rub at the drops sliding silently down her cheeks.
Awkwardly, she freed her other hand, fumbling in her purse for a
tissue.

“
Are tears a
yes
or
go-take-a-flying-leap-in-the-gulf?”

Why pretend the attraction didn’t
exist? Being given a chance to feel again, love again, live again
was, in itself, a miracle
. Never look a
gift horse in the mouth
. Well, that worked both ways.
They each brought baggage, past history, to this relationship.
Would mutual attraction, no matter how strong, be enough to conquer
all?

Claire swallowed, blew her nose.
“Model-sitting sounds great.” She was proud of herself. She had
managed those four fatal words without a quiver.

The way his mother nagged, she must
have
known
. Known he’d killed
Kim Willis.

She just kept after him. Don’t smoke,
you’ll get cancer. Don’t drink, you’ll get cirrhosis. Don’t yell at
that driver, he’s probably got a gun. Don’t spend so much time on
the Internet, get a real woman. Get married. Have kids. Be
normal
.

So who the hell wanted to be normal?

And she never liked his music. Told him
if she heard one more screech from the Valkyries, she was going to
scream. But he
liked
the
Valkyries, especially the part they’d used in
Apocalypse Now
. He must have seen that movie five
times when he was a kid.

That was part of the trouble. Mom had
sent him to a good college, but she had no taste herself. Her idea
of good music was the theme from
General
Hospital
. So in the end he’d lost it. He’d turned up
the Valkyries full blast and done some screaming of his own.
Screamed that if she didn’t shut up, he’d do her like he did that
bitch who said she wanted to sell him a house. His mother’s eyes
had grown real big. She didn’t even do the mom-thing and tell him
she knew he would never kill anyone. It was like she’d always known
he was going to kill somebody someday. She’d dialed 911 before he
even saw her reach for the phone.

One blow to the head was all it took. When
911 called back to see why the phone had been hung up, he’d
explained it was all a mistake. A kid playing with the phone. No,
ma’am, absolutely, ma’am, he’d see it never happened again,
ma’am.

He drove the body to the next town. Dug a
shallow grave in a stand of pines draped in Spanish moss. Mom
always liked Spanish moss.

The elevator was spacious, well-lit,
air-conditioned. As far as Brad Blue was concerned, it was a
coffin. Carrying him toward the inevitable. He tugged at his tie,
wondering why he’d worn it. Armor for the awkward formality of the
occasion? After all, he’d never done this before. Affairs ended
when he moved on. Another assignment, another city, another woman.
That was life, right?

Right.

How did he tell a woman with whom he’d made
passionate and erotic love only four nights earlier that he wanted
his freedom? A strikingly beautiful, dynamic woman who made it
plain she couldn’t get enough of him?

Conceited ass. Who do you
think you are, Blue?
According to the traditions of
such hot affairs, it should have burned itself out weeks ago. There
was no pretense of love. Just great sex and the satisfaction of two
sharp, headstrong intelligences in a sparring match of
wits.

And he was blowing it all for what? A little
brown wren of a woman with blue-green eyes, an appealing kid, both
with a mysterious past. A woman who had remained frozen under the
touch of the most chaste, respectful goodnight kiss he’d offered in
his entire life. For a moment there, he’d even thought she was
going to pull away from him.

Well, hell, he’d always liked a
challenge.

Then again, was he a complete fool when he
held a woman in his arms on a flooded, rainswept bridge and
experienced a first faint glimmering of fate? Even before he’d
climbed the ramp to Virginia Bentley’s greatroom and gotten his
first good look at Claire Langdon, he had begun to suspect his life
had made a sharp turn in a new direction.

But make sense of it he couldn’t.

A medieval fairytale, that’s what it was.
He’d rescued the Fair Maiden and some modern-day Merlin had
rewarded the Blue Knight by making him her permanent protector.

It made about as much sense as any other
explanation.

Maybe he was suffering a male version of
panic over the inexorable ticking of the biological clock? He
didn’t want to attend his kids’ college graduations in a
wheelchair.

And monogamy wasn’t a bummer. Until Diane
Lake he’d lived the life of a monk for nearly two years. He’d
returned to Golden Beach barely able to stand on his feet. And good
old Phil had been there for him, armed with brisk efficiency and a
certain modicum of carefully controlled compassion. She’d organized
his invalid life—housekeeper, doctors’ appointments, physical
therapy. And Saint Garrett, damn him, had produced a male nurse to
live in the apartment over the garage. Brad suspected his
grandfather had footed the bill for all those extras, but Garrett
had grandly waved off Brad’s questions, and, truth to tell, he was
too damn weak at the time to care. Later . . . later he decided to
enjoy his illusions. There was definite poetic justice in his
expensive care being paid by the Whitlaw estate.

When he’d recovered sufficiently for rational
conversation, he and Phil had discussed their relationship. At
twenty-four he’d been bitterly hurt to come home from a long tough
assignment and find her gone. If he had chased after her, would
anything have changed? Probably not. She had the opportunity to
take over her father’s business and he was hell-bent on saving the
world. They were best friends who enjoyed each other in bed, but
their goals simply didn’t coincide. Life had moved on, separating
their oneness forever.

Brad threw himself into learning about land
surveys, banks, draws, impact fees, permits, the laying of roads,
water lines and sewer pipes—all part of the endless struggle to
develop property to the point where it was even remotely ready to
start making money. So far the cost of Amber Run was rushing toward
nine hundred thousand, most of it debt, and still going up.

He’d had little time or energy for sex. Oddly
enough, he’d found celibacy strangely soothing. And, later, he’d
needed all that stored-up energy to satisfy Diane Lake.

The elevator door slid soundlessly open,
revealing a long concrete-floored gallery set with a series of
numbered doors. In design, it could have been almost any motel in
the United States instead of one of Calusa County’s most expensive
gulffront condominiums. The view, however, was spectacular, whether
facing the twinkling lights of Manatee Bay to the east or the
indigo depths of the gulf to the west.

Diane’s condo was only a few steps from the
elevator. Inserting a key in the lock, Brad let himself in. He
moved through the entry hall, past the dull gleam of the kitchen
and into the living room, switching on lights with the ease of
frequent practice. He tugged on the drapery cord, revealing the
glass doors to the balcony. Sliding the panel open, Brad stepped
outside.

Usually he could renew his soul with this
view, standing motionless, drinking it in while waiting for Diane
to come home from her stint on the eleven o’clock news. But tonight
the magic was gone. And yet . . . there they all were down
below—thousands, millions of people clinging to the shores of the
ocean, long after its life-giving properties had been forgotten.
Some dim racial memory prompting a return to the womb? An urge so
strong they risked being swept away in the Big Wave? If not this
year, then the next.

Brad blinked away the vision. Wearily, he
went back inside, shoved the thermostat down ten degrees and
sprawled on the white leather couch. But not before removing his
shoes. He cupped his hands behind his head and allowed himself a
sigh that was closer to a groan. To hell with speculation,
philosophy . . . women. Hold all thought. He’d come for one
purpose, one purpose only. If Diane wanted to flaunt her success by
paying an exorbitant price for the privilege of drowning in the Big
Wave, so be it. Brad Blue was an in-country man, living his life on
the fringes of Florida’s wilderness. Another reason why, after
tonight, Diane was history.

He must have fallen asleep for he never heard
her key in the lock. His once infallible reflexes were definitely
slipping, Brad realized as he woke to Diane’s impeccably tailored
blouse hitting him in the face.

“
Shit! Why can’t they build a bubble
over this goddamn hell?” she demanded. “Thank God you got here
first. If I’d had to wait for the air to kick in, I think I’d melt
into the fucking carpet.”

Brad removed the pristine white blouse from
his face and sat up slowly. “Aren’t you afraid you might forget
yourself sometime and sully the county’s air waves with your
colorful mode of conversation?” It was an old bone of contention.
Diane did not bother to reply.

Her hot pink suit jacket had been thrown onto
the nearest chair as soon as she entered the living room. The
matching skirt puddled on the stark white Berber carpet. The black
lace push-up bra, which required no padding, revealed far more than
it concealed as she kicked the skirt aside and bent to a lingering
taste of her lover’s lips.

Diane pulled away, turning to present her bra
hook for his usually nimble fingers.

“
Uh, Diane . . .”

“
Oh, God, what a relief!” She flung the
bra halfway across the room, sent her stiletto heels flying
after.

Brad, who seldom lost his cool, discovered
his tongue wouldn’t move. There she stood, tall and slim with the
perfect muscle tone only a personal trainer could produce. Diane’s
only garments were the teeniest triangle of black lace and
thigh-high stockings. Her golden skin was uniformly tan, too well
tanned to belong to the gold perfection of the shining blond hair
that curved in to touch the fine bone structure of her face just
below the jawline. Brad had never minded that Diane’s hair color
came out of a bottle. Everything else was very real indeed. Her
eyes were a magnificent golden amber. He had once told her she
should have all her publicity shots taken with a Florida
panther.

“
Thoughts of a cold drink and hot sex
were all that sustained me on the drive home,” she announced with a
gusty sigh as she bent over to strip off her stockings, presenting
him with a view that would have stunned an ox.

“
The studio is air-conditioned, your
car is air-conditioned, the condo’s air-conditioned.” Brad’s tone
was dry. So was his mouth. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off
the slow peel of her stockings, first one, then the
other.

“
Enjoying the show?” With the second
stocking in her hand, Diane stopped and peered at him. “Don’t just
sit there, darling. Fix me that drink. Or . . .” She struck a
provocative pose, whirled the last stocking round and round before
flinging it toward her bedroom door. “Shall we do it first and
drink later?”

She undulated across the carpet with all the
finesse and style of a strip queen until there was nothing between
Brad and herself but the back of the white leather sofa. She leaned
forward until all that filled his eyes were the twin rosy thrusts
of her nipples, taut and pointed in their sudden exposure to the
condo’s cool air.

“
A bit slow off the mark, aren’t you,
stud?” she taunted. “Bad day?” Diane ran her fingers behind his
neck, under the tightly confined mane of pale gold, traced a light,
enticing pattern down his back. “After all, darling,” she breathed
in his ear, “it’s a little late to be shy.”

Brad groaned. Damn Pavlov and his stupid dog!
He was just as bad. Worse. He was hard as a rock and losing his
willpower fast.