Shadowed Paradise

by Blair Bancroft

  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.”

  If Gene Blue had been anything like his son, it was a choice Claire could easily understand. “I wonder if I’d have been that brave,” was all she said.

  “Yeah . . . the power of love to make idiots of us all.”

  Great. Brad’s sarcasm effectively quenched Claire’s wistful thoughts on love and romance. “Where did you say your parents got their farm?”

  “My grandmother was a Tyree before she had the misfortune to marry Wade Whitlaw. The Tyrees came here right after the Civil War, about twenty years after the Whitlaws. They had nearly as many acres and only a few less cattle, which was most of the reason Wade Whitlaw wanted Hattie Tyree. She came with a respectable amount of acreage as a dowry, land the Whitlaws had wanted for years.” Brad’s lips quirked in a secret smile. “But that’s another story altogether.

  “Anyway, Hattie wasn’t about to see her daughter go landless or penniless. She got her brother Ben Tyree to give my mother a nice bit of farm and pastureland along upper Shake-It Creek north of town. It was a good place to grow up. You would have liked my grandmother,” Brad added quietly. “She kind of reminds me of your grandmother. True integrity. And lots of soul.”

  For a while they ate in companionable silence. As delicious as the food was, Claire didn’t really taste her Shrimp Scampi. “You make me feel ungrateful,” she admitted at last. “I’ve been so wound up in my recent past that I forgot I had an excellent childhood. And I’ve been blessed with two parents who are still living. They’ve worked together every day of their married lives, running a small educational publishing company. Miraculously, they almost never raise their voices to each other. They’re the ones who thought of asking Grandma to take Jamie and me when our lives fell apart. We could have gone to live with them, of course, but they thought the complete change of scene would help.”

  “And has it?”

  “Oh, yes,” Claire murmured, “I think it has.”

  Chapter Five

  “Hey, Cuz!”

  Brad peered over the deck’s railing, waved a friendly salute to a group of young men in the parking lot below. Each carried a surfboard and wore nothing but swim trunks. Tall, bronzed, beautiful, not a day over eighteen, the quintet was as out of place in a town full of senior citizens as a race of aliens. “How’s the surf?” Brad called.

  “Dying,” was the mournful reply from the tallest of the five surfers, a slim, broad-shouldered young man with sparkling blue eyes and hair so short it was only a shadow on his well-shaped head. “You know it’s only good when it’s storming, cuz. The last three days were great, but it’s time to pack it in. Gulf’s about as flat as my board.”

  With a polite nod to Claire and a wave to Brad, the young man ambled off. His friends trailed behind, each juggling his surfboard to keep from banging into a group of seniors walking to their cars.

  “My cousin Slade,” Brad explained. “His father’s Garret Whitlaw, my mother’s younger brother and heir to the Whitlaw acres.”

  A chorus of shrieks rose from the parking lot. Claire scanned the gathering shadows below, seeing nothing but six gray-haired seniors clustered outside their cars staring after the sound of squealing tires echoing along the road that led back to town. At the first scream Brad was at the railing, looking ready to leap into the lot below. Just as suddenly, his shoulders slumped, he sank back into his chair, planted his elbows on the table, and pillowed his forehead against clenched fists.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” Claire demanded.

  “I don’t know that boy,” Brad vowed. “ I don’t know his friends. I’ve never seen that bunch of young hellions before in my life.”

  Taking a closer look, Claire could see that Brad’s shoulders were shaking, his lips twitching. “Okay,” she said, “what did they do?”

  “Mooned the seniors.”

  “You’re joking!”

  Brad shook his head, which was still bent over his coffee cup. “It was only two of them. And Slade wasn’t one of them. I think.”

  Claire chuckled. “It’s what you said last night, isn’t it? It’s tough to be young in a town full of senior citizens. The temptation to break out must be enormous.”

  Brad lifted his head, reached for his coffee. “There are only a very few places the kids can surf. And, fortunately for the town’s peace of mind, only a few times a year when the surf’s up, because no matter where the kids go or what they do, someone complains. Major generation gap. The sight of all that silver hair just set the kids off, but it was a stupid thing to do. Most of the seniors take this kind of nonsense as a joke. Then again, this just might be the group to lodge a complaint with the city council. Then some vote hunter will propose a ban on surfing in Golden Beach, and there goes another of the few perks kids have in this town.”

  Claire could see his point. Teenagers were frequently their own worst enemies.

  “I hope your cousin’s hair was a fashion statement and not political.”

  “Political, yes, but not the way you’re thinking. Grandad hates skinheads almost as much as he hates long hair. Slade is flaunting his unfortunate tendency to be more like his cousin, that awful Blue boy, than his old man. Garrett Whitlaw’s the good guy of the family. Runs the ranch, sits on the County Commission, belongs to all the right clubs, yet never fails to offer a hearty shake to every color, creed and bank account. Just too good to be true is my dear Uncle Garrett. He even does his damnedst to keep granddad from shooting trespassers—”

  Shooting? “I do wish I could tell when you’re teasing the new kid on the block.”

  “Nothing but the truth, Ms. Langdon.” Brad raised his right hand, palm out. “Wade Whitlaw’s ancestors squatted on this land for years before they owned so much as a single acre. In fact, his daddy nearly lost it all to developers back around the turn of the century. Now that it’s platted, deeded, and fenced, he’s going to make damn certain no one else sets foot on it. Including me.”

  Abruptly, Brad pushed back his chair. “Let’s get out of here before those seniors come storming up the stairs looking for somebody to sue.”

  “They left. And the check hasn’t come yet.”

  “It’s not going to. They bill me monthly.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t! I’m paying for dinner,” Claire hissed.

  “I told you there isn’t going to be a check to pay. Zip. Nada. Don’t argue, woman, I’m bigger than you are.”

  Heads were beginning to turn their way. Claire gritted her teeth and let Brad guide her down the outside stairs to the parking lot. Seething silence filled the Thunderbird as he drove south along the shore road, passing high-rise condos, marinas, a city park and public boat ramp. Still furious and not a little humiliated, Claire paid scant attention to the elegant stucco homes lined up along Golden Beach’s broad boulevarded streets. Then, abruptly, the road narrowed, the houses dropped away, leaving nothing but sand dunes, sea grass, and a few low wind-swept pines.

  On their right was a narrow strip of sand offering miles of gulf beachfront. To the left, invisible behind a dense screen of cabbage palms and palmetto, was the Intracoastal Waterway and an ever-widening bay. The area overflowed with people during the day, but was a lonely, deserted wilderness of sand and sea at night. The haunt of alligators, snakes, raccoons, possums.

&nb
sp; And predatory males.

  Claire’s mouth went dry. Just because he’d paid for dinner . . . Her heart threatened to leap into her throat and choke her. There was just one reason to drive down a deserted beach road at night.

  The man was pure temptation. A tidal surge of pure sex. She wanted . . . but she wasn’t ready. Not yet, not yet, not yet.

  The T-bird bounced over ruts left by the rain as Brad turned into the deserted parking lot at the end of the road, turned off the engine. Into the silence he drawled, “Tell me, Ms. Langdon, when was the last time you went parking?”

  Oh, hell. Brad felt a twinge of guilt. She was pale, jaw clenched, ready to throw open the Bird’s door and run. He wasn’t above teasing, but terrifying an innocent was another matter entirely. “Let’s take a walk,” he offered, stifling a sigh. As Brad guided Claire along a wooden walkway over the dunes to a park bench facing the gulf, he could feel her tremble. Silently, he swore. He was so used to Diane’s gusty enthusiasm for sex, her total amorality, that he hadn’t stopped to think. This was Claire Langdon. He liked her, was drawn to her, had not questioned his urge to be alone with her. Or not more deeply than relying on his ability to charm her into . . . whatever. Shit!

  So now he was confronted by an icy female wall, hiding fear and God alone knew what else. Well, if she thought a little deep freeze was going to put him off . . . “What do you think?” he asked, nodding toward the gulf.

  Before them, as far as the eye could see, the black of the sky could be distinguished from the black of the sea only by the brilliance of the stars. The sole signs of civilization were the running lights on six or seven fishing boats scattered about a mile off shore. At the edge of the beach gentle whitecaps shone through the darkness, hissing rather than roaring as they hit the shore.

  “It’s like the end of the world,” Claire said. “The place where sailors fell off the edge of the earth. Beautiful but . . . too infinite. Maybe a little scary.”

  Oh, yeah. A woman whose brain still functioned while she trembled under his hand, expecting him to pounce at any moment. Brad examined her delicate profile, the proud lift of her chin, the curves of her small but ample figure, the determined set of her shoulders. Everything about Claire Langdon screamed, Don’t Touch. But somehow the message wasn’t I don’t want to be touched, but I’m afraid to be touched. I’ve been hurt and I’m terrified. How he recognized that, Brad wasn’t sure. Most likely by the same instincts that had kept him alive through hundreds of tight situations in nearly every part of the world.

  The steady seabreeze tugged at Claire’s shoulder-length hair, riffling it back over her ears. Her full inviting lips were narrowed into a thin line. Time to stop the games and get serious before he began to feel like a sexual predator.

  “Contrary to what you’re thinking, I brought you here because I wanted a private place to talk. I also wanted to be damn sure that when you’re asked tomorrow how you liked my house, you can honestly say you’ve never seen it.”

  Talk? House? She was on a dark beach with a star-quality hunk, her body pulsing like a neon girlie-bar sign, her brain threatening meltdown, and he wanted to talk?

  ‘I’d like to offer you a job.”

  Job? Claire stared at him, unable to take it in.

  “Not for a month or two,” Brad explained. “I’m building models out by the river. When they’re ready, I’ll need someone to show them.”

  She could handle this, Claire vowed. She could turn starlight and romance into business as coolly, as blandly as Brad Blue. “I don’t have a license,” she said.

  “If I pay you a salary, you don’t need one.”

  “Developers can’t afford full-time salaries.”

  “This developer can.”

  Which could be straight business talk. A tantalizing peek at the Blue ego. Or it could be a great deal more. Like plain, old-fashioned “being kept.” No way. He had Diane Lake. What did he need with Claire Langdon?

  As she pictured the TV anchor’s reaction to her working for Brad, Claire’s lips curled into something dangerously close to a smirk. She gazed up at the brilliance of Venus hovering overhead, and the curl became a flat-out smile. Oh, yes, Diane Lake would absolutely hate it.

  As if he’d read her thoughts, Brad said, “I suppose you’ve been told I’m involved with someone.”

  Above them the breeze off the gulf rustled through the cabbage palms, the long spiky fans silhouetted against the night sky like the clutching multi-fingered claws of some mysterious beast. Diane Lake waiting to pounce? Claire wondered. Brad himself? “T & T gossip is pretty thorough,” she admitted. “I heard about Diane. And Phil.”

  “Phil was a very long time ago. The only kid in first grade who didn’t call me Little Boy Blue.” Brad leaned forward on the bench, rested his elbows on his knees. “We went off to college together, got married right after graduation. I don’t think either of us ever dated anyone else.”

  “Then why . . . ?” Claire’s voice trailed off. She had no right to ask. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to know.

  Brad didn’t seem to mind the question. “As strange as it seems, in all those years together Phil and I never considered we might be destined to live entirely different lives. When she got the chance to take over her father’s business, she leaped at it. Two years after we were married, Phil was back in Golden Beach, and I was about as far from here as I could get. End of story.”

  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 h
ell 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.