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  Oh, great. Somehow their confident, hunky hero was managing to juggle defensive, truculent, and smugly sophisticated. Beast indeed. He worked both sides of the street, yet refused to acknowledge she had a right to be confused.

  “There’s the bridge!” Jamie cried.

  Brad pulled over and parked the pickup next to the patrol car that was blocking the south entrance to the flooded bridge. “I’ll check on the tow truck,” he said. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  They had missed the most dramatic moment. With the rain gone, Claire and Jamie could easily see the far side of the swollen creek. The Toyota was safely in tow, its rear end waving at the end of the cable hook as the tow truck gingerly maneuvered past the patrol cars. When the driver paused, stuck his head out of the cab, Brad gave him the traditional circled thumb to index finger before turning back for a few casual words with the deputy. A smile, another wave of thanks and he was back in the pickup, putting it in gear. The scene of the accident faded away behind them.

  “Do you know everyone in town?” Claire inquired, impressed in spite of herself.

  “Not any more. But when I was growing up, just back from the beach there was one small section of town with mom and pop businesses, including a one-screen movie theater. A half mile away was the school—two modest buildings, twelve grades. Outside of that, there was nothing for twenty miles in any direction but ranch land, orange groves, horse farms, some truck gardening, and miles of glades. And, yes, I knew every person in the high school and nearly every single person in town. That’s one of the hardest things to see disappear. Most days I look around and, outside of the men I work with, I don’t know a damn soul.”

  “You’re saying downtown—where T & T is—was all there was. There were no other stores, no other housing, no shopping centers . . . ?”

  “No shopping centers, no malls, no housing developments, no condos, no Interstate, no Intracoastal Waterway. Just a sleepy little town with miles and miles of beach and sun. Five minutes from downtown you could drive off the road and catch wild pig for a barbecue. Alligators stretched out along the banks of the Calusa and rattlers sunned themselves in the middle of the roads.”

  “Rattlesnakes? You’re kidding,” Jamie declared. But the grownups didn’t seem to hear him.

  “I remember,” said Claire, frowning in concentration, “when I was very little we could still walk to the beach from Ginny’s house. There was a wooden walkway across the bay.”

  “That’s right. Before the Intracoastal cut people off from the beach. Not enough political clout in the south end of town to get a drawbridge built. You have a good memory. That old walkway must have come down twenty-five years ago.”

  “Well, I never claimed to be a teenager,” Claire snapped. She was all too aware of her bedraggled condition. Just her luck to meet a man with a face out of Norse legend grafted onto the body of Mr. Clean when she looked like the Wicked Witch of the West after the house fell on her. Nor could her thong sandals pass for ruby slippers. Too bad. She could use a bit of magic about now.

  A tinkling chirp pierced the awkward pause in the conversation. Brad whipped a cell phone off his belt. “Brad Blue. Yeah, she’s here with me . . . That’s great. I’ll tell her. Thanks, Dave. Bye.”

  Brad turned to Claire. “Dave says your car seems to be okay. He’s bringing it to your house. He thinks you ought to have the alignment checked sometime this next week. Otherwise you shouldn’t have any trouble driving it.”

  Claire didn’t try to disguise her whoosh of relief. Her insurance only covered liability. A new car was definitely not in the Langdon budget. Just as she couldn’t afford to set up a new cell phone.

  “Sea Grape’s on the right, where the pines are,” Claire pointed out. Ahead, a tall stand of slash pines marked the area where a narrow peninsula of higher ground rose above the water-logged mangrove swamps, forming just enough space for a single home in an absolutely private setting. Virginia Bentley and her husband had built their dream house there forty years ago when they were a mile from their nearest neighbor and twelve miles from a grocery store. This southern portion of Golden Beach, which had once been a wilderness of palmetto, palms and pine, was now serviced by three massive shopping centers, five grocery stores, a mammoth Target, a Super Wal-Mart, and mile after close-packed mile of store-front businesses along U.S. 41, the legendary Tamiami Trail.

  Brad drove carefully on the Bentley’s quarter-mile drive of sand and crushed shell. There was no telling just how far the bay itself had risen in what forecasters were now calling “a hundred-year rain.” He needn’t have worried. The ground around the Bentley house rose well above the bay that surrounded it on three sides. The house itself was doubly high and dry, rising on twelve-foot pilings solidly imbedded in concrete.

  Brad’s eyes widened as he parked and looked up at the house, which was lit by floodlights at each corner, with two more illuminating the open garage area beneath the house. He’d had no idea. The house was older than he was, yet not even when the population of Golden Beach was only four thousand had he ventured into this part of town. Virginia Bentley was a celebrity when she moved to Golden Beach, and the town protected its own. Brad grinned into the darkness. Even to wiseass teenagers, Virginia Bentley’s aerie had been off limits.

  He stopped gaping and turned to Claire. “I’d like to stay until your car arrives. I’ll check it out for you.”

  And she’d thought knights-errant had been extinct for eight hundred years. Certainly the past two years of her life had been distinguished by their absence. Her debt to this stranger was growing by the minute. What was that old line from Streetcar? Something about depending on the kindness of strangers. Was that what she’d come to? The broken-down, over-the-hill female dependent? Claire felt a little sick. But she’d never let him see it. Pride, that cold bedfellow, was all she had left. And, besides, she’d probably never see him again.

  It was not the comforting thought it should have been.

  “Thanks, that’s great,” Claire mumbled, swallowing the choking sensation in her throat.

  Never having ridden in a pickup before, she descended from the cab with caution. When she turned to help Jamie, Claire discovered he was being swung down on driver’s side by a pair of strong arms encased in classic blue chambray. Blast! He’d gone to a stranger instead of to her. To a man. Of course, to a man. Claire turned blindly toward the house, leaving the males to follow.

  Brad found himself with an armful of clinging child, thin arms wrapped firmly around his neck. Not the worst vote of confidence he’d ever had. As Claire plunged beneath the sturdy stilts that supported the Bentley house and started up an L-shaped ramp, Brad paused, once again staring up at the towering structure above him. A cracker house. Boca Grande style. Key West. Whatever you called it, this was the natural way to beat the Florida climate. Now the latest environmentally correct darling of avant-garde architects, this house had been built forty years ago when new construction in Golden Beach consisted of two-bedroom stucco ranch homes with carports.

  “What’d you stop for?” Jamie demanded.

  “Sorry. Just admiring your grandmother’s house.”

  “Great-gramma.”

  “Right.” Still carrying Jamie, Brad climbed the wooden ramp that led to the granddaddy of all greatrooms. The entire bay side of the house was one long room, a three-sided panorama of glass. He drank it in, mentally rearranging the floor plan of one of his model homes. Jesus! He was thirty-eight years old and staring like a starry-eyed kid.

  “There’s beer in the fridge,” Claire said. “Help yourself while I get Jamie to bed.”

  Brad slid Jamie down onto the gleaming white tile floor and held out his hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Jamie. You were very brave tonight. In a tight situation it’s important for people to do exactly what they’re told. And you did. I hope I get to see you again.”

  The look he got as Jamie Langdon solemnly shook his hand made Brad’s stomach churn. He’d thought ther
e was nothing left in this world that could faze him, but abject, brimming gratitude in the eyes of a small boy was something he had never encountered before.

  “G’night.” Jamie’s lips quivered but the words were clear. “And thanks.”

  Brad swallowed hard. No little boy should have to be so solemn, so determined to be the man of the family. “Okay, off to bed with you now. And don’t worry, I’ll check out the car when it comes back.”

  Brad stood for some time, looking down the hallway toward the door that had closed behind Claire Langdon and her son. Something in his head went click. Like a key turning on a new life, shutting out the past. All he had to do was . . .

  Remember he was a developer. Building houses like Virginia Bentley’s on a jungle river out back of beyond.

  And forget what he’d been before that. A man of violence who shouldn’t be allowed in the same room with people like Claire and Jamie Langdon.

  Brad crossed the width of the greatroom, slid open the glass door and stepped out onto the broad covered deck that ran around all four sides of the house. Far to the west lightning still flickered over the Gulf, but here—incredibly, after three days of rain—the moon had come out. Stars shone with an extra brilliance as if newly washed. Below him lay a fairytale landscape. The only break in a sea of mangroves as thick as the briars around Sleeping Beauty’s cottage was a long wooden walkway that led past a gazebo down to a dock at the edge of the bay. Moonlight cut a swath across the narrow bay that was part of the Intracoastal Waterway. The long dark shadow beyond was a narrow strip of barrier island. Beyond that, the beach Claire had been able to walk to when she was child. The long beautiful stretch of beach forever cut off from the mainland in order to accommodate a few fat cat yacht owners.

  And what right did he have to be so cynical? His father had jumped from a Russian trawler, reaching shore more dead than alive, to escape communism back in the bad old days of the Cold War, and here he was having snide thoughts about American capitalism.

  “Oh, there you are. Thought you might need this.” Claire tossed him a large bath towel, then retreated as quickly as she had come.

  Brad’s eyes lingered on her back as she crossed the greatroom and once again disappeared down the hallway. Nice ass, but for the life of him he couldn’t understand why he found her appealing. He preferred his women stunningly beautiful, sleek, stacked, and sassy. Tigers in bed.

  Hell . . . maybe he was suffering from the male equivalent of the ticking biological clock. A settled home, a family, had an undeniable appeal. Or maybe it was the old rush of adrenalin, the whiff of danger, the ancient attraction of rescuing a maiden in distress. Had the world really changed so little? You could take the knight out of his armor, but you couldn’t take the instincts out of a man’s soul.

  Shit! Diane would kill him. Think architecture, not women!

  Brad sat on the porch’s outer railing, clutched a support post with one hand, and leaned out, craning his neck upward. There it was. The obligatory cupola. A large one. Very likely the vantage point from which Virginia Bentley had written most of the novels that had graced the Best Seller list of The New York Times.

  Brad slid off the railing, turning for one last look at the panorama of bay, beach, and gulf that stretched all the way to the storm on the horizon. Beyond the waterway and the barrier island’s narrow strip of sand and sea grass, there was nothing but water all the way to Mexico. He had a great fondness for his own portion of Golden Beach, the jungle on the opposite side of town that ran along the Calusa River, but he had to admit Virginia Bentley and her husband had known how to pick a spot. Privacy was no longer easy to come by in Golden Beach. The Bentleys had found a location that would remain theirs and theirs alone, no matter how many people overran the land behind them.

  Dampness rose in waves from the rain-soaked land around him, from the broad leaves of dripping sea grape, from hardy hibiscus, from mangroves reaching up out of their beds of salt water. From the bay and the seemingly infinite Gulf of Mexico. The night insects had come out of hiding and begun their insistent song. The world was fresh. Renewed. Hopeful.

  No wonder people wanted to live in Golden Beach. Who could blame them?

  The kitchen, Brad discovered, was in the center of the house, divided from the living area by a waist-high counter. Somehow dishes must not seem so bad if you could stand at the sink and see, theoretically, all the way to Mexico.

  He found the beer, popped the cap, and downed a long satisfying swallow. Life was good. And looking better by the minute.

  Chapter Three

  “Good morning, Jody!” Claire could only hope the sixteen-year-old wouldn’t find anything odd about the fatuous grin she couldn’t quite hide.

  Jody Stevens was a summer replacement for T & T’s regular receptionist who had three young children and no one else to tend them over school vacation. Though still suffering slightly from baby fat, Jody was graced by a round face framed by dark brown waves of shoulder-length hair and anchored by a pair of glowing eyes as brown as hazel nuts. She was so cheerfully efficient she made everyone else in the office feel like Methuselah. She could answer six incoming lines with thirty extensions, send and receive faxes, arrange showings for T & T’s many listings and still maintain her bubbling enthusiasm and quick smile.

  Fortunately, this morning Jody was so busy she barely glanced up from her desk. “Am I ever glad you’re here!” she cried. “The rental list must have hit the north in yesterday’s mail. The phone hasn’t stopped, and there were so many messages on the machine I couldn’t do them ‘til you got here.”

  “I’ll take the phones while you check the messages,” Claire volunteered. Jody flashed a grateful grin, grabbed a pad and pencil and headed for the answering machine in the backroom.

  Spared! Claire was ready to share her harrowing adventure on the bridge last night, but her reaction to Brad Blue was way too sensitive. Private.

  Nine a.m., Claire, old girl. Time to get your head out of the clouds.

  And yet . . . while Claire waited for her computer to run its system checks, her fatuous grin came back. She stared at the screen and saw only a mass of long blond hair shimmering around the tanned face of the man who had put down his bottle of beer and unfolded himself from the kitchen chair when she returned from putting Jamie to bed. She’d made her entrance well-armed, having changed her clothes, combed her hair, and executed a mad scramble to find the rosy gold of her favorite lipstick.

  He stood as she entered the kitchen, his eyes glowing with the shared amusement of what-a-hell-of-a-night-we’ve-had. And something more.

  Right there, under the unromantic glare of the kitchen light, Claire knew she was in trouble. She hadn’t even looked at a man in two years, yet if this one wanted to throw her over his shoulder and carry her into the bedroom in the same house with her son and grandmother, she probably couldn’t have managed a squeak of protest.

  Well, maybe not. But the urges were powerful.

  His cheekbones were high, his nose a finely structured flare of flesh and bone set between blue eyes the color of a brilliant summer sky and above full lips that could only be described as sensual. His jaw was firm, that of a man accustomed to having his own way. Framing the whole was the incredible mass of long thick hair so blond, even wet, that Claire realized it would probably dry to near white.

  What did he see? Claire wondered. The red glints in her shoulder length brown hair? Probably not. The red was only visible when thoroughly dry and under strong sunlight. And her face was nothing to get excited about. A nice even arrangement of features, large blue-green eyes her only claim to beauty. She was the girl men brought home to their mothers. Never the one they lusted after.

  “Did you say your name is blue, like the color?” Claire asked as Brad found a glass and poured her a beer. They sat, facing each other, at the kitchen table.

  “Yeah. Long story. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  Claire couldn’t take her eyes off his pale glistening
hair, framing his face and tumbling damply over his shoulders. Brad Blue had more hair than she did. “What were you going to say to Jamie about your hair before you changed your mind?”

  His lips curled in a long, lazy smile. “That I started to wear it this way because my grandfather hated it.”

  “You still have a grandfather?”

  “Eighty-five, going on a hundred and ten. The most cantankerous, difficult, miserable son of a bitch you’d ever care to not meet. He made my mother’s life hell, not to mention my grandmother’s.” Brad stopped abruptly, chugged the rest of his beer. Leaning his chair back at a precarious angle, he retrieved another bottle from the refrigerator.

  “Sorry,” he murmured as he popped the cap with his fingers. “As I said, ‘long story.’ I’ll tell you sometime.”

  So much for innocuous topics of conversation. Claire had her own difficulties with family skeletons. “I want to apologize for Jamie—”

  “Don’t. He’s a good kid.”

  “Yes, he is, but I want you to understand. There was an incident. As you say, ‘long story,’ but he was involved with a lot of sirens and lights and people asking him questions. Most of the time he’s fine, but there in the truck, all alone, not knowing what had happened to me . . . when he heard the noise, saw all the lights, it was just too much.”

  “I told you, no need to explain. I figured it must be something like that. You don’t owe me any details. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’m glad I could help. As it turned out, you didn’t really need me.”

  Didn’t need him? “You kept me sane,” Claire told him flatly.

  “No. You’re a tough lady. You’d have made it on your own.”

  “I’d still be out there, banging on doors, trying to find someone who hadn’t gone north for the summer.”

  Brad chuckled. “You’re probably right. As I said, I’m glad I came along.”

  A flash of headlights signaled the arrival of the tow truck. Not until Claire saw Brad Blue pay the tow truck driver did she realize just how far her wits had gone begging. Brad waved off her sputtered apologies, her insistence on writing him a check. She stood there, cheeks burning, as he test-drove her car out to the main road and back.