Paradise Burning Page 5

  Mandy’s face crumpled. She stepped back from the brink and moved on. When she reached the bedroom done in white wicker with soft blue and green fabric on the bedcoverings and draperies, she knew this was the room intended for her. All right, so it was a nice try. Thoughtful. But a roomful of pretty furnishings didn’t make up for five years of Peter wandering the world and other women’s beds while she stayed glued to her computer at AKA. And whose fault was that?

  Damn!

  “Changed your mind? Ready to move in?” Peter’s challenge was so unexpected, Mandy jumped and whirled around, wincing as she stubbed her toe on one of the bed supports.

  “Must you sneak up like that?” she snapped.

  Peter, suppressing a mean-spirited inclination to remind her it was his house, leaned a shoulder against the door frame and smiled. After all, whatever the new fancy packaging, he had his skittish little Mouse exactly where he wanted her. Hard up against the edge of a bed.

  He let his eyes roam over her from head to toe. “Looking good, Mouse. In case I failed to mention it yesterday.” She was eyeing the door behind him as if he were a predatory tom focused on a fine fat mouse. Not quite the effect he was hoping for.

  Pretty sad for two people who had once laughed together, loved together, finished each other’s sentences. But that was long ago. They’d taken different paths, neither one well-traveled, and become strangers. Only one thing seemed to have survived—pure, raw sexual attraction. At least Peter thought it wasn’t one-sided. Mandy had fled back to her stupid tin box so fast last night that her tires had actually squealed on the driveway.

  But the Mandy he’d known and loved must be in there somewhere.

  You can never go back.

  Hell! He could and he would. Besides, that wasn’t really what he wanted. He didn’t want to repeat a relationship that had ended in failure.

  “I–I saw a girl on the far side of the river this morning,” Mandy said, chin high, her arms crossed defensively over her chest. “I didn’t think anybody lived over there.”

  Peter almost applauded. If Mandy wanted to make a 3-D chess match out of his attempt at reconciliation, then so be it. “There’s a cluster of homes on the other side about three or four miles upriver,” he told her. “Rugged individualists who built there years ago when they had to cross a rickety bridge and drive miles of dirt road to get there. It’s a lot more civilized now,” he added, “new bridge, paved road . . .”

  “Where did you learn all that?” He could see Mandy’s natural curiosity, never far from the surface, ooze up and over the awkwardness of being trapped in a bedroom with him.

  “Brad Blue, the developer here at Amber Run. He’s a native, and his grandfather owns everything on the far side of the Calusa except that one small area of homes. He has the largest cattle ranch in the county. In fact,” Peter added on a note of amused confidentiality, “I’m told—not by Brad—that his grandfather grazed cattle for sixty years on the land Brad turned into Amber Run. According to local gossip, the land was Brad’s grandmother’s dowry, and it was a big shock to old Wade when she left it to her grandson instead of her husband.”

  “How can there be cattle across the river?” Mandy demanded. “It’s just one big jungle.”

  “The jungle is only along the river,” Peter explained patiently. “The land behind it gets a bit soggy during the rainy season, but it’s prime cattle country for miles and miles. Wade Whitlaw is a genuine cattle baron, and his son and heir, Garrett, is a big wheel on the County Commission.”

  My second husband is in politics and prefers to have his name as prominent and wide-spread as possible.

  Mandy was nothing if not an expert at assimilating random pieces of information. “Then Phil Whitlaw, the real estate broker, is Wade Whitlaw’s daughter-in-law?”

  “She was also once his granddaughter-in-law,” Peter returned smoothly. “She used to be married to Brad Blue.”

  “What is this, General Hospital?” Mandy shot back, failing to suppress an incredulous grin.

  “More like a twenty-first century Dallas,” Peter countered, his lips quirking up in an answering smile.

  It was too much like their old rapport. Ruthlessly, Mandy steered herself back on track. “Okay, we’ve got some houses three or four miles upriver from here. Where’s the ranch house?”

  “You mean where does Wade Whitlaw live? Damned if I know. But your girl had better watch her step. Rumor has it old Wade patrols his land with a shotgun and isn’t above taking pot shots at trespassers.”

  Mandy’s eyes widened, but in typical Armitage fashion, she stuck stubbornly to the subject. “Then how could I have seen a girl sitting on the riverbank this morning?”

  “Easy. She must have had a boat. And Wade hasn’t seen her yet.”

  “I didn’t see a boat.”

  “How far away was she?” Peter challenged.

  “Maybe as much as the length of a football field.”

  “You’re near-sighted, Mouse. Add fifty or sixty feet for the width of the river, and practically anything could have been hidden behind the brush along the bank. She had to have had a boat.”

  “The woman I saw had long blond hair and an odd-looking dress. She seemed to be young, but I have to admit she was pretty far away.”

  “Bud’s Fish Camp, a couple miles upriver, rents canoes. Face it, Mouse, your girl had a boat tucked away somewhere.”

  Mouse. She ought to resent it—it wasn’t exactly flattering—but somehow the old pet name made her feel cherished. A wife instead of a research assistant.

  “I don’t think so,” she replied far less firmly than she’d intended. “Is Brad Blue around every day? I’d like to talk to him.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so interested in some strange girl,” Peter muttered, every nerve tingling at the sight of Mandy in the bedroom he had furnished just for her. Until he could convince her to make the switch to his. Keep on topic. Don’t scare her! “But Brad’s always around. His wife can locate him for you. She runs the model center. You must have seen the sign on your way in. Her name’s Claire, and I think you’ll like her.” Good thought, Pennington. A friend at Amber Run would help Mandy feel more at home. Home is where the heart is. Whoever said that surely had it right.

  So far, he’d managed Step One. Mandy was in Golden Beach. Now he needed to maneuver her out of her hideaway on wheels and into this room.

  And then up the hallway to his room. His bed.

  Their bed.

  3-D chess. Complex. Tricky. With dangers coming at you from every direction.

  He wasn’t Pete Rodcyzk any more. He was Peter Pennington. Older, wiser, more experienced. This time his Mouse wasn’t going to skitter away.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning Mandy set the alarm for the crack of dawn and dragged herself down to the steaming river, only to find nothing but masses of misted greenery, the steady thrum of insects, and the usual disgustingly wide-awake birds. Close to the dock where the mist was not so thick, the river was pock-marked by ever-widening pools as fish sprang up through the dark water to snatch their breakfasts. But not so much as a glimpse of a female will-o-the-wisp with long blond hair.

  Mandy scowled at the pristine paradise around her. Why the feeling of disappointment? For some inexplicable reason she’d been trying to make a mystery out of nothing more than an intrepid hiker.

  In a dress?

  Mandy stuck to her vigil for nearly an hour, experiencing an odd mix of reveling in this private Eden and wondering if she’d gone stark, raving mad to be anywhere but in her bed at sunrise. She also examined her underlying surge of excitement, the call of a hunt so much more up close and personal than sitting at her keyboard. Was this need to solve a mystery in her genes? Or was she desperately seeking a distraction from a different call of the wild? Named Peter.

  Did it matter? She felt . . . alive. She felt good. Whatever urge had gotten her up in the cold predawn, she was doing the right thing. She was certain of it.
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br />   As the sun began to rise behind the dense mass of greenery on the far side of the river, Mandy trudged back to the RV, where she set about reading the instructions on the brand new coffee bean grinder that had caught her eye at the grocery store. Well, why not? If she was going to be independently domestic, she might as well go all the way. Ten minutes later, when she savored the first sip of coffee made from freshly ground beans, she felt almost as much satisfaction as the day she’d completed cooking school. Real coffee. Maybe, one of these days, she’d manage to be a real woman.

  If she hadn’t been so damned stubborn five years ago . . .

  Whither thou goest . . .

  How could she have chosen AKA? But when Peter declared his intention of abandoning his position as Heir Apparent to the Armitage family business to wander the world, write books, become an observer instead of a participant, it was as if he was abandoning Mandy as well. The hurt was all-encompassing.

  Jeff’s and Eleanor’s shock had been nothing compared to her own. So what if he had asked her to go with him, they couldn’t both dessert their posts. Leave AKA without its two most brilliant assets.

  But, dear God, the pain had nearly torn her in two.

  And now Peter thought he could just waltz back into her life . . .

  Peter. The man radiated sex appeal like a Catherine wheel shooting sparks in all directions. He was a lethal weapon. And knew it. There ought to be a law . . .

  Maybe chocolate macadamia nut coffee would strengthen her resistance. Mandy poured a second cup.

  She was free to explore this morning. Before returning to his aerie to work, Peter had told her she needn’t come in until eleven as he wanted her to accompany him to a luncheon interview in the neighboring city of Manatee Bay. So . . . the land beyond the river beckoned.

  On the RV’s small dining table Mandy spread out the local map given to her by T&T Realty. Which confirmed that the Calusa River was the end of civilization. In fact, the elegant community of Golden Beach dwindled to near wilderness several miles west of the river. To the east there was nothing at all, except for the one small enclave of homes Peter had mentioned, clustered together on the east bank several miles upriver from Calusa Campground.

  Bending over the map, Mandy frowned. Finding the bridge across the river on paper was one thing. To actually get there, it looked as if she was going to have to negotiate a maze. North, west, north, east, then south. Almost as if the rugged individualists on the far side of the river had set up an obstacle course to keep people out.

  In the end, the four-mile trip upriver took nine miles to drive. Nine miles of flower nurseries, tree nurseries, grazing cows and horses. Even a riding academy and a vast horse farm, which included a racetrack and a glimpse of a home that made Tara look like the gardener’s cottage. By the time Mandy came to the bridge across the river, she had rubbernecked so much her shoulders were stiff.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing, about downtown Golden Beach—which prided itself on being one of the Florida’s finest resort and retirement communities—had prepared her for the vast bucolic acreage on which some of its citizens lived. Hearing Peter say there was a cattle ranch across the river was far less of a surprise than seeing so many cows, horses, pastures, and stables on this side of the river. Florida was a very strange place. Not at all what Mandy had expected.

  She found the bridge. About a mile beyond it, homes began to appear, nearly all wood frame and sensibly elevated on stilts. One or two were Key West style, though not as elegant as their cousins in Amber Run, but most were country cottages elevated solely for practicality instead of any attempt at architectural grace. All were set in the midst of a live oak forest so large and so old that the Spanish moss dripping from every branch seemed like honored beards of age. With the river on one side and the oaks above, Mandy realized these people on the far side of the Calusa had a natural air conditioning the rest of Golden Beach’s citizens could only envy.

  Nearly every yard was fenced. To keep dogs and children in, Mandy wondered, or alligators out? Probably both. Not to mention that these people built here because they enjoyed their privacy. Mandy winced. Did that make her a voyeur?

  It took only five minutes to drive by every home in the enclave, yet she was certain she was still two or three miles north of the place where she’d seen the blonde in the white dress. So what now? Mandy turned around and drove back to a place where the road forked and she’d gone left instead of right. As she turned onto this last unexplored road, Mandy guessed she was going south, but she’d made so many twists and turns to get where she was that her usually reliable sense of direction was sadly skewed.

  The houses fell away, the road narrowed, turned to dirt. Mandy had visions of Wade Whitlaw hiding behind a sturdy oak, shotgun in hand. Perhaps she should turn around. But where? Drainage ditches hugged the narrow track on either side. Mandy gritted her teeth and kept going, vowing to turn around at the first wide place in the road. Independence was all well and good, but she might be overdoing it. One glimpse of a woman on a riverbank was not worth getting shot at. Or arrested for trespassing.

  The road came to an abrupt dead end. Mandy braked to a halt, staring in fascination at a very business-like eight-foot chain link fence topped with four strands of barbed wire. The gate boasted a key-pad lock. Oh-oh. The fine hairs on the back of her neck rose. This was more than a desire for privacy. That fence, not to mention the signs she’d ignored, screamed she was trespassing big time. She needed to get out. Now.

  There was, thank God, a turnaround in front of the towering gate. Mandy had just begun to maneuver the car around when she saw a man striding down the road behind the fence. He was moving in the brisk, almost bristling, manner of a man who had to be moving—going somewhere, doing something—or go stark raving mad. Horribly embarrassed, Mandy once again braked, too polite to run from the scolding she was about to receive. The man had a right to scold. She was a Peeping Tom, caught red-handed. He did not, she noted with relief, carry a shotgun.

  But as Mandy sat there quivering, the man never faltered in his stride, never gave the slightest sign he even noticed her existence. He reached the gate, slammed his palm against the silver metal bar at the center, his taut energy palpable, then turned on his heel and started back down the sandy trail. Mandy’s breath whooshed out in a long heartfelt sigh. She willed her pulse to stop racing. She had gotten a very good look at him, and he was not someone she would care to confront out here in the middle of nowhere. Definitely a man who looked as if he belonged behind an eight-foot security fence topped by barbed wire.

  And yet . . . talk about tall, dark and handsome! Even taller than Peter, he was as leanly fit as an NFL end or a soccer player of international distinction. His hair was short, black and tightly curly. His handsome face, nearly square, was oddly enhanced by features so strong they verged on the harsh. A neatly trimmed black Van Dyke surrounded a pair of thin straight lips. His skin was the golden bronze Mandy had once viewed from above the black confines of a chador. His erect carriage, his long purposeful strides proclaimed him a man of action. A man totally out of his element in an isolated backwoods setting in the tranquil resort town of Golden Beach, Florida.

  When Mandy looked past her surprise, three words leaped to mind: Soldier. Muslim. Iranian. All he lacked was the uniform.

  At least that one time she viewed the world from beneath a veil, she was quite sure she was in Iran because Iraqi women were not required to hide their faces. But since working for either country was outrageously illegal at the time, she had never been certain where she was. Eleanor had not said, and she had not asked. AKA was inclined to be mixed up in some very strange pies.

  No matter. Wherever she’d been, this man matched the look. But with a little something extra thrown in. Dynamic? Yes, that was likely the best word to describe him. And screaming of secrets. What was a man like that doing out back of beyond in Golden Beach?

  Dear God, no! Not again. Mandy hadn’t made the association before now, but
her analytical brain suddenly connected the dots. Golden Beach was where Mohamad Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi learned to fly.

  Ridiculous! She was so overreacting. Terrorists would never use the same town twice.

  And yet . . .

  In a ridiculous effort to appear invisible, Mandy sat in her car and watched the man disappear back into the shade of the oaks overshadowing the sandy trail. His back was still stiff as a board, his shoulders military straight. He had seen her, but looked right through her. A typical Muslim reaction to an unknown female.

  This had to be a different mystery. Possibly a piece of the puzzle of the girl on the riverbank, for if she had truly been heading south on this dirt road, she could easily be close to where the Russian girl perched on the fallen tree trunk.

  So not terrorism, but something else . . .

  A woman with long blond hair and flowing dress and a middle-eastern male of military bearing? In Golden Beach, that mecca for tourists and retirees from the mid-West and the Northeast, it was like finding two sleek leopards in a field of white fuzzy sheep.

  The man was gone now. Disappeared into the dense stand of trees lining the road beyond the gate. Not wanting to attract further attention, Mandy turned the car with precise care, then slunk back toward civilization, each moment expecting shotgun pellets to rain down from some avenging god of privacy.

  Okay, so she was a coward, accustomed to doing her sleuthing via computer. She fully deserved to be called Mouse.

  And yet . . . it was fascinating. Had she found a mystery, a bit of a challenge to keep her wits sharp? Or had she discovered that lightning really could strike twice—terrorist had returned to Golden Beach?