Paradise Burning (4 page)

Yet two years ago, when Peter’s wanderlust
had ended in Manhattan, they’d actually set a date and time to
meet. Older, mellower, more willing to compromise, they’d agreed to
celebrate the publication of Peter’s first book. She’d arrived a
day early, planning to buy a whole new wardrobe at Bloomie’s. And
found Peter in bed, covered only by the lithe lines of his editor’s
editorial assistant.

Well, not quite, but Peter had answered the
door in nothing but jeans and a red face, and Mandy’s imagination
filled in the rest. The lithe young thing, attempting to slink out
of the bedroom and down the hall, hadn’t exactly left her clueless
either.

Not that Mandy hadn’t expected Peter to
have other women, but the
day before
their first meeting in two years . . .

Well, hell!

She’d rolled her suitcase back to the
elevator, back to Penn Station. Back to Boston. Where she rolled up
the last faintly hopeful remnants of her love life and tossed them
away.

Mandy frowned at the screen, her
fingers skimmed the keys
. Peter. I have
some things to take care of. Expect me when you see me.
M.

Good. That should really piss him off.

“
Not to worry. You’ll get the hang of
it in no time at all.” Ed Cramer, manager of Calusa Campground,
gave Mandy an encouraging smile as she watched the car with the two
men from the RV dealership disappear down the dirt road.

Cramer had a round face, lined by at least
seventy years of hearty living and topped by a ring of
white-flecked gray hair not quite successfully combed over a pink
bald spot. But his body was lean and his eyes sparkled with an
interest in everything around him. Mandy liked him immediately. But
life in a campground was not at all what she was used to. And the
lecture she’d just received on how to dump her sewage and live with
a propane tank nearly had her running screaming down the road,
calling the deliverymen back.

She didn’t do domestic. She didn’t do
mechanical. Bytes and bits and codes, zeros and ones, that was her
world. This one was scary.

Ed Cramer was talking—better pay attention.
Who knew what dangers she might miss if she didn’t. But he was only
enumerating a list of campground activities long enough to make
Mandy’s jaw drop.

“
It—it sounds wonderful, but I’m going
to be working,” she stammered, somehow feeling that her
non-participation would be letting the campground down. “I’m afraid
I won’t have time for activities.”

“
Well,” drawled the trim campground
manager whose gleaming dentures contrasted sharply with the depth
of his tan, “there’s three johnboats down at the dock. You can
always fit in some rowing, maybe a bit of fishing, any time you
like.”

“
That sounds great,” Mandy murmured.
“I’ll remember that.” Like she was going to take some itty bitty
dinghy onto a river that was probably stuffed with alligators,
water moccasins, and God alone knew what else. Jeffrey Armitage and
Eleanor Kingsley had not produced an idiot.

Mandy thanked Ed for his help, then
stood stock still, her gaze following him, almost in amazement, as
he headed back toward his office. What was she doing here? She,
Mandy Armitage, the girl who was so certain AKA couldn’t function
without her, was standing in the middle of a campground in
Florida
, twelve hundred miles from
home. Instead of the cocoon of a cottage on AKA’s vast acres, she
had a tin can on wheels. No vital mission to plan. No friends or
colleagues. No Eleanor or Jeff.

She hadn’t wanted to be here. Or that’s what
she’d told herself. She’d even blamed her wishy-washy reaction to
Eleanor’s orders on grief over Kira. Truth was, now that she had
left AKA behind, the heavy gray nothingness that enveloped her
after Kira’s death was beginning to show faint streaks of
light.

She’d done it. She was
out
. Though Florida, admittedly, was
a challenge.

Peter even more so.

Mandy took a deep breath and looked around.
Neatly arrayed around her was a mixed bag of recreational vehicles,
from chunky toppers designed for pick-up trucks to classic silver
Airstream trailers, to giant fifth wheels. Yet all were nicely
spaced out under a canopy of tall pines, sturdy live oaks, and
waving palms. Lots of green grass, studded with picnic tables. Not
an inch of asphalt in sight.

About half the residents were snowbirds, Ed
Cramer had explained. Northerners who migrated south for the
winter. Which, Mandy guessed, included herself. Did she escape the
name because she was here to work? Or was she a snowbird, because,
come spring, she’d fly away home?

Or maybe not?

That thought was alarming enough to get
her feet moving. Curiosity and a determination to think of anything
but Peter propelled her toward the river that formed the eastern
boundary of Calusa Campground. Although not a natural people
person, Mandy made a genuine effort to return the smiles, nods, and
greetings from her predominantly senior neighbors as she passed by.
Not so hard, after all. But the warm glow that had begun to blossom
inside winked out when she saw the river. The Calusa couldn’t have
been farther from a sparkling clear New England stream if some mad
scientist had set out to design it that way. No rushing current,
gurgling over granite boulders, the Calusa was the color of
mahogany, the current so sluggish the water appeared to be standing
still. The dark depths were like a black hole, Mandy thought, ready
to pull unwary strangers to their doom. Capable, in fact, of
concealing
anything
beneath an
impenetrable surface that screamed of hidden secrets.

Feeling almost dizzy, Mandy forced her gaze
away from the river’s unreflecting surface. She was standing on a
small wooden dock. Tied to it were the three small boats Ed Cramer
had mentioned. Fishing? No way, no how. She was quite certain the
boats were smaller than the alligators that lurked in these
waters.

And yet . . . it was so quiet. As if the
world of the Calusa went on hold with the coming of dusk. Or was it
always like this? A place where the modern world dropped away and
only the primeval remained?

Frowning at her lapse into the fanciful,
Mandy examined the area near the dock. Graceful arches of willow
and live oak dipped their branches into the quiescent black shadows
along the river’s edge. Except for the clearing created by the
campground, a solid mass of greenery overhung both banks, including
massive amounts of vines that looked like wild grape.

The ambiance was beginning to grow on her. As
dark and mysterious as the river was, it was strangely soothing.
Peaceful. Balm for a troubled soul.

She wasn’t troubled! Just a little . . .
torn. Struggling hard to maintain her dignity. To not run straight
into Peter’s arms and never look back.

Gradually, Mandy became aware of the noises
that were so much a part of this old Florida setting they hadn’t
registered before. The insistent chirrups of a myriad insects, the
calls of birds she couldn’t see, let alone name. She did, however,
recognize the sudden loud scolding of a squirrel. Turning, she
discovered him perched on the moss-hung limb of a live oak, the
object of his anger a large black and white cat sitting on the
river bank calmly washing himself. Mandy strolled over to the cat,
murmuring appropriate words of greeting. The cat ceased his bath,
cocked his head to one side, and deigned to allow Mandy to scratch
behind his ears and rub her hand along his checkerboard back.

Perhaps it was going to be a season in
paradise, after all, as Eleanor had assured her. Perhaps this
idyllic spot, the magic of a jungle river and its creatures, could
mend the shambles of what she’d tried to convince herself was a
good life.

Even Jeff and Eleanor, who would never be
chosen Parents of the Year, had known something was wrong. That
something had to change.

The thing being Mandy.

But she’d only be manipulated so far. She
wasn’t going to do this their way. Or Peter’s way. Only Mandy’s
way.

My way or the
highway
. And wasn’t that what had put paid to her
marriage in the first place?

“
Bye, cat.” Mandy sighed. Head down,
shoulders slumped, she headed back to her first night in her new
home. The freezer was full of TV dinners. She’d bought a gallon jug
of green tea and a pint of Häagen Dazs Macadamia Brittle. What more
did she need?

Mandy peered into the narrow full-length
mirror on the back of the door to her equally narrow closet. If
she’d known she was going to end up living in a tin can, no matter
how luxurious, she wouldn’t have ordered all those clothes. On top
of that, since her catalog treasures hadn’t arrived yet, she’d made
the rounds of the resort boutiques lining Golden Beach’s Main
Street. Definitely, Sin City as far as shopping was concerned. She
who never shopped was discovering a whole new facet to her
personality.

Her hair wasn’t bad either. Mandy cocked her
head to one side, took another look. A salon Phil Whitlaw
recommended had cut and highlighted her hair, transforming it from
mouse to gleaming warm brown in a saucy, shorter length that curved
softly in just below her ears. Eyeliner and mascara had done
wonders for her eyes, but the rest of her . . . that was a woman
she didn’t know. Wasn’t sure she liked. An almost-Eleanor look in a
sage green pantsuit worn over a lacy white camisole.

Then again, her alternative was Mandy Mouse’s
same-old, same-old jeans and T-shirt. One last peek in the mirror.
Frowning, Mandy added a dash more lipstick, grabbed up her laptop
and brand new purse, and set out to meet her Nemesis.

Local maps had not yet caught up with Amber
Run. The area where Peter lived was nothing more than a blank white
space along the river, about a mile north of Calusa Campground.
“Drive in, take a right at the community dock,” Phil Whitlaw had
told her. “You can’t miss it. Biggest house in Amber Run.”

Mandy turned in at the development’s
impressive black wrought iron gate and drove past one-acre parcels,
each with a neat sign giving the lot number. Closer to the river,
she passed three homes in varying stages of construction. At the
community dock, considerably larger than the one at the campground,
she turned right down a road so overhung with trees, their beards
of Spanish Moss almost brushed the windshield. A lot of ambiance
for a brand new development. Someone had cared enough to spare the
trees.

And an odd hideaway for Peter the Great,
who’d always wanted to be in the thick of things. Mandy had named
him that when she was fifteen and studying imperial Russia in
school. Jeff had just recruited Peter right out of the Boston
University School of Journalism, and the young agent had hit AKA
running. As if Heir Apparent were already stamped on his forehead.
A street-smart kid with a steel-trap mind who had created his
ever-so-slightly rough-edged persona out of imagination, a sharp
eye, and sheer determination.

And there it
was
. She’d come to the end of the road, and above her
head rose a huge house on stilts, enclosed on three sides by a
screen of tall trees.
Oh.
My
.

Peter was home, or at least there was a
4Runner parked beneath the house, with room for another car beside
it. The rest of the ground floor area was walled with white wooden
lattice, evidently concealing some kind of storage area. A large
neatly asphalted circle in front of the house provided guest
parking. Sweeping double staircases led up to an elaborately carved
front door, and to a wraparound deck that put residents straight
into the heart of old Florida.

Wow!
There was
no other word. Mandy gaped. This was where Peter expected to live.
If she weren’t the most stiff-necked, stubborn, prideful idiot ever
created.

Ah, well . . . time to face the music.
Hoisting her purse and laptop to her shoulder, Mandy got out of the
car.

The front door burst open. Peter charged out,
braced both arms on the deck’s decorative railing. “Goddamn it,
Mouse! Where the hell have you been?”

Dejà vu
. She’d
already lived this bit. More than once. That fateful moment in
Manhattan. The day Peter walked away from AKA. The weeks and months
before that when they’d argued, Peter raging, Mandy stubbornly
resisting, usually ending in tears.

Nothing had changed.

Oh, yes, it
had
. The mouse was working on becoming a lion, and
they were both older, hopefully wiser. Which didn’t keep Mandy’s
knees from turning to jelly and her heart from ping-ponging inside
her shell of a body in a frantic attempt to escape. She wasn’t
ready. She couldn’t handle it. She wanted to leave.
Now.

Peter was nearly upon her. Incredibly, Mandy
stood her ground, drinking him in like some toxic brew she knew
wasn’t good for her, but couldn’t resist. Except for the scowl, he
looked . . . good. Scrumptious. There were more pounds on his
six-foot frame, but he’d been lanky, appearing undernourished no
matter how much he ate. Now he had broad shoulders, a solid chest.
His stomach was still flat, his hips lean. And he still wore his
dark curls cut ruthlessly short. The glowing amber eyes hadn’t
changed either. Always alert, always examining, analyzing.
Unfortunately, at the moment they were flashing a bit more
lightning than Mandy could have wished.

And, yes, life had etched more lines above
his square chin and around his eyes. Those eyes that tilted up ever
so slightly, a genetic gift from some ancient Asian tribe on a
rampage in Europe. In short, he was Peter. The epitome of an
adventurer. Exciting and dangerous.