Paradise Burning (6 page)

The woman lifted her gaze above the rapidly
dissipating mist and looked downriver. Clearly startled by the
sight of Mandy standing upright on a bench and looking straight at
her, the woman shot to her feet, poised to run away. Yet something
seemed to hold her back. She froze in place like a deer pinned by a
hunter’s spotlights. Mandy raised her hand and waved. One lesson
she’d learned in the past few days—Floridians were friendly. And
polite to strangers.

Unmoving, the woman continued to stare at
Mandy. For the space of perhaps ten seconds the world along the
river seemed to stand still. Then a sudden loud squawk, a shrill
squee echoed through the jungle as some predator satisfied its
craving for breakfast. The woman turned and ran inland so fast her
loose-fitting dress flapped around her ankles and her long blond
hair streamed out behind.

Both Ed Cramer and Peter had told her no one
lived on the far side of the river. As far as Golden Beach was
concerned, it was the end of the world. Nothing but Florida
wilderness for miles.

Fine. The girl would give her a topic of
conversation with Peter other than sex.

Sex. Sexual
slavery
. The idea was so repugnant, no wonder she’d
left the fight to Eleanor. Oh, Mandy had done her job. Research,
planning sessions, running scenarios, hacking computers far, far
away. But she hadn’t dug in, done more than she was
asked.

Not our
problem
. Like Grandmother Kingsley, she hadn’t wanted
to know.

And Kira had died.

While precious privileged Mandy was being
given a season in paradise. And a chance to restart her life.

It seemed so grossly unfair. Kira had died on
Mandy Armitage’s watch, and her punishment was being force-fed
Peter Pennington. One thing was certain. The book research was
going to be a hell of lot easier than mending her love life.

Mandy parked her car next to Peter’s 4Runner,
taking advantage of the shade beneath his towering house. No sense
in driving home in an oven at the end of the day, even if she had
to cozy up to Peter’s SUV to stay cool.

There had to be irony in there somewhere,
Mandy thought, as she walked up the L-shaped ramp that led to the
kitchen. Remaining cool when cozied up to anything of Peter’s was
well-nigh impossible.

Forget Peter. She’d had a good morning in
town, establishing rapport with the local Reference Librarian, who
had found and ordered books from libraries in Tampa, Orlando, and
Atlanta. Oh, the joys of interlibrary loan. The accommodating
librarian had found everything from the confessions of a pop singer
sold into a brothel in Japan to the documentation of an
investigative reporter shocked to find forced prostitution in
Israel, to a compilation of reports on international trafficking in
women and children published by the UN. The writing on that would
probably be dry, but the content hot to the point of incandescence.
How such horrors could occur on a daily basis and receive so little
attention was beyond Mandy’s comprehension.

Yet she had to step back, look at the
statistics clinically. Refuse to think beyond the facts, beyond the
research task at hand. Statistics, just statistics. She mustn’t
personalize it, musn’t think about the individual suffering. It
would destroy her.

Mandy Mouse, clinging desperately to her
hole. Safe. Sane. Untouched.

Wise mouse.

Cowardly mouse. Voyeur. The mouse who could
plan, control, wrap up problems and lock them away. But never
touch. Or be touched.

Shoulders slumped in chagrin, Mandy stared
blankly at the door at the top of the ramp. She hadn’t wanted to be
on the outside of life, looking in. It had simply . . .
happened.

She bit her lip, squared her shoulders, tried
the door knob.

The house was unlocked and utterly still, a
stage set waiting to be brought to life. Peter must be upstairs,
she decided, working in his office aerie. Heaven forbid she should
disturb him while he was working . . . so now would be a good time
to explore.

The day before, she’d come away with little
beyond an impression of elegant space surrounded by a broad deck
and a spectacular view of the Florida wilderness. Now, however . .
.

The door had opened into a gleaming white
kitchen with state-of-the-art gadgets. As Mandy looked around, her
eyes lit with secret amusement. She actually knew what all these
appliances were for and how to use them. Last night she’d turned
down Peter’s offer to stay for supper, scooting home like the devil
was after her, leaving him standing on the deck, glowering. But
intimacy, even a simple dinner, must be shunned. She was weak, she
knew her limits. And that included revealing she’d taken a
comprehensive course in cookery. Which was much too much like
groveling. But one of these days she’d surprise him.

Maybe.

Mandy wandered into an adjacent room
that seemed to be a cross between a classic library and a
traditional family room. Pausing to examine a floor-to-ceiling
collection of books, she ran a finger along the row of Jack Higgins
and James Patterson, scowled at Hemingway. Her hand lingered over
the frayed binding of
Pride and
Prejudice
. Surprisingly, it seemed to be one of
Peter’s favorites as well as her own. A vision of Keira Knightly as
Elizabeth Bennet wandering, awed, through Pemberley filled her
head. Mandy frowned. The implications of Jane Austen’s study in the
fallacies of stubborn pride and misconceptions were not
comfortable. She was having enough trouble dealing with Peter
without a reminder that she too might be at fault.

Abruptly, Mandy abandoned the cozy family
room, but paused on the threshold to the vast central greatroom,
seeing not the living area, but only the view. The east wall was
nothing but panels of glass opening to the broad, partially covered
deck and to the endless uninhabited expanse of river and jungle
beyond. A primeval Eden. As if the world had dropped away, leaving
Peter and herself to renew civilization. And themselves.

A powerful, seductive thought. She doubted
Amanda Armitage, the keyboard mouse, was up to such earth-shaking
responsibility. But what about the daughter of that dynamic duo,
Jeffrey Armitage and Eleanor Kingsley? That Amanda would never let
a man get away twice.

Mandy forced her gaze back to the room around
her. She didn’t have to be an art expert to recognize that the oils
and watercolors adorning the off-white walls were all originals.
And by artists of exceptional talent. The coffee table, formed by
an oval of glass laid on top of an artistic tangle of thick grape
vines was also a work of art. And the glass collection . . .

All else forgotten, Mandy rushed to the
lighted display case, the sudden sparkle in her eyes matching the
shimmer of the objects inside. She had been only four years old
when her Grandmother Kingsley had introduced her to the infinite
possibilities of glass. One trip to see the glass flowers at
Harvard, and Mandy was lost. The museum became her second favorite
spot, right behind the swanboats on Boston Common. As she grew
older and acquired money, she had begun her own modest
collection.

And, amazingly, Peter must have remembered.
Mandy’s eyes devoured the beautiful objects in the case. Colorful
paperweights, a plate of red and gold glass fit to serve a queen,
glowing multi-hued flowers inside a rounded crystal bowl, a
delicate goblet of midnight blue, glittering geometric shapes and
free-form sculptures. The collection, though small, was excitingly
lovely. Eclectic. Chihuly, Dejonghe, possibly a Heilman . . .

She re-examined the collection, piece by
piece. And there . . . how could she have missed it? Crouched at
the front of the second shelf from the top was a small glass mouse.
A shy creature, dwarfed by the more ostentatious beauty surrounding
it. A fragile translucent rodent not more than three inches nose to
tail.

Mouse
. When
Peter had first called her Mouse, it had been all too fitting, for
that’s exactly what she’d been. Meek, mild, low-fat vanilla. With
odd moments of artistic temperament not unknown in spoiled
geniuses. And yet . . . even now, after so many years, the little
glass mouse brought not anger or sadness but a moment of nostalgia,
of whimsey. And magic.

Peter had assembled this collection for
her.

Stupid!
No way.
It was just Peter being Peter. He had always had superb
taste.

Except for his inexplicable interest in
Amanda Armitage.

Mandy swallowed a sigh. Reluctantly leaving
the glass collection behind, she continued her exploration.

She paused in the doorway of the master
suite, her brain—or was it her wounded soul?—balking at setting
foot in Peter’s bedroom. Very much a bachelor’s pad, it was
decorated in black and white with occasional splashes of red. It
even smelled masculine. Designer after-shave, deodorant endorsed by
some multi-millionaire from the NBA, the faint whiff of hampered
laundry, and something less definable that was simply Peter.

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?”