Free Shadowed Paradise by Blair Bancroft

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