Free Shadowed Paradise by Blair Bancroft Page A

Boy Blue.” Brad
leaned forward on the bench, rested his elbows on his knees. “We
went off to college together, got married right after graduation. I
don’t think either of us ever dated anyone else.”
    “ Then why . . . ?” Claire’s voice
trailed off. She had no right to ask. She wasn’t even sure she
wanted to know.
    Brad didn’t seem to mind the question. “As
strange as it seems, in all those years together Phil and I never
considered we might be destined to live entirely different lives.
When she got the chance to take over her father’s business, she
leaped at it. Two years after we were married, Phil was back in
Golden Beach, and I was about as far from here as I could get. End
of story.”
    He made it all sound so plausible. So easy.
Unemotional.
    Which simply wasn’t possible.
    “ As for Diane,” Brad added, “I’m just
the latest on a long list, the modern-day equivalent of another
notch on her belt. “It’s a situation I’ll have to deal with.” He
shifted his weight on the hard wooden bench, and somehow they were
melded hip to thigh. Lust fogged her brain. “Believe me, Claire,”
Brad said in a voice that had dropped to a husky bass, “if I were
free, we wouldn’t be sitting on this damn park bench making polite
conversation.”
    Was it possible Brad was feeling it too—this
rage of attraction that threatened to sweep everything before it?
Fool that she was, she’d like to believe it, but . . . she had to
keep her head, pride demanded it. “Twenty-four hours ago we hadn’t
met.”
    “ And it’s going to take me longer than
that to extricate myself from my entanglements.” Brad traced an
index finger down Claire’s forehead, along the bridge of her nose,
coming to rest lightly against her lower lip. She could not have
been more aware of him if they were lying naked in bed. Each and
every nerve end dissolved in a sea of sparks.
    Softly, Brad added, “I suppose what I’m
really saying is, ‘Will you still be around when I’m free? It won’t
be long, but I want the dust to settle so you’re not touched by the
fallout.” He stopped, took both her hands in his. “In plain
language, Claire, do you want to be around?”
    She was going to do some dumb fool thing like
cry. Who was Claire Langdon to deserve a second chance at
happiness? Embarrassed, she turned her head away, pulling loose a
hand to rub at the drops sliding silently down her cheeks.
Awkwardly, she freed her other hand, fumbling in her purse for a
tissue.
    “ Are tears a yes or
go-take-a-flying-leap-in-the-gulf?”
    Why pretend the attraction didn’t
exist? Being given a chance to feel again, love again, live again
was, in itself, a miracle . Never look a
gift horse in the mouth . Well, that worked both ways.
They each brought baggage, past history, to this relationship.
Would mutual attraction, no matter how strong, be enough to conquer
all?
    Claire swallowed, blew her nose.
“Model-sitting sounds great.” She was proud of herself. She had
managed those four fatal words without a quiver.
     
    The way his mother nagged, she must
have known . Known he’d killed
Kim Willis.
    She just kept after him. Don’t smoke,
you’ll get cancer. Don’t drink, you’ll get cirrhosis. Don’t yell at
that driver, he’s probably got a gun. Don’t spend so much time on
the Internet, get a real woman. Get married. Have kids. Be normal .
    So who the hell wanted to be normal?
    And she never liked his music. Told him
if she heard one more screech from the Valkyries, she was going to
scream. But he liked the
Valkyries, especially the part they’d used in Apocalypse Now . He must have seen that movie five
times when he was a kid.
    That was part of the trouble. Mom had
sent him to a good college, but she had no taste herself. Her idea
of good music was the theme from General
Hospital . So in the end he’d lost it. He’d turned up
the Valkyries full blast and done some screaming of his own.
Screamed that if she didn’t shut up,