Paradise Burning Read Online Free PDF

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