Shadowed Paradise Read Online Free PDF Page B

from baby fat, Jody was graced by a round face framed by
dark brown waves of shoulder-length hair and anchored by a pair of
glowing eyes as brown as hazel nuts. She was so cheerfully
efficient she made everyone else in the office feel like
Methuselah. She could answer six incoming lines with thirty
extensions, send and receive faxes, arrange showings for T &
T’s many listings and still maintain her bubbling enthusiasm and
quick smile.
    Fortunately, this morning Jody was so busy
she barely glanced up from her desk. “Am I ever glad you’re here!”
she cried. “The rental list must have hit the north in yesterday’s
mail. The phone hasn’t stopped, and there were so many messages on
the machine I couldn’t do them ‘til you got here.”
    “ I’ll take the phones while you check
the messages,” Claire volunteered. Jody flashed a grateful grin,
grabbed a pad and pencil and headed for the answering machine in
the backroom.
    Spared! Claire
was ready to share her harrowing adventure on the bridge last
night, but her reaction to Brad Blue was way too sensitive.
Private.
    Nine a.m., Claire, old girl. Time to get your
head out of the clouds.
    And yet . . . while Claire waited for her
computer to run its system checks, her fatuous grin came back. She
stared at the screen and saw only a mass of long blond hair
shimmering around the tanned face of the man who had put down his
bottle of beer and unfolded himself from the kitchen chair when she
returned from putting Jamie to bed. She’d made her entrance
well-armed, having changed her clothes, combed her hair, and
executed a mad scramble to find the rosy gold of her favorite
lipstick.
    He stood as she entered the kitchen, his eyes
glowing with the shared amusement of
what-a-hell-of-a-night-we’ve-had. And something more.
    Right there, under the unromantic glare of
the kitchen light, Claire knew she was in trouble. She hadn’t even
looked at a man in two years, yet if this one wanted to throw her
over his shoulder and carry her into the bedroom in the same house
with her son and grandmother, she probably couldn’t have managed a
squeak of protest.
    Well, maybe not. But the urges were
powerful.
    His cheekbones were high, his nose a finely
structured flare of flesh and bone set between blue eyes the color
of a brilliant summer sky and above full lips that could only be
described as sensual. His jaw was firm, that of a man accustomed to
having his own way. Framing the whole was the incredible mass of
long thick hair so blond, even wet, that Claire realized it would
probably dry to near white.
    What did he see? Claire wondered. The red glints in her
shoulder length brown hair? Probably not. The red was only visible
when thoroughly dry and under strong sunlight. And her face was
nothing to get excited about. A nice even arrangement of features,
large blue-green eyes her only claim to beauty. She was the girl
men brought home to their mothers. Never the one they lusted
after.
    “ Did you say your name is blue, like
the color?” Claire asked as Brad found a glass and poured her a
beer. They sat, facing each other, at the kitchen table.
    “ Yeah. Long story. I’ll tell you about
it sometime.”
    Claire couldn’t take her eyes off his pale
glistening hair, framing his face and tumbling damply over his
shoulders. Brad Blue had more hair than she did. “What were you
going to say to Jamie about your hair before you changed your
mind?”
    His lips curled in a long, lazy smile. “That
I started to wear it this way because my grandfather hated it.”
    “ You still have a
grandfather?”
    “ Eighty-five, going on a hundred and
ten. The most cantankerous, difficult, miserable son of a bitch
you’d ever care to not meet. He made my mother’s life hell, not to
mention my grandmother’s.” Brad stopped abruptly, chugged the rest
of his beer. Leaning his chair back at a precarious angle, he
retrieved another bottle from the refrigerator.
    “ Sorry,” he murmured as he popped