Read Online Rivals in Paradise by Gwyneth Bolton - Free Book Online Page B

withstand hurricane seasons and look good while doing so.
    â€œDid you grow up in this area of the island?”
    â€œNo. We lived in a much poorer section where mom still has her rum shack. No matter how muchmoney I make and send her, that woman still won’t give up her business.” Chase chuckled. “At least she took the house here and let me remodel her business. I wanted to build her a house near mine on the beach, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
    â€œShe sounds like my grandmother. My sister and her husband have been trying to get her to let them build her another house in Miami, but she refuses to leave her little house in Overtown. She’s like, ‘I worked my fingers to the bone to pay for it, and it’s mine.’”
    â€œSounds like my mother. I had to build the house and have her sisters furnish it the way my mom would like before she agreed to move into it.”
    â€œThat sounds like my gran. I purchased a cruise for her a few years back—that’s when I first visited Dahinda. Anyway, before that, she would never get on a plane and she darn sure wasn’t getting on a boat and sailing across the ocean. She was of the, ‘God put me on land and made me from the earth. I’m gonna stay on the ground until the good Lord sees fit to have me returned to the earth’ school of thought. She wasn’t trying to be in the air or in the sea.” Cicely laughed remembering her grandmother’s colorful arguments about why the only thing she was getting in was a car and how she didn’t totally trust those, either.
    â€œBut I went and purchased a cruise for the twoof us anyway, and my sister and I both talked her into going. Since she didn’t want to see me waste my hard-earned pennies, she went. The only thing she couldn’t stand worse than the thought of getting on a boat or plane was wasting hard-earned money. Now girlfriend takes at least one cruise a year, maybe even two. And my sister has Gran flying now. She’s a regular jet-setter!”
    Chase chuckled at Cicely’s depiction of her grandmother. She sounded a lot like his own grandmother. That woman had never stepped off of Dahinda because she had refused to get on a plane or boat. Once again he felt the pang of guilt that came whenever he thought about her and the fact that he hadn’t been able to be at her bedside when she died because he’d had a big merger to oversee at work.
    â€œSounds like we both come from humble beginnings and have managed to do better for ourselves and our families.” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
    The less he found himself identifying with the very tempting Cicely Stevens the better. She was probably the same as all the other scandalous women he had dealt with in the past, maybe even worse. She had actually beaten him before, and she might have done so by nefarious means. He still wasn’t sure he bought the theory they’d come up with on the plane.
    Without proof of who took the picture and why,Cicely and he had an uneasy truce, at best. He needed to keep that firmly in mind.
    Chase parked the car beside his two-story home, located on a private beach.
    They had driven around the island chatting and had pretty much forgotten about the tour part of it. They were just riding, talking and letting the island breeze entice them with the possibilities that lay ahead.
    â€œThis is my home. I usually stay here when I visit. I don’t get to make it back often, but it’s still nice to have a place that’s all mine on the island.” He turned to her and smiled. “Would you like a quick tour of my home before we go to my mom’s spot?”
    He could see that she seemed to be at war with herself as she tried to decide how she was going to answer his question.
    He smiled as he watched her put one foot in front of the other, slowly.
    Did she dare walk willingly into the wolf’s lair?
    Things were not going