Read Online Shadowed Paradise by Blair Bancroft - Free Book Online

to mind working with his hands in a climate
more foreign than the language.
    “ Did he stay a cowhunter?”
    “ In a way. My mother was given a bit of
land by her mother’s family. Enough to run a few head, do pretty
well with a market garden. My mother did most of the farm work
while dad turned out to have a gift for wood. The finest custom
cabinets in Golden Beach were created by Gene Blue.”
    “ Are they still alive?”
    Far out in the gulf only half a rose-red sun
remained above the water, casting the western horizon into a blaze
of purple, pink, and gold. Brad’s eyes darkened with the fading
light. “No. About ten years ago mom and dad took their first real
vacation. Their Caribbean cruise offered a flight from Cozumel to
Chichen-Itza as an extra. Their small plane went down in the
jungle. No survivors.”
    “ I’m sorry,” Claire murmured, but Brad
Blue, the person, was becoming more clear in her head. Beneath the
handsome façade, the charm and engaging humor, she sensed a
darkness. Personal tragedy, compounded by the melancholy of the
Russian soul, explained a good deal. But not all. What other
secrets lingered behind his charm and impeccable
manners?
    Somehow the brie and fruit had disappeared,
and Brad, slowed by his role as storyteller, was just downing the
last of a dozen raw oysters. He gave her a wicked grin as he doused
the slimy crustacean with hot sauce, held the rough shell to his
mouth and slid the pearly gray mess down his throat.
    Claire made a face. “As Jamie would say,
‘Gross!’”
    Brad winked. “Good for what ails you,” he
assured her.
    Somehow Claire doubted Brad Blue needed any
help in that department.
    “ Your turn,” Brad urged. “You must have
something in your past that won’t put a pall on the
evening.”
    “ No. I don’t.” There was no way she was
going to pour out the recent history of the Langdon family for his
amusement. “So why does your grandfather hate your
hair?”
    Brad glared at a seagull that was swooping
low, obviously contemplating a run on the rolls that peeked out
from beneath a white napkin in a basket on their table. A quick
flip of Brad’s hand and the bird did a neat ninety-degree bank, the
tip of its yard-wide wingspan nearly clipping the deck railing as
it went off to find more amenable prospects.
    “ Basically,” Brad said, “what old
Wade–-my Grandfather Whitlaw–-really hated was my father. Oh, in
the beginning he was impressed enough to offer him a job. Thought
he was a hero for jumping ship in the middle of the gulf.
And noblesse oblige is as much
expected from Florida cow kings as the European variety. But that
was before he found out his one and only daughter thought Gene Blue
was a hero too.”
    Classic, Claire thought. Romantic enough for
one of her grandmother’s books.
    “ I don’t know if anyone’s told you, but
Wade Whitlaw runs more cattle than any other rancher in Calusa
County. The Whitlaws were selling beef to Cuba before the Civil
War. Kept right on doing it straight through the Yankee blockade
too, particularly after they sold two years of beef to the South
for worthless Confederate scrip.
    “ What it comes down to,” Brad
continued, tucking into his Mahi Mahi, “granddad is loaded. My
father didn’t have a dime. In the end, my mother, who was due to
inherit a hefty share of the cow kingdom, was told to give up the
slimy commie deserter or else.” Brad took a long swallow of his
second scotch. “She chose the or
else .”
    If Gene Blue had been anything like his son,
it was a choice Claire could easily understand. “I wonder if I’d
have been that brave,” was all she said.
    “ Yeah . . . the power of love to make
idiots of us all.”
    Great. Brad’s sarcasm effectively quenched
Claire’s wistful thoughts on love and romance. “Where did you say
your parents got their farm?”
    “ My grandmother was a Tyree before she
had the misfortune to marry Wade Whitlaw. The Tyrees came here
right after the Civil