Paradise Burning Read Free

gotten down on his knees
and begged. To Eleanor, the icicle, who might have had a maternal
impulse somewhere back in the Stone Age, but he doubted it.
    He’d wanted to go direct to Jeff, man to man,
but Mandy was the heart and soul of Jeff’s operations. It was
Mandy’s loyalty to her father and his far-flung band of agents that
had split them up. So Peter had devised a plan, a thinly disguised
maneuver to get Mandy to Florida.
    And hit a wall as strong as the ribbons
of stone framing New England’s fields. Until now. Until Eleanor had
actually called him .
    Jesus . Mandy
was on her way, smack in the midst of the seasonal southbound crush
on I-95. Not to worry, of course. Anybody who could drive in Boston
could handle traffic anywhere.
    But he did worry. His sheltered Mandy Mouse
might as well be a cloistered nun. Hell, he used to wonder if they
let her up from her keyboard long enough to pee. And he doubted
things had changed. Eleanor agonized over slave labor, yet just
what the hell did she think she and Jeff were doing to Mandy? Just
because they paid her well and surrounded her with luxury didn’t
mean Mandy wasn’t a captive.
    Loyalty . That
was the trap. As far as he was concerned, five years ago loyalty
became a dirty word.
    So what had changed? What had broken the
barrier and let his Mandy Mouse out of her gilded cage?
    Did it matter? Mandy was on her way. To
the house he’d built in an aerie of live oaks, pines, and palms,
with a dock along a river right out of Apocalypse Now . A house where wild creatures ran
across his roof at night.
    Peter had longed for the solitude of his
private bit of Florida, perfect for a writer, but he’d never
planned to live alone in this vast expanse of space with nothing
but Florida critters to keep him company. Every time he looked at
the jungle river from the third floor cupola he used as a studio,
every time he looked a twittering bird in the eye, every time he
cooked a solitary meal in his shining white kitchen, he thought of
Mandy.
    He had the perfect house in the perfect
setting—the culmination of writing efforts that had begun while he
was still working for AKA. And now he needed a mate to share it.
For some ridiculous reason—a tendency toward masochism?—only Mandy
Mouse would do.
    Not that he hadn’t tried alternatives—five
years is a damn long time—but for some mysterious reason Mandy
Armitage was the only woman he could see in his elaborate tree
house set in a primeval Florida few tourists ever got to see.
    Mandy. In his house. Where she belonged. If
she thought she was ever going back . . .
    Well, too damn bad.
    Better see if his cleaning service could give
him a few extra hours.
     
    Hands on hips, Mandy stood in the
doorway and scowled at the luxurious suite she’d been forced to
accept just south of Brunswick, Georgia. Shit! Not that she was a cheapskate, but a
hundred and forty dollars for eight-hours sleep was
ridiculous.
    If she got out more often . . . Mandy
supposed Eleanor was right. She should have known she couldn’t just
pop off I-95 at the height of the winter season and expect to find
a room.
    What an innocent she was. On a few
occasions—for very special clients with unlimited assets—AKA let
her out of her cage. Amanda Armitage, Systems Consultant.
Airplanes, helicopters, limos, armed escorts—all ready and waiting
to ease her way. All arranged by AKA.
    Vacationing by herself on Cape Cod or
in the mountains of New Hampshire, despite the boredom, had some
exhilarating moments of freedom. But once again, AKA made all the
arrangements. Driving to Florida, however, was a lesson in
humility. Surprise! The world
of AKA did not come to an end because Mandy wasn’t at her keyboard.
The traffic on I-95 didn’t give a damn who she was. She was lucky
to get a bed, even at one-forty a pop.
    She was no longer the linchpin of AKA. She
was Peter Pennington’s Mandy Mouse. The wimp who sat at a computer
while others took the risks. The foolish girl