Shadowed Paradise by Blair Bancroft Read Free Book Online Page B

have? Except . .
.
    “ You know all that stuff I’ve been
practicing— What a pleasure to market your
beautiful home, Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner? Well, what a
crock! There I am, scrambling to improvise without tripping over my
tongue, when I happened to look down.” Maggie, eyes huge, drew a
deep breath. “You’re not going to believe it, you’re really not. On
the floor next to his chair, not six inches from his right hand,
was a shotgun! Really. I swear it.”
    “ She turned green,” said Jake
cheerfully. “I have to admit I didn’t see the gun until I noticed
Maggie’s face. I thought it was going to be a snake or one of those
big spiders or something. I sort of craned my head around, and when
I saw the gun, I almost told him T & T didn’t take mobile home
listings and to hell with getting brought up on ethics charges . .
.”
    “ But Jake didn’t say a word, he let me
finish,” Maggie cut in, “though I haven’t the slightest idea what I
said.”
    “ Then I suggested, in my best
professional manner,” Jake added, “that he should always get market
analyses from two or three different Realtors before making up his
mind. And we got the hell out of there. Can’t you just see the MLS
description if we’d taken the listing? WARNING. OWNER MAY BE ARMED AND
DANGEROUS. ”
    “ Claire, you saved me!” Maggie
declared, sweeping Claire into a big hug. “If I hadn’t had Jake
with me, I would have been terrified.” She gave Vicky DelVecchio a
weepy embrace as well.
    Vicky patted Maggie on the back. “Just
another day in the life of a Realtor. Though I admit we probably
won’t have this much excitement again until Diane Lake finds out
Claire is taking her man to dinner. Uh-uh-uh, Realtors, don’t touch
that remote. Stay tuned for the continuing saga of Brad Blue and
his warring women.”
    Definitely a conversation-stopper. Wearing a
variety of expressions from salacious grins to sympathy for
Claire’s embarrassment, T & T’s Realtors scooted back to their
desks.
    Late that afternoon, when the summons came to
Phil Tierney’s office, Claire realized she’d been expecting it all
day. With the speed of office gossip it was inevitable that her
little adventure would reach Phil’s ears. Philippa Tierney, who had
inherited T & T while only in her mid-twenties, was everything
a professional Realtor was expected to be, from the sleek coiffure
that made the most of her rich brown hair to her tall trim figure
superbly dressed in a summer suit of cream linen. Her nails were
always perfectly manicured. Claire suspected Phil’s expensive pumps
hid a perfect pedicure as well.
    Phil Tierney had made the most of her name.
Many a tourist made an appointment to be shown a property, only to
be astonished to discover they were dealing with a woman. Even many
local residents who had seen “Phil Tierney” on signs for years,
thought T & T’s broker was a man. Phil had, in the end, broken
the male stranglehold on real estate in Golden Beach, turning a
modest family business into the most successful, most prestigious
real estate agency in the area. Owners of expensive properties
wanted nothing but T & T’s exploding fireworks logo on their
front lawns.
    Dynamic, sleekly attractive, successful,
powerful. Brad Blue’s ex-wife. That was her boss, Claire thought
glumly as she made her way to Phil’s office. And then there was
Diane Lake, spreading her gorgeous golden girl image nightly into
every home in Calusa County. Brad Blue had been married to one of
these two professional paragons and was sleeping with the other.
Two giants poised to step on the little ant named Claire if she
dared move into their territory.
    Phil surprised her. After asking her to be
seated, Claire’s boss said, “I hear you’re responsible for
distributing the Board’s warning to everyone this morning, Claire.
I want to thank you. You saved Maggie from a very nasty experience.
And, hopefully, this will make all our agents think carefully
before