Read Barefoot in Pearls (Barefoot Bay Brides Book 3) for Free Online Page B

out.”
    “Did you?” Luke asked.
    She nodded, a frown pulling at her lightly freckled brow. “My daughter and I lived right over there where the main hotel is now, in a house my grandfather built. We spent that night in a bathtub with a mattress on our heads.” She closed her eyes on a sigh. “It was a miracle we survived, because nothing else did.”
    Ari had heard bits and pieces of the story, folklore around Casa Blanca now, but seeing the memory darkening Lacey’s amber eyes made it real. Yet her mind went back to the land in North Barefoot Bay. “Did you know the man who died?”
    “I’d met him as a child, but he was a recluse after his wife passed away.” She nodded, narrowing her eyes to pull up a memory. “My grandfather knew him, though. They were both Mimosa Key founders who claimed land in the forties.”
    “And left it to Cutter Valentine?” Ari asked, wondering about the pro baseball player and how much he might—or might not—care about sacred ground and making a mental note to sit down and talk to Lacey about her grandfather, and that hill.
    “Nobody was more stunned than Cutter when he found out he had a great-uncle who left him part of an island,” Luke said. “But, then, that’s how Cutter Valentine’s life goes. Perfectly.”
    “Who lived there before Cutter’s great-uncle?” Ari asked. Maybe someone, somewhere kept a record of that land or its history.
    “No one,” Lacey said. “Before my grandfather and his cronies built a wooden causeway from the mainland, this island was purely overgrown scrub and mangroves, totally uninhabited but for gators and birds, like lots of the keys and small islands along this part of the coast and the Everglades.”
    “And these settlers just claimed the land?” What if it belonged to someone else? “Is that even legal?”
    Lacey gave a dismissive laugh. “Back then? Land acquisition was a free-for-all, according to my grandfather. No one cared about this island off the coast of Florida, so the founders built the bridge and took the land they wanted.” She swept her hand toward the spectacular view of white sands that curved in a half moon at least a mile long. “Which is how I ended up with such prime property for Casa Blanca.”
    But someone might have lived here before, Ari thought. Seminole, maybe. Or Calusa. Grandma would have known. An old, dull pain, more like the memory of the ache than the actual thing, pressed around the edges of her heart, but Ari pushed it away. Ari’s grandmother would have known and she would have cared . She’d have done something about the very idea of leveling a burial ground.
    “Anyway, you know Clay is really happy you took the job for Mr. Valentine, since your sister works here at Casa Blanca. It’s incredible good fortune that it worked out that way.”
    Fortune. Serendipity. Coincidence. All the words scraped over Ari’s heart. He was here for a reason, all right. But was it because he was The One for her…or the one she was supposed to stop from destroying sacred land?
    Right that minute, Ari had never missed her grandmother more.
    Luke’s reply was drowned out by a cheer that rose from across the dance floor, where a group of guests surrounded Mandy Nicholas and her husband, Zeke. “And it seems we have even more to celebrate today.” Lacey beamed at the couple. “Did you hear Mandy’s going to have a baby?”
    “I heard,” Ari said dryly, sliding a look at a very smug Luke.
    “Love is in the air, as always!” Lacey blew them a playful kiss, moving on to greet guests at the next table.
    “Pregnant, huh?” Luke turned to her and tipped her chin up. “About my winnings…”
    She inched out of his touch, thinking hard. She had to make him understand why he couldn’t destroy that hill. “One more bet, Luke.”
    He gave a pretend grunt. “You really want me to work for it, don’t you? All right. Name it.”
    “I bet you”—she put her hands on her hips and looked up, purposely