by Alice Orr
“If you have questions that have to do with me or my family, I must insist that you address them to me.”
“I see.”
Santos looked her over, no doubt taking in her rumpled dress and unruly hair and probably doubting that she was as capable of taking charge as she claimed. Taylor smoothed her skirt and stood very straight. She wasn’t about to be intimidated by this officious man. Des Maxwell was another story. He was looking at her too, and she felt his gaze as if it had fingers to reach out and touch her. Those fingers travelled over her, but not at all in the same way Santos had looked at her. There was nothing in the line of duty about Des’s eyes. She warmed to the tropical intensity of their touch, from the skin on down into the center of her where she suddenly felt desperately in need of warming.
“Since you are speaking on your own behalf,” Santos said, with unmistakable sarcasm this time, “maybe you can tell me why the perpetrator appears to have been in your room when the victim encountered him.”
“In my room?”
“You’re in... “ Santos again consulted his notepad. “Second floor, front left?”
“That’s right.”
“According to my officers, there are no signs of disturbance in any of the other rooms, but it looks like there was quite a disturbance in yours.”
“I don’t know why that would be.”
Taylor was confused. Why would a thief single out her room? She hadn’t brought any valuables with her to Key West. This time, she was relieved when Des intervened.
“Isn’t Miss Bissett’s room off the veranda?” he asked. “Maybe the guy climbed in that way. April Jane could have heard him and gone up to investigate. The struggle might have started up there and ended up down here when April Jane ran down to call the cops.”
“Interesting theory,” Santos said with something like a sneer. “Did you think that up all by yourself, or do you have an inside source of information I should know about?”
“I was making the point that the guy could just have happened to come in through Taylor’s room.”
“Maybe.”
Santos was looking Taylor over again. She might have been unsettled by that, but her attention seemed to be stuck on the way her name sounded when Des spoke it and how that sound spread over her like heat, the same way the touch of his gaze had done. Once again, she told herself that such thoughts were only the effects of exhaustion on her overtaxed mind. Unfortunately, she wasn’t as sure that was true as she would have preferred to be.
“What makes you think there was a struggle?” Santos was asking Des. “I only said there were signs of a disturbance.”
“I assumed you were talking about the same kind of thing as out there.” Des gestured toward the entryway with its shattered lamp and general disarray. “That looks like the scene of a struggle to me. Besides, I knew April Jane. She would have put up a fight, and she was strong enough to give the guy a pretty hard time.”
Taylor had to agree. April Jane hadn’t come across as a woman who would sit still for being pushed around, or for letting somebody rob the place, either.
“What about you, Miss Bissett?” Santos asked. “Do you think the perpetrator just happened to be in your room when the victim found him and decided to give him a hard time, like Des says?”
Hearing April Jane repeatedly referred to as a victim brought the body bag and the city morgue to Taylor’s mind once more. She swallowed the lump of sudden grief in her throat.
She hadn’t known April Jane Cooney personally, but the woman had to have deserved something better than to be a live human being one minute and a victim the next. The true horror of what had happened here tonight was beginning to impress itself upon Taylor. She was seized by a terror that felt familiar somehow. Why familiar? She had experienced very little violence in her life. Yet, this deep-down fear had been with her before. It had been with her in her dreams.
“Miss Bissett, is there some reason you don’t want to answer my question?” Santos was studying her with continued interest.
“What was the question again?”
“Do you think that the perpetrator just happened to be in your room?”
“I can’t think of any other explanation.” Actually, she couldn’t think much of anything right now. “Detective Santos, would it be possible to continue this in the morning? I’ve had an exhausting day.”
“Murder can do that to you.” Santos was at it with the sarcasm again. “By the way, do you have somewhere else to stay? This place will have to be closed down, at least for the next few nights.”
Taylor searched for an answer. She didn’t really know anybody here in the Keys. She didn’t know the hotels either. And, she didn’t want to stay at Stormley. She wasn’t ready for that yet.
“You can come to my place,” Des said.
Santos glanced back and forth between them with obvious interest. For the moment, Taylor couldn’t think what to say, especially since the suggestion had tripped loose that flutter in her heart she’d felt earlier.
“There’s a room at the Beachcomber over the café,” Des said. “It’s quite comfortable and very private.”
He’d emphasized the privacy part. Taylor wondered if his offer might be her only recourse. She thought of asking Santos if he had any recommendations. She was wavering between taking a chance that he’d offer her a cot in the local jail and taking a chance on Des’s invitation when a flurry of motion turned everyone’s attention toward the door.
The woman who had swept in was dressed all in white, from her turbanned head to her slippered feet. Her clothes appeared to swirl around her—a loose tunic top, full-legged trousers and a kind of shawl or train draped over her shoulder—all in soft, mobile fabrics. Her skin was light by Key West standards, but brightened by dramatic makeup, as were her very round eyes, which were almost as dark as Detective Santos’s.
“My dear child,” she exclaimed as she advanced on Taylor with open arms.
Santos stepped into the path of this swirling, white onslaught. “Mrs. Starling,” he said. “I believe we’ve met.”
“Of course,” she replied. “I have met everyone on this island.”
Jethro appeared in the doorway, confirming Taylor’s guess that this woman was Winona Starling.
“May I ask what you’re doing here?” Santos inquired.
“I have come to the rescue of this beleaguered young woman,” Winona pronounced. “It is what my dear friend Netta would have wished.”
Taylor had spent entirely too much of her life being hovered over and protected and rescued. She had vowed that wasn’t going to happen anymore, but right now that vow felt less crucial than usual. She did her best to ignore the twinge of regret that it wouldn’t be Des Maxwell’s brown, muscled wing under which she would find shelter from what was left of this harrowing night.
Chapter Four
Folds of dark trees, rolling and rippling, soft as velvet on her body. Sliding over her, along her skin, clinging to the roundness of her breasts, catching on the hard points of her nipples. Fingers of leaves, satin-smooth, slipping between her thighs, whispering there till a moan rose in her throat and her body rose to meet the lover.
In the background, like a rising wind, another moan, repeated in rhythm, first too faintly to be understood, then louder, Danger. Danger. Danger. Something spoke in her mind for a breath of a moment of her having heard that warning rhythm before. But that thought was being rapidly swallowed by sensations so intense that there was no possibility of thought left. The warning rhythm remained, but only as an echo now, far off at the edge of her beyond the sensations. At the center of her there was no longer room for anything other than the lover.
The leaves had suddenly turned to flesh. They were his fingers now, opening her wide and wider while she drew deep breaths, as deep as the probe of his touch. He moved astride her and plunged inside. She arched to meet him with a cry of triumph and pleading. They rode one another, desperate and groaning. The power of their thrusting s
lapped the bed against the wall to punctuate their passion—thump, thump, thump—drowning out even the faint remaining echo of the danger warning...
Thump, thump, thump.
Knock, knock, knock.
The sound was transforming yet again, to become different but the same. Taylor knew the ache deep inside her was real, but the man had melted away in the light that greeted her fluttering eyelids. He had been a dream. She could barely stand to discover that, the ache of missing him was so strong and torturing. The velvet leaves and folding trees retreated as well. Only the sound remained.
Knock, knock, knock.
Taylor’s mind began to understand where she was—in a guest bedroom of the Starling house. Yet, part of her longed to stay, if even for only a moment more, in the place of undulating leaves and plunging passion. The cool of the air conditioner chilled the damp places on her body and banished the warm satin that had stroked her skin only an instant ago. Still, the mood of it was with her. She had been making love with a man of power and lust. She even knew who that man was. It had been a long time since she’d made love in real life. Because of that, she had turned herself off till she seemed not to care much anymore.
One night in the tropics, and she was being tormented by erotic dreams of—
The knocking was more insistent now. Taylor’s gradually clearing mind followed the cadence of it to the wide doors, and through them onto what she guessed must be another veranda. There had been a veranda off her room at the guesthouse, but she wasn’t there now. The colors were different in this room—creamy-golden walls and doorways, rich floral patterns in the bedding and on the floors. A stained-glass skylight echoed those patterns in its design, refracting the morning light into pools of color along the walls. Winona Starling was obviously a woman of sensuous tastes. The thought nudged the longing ache to sharpness again. Taylor sat up straight from the rumpled pillows, intending that rapid movement to dispel the last vestiges of the dream as she calmed her still-ragged breath toward its normal pace. At this new angle, she could make out the figure behind the slanted slats of the wooden blinds at the veranda doors. She almost fell back onto the pillows in surprise.
“Oh, no,” she gasped, though something inside her was saying quite the opposite.
It was the man from her dream. There was no mistaking Des Maxwell’s silhouette. She knew instantly who he was. She didn’t know why he was here. She would have to answer his knock to find out. It was also the only way to keep him from waking the rest of the house. But maybe that would be best. Then Jethro or someone would send Des away. Meanwhile, the warning rhythm from her dream had returned. Its chant of danger, danger, danger droned beneath her thoughts. Still, as her head cleared she knew she didn’t really want a scene involving the entire household. She’d had enough of scenes last night. She eased out of bed and tiptoed to the veranda door.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered through the space between the blind and doorframe.
“I can’t hear you,” Des said, more loudly than she would have preferred.
She suspected he wasn’t telling the truth. After all, she could hear him. Why wouldn’t he be able to hear her? She also suspected he wasn’t going to go away without seeing her face-to-face. Maybe she would have a better chance of getting rid of him that way. She unlocked the door but kept her body behind the closed blinds that covered the glass. She was very aware that her nipples were still visibly aroused beneath the oversize, white T-shirt that Winona had taken for Taylor, along with a change of clothes, from the guesthouse. She definitely didn’t want him to see that. Just considering the possibility made her nipples harder still.
Taylor edged the door open a crack and was greeted by the soft, warm scent of the Key West morning. The sun was up, and already brighter than on the sunniest of northern New York days. She was tempted to throw the door wide and be embraced by the fragrance of jasmine and frangipani from Winona’s garden arbor. Taylor had longed for the exhilaration of pure freedom much of her life. In this first instant of her first tropical morning, she felt the proximity of that freedom sweep over her. Then, Des Maxwell stepped across her line of vision through the crack in the doorway, and the sensation disappeared.
“I apologize for waking you up,” he said.
She put her finger to her lips to shush him into speaking more quietly. The sun might be up and bright, but the hour was early. Roosters crowed at the dawn somewhere in the distance. Before she could ask him what he wanted, he went on, but in a whisper this time.
“I didn’t want you to miss your first morning here. I thought you might sleep through it.” He hesitated a moment, as if just now realizing he might have judged the situation wrong. “And I thought you might want to get your stuff out of the guesthouse, at least anything you don’t want the cops pawing through.”
Taylor had been about to scold him for disturbing her so early after yesterday being such a grueling day for her, but what he was saying made sense. Besides, she agreed with him. She wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, anyway. The warning of danger from her dream tried to intervene upon that thought but she pushed it aside.
“I would like to get my things,” she said.
“You might also like to eat something. I have croissants in my car. There’s a place over on Duval that makes them fresh. They’re the best this side of New Orleans.”
The mention of food reminded Taylor of how long it had been since she’d eaten last. Late yesterday afternoon on the plane, which felt like very long ago indeed. The rumbling in her stomach agreed. She was definitely hungry. Still, she hesitated as another recollection of her dream returned, the memory of another kind of hunger. She might have fantasized about Maxwell in the most intimate of ways, but she didn’t really know him. This early morning visit smacked somewhat of the bizarre. She did have serious questions about his relationship with Netta. It occurred to Taylor that he might be trying to work the same spell on her that had charmed her aging aunt. Taylor’s still-damp body might be more vulnerable to those charms than her will to resist was strong. Perhaps it would be wise to keep a safe distance from Des Maxwell, at least until she felt more her usual in-control self than she did at this moment. She didn’t know what to do, which way to choose—another uncharacteristic state for her to be in.
“We could go to the Key Westian,” he was saying, “then drive up to the beach for a little breakfast.”
“Wait a minute.” Something had suddenly occurred to her. “Didn’t the police say they were sealing the guest-house?”
“We can get past that.”
Taylor hesitated.
“Aren’t you curious to see whether the guy who killed April Jane might have had some special reason to be in your room, after all?” Des asked. “The cops suggested that could be the case. Remember?”
Taylor did remember that, and she was definitely curious about it.
“I figured we’d be smart to go there early, before anybody’s around,” Des said. “Less chance of being stopped that way.”
Taylor nodded. He was right, or maybe she merely couldn’t think of a good argument this early in the morning. The soft air from the veranda had cooled her body from the frenzy of her dream. More practical considerations were supplanting her qualms about being alone with Des Maxwell. She could surely govern her emotions as successfully with him as she always had with other men. She ignored the danger warning yet again.
“I’ll get dressed and be with you in a few minutes,” she said.
“You can come out this way,” he said, indicating the end of the veranda. “There are stairs around the corner of the house and a path to the street. I’m parked out there in the red Jeep.”
She might have known he’d have a car like that. Where she came from, mostly oversexed adolescents drove Jeeps, especially red ones.
* * *
DES HAD the T-top on the Jeep. All of a sudden, he wasn’t sure that had been the right choice. Maybe it would be too breezy for her in the open air. He thought
of her full, wavy hair, how it had haloed her face last night in curling strands against her long, white neck. Her hair had been wilder a few moments ago. Even through the narrow door opening he could see how tossed and tousled she was. The memory of that wildness, along with the bright flush of her cheeks from sleep, flashed through him now with an intensity that sped straight to his groin. He’d felt the same stab of lust on the veranda, at the first glimpse of her misty blue eyes, so sultry in their sleepy softness. He’d had to hold himself back from shoving through the door and grabbing her. He couldn’t remember ever having the urge to put his hands on a woman come over him so strong. Still, she didn’t strike him as the kind of woman you grabbed.
But what kind of woman was she? Des smiled at the question and at himself. Obviously, she had to be the kind of woman who could get him out of bed at dawn and off to the Croissanterie before anybody was around but the bird-watchers. The buttery aroma from the pasteboard box on the back seat enticed him, but Taylor Bissett had been the real enticement. For what felt like the hundredth time this morning, Des asked himself what was going on with him, anyway. He didn’t run after women. He didn’t have to. They generally came after him. He didn’t kid himself that they thought of him as some kind of stud. He figured his general lack of interest turned them on. Sandra had told him that. He’d married her thinking she could break through the wall he’d had around him for so long. They’d grown to be friends but nothing more. The deep parts of him remained untouched, no matter how much he’d wished them not only touched but overwhelmed.
Sandra said once that he reminded her of a conch shell, spiny hard outside with secret folds inside where he kept his heart tucked into the place nobody could reach. Sandra had a poetic nature and said things like that sometimes. When they finally called it quits, she claimed she had no regrets, except maybe for the time he’d taken out of the middle of her life. Des regretted that, too. He never wanted to hurt her. He had only hoped to make himself feel something intensely and, eventually, to find the loving family he had never known. Well, he felt something intense right now, though he couldn’t yet put words to what exactly it might be.