Key West Heat

by Alice Orr

  “More than lust. Less than love.” Had that been a line from one of Sandra’s poems?

  Taylor emerged from the pathway between clumps of flowering shrubbery, and all thinking of anything but her and the way she looked vanished from Des’s mind. He would have liked to call to her to stand still for a moment, framed by the colorful blossoms. She was pale by contrast, but hardly pallid. Her features were more vivid to him than the reddest petals. She walked into the sunlight that touched her winter-white skin and made it luminous. Her shoulders were bare except for the straps of her tank top. He would have to make sure she put on sunblock or a jacket as protection from the mounting sun. He would rather put his arms around her and shield her with himself, but sunblock would probably have to do.

  She had walked almost close enough for him to make out the misty blue of her eyes. Then, she pulled a pair of dark-tinted sunglasses from the pocket of her long, full skirt and put them on. “Don’t do that!” he wanted to cry out. Instead, he said, “You’re very tropical this morning. I’d have thought you’d need to do some shopping before you got to look so Key West.”

  “We have summer where I come from,” she said with a less-than-summery smile.

  Damn! he swore at himself. That had been the wrong thing to say. He had managed to put his foot in his mouth with his first step.

  Speaking of feet, as she climbed into the Jeep he saw that she was wearing sandals made of leather straps. Her toes were clearly visible, including their pink-coral nails. She polishes her toenails! he thought. The discovery caught in his throat and almost made him groan. She seemed so proper, and painted toenails had always struck him as very sensual. They hid under a woman’s shoes and stockings, like a slightly racy secret. They made him wonder what other secrets there might be beneath her breezy clothes. He particularly wondered about the parts that might be tinted as pink and coral as her toes.

  “There’s sunblock in the glove compartment. I think you might need it,” he said, wishing he could say much more, while also telling himself to keep cool. Keeping cool had always been his modus operandi, after all.

  “I brought my own lotion,” she said, tapping the small shoulder bag she was carrying. “As I said, we have summer where I come from, and sun too.”

  Not sun like this, he wanted to say but didn’t. He could already sense she liked to do things for herself. Desiree had been that way, too.

  The thought dropped like a stone to Des’s gut. Had he inadvertently stumbled upon the key to what was really going on here this morning? Could he be transferring his adolescent admiration of the mother to her daughter? That might explain why she’d gotten under his skin so fast. He’d better slow down and take some time to check out his own feelings, especially since he was not accustomed to letting himself know he had any. A retreat into the conch shell appeared to be definitely in order, at least until he had sorted things out.

  Meanwhile, Taylor had been examining the houses, mostly white but in a mix of sizes and architectural styles, as they drove up Elizabeth Street. “What lovely homes,” she said. “I had no idea Key West was so beautiful.”

  “You don’t remember very much of it, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You were old enough to remember when you left here.”

  “That’s what you and Jethro have been telling me.”

  She gripped her purse in one hand and nervously twiddled the strap with the other. Des could see how uneasy this subject made her. He couldn’t resist the urge to find out more about that and about the mystery of her past.

  “How come you never came back here to the Keys?”

  “Key West was always described to me as somewhere I wouldn’t want to be. Terrible things happened to my family here. Besides that, my aunt told me it was a trashy place, a honky-tonk town full of drunks and nothing more.”

  “Your aunt was wrong.”

  “You really love it here, don’t you?” She turned to look at him. He wished he could see the expression in her eyes behind her dark glasses.

  “This is the closest I’ll probably ever come to heaven. I’m sure of that,” he said, thinking that having her around might bring heaven closer still. “Of course, you have to get off lower Duval Street if you don’t like the honky-tonk your aunt told you about. She was right about that much. That part of town is bars and booze and wall-to-wall tourists, especially after dark.”

  “That’s where the Beachcomber is.”

  “Right.”

  “So, you must like honky-tonks.”

  “I like my place and the people who come in there. I own the café next door too.”

  They turned onto Truman Avenue, heading west. He picked up speed a little, and the breeze lifted her honey-colored hair from her milky shoulders. Des was glad he’d left the T-top on the Jeep after all.

  “Are you telling me that your Aunt Netta discouraged you from coming, even for a visit? She loved it here.”

  Taylor appeared to be studying him from behind her dark glasses. “Maybe Aunt Netta did love it here. She just didn’t love the idea of me here.”

  “How come your aunts cared so much about that in the first place?”

  Taylor looked away again, out of the window on her side of the car. “They cared about everything I did,” she said in a tone he couldn’t quite interpret. “They were very protective of me.”

  “I see.”

  He could guess that they wanted to protect her from the horrible memory of how her mother died, especially if there had been any truth to the rumors about Taylor’s role in that death. If she really had started that fire, the guilt could be unbearable. He wanted to ask Taylor about that, but driving down the street wasn’t the place for that conversation. They drove the remaining blocks in silence, with Taylor continuing to stare out the window and away from Des.

  * * *

  THEY PARKED on Virginia Street, the block north of Amelia and running parallel to it. The street looked different in the daylight, seedier than Taylor remembered it. Even so, she recognized this as the block where she had emerged from the trellis walk behind the guesthouse on her way to the Beachcomber last night. She would have liked to ask Des how he knew this back way, but if she started questioning him he might get back to questioning her also. She didn’t want that. There were too many answers she didn’t really have.

  Why had Pearl and Netta been so adamant about keeping her away from this place? Why had she gone along with them? It had seemed natural that she should at the time. She recalled even feeling relieved, as if her aunts’ opposition had saved Taylor from the burden of a ponderous decision, or maybe from the consequences of it. Why had all of that not bothered her more when it was happening? She never wanted to cause her aunts undue worry, but Taylor wasn’t a pushover. She’d managed to live her own life despite their hovering. She hadn’t put up a fuss over coming to Key West because she hadn’t wanted to. But why was that?

  Des held the door open, and Taylor stepped down out of the Jeep. She was happy to have a reason to stop tormenting herself. They walked directly to the opening in the greenery that marked the path behind the Key Westian. In the daylight, Taylor could see that the foliage wasn’t as dense along the path as it had appeared to be in the dark. Gaps were visible now between the trees and bushes, even where they bordered the slatted trellis. Somebody could very possibly have watched her from there last night as she dashed through here to Virginia Street. Taylor shuddered at the thought. She must have moaned aloud, because Des turned and looked at her in a way she couldn’t quite define.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea to be coming back here, after all.”

  “I’m fine, and I want to be here,” she said emphatically.

  Why was it that everywhere she went somebody was hovering over her and worrying about her? She wasn’t the kind of person who wanted or needed that. In fact, she could barely stand it. Now, a virtual stranger was getting into the act.

  Des pushed on the back door
once, but it didn’t budge. Taylor remembered the safety bar and that the door locked itself from inside. He didn’t bother to try the door a second time, as if he might also have suddenly remembered the self-lock bar. Then again, maybe she was being overly suspicious. Still, she couldn’t help wondering once again just how familiar Des might be with this guest-house.

  The Key Westian obviously wasn’t one of the most prominent establishments in town, or in one of the most notable neighborhoods. Taylor had already come to that conclusion from her brief travels last night and this morning. Why would Des know anything at all about this particular guesthouse? Taylor had also concluded, from studying her map on the flight down here, that this was really a very small town. And maybe the locals all tended to know each other. Maybe Des and April had been even more closely acquainted than that. She had been an attractive woman. Taylor told herself she didn’t feel a pang of something almost like jealousy at the thought of them together.

  On second thought, if April Jane and Des had that kind of relationship, wouldn’t he have been more emotionally upset by her death than he seemed to be? Taylor watched Des slide open the window nearest the back door of the guesthouse. If it bothered him to be breaking into a police-restricted area, he didn’t show any signs of that concern. He was a cool customer all right. Maybe he wouldn’t have betrayed signs of being upset over April, either. Or maybe he simply didn’t care.

  “Wait here,” Des said as he prepared to hoist himself through the window opening. “I’ll unlock the door.”

  Still cool as a cucumber. Taylor felt some of that chill herself. As she had told herself earlier this morning, she didn’t really know anything about this man. In fact, that impassive facade of his made her wonder what he might be hiding. Yet, she was creeping through solitary back yards with him. She was even about to go inside a deserted building with him. She glanced around at what she could see of the neighboring yards beyond the high bamboo fence that blocked off the Key Westian property. This must be an outdoor lounging space for guests. There were two white-painted wrought-iron-and-glass tables with matching chairs clustered around them under the trees. The fence was probably to keep this area private. Taylor couldn’t see a single soul in any direction. She and Des were definitely alone here. The back door opened, and he beckoned her to come inside. She didn’t move. She wasn’t sure what she should do.

  “Come on,” he said in a whisper loud enough for her to hear, “before somebody sees us out here.”

  Her sensible side, long conditioned toward caution by Aunt Pearl’s training and example, told Taylor she shouldn’t be alone in a vulnerable situation with a man she didn’t know. Another side of her, which had grown steadily in influence since Pearl’s death, had long since tired of being cautious. More than once in these past months, Taylor had suspected that her fledgling recklessness might get her into trouble someday. As she walked toward Des and the open door, it occurred to her that someday could be now.

  Chapter Five

  Des held out his hand to Taylor who was still hesitating at the back door of the guesthouse. “Come on in,” he said, more softly than before. “It will be all right.”

  He took her hand. Her palm met his as his fingers closed around her own. In a flash, a powerful sensation coursed through her. The heat of that sensation seemed to melt them into each other through every pore where her flesh touched his. She felt she couldn’t break away, as if she were held to him by an irresistible force. She thought he might pull her to him and crush her mouth with his. Her heart raced.

  Then, in the next instant, Taylor knew it was only a fantasy. In reality, he was holding her hand very gently and only trying to urge her into the building before somebody saw them here. She withdrew her hand from his and walked past him into the guesthouse. She wasn’t certain that was the smart thing to do, but she had to move out of the spotlight of his gaze, glaring down at her and perhaps detecting what she had been thinking only a second ago. She turned toward the inside stairs without looking back at him and concentrated on being businesslike.

  Taylor remembered last night when she had crept down these same stairs, feeling like a sixteen-year-old breaking curfew. Right now she felt more like a criminal than an adolescent on a spree. They weren’t supposed to be here. Thinking of the reason for that brought a catch to her throat. There had been a murder here last night, only one floor and the length of a hallway from where she stood at this very moment at the top of the stairs. She fitted her key into the door of the room that had been hers last night but was now part of a crime-scene investigation. She couldn’t imagine how anything connected with her might be relevant to a murder. Then Des pushed the door open, and suddenly she wasn’t so sure.

  Taylor gasped at the disarray. The bed had been completely stripped. Bedclothes lay around it in tumbled heaps on the floor, and the mattress was pulled askew, half on and half off the bed frame. The drawers of the dresser and bureau were wide open, their contents obviously rifled through. Taylor’s clothes had been tossed out of the closet where she’d hung them up last night before going out. She stared from the bed to the dresser to the closet and back again, trying to make her brain register what had happened here.

  For the first time, it occurred to Taylor that maybe she ought to be frightened. What if she had been here when the intruder came in? She might very well have gone to bed immediately after her arrival. She’d certainly had a long, exhausting day and should have been ready for sleep. She had been too keyed up for that and eager to get a look at Des Maxwell, too. She didn’t like to think that an excess of adrenaline and some curiosity were all that had stood between her and ending up tumbled on this floor along with the bedding.

  “Are you okay?”

  When Taylor gasped in dismay, she had also taken a step backward directly into Des’s path. He took her shoulders gently in his warm hands and turned her to face him.

  “Are you all right?” he repeated, searching her face as if he might find an answer there.

  No, I’m not the least bit all right, she longed to cry out. Instead, she only breathed a long sigh. This was all getting to be too much for her—yesterday, last night, now this morning—one shock after another. Des must have felt that anguish in her and been moved by it, because he put his arms around her and drew her to him in what began as a comforting embrace. She even thought she heard him making soft sounds in his throat to calm her. She couldn’t be sure about that, because of the sudden rush of emotion that drowned out everything else she might be hearing or feeling.

  Neither his embrace nor his soft words had what she assumed to be the intended effect. Taylor pressed closer to Des’s broad body. She couldn’t take her eyes off his lips, which were parted slightly and descending slowly toward hers. The moment was maddening. She longed to drag him to her, but she didn’t move as the heat of desire burst forth and flooded through her.

  At last, his mouth covered hers and she knew she had been imagining this kiss from the first moment she saw him. His lips were warm and insistent. He clasped her tightly against the hardness of his body. Her hands slipped up his arms to his shoulders and caressed the firm, full muscles that strained beneath his shirt. His tongue urged its way between her lips. For once in her life, Taylor didn’t stop to think about how she would respond. She knew what she wanted, and it had nothing to do with the good sense and sound reason that had been drilled into her for as long as she could remember.

  Taylor parted her lips to welcome him. She circled and caressed his tongue with her own, beyond thinking at the moment. She was being carried on a tide or a gust of prevailing wind into the very unfamiliar territory her aunt had warned against, beyond the boundaries of control. A small voice, probably Pearl’s, told Taylor she should stop now, push him away and never let him touch her again. That voice of caution, which she had listened to and followed all of her life was little more than a whisper compared to the roar of passion rising inside her. Taylor knew as certainly as anything she had ever known that this unfamiliar
territory was precisely what she wanted to explore.

  When they finally moved apart, Des was the one who pulled away. “We can’t do this now,” he whispered as he held her at arm’s length.

  Taylor felt the sudden distance between them like a wave of icy water. With that cold blast came the shock of humiliation. What was she doing? She stepped backward out of his grasp.

  “You need to check to see if anything is missing,” Des said softly.

  “What?” she asked, feeling suddenly as disordered as this room. Could he be talking about her pride and common sense? They had certainly deserted her for the few moments just past.

  “You should check the room in case something was stolen,” Des said. “Valuables. Jewelry, cash, that kind of thing.” He sounded like his usual cool self again, as if their fiery kiss had never happened.

  Taylor allowed herself only a second or two to reorient herself. “I had no jewelry or cash here to speak of. Nothing worth stealing, anyway.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. She might be walking out of this room this morning minus something definitely worth accounting for, but it wasn’t the kind of valuable he was talking about.

  “Then they tore this place apart for nothing.”

  “Wait a minute.” Taylor’s mind was beginning to function again. She turned toward the bed. “I did have some papers.”

  The bed was still wedged tightly against the nightstand. Taylor walked over there, mildly surprised that she could move around without wobbling. A moment ago she wouldn’t have been steady enough on her feet to cross the room on her own. She reached down between the bed and the nightstand. The portfolio was still there. She pulled it out and leafed through the contents.

  “Everything is here,” she said.

  “Could that be what they were after?” Des asked. She noticed that he avoided looking directly into her eyes.