Key West Heat

by Alice Orr

  “A vision,” Taylor corrected. “I call them visions.”

  “This has happened to you before?” Early asked. He sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Yes, it has,” Taylor said.

  She looked at Des. The anguish he had heard in her voice was now in her eyes. She could have been pleading with him for comfort, entreating him to come to her. Then she looked away, as if to shut him out again. He wasn’t sure which message he should heed, the invitation or the rejection. This was one of the reasons he kept women at arm’s length as a rule. Too often he had trouble interpreting their messages. Unfortunately, he had let this woman get a lot closer than arm’s length. Unfortunately, she was threatening to creep into his heart, and he couldn’t seem to stop that from happening. Maybe he wasn’t even trying to stop it.

  “How long have you been having these...visions?” Early was asking. He took Taylor by the shoulders and forced her to look up at him. “Was this going on back home, too?”

  “Yes,” Taylor said, sounding close to despair.

  Des wanted more than anything to take her out of there right this minute to some safe place where there was no need for her to be desperate ever again. But, what if there wasn’t such a place for her? What if she was still as disturbed as they were saying she had been as a child?

  “But I never saw the fire before,” Taylor went on. “I smelled the smoke, and I may have heard the flames crackling. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen it.”

  “You need to talk to Winona right away,” Early said. “It’s a good thing she called me to come down here.”

  He had stepped toward Taylor to take her arm, but she wouldn’t be moved. “Winona called you?”

  Early nodded. “She told me what’s been going on since you got here. She’s very worried about you. I’m worried, too. The way you ran off like that from home without telling anybody. It’s not like you. Then I find you down here, all worked up, like when you were a kid. You talked about seeing things sometimes back then, too, but I thought that was all over with years ago. What is it you think you saw just now anyway?”

  Taylor shrugged and sighed. “I’m not really sure.” She sounded more discouraged than ever. “There was the fire. I think it was inside this room. And somebody crawling toward the window. I seemed to think it was my mother but I couldn’t see her face.”

  Taylor hesitated, her expression transfixed, her eyes staring at nothing, at least nothing in this room at this moment.

  “That’s enough for now,” Early said. “This sounds like the mumbo jumbo I used to catch that cook planting in your head when you were too young to know better. It’s just your imagination working overtime.”

  “I remember now!” Taylor exclaimed as if she hadn’t heard a word he said. “There was a man in the room, too.” She was suddenly very agitated.

  “Taylor, you have to calm down,” Early said. “You don’t have to talk about this now.”

  For the first time in memory, Des agreed with Early about something. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “I’m taking her to Winona.”

  “I’m coming along.”

  “What for?” Early snarled. “You’re the one who started this.”

  “I didn’t start anything.”

  “You brought her here to Stormley, didn’t you?”

  Des stopped in midstride on his way to extricate Taylor from Early’s grasp. The ring of truth and a stab of guilt came with Early’s words. “Yes, I brought her here.”

  “I rest my case,” Early said.

  “I’m coming along to Winona’s anyway.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Taylor spoke up. “Wait a minute. Wait just one damned minute.” Her voice was trembling, but she had calmed herself considerably. “In the first place, nobody brought me to Stormley. I wanted to come. Secondly, Des can come to Winona’s with us if he wants. And, finally, this is not about the two of you. It is about me and my mother.”

  Des wanted to say that anything involving Stormley and Desiree had to do with all of them, but he kept his mouth shut. He felt he had already talked more in this one day than he had in the past six months. He wasn’t at all sure he should have done that. Talking had never been his specialty, except maybe with Desiree and Violetta, and look what had happened to them. The pain in his heart told him how much he didn’t want that to happen again.

  * * *

  DES HAD COME ALONG to Elizabeth Street. They had all been there together—Des, Winona, Early, even Jethro. It didn’t take long for Taylor to realize what a mistake that was. Early and Winona joined forces against Des. Jethro darted nervously among them, groping for some miraculous means to make them all get along. Meanwhile, Taylor couldn’t help but feel a bit neglected. She was the one with the problem. She was also the one whose needs were being paid the least attention. When she finally slipped away upstairs, she wondered if any of them even noticed. She especially wondered if Des noticed. She had more questions and doubts where he was concerned than she cared to think about. Still, every time she looked at him her heart did a small jump in her chest and her breath caught for a moment. Unfortunately, when she made her escape from Winona’s very grand parlor, Des had his face turned away in the direction of Early’s challenging scowl.

  Taylor sank onto the thick comforter in her cream-and-chintz room with a sigh. She told herself she was relieved to be alone at last. Nonetheless, she hadn’t forgotten the dream she’d had when last in this bed, of Des’s hands and body so intimate with hers. She particularly hadn’t forgotten how the dream had come true that very afternoon. She recalled, with a twinge of what felt like regret, the warmth of the hot tub as its silken water washed over her. Then, later, on the wide lounge among the enveloping towels, how Des had opened her up to parts of herself never truly awakened before. Those had been perhaps the most wondrous moments of her life. Certainly, she had never known anything as intense as the wild, thundering tempest of their passion or the complete sweetness of the calm that followed the passing of the storm.

  So, why the twinge of regret? Taylor knew the answer. She regretted the loss of that intensity and the sure knowledge she would not find it with anyone else. Even so, it had to be lost to her as irrevocably as if Des had been the figure she saw perishing in the fire reflected by Stormley’s window. She could not trust him, and that meant she could not love him. She had good reason to believe he had used her family for his own ends—first her mother, then her aunt, now maybe herself as well. He had been little more than a street urchin when Desiree found him. Her death left him with nothing, or so it seemed. Then, Netta took him up. He came out much better off with her, with a generous chunk of her money and more than his share of her valuable possessions. Now he was making love to Taylor. Her natural suspicion had to be that he was after the whole ball of wax this time, the balance of the Bissett money to which she was the major heir.

  Taylor wasn’t the only one to suspect that, either. Winona, Early, even Detective Santos had broached the possibility, even the probability, of questionable motives for Des’s long and complicated involvement with Taylor’s family. He had certainly profited from the connection. She wondered what Violetta Ramone would have had to say about that. Of course, Des wouldn’t have been taking Taylor to Bahama Village if he thought Violetta would tell incriminating tales about him. Or, could he have known there was no danger of that? Hadn’t Santos said that Des was the last person to see Violetta alive—except for her murderer? Hadn’t Santos been suggesting that Des could in fact have been the murderer? That thought allowed in the other that had skirted the edge of her consciousness for the past hour or two, that Des could also have been the figure poised to strike in her fiery vision.

  “No,” Taylor said loudly enough, she hoped, to dispel this ugliness from her head.

  “Are you all right in there?” The muffled male voice came from the other side of her bedroom door.

  Taylor sat bolt upright among the deep folds of the comforter. Her
heart had taken off at a pounding clip. The terrible suspicions she had been entertaining faded in the bright, thrilling light of the thought that Des could be only the half width of this room distant from her right now. Who else could it be, after all? She didn’t think that was Early’s voice. She hurried to the door, hoping with that haste to leave her misgivings behind.

  “Are you okay?” her visitor repeated as Taylor opened the door.

  Her expectations plummeted. She could feel her heart sink with them, so much so she imagined he might notice. It was Jethro at her door.

  “You aren’t okay, are you?” he asked.

  “I’m just tired,” she said, after a moment to collect her wits enough to know she did not want to talk to Jethro right then. She hoped the mention of being tired would help her get rid of him.

  “Sure, sure,” he said, agitated as always. “I just wanted to give you something I thought might help you out.”

  He looked up and down the hallway as if to make certain he wasn’t being observed. Then, he pulled a card from his pants pocket and thrust it toward her. For a fleeting instant, the furtiveness of his manner made Taylor think he might have some piece of important knowledge to impart to her, maybe something that would cast some light on her confusion and the maddening doubts that tormented her. She grabbed the card before his obviously unsettled condition might prompt him to think better of trying to help her and make him run away.

  Taylor stared down at the card, unable at first to comprehend its meaning. Madame Leopold, it read. “Woman of Wisdom and Power. Seer. Sage.” There was a graphic image of a crystal ball in one corner and an address in smaller print at the bottom. Taylor looked up at Jethro. If this was a clue to something, she hadn’t a clue what that might be.

  “My psychic,” he said with a grin, as if that description should clear up the bewilderment her face must surely be revealing.

  Taylor glanced down at the card again. She turned it over, but the reverse was blank. She looked up at Jethro.

  “She’ll bring you your luck,” he said. “I figured you could use it.”

  Taylor sighed. “I see,” she said. She really wasn’t up to this kind of foolishness right now.

  “Really,” Jethro insisted. “I go to her every single morning of my life. I never miss. I go there and she gives me my luck for the day. I wouldn’t go out of the house without it. She’s got the power to do that. I swear it’s true.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Taylor could hardly believe she was being subjected to such babbling at this most difficult moment of her life.

  If Jethro heard the sarcasm in her tone, he apparently didn’t register its significance. “She can do the same thing for you. Just try her. You’ll see. She’ll get your luck back for you.” He looked up and down the hall again, then lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “I’d like to see you get your luck back. I really would.”

  “Thanks, Jethro,” she said wearily. “I’d like that, too.”

  She tried to return the card to him. “No, no,” he said. “You have to keep that. I know it’s just what you need.”

  “Okay, Jethro.” Taylor began easing the door closed. “I’ll keep it.”

  “You mark my words,” he said through the narrowing opening. “It will be exactly what you need very soon. You’ll see.”

  Taylor nodded. “Thanks again, Jethro,” she managed. “Good night, now.”

  She shut and locked the door then leaned against it. Ordinarily, she would have laughed at the absurdity of what had just happened, in fact, at the absurdity of the entire, convoluted situation in which she found herself. Instead, she crumpled Madame Leopold’s card in her fist and tried her hardest to hold back the tears.

  Chapter Nine

  The next knock was not at the door. Taylor knew who it was for certain this time, no guesswork or wishful thinking. Only one person would climb the outside stairs to her balcony, like Romeo on a moonlit evening. She could imagine him saying good-night to everybody downstairs and pretending to leave. Maybe he had even driven away and then driven back or parked the car a block down the street where it wouldn’t be seen by Mrs. Starling and her guests. Then he would have crept around the house and up to Taylor’s balcony quietly enough not to be heard. Thank heaven, for his sake, that Winona had no guard dogs. Jethro might be said to perform that function for her, and he must not be on the prowl this late.

  The knock came again, just as it had this morning, only softer now. Taylor lay very still. The lights were out in her room. He might assume she was sleeping. She didn’t think he would want to make much more noise than this. She didn’t think he would want Early and Winona or even Jethro to know that Des Maxwell was knocking on Taylor’s window at nearly midnight. Meanwhile, the romance of that was not lost on her. The handsome lover comes questing for his lady in the wee hours. Taylor would have preferred to lose herself in that fantasy, but the practical side of her nature could not do that. Des was not Romeo, though he might be said to be her enemy, as Romeo and his family had been to Juliet. That love story had come to a bad end. Taylor understood that the same outcome was inevitable where she and Des were concerned.

  The balcony door handle rattled. Apparently, Des wasn’t about to give up easily. She heard him try both handles on the double doors. They must have been locked, because he had no luck. She thought she heard him mutter something disgruntled after his efforts failed. He would, of course, know that she was in here. She had left the parlor virtually unnoticed. Still, if Jethro had figured out where she went, Des would certainly have done the same. He might also have guessed that she wasn’t really asleep, that she was in here listening to him and refusing to respond.

  He will go away now, she thought.

  What she had observed of Des told her he didn’t put himself out very far to pursue much of anything. His well-developed defensive instincts would sense rejection and signal immediate retreat, back behind the blasé facade he had practiced to near-perfection. The prospect of that distance between them tugged at Taylor’s heart. Her honest soul had to admit that losing him was not at all what she wanted. However, it was what had to be. Her earlier conclusion remained true. If she could not trust him, she could not love him. Being reminded of that tugged her heartstrings harder still, till the ache there was almost too bitter to bear.

  All was quiet now. The windows along the balcony were closed and latched to maintain the climate-controlled temperature inside. He didn’t rattle those windows as he had rattled the doors. He might have noticed the closed latches, or maybe he had simply lost interest and given up. Taylor rolled onto her side and curled up under the comforter, which didn’t really provide her much comfort. She would have liked to cry. Tears can bring relief sometimes. Right now, however, she was afraid that if she started crying she might never stop.

  From her nesting place, muffled by the comforter, she only half heard the sound on the roof. It was a shuffling noise that could have been the movement of a woods creature like a possum or the long branch of a tree. Except that Taylor would be very surprised if there were possums in Key West, and the trees around this house were mostly coconut palms that didn’t have long branches. By the time those realizations took shape in her mind she had heard something else, also coming from the roof and definitely too loud to be a small animal.

  She looked up. At first, what she saw struck fear to her bones. A shadow was moving above the stained-glass skylight, too close to be travelling clouds. Hinges squeaked and the skylight began to open. When it was opened wide, a figure slipped through, all but filling the space. Taylor gasped. Of course, she knew the identity of this intruder. She didn’t need to be afraid as she would have been of a prowler or a cat burglar, but she did feel another type of fear. She scrambled backward to the headboard of the bed and pulled the comforter tight under her chin.

  He eased himself down from the skylight opening, gripping the edge and dangling a few feet above the floor. He dropped into a crouch with far less noise than she would have thought p
ossible for a man his size. He hesitated for a moment, probably to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Then, she could feel rather than see him looking directly at her. She had hoped against hope to disappear among the bed covers so she wouldn’t have to deal with the dilemma of this man whom she did not want here but also longed to be with. That dilemma was standing now, and walking toward her.

  “What are you doing in my room?” she asked in a low whisper. She knew she must take charge of this situation right away or she would be lost.

  “I had to see you.”

  He had reached the bed and was about to sit down next to her.

  “I want you to get out of here,” she said. That was only half a lie.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  He did sit, very close. She inched away, but he grabbed her through the comforter before she could get very far.

  “I had to be alone with you. I couldn’t go home to my bed without you beside me.”

  His voice was deep and quivering with what she recognized as desire. Her own body responded instantly, as if the sound of him were vibrating deep inside her. She silently cursed this betrayal and struggled against it as he pulled her closer to him.

  “This isn’t right,” she said. “I don’t want you here.”

  “It is right, and you want me as much as I want to be here.”

  He swept the comforter aside. His eyes must have become as accustomed to the darkness as hers were by now. He would be able to see the hardness of her nipples jutting against the thin material of her sleep shirt, which his grip on her shoulders had stretched tight across her breasts. He slid one hand downward, as if to confirm what he saw. When his fingers touched her taut flesh, Taylor moaned despite herself. She couldn’t help it. Her body, the betrayer still, was at war with her mind. Her mind was losing ground.

  “See how much you want me here?” he rasped next to her ear in response to her moan. “You want me, and I want you. We can’t deny that.”