Key West Heat

“I didn’t catch that.”

“It’s not important.”

“Whatever you say, hon.” The woman set Taylor’s bags down in front of a high registration desk that looked as if it must be a valuable antique—oak, aged to a reddish grain, topped with a slab of white marble veined by rose-colored streaks. The woman walked behind it and extended her hand across the marble. “My name is April Jane Cooney. I run this place.”

April Jane was tall, all right. Taylor hadn’t imagined that part at least. However, she was beginning to question her perceptions about the dark car. Maybe April Jane was right. The drastic transition from driving through a northern New York blizzard this morning to stepping into this land of exotica tonight might be enough to distort anybody’s perceptions.

“Now, let’s get you checked in so you can settle yourself down and take a nice, long bath. That’ll have you a hundred percent again in a jiffy. There’s even some stuff in your room that makes heaps of bath bubbles. Look in the cupboard under the bathroom sink. Or maybe you like showers best. Lots of New Yorkers don’t like to take the time for a bath.”

“I’m not from New York City. I’m from rural New York State,” Taylor said, feeling she was being put on the defensive. “There’s a big difference.”

“I suppose there is,” April Jane said, turning the leather-bound register toward Taylor. “Sign here. We do it the old-fashioned way at the Key Westian.”

Taylor managed a thin smile. She did want to get to her room. Whether she would shower or bathe once she got there wasn’t important to her right now. She did not want to hear anymore about how uptight snowbirds are or what a paradise this place was supposed to be. She was even beginning to resent the golden-brown tan above the curve of April Jane’s peasant-style blouse. Her hair was streaked with blond as further evidence of how much time she clocked in the tropical sun. Suddenly, Taylor was more aware than she wanted to be of her own hair clinging to her neck, the damp wrinkles staining her jacket, the perspiration trickling between her breasts. Suddenly, she wished she could will herself back to this morning’s frigid blizzard. She would be comfortable there, where the chill made her feel sharp and alert the way she liked to be. Aunt Pearl’s warnings about what happened when you strayed too far from home echoed in Taylor’s brain as she scrawled her name in the register. She dropped the pen and grabbed her bags from the floor.

“Let me help you with those, hon,” April Jane drawled.

“I’ll get them myself,” Taylor said a little too harshly.

“Suit yourself.” April Jane sounded amused again. “Second floor.”

Taylor hoisted the bags as best she could and struggled toward the stairs. She knew what a pathetic, bedraggled sight she must be right now, but she didn’t care. She told herself that if she could just be alone, she’d be able to sort everything out. She’d know what she was or was not seeing. She would be able to tell the difference between a harmless illusion and real danger. And, there would be no more overwhelming urges to run back home like a frightened child. She chose not to remind herself that it had been an overwhelming urge that had brought her here in the first place.

* * *

IT WAS LESS THAN AN HOUR later when Taylor wandered out onto the terrace of her second-floor room two blocks off Duval Street. She had taken a shower after all and put on a sleeveless cotton dress. The night air rested on her bare arms, warm and slightly moist and unbelievably warm. The fronds of a tall coconut palm brushed the terrace railing. The scent of night flowers surrounded her, as soft and shimmering as the silver light from the haloed moon or as a whisper of romantic memory. She understood how someone might be so seduced by this place that they could never leave. April Jane might be right. This could possibly be paradise after all. Taylor walked back inside where a circling ceiling fan had cooled the room to a pleasant evening temperature. The shower had revived her from her previously overheated state. What couldn’t be so easily cooled was the reason for her visit to the Keys. She had come here with a burning need to find out why this place haunted her so, and she had very few clues to go on—except for three names.

She had already unpacked the leather portfolio and slipped it between the bed and the nightstand. It contained a copy of Aunt Netta’s will and descriptions of the three heirs she had mentioned in addition to Taylor. There were two relatively small and perfectly understandable bequests, one to Violetta Ramone who had cooked for Netta and kept house at Stormley, where Netta had lived after it was rebuilt, and another to Netta’s longtime friend Winona Starling. The third bequest was larger and more mysterious. Netta had left it to a man with the unlikely name of Destiny Maxwell and the enigmatic instruction “he will know what it is for.”

The description of Mr. Maxwell was not so mysterious, but it was definitely troubling. He was in his late thirties, a lot younger than Aunt Netta had been. Yet, he had apparently been her frequent companion both socially and privately. He owned and operated a Key West saloon called the Beachcomber on lower Duval Street. Had he been Aunt Netta’s young lover? Was that what she meant by his knowing what the bequest would be for? Taylor wasn’t really bothered by that possibility. Aunt Netta had been free to spend her time with whomever she chose and to leave her money to them if she wished. Taylor respected that, though she didn’t like to think that her aunt might have been taken advantage of by an opportunist.

What Taylor was more curious about, however, was if Netta might have confided in Mr. Maxwell. Had she told him things about the Bissett family and its history in Key West? If so, Taylor wanted to know those things, along with whatever Violetta Ramone and Winona Starling might have to tell. It was too late at night to go calling on either of them right now, but a Key West saloon was sure to be open at this hour.

Taylor picked up her small handbag and the room key on her way to the door. She took a few steps toward the front stairway then thought better of it. She had a feeling that, despite April Jane’s casual manner, she kept a close watch over things around here and would be far too interested in the reason for Taylor’s going out alone so late. She used the back stairs to avoid that interest. The back door had a release bar across it. That meant it could be opened from the inside only. Taylor would have to take the front entrance back in. She could see herself tiptoeing barefoot up the stairs like a teenager out past curfew. The thought made her smile, but that smile disappeared as soon as she stepped outside and the door clicked shut behind her.

The back door did not open onto a street or a well-lit path as she’d thought it would. Instead, a pattern of flat stones led from the stoop through an overhang of foliage with no visible light along the way. Taylor moved cautiously down the steps to the stone walk and the entrance to the overgrown pathway. She could see that the foliage actually arched over the path for some distance to the street beyond. The light from the opposite entrance was just bright enough to reveal that much. There must be a wood or wire trellis structure that kept the greenery from filling in the opening altogether.

A shudder ran through her. She had been suddenly reminded of her dreams. There was a tunnel much like this in one of them, made up of long, undulating fronds that reached out to grab her as she ran through. She still trembled at the remembered sense of great danger lurking among those wild, grasping, green things. Taylor’s experience with the dark car had made her skittish already. She would have preferred not to be reminded of her nightmares right now. She told herself that there was no person lying in wait along this passageway or she would be able to make out their shape even in the dim light. She couldn’t be accosted from the side because of the trellis and the thickness of the shrubbery.

But what about non-persons? Wasn’t this the tropics, after all? Weren’t snakes and other creepy-crawly things common to this part of the world? She took a deep breath against that possibility. Another deep breath and Taylor was into the tunnel, which smelled faintly of leaf mold. She hurried but would not allow herself to run. Her heart tripped at the sound of her own footsteps and the attention they might arouse among whatever beings lurked within the green wall that surrounded her.

“Stay where you know the territory and the territory knows you.” Aunt Pearl’s words rang in Taylor’s head as haunting accompaniment to her hurried steps. She could almost feel Aunt Pearl keeping pace and whispering, “I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.”

Taylor didn’t take a full breath again until she was out of the passage. She didn’t slow her pace until she was standing beneath a street lamp where she was forced to stop for a moment to get her bearings. She had studied a Key West street map on the way down here in the plane. She knew precisely where the guesthouse was located in relation to the place she was now headed. Her exit through the backyards had taken her one block closer to her destination. She took a few more deep breaths to slow the tripping of her heart then set out along the cracked pavement toward Duval Street.

Small, modest houses lined the block on both sides. She was alone on the street—no people, no vehicles parked in possible ambush, no leafy nightmare creatures in evidence. Duval Street was famous for its noisy nightlife, but all was quiet here. She had deliberately chosen an address near the center of things but still at some distance from the hubbub of Mallory Square, with its sunset worshippers and late-night revels. Her guesthouse was only a few blocks from the southernmost point on the island, which the brochures all bragged of as also being the southernmost point in the entire United States. Almost not in the same country with the rest of us, Taylor thought, and wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She was reminded yet again of being out of her element.

The tropical air caught in her heavy hair. She could feel it there like a gossamer web among the strands. She raked her fingers through it and felt the coolness of that web and the fullness of the waves made suddenly untamable by this place. She pulled the strap of her handbag from her shoulder and began fishing inside for a wide-toothed comb that might bring the honey-colored mass under control. She was still poking around in her purse when she felt a movement behind her.

“What’s an angel like you doin’ out here on her own?”

He must have come out of one of the shop doorways that bordered the street. She was on Duval now. The shops were all closed along here, and there was no one else on the street, at least not near enough to be of help if she needed it. He was tall and very thin. His clothes hung loosely on him. His shirt was open several buttons at the neck, and his pants fit more like pajamas than trousers. She thought he might be wearing sandals from the sound of his shuffling along the pavement, but she couldn’t see his feet in the shadowy night.

She began walking fast away from him, down Duval Street toward the bright neon and the sound of music ahead. She could see that the lighted shop fronts were closer on the opposite side. She would cross the street when she got there, maybe step inside one of the open boutiques till she was sure she wasn’t being followed any longer. She could hear him, still laughing softly behind her. She glanced back over her shoulder.

“Fluff out your wings and fly away, angel,” he said. “There ain’t no heaven hereabouts.”

Chapter Two

“Desiree,” he breathed.

Des Maxwell was behind the false mirror over the Beachcomber’s long, teakwood bar. This observation post had been here when he bought the place. He’d thought about getting rid of it. He didn’t like keeping tabs on people when they didn’t know he was doing it. Instead, he told everybody who worked for him that from back here he had a clear view of everything, including the cash register. He figured that would keep most of them honest. There’s no such thing as being too careful in the bar business.

You can’t be too careful about a lot of things. Like letting yourself get blindsided the way he just did when she walked in and sat down. Of course, he knew she wasn’t Desiree. He’d seen Taylor Bissett’s photograph at Netta’s house, and Desiree had been dead almost twenty-four years now. That was just about time enough for him to get used to how much she had meant to him and how much of his life had died with her—like the only chance he’d ever had of anything even close to a family. Now, as he stared through the one-way glass at the woman who was the vision of her mother, he knew there hadn’t been time enough to get over his loss after all.

Des had half expected the daughter to show up here someday. Then again, he’d half expected her not to. Either way, she’d caught him by surprise tonight. It had never occurred to him that in real life she would look almost identical to her mother. Not even the photograph had convinced him of that. Nothing could have convinced him that anybody could look so much like Desiree. Nobody ever had. He pressed closer to the glass. The hair, especially, was as he remembered, and the skin he knew would be moist and cool in the night air, the way Desiree was cool while being warm and caring at the same time. He couldn’t tell if Desiree’s daughter might be warm and caring too. She was certainly beautiful. She was also subdued and aloof in that white dress, at least a world away from the halter tops and jeans cut off high enough to show some back cheek along the bar. She didn’t flash her body around that way any more than her mother would have done.

Still, there was something different about her, some way she wasn’t Desiree. Des couldn’t put his finger on it. He felt he needed to know what that difference was. He had to set her apart from Desiree, especially considering what a lot of people suspected about that night twenty-four years ago, and the fire. Taylor was only a kid then, younger than he was by several years. Even if what they said about her and the fire was true, she couldn’t have really understood what she was doing. Knowing that hadn’t kept him from wishing a thousand times that he’d done what he first meant to do that night and saved the mother instead of the child.

That regret rose in him now. Suddenly, he felt the need, stronger than ever, to set them apart from each other in his mind, these two women who would have looked like sisters, were they standing side by side. He knew he would be able to tell from the eyes. Unfortunately, Taylor Bissett was halfway across the room, and the mirror glass on the other side of here could stand a polish to clear up the view. He would have to go down there for a closer look.

Des headed for the steps that led to a side door at the end of the bar. He glanced one more time through the back of the mirror. “Damn,” he cursed as he saw a lanky man walk up behind Taylor with a smile on his face that said he intended to get to know her very well, very fast. Des quickened his pace toward the door.

* * *

WHEN TAYLOR FELT someone at her shoulder, she thought it might be the person she had come here to find. She looked up to see a dark-haired man of wiry build, attractive in a rawboned sort of way. He leaned over and flashed her a quick smile that told her he was just a stranger trying to pick her up, after all.

“I bet you won’t believe this, but I know you,” he said, starting out with the most clichéd of pickup lines.

“I beg your pardon. I don’t think I know you.”

“It was when you were a kid,” he said. “May I?” He gestured at the chair next to hers and sat down in it before she could say whether she wanted him to or not. His movements were abrupt, like a darting animal’s, so much so that there was no time to react.

Taylor hesitated. Was this a new twist on an old line? “Are you trying to say you knew me when I was a child here in Key West?”

“That’s right. I did.”

Taylor almost laughed at him. She had left here as barely more than an infant, and she hadn’t been back since. How could he possibly recognize her now as an adult?

“That was so long ago. You probably don’t remember,” he said. “Your aunt used to bring you to my mother’s house almost every day. I’d sneak around corners to get a look at you. You were almost as pretty then as you are now.”

“Thank you for the compliment. But you’re right, I don’t remember you. What did you say your name was?”

“Oh, sorry. I was so surprised to see you I forgot my manners. I’m Jethro.”

He took her hand and shook it briefly. His grip was firm, but darting like the rest of him.

“Was it my Aunt Netta who brought me to your house when I was small?”

“That’s right. That was her name. But you weren’t so small. I could already tell you were going to be tall like you are now.”

Taylor was again tempted to laugh. She had seen pictures of herself at three years old. She had been average size then, maybe even a bit small for her age. Her first growth spurt hadn’t happened till a couple of years later, at least. She was about to throw this guy some lines of her own, of the brush-off variety, when she noticed a man coming through a doorway at the end of the bar that extended the length of the room. He stopped for a moment to say something to the bartender. Taylor was looking at him with such concentration that, when he turned, he caught her staring. The directness of his gaze connected them, one to another, across the room with a flash of electric intimacy that almost made Taylor look away. She felt suddenly apprehensive, but she held his stare despite the flutter in her chest that was her heart picking up speed.

He was powerfully angular, almost too imposing for the low-ceilinged barroom. The lines of his face might have been chiseled from the rich-grained wood of the beams supporting that ceiling. His cheekbones were high and resolute, like the ridge of collarbone below his square, dimpled chin. He seemed out of place somehow in this smoky barroom, as if he was meant to be out-of-doors, among trees and landscapes as rugged as himself.

He began walking across the room. He was headed, in as straight a line as possible, directly toward her. She had guessed who he was the moment she saw him. He walked as if he owned the place, and that meant he had to be Destiny Maxwell. She felt that ownership reach out toward her the way it sometimes did with very strong-minded men. She steeled herself against its strength. She wasn’t about to be dominated, especially not by this particular man, no matter how strong-minded he might be. If this was to be a test of wills, she was determined to come out the winner.

Still, she couldn’t deny how attractive he was. She had seen it in the photographs in her portfolio, but those had only been pictures. The man in the flesh was even better-looking, almost disturbingly so. She would have preferred that not to be the case, but Taylor wasn’t accustomed to lying to herself. She had to admit, if only in private silence, that even the way he walked was somehow unsettling to her. He moved fast across the room without appearing to hurry at all, as if he wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t the kind of man who hurried for anybody. He might put on a little speed when his priorities required it, but he didn’t hurry. That would mean behaving as if something really mattered to him. Taylor guessed that this man didn’t like things to matter to him, or to let anybody know they did.

Des Maxwell might possibly be the handsomest man she had ever seen. He might also be the coolest and the most detached, and that coolness and detachment intrigued her. It also made her increasingly uneasy with every step he took because, the closer he got, the more striking he looked. As he approached she noticed more details about him, such as that he was quite tall, six feet or more. She couldn’t tell exactly from this angle. His hair was bronze and gold, much like April Jane Cooney’s. His deep, copper tan made Taylor aware of her own snowbird-pale skin.

Taylor felt a sudden shift of perspective, as if she had turned abruptly at an angle to see something not visible in her former line of vision. However, she hadn’t moved a muscle. She knew what was happening. She had experienced it before. The barroom scene disappeared for her for an instant and was replaced by something much more disturbing. She could see her body stretched out full length and naked. His nude body lay atop hers. Their skin touched, almost blended, but remained mysteriously different, like night from day.

Then the image was gone, as suddenly as it had materialized, and she was watching him stride toward her once again. Unfortunately, as with other such experiences, the shadow of the vision remained, along with its aura of strong sensuality. Taylor struggled to erase that sensation from her consciousness. She reminded herself that she’d always been put off by men who were what she thought of as too handsome. Vanity usually came along with such physical gifts, and arrogance. The way this particular man moved led her to suspect a generous portion of both.

Still, Taylor had to concede that the very sight of him had shaken her. Or, could it be just the vision she was reacting to? She hadn’t gotten over being startled when this kind of thing happened. She doubted she ever would. The experience made her feel unprotected, as if her usual defenses had toppled and she was left completely vulnerable. She definitely didn’t want to feel that way now, in front of Des Maxwell. She stifled the impulse to swallow hard against the rapid beating of her heart.

“Well, Jethro,” the tall man said when he reached the table. “You usually don’t prowl your way in here till the weekend.”

She wouldn’t go so far as to say there was a sneer in his voice, but it came very close to that. Meanwhile, though he was talking to Jethro, Destiny Maxwell was staring at her. His green eyes didn’t waver an instant from their study of her face. She felt their imposition so keenly that she was tempted to slap him for his rudeness, or maybe to dispel the shock his close-up gaze seemed to be causing to her system. She could actually feel her stomach tightening into a knot under his scrutiny. The vision of herself naked under him had already unnerved her. His stare couldn’t help but add to her uneasiness. She felt the warmth of a blush rise unbidden beneath the white cotton of her dress. The thought that he deserved a slap grew stronger, as if he might, in some deliberately insolent manner, be forcing this blush upon her, all the while enjoying her embarrassment.

“You two know each other. Right?” Jethro asked, glancing from one icy stare to the other.

“Not really,” Taylor said.

“I’m afraid you’re wrong about that. I’m Des Maxwell, and you are Taylor Bissett, which means I’ve known you almost all your life.”

Maxwell sounded so aloof he might not have been there at all, as if his words had been spoken with no connection to the rest of him. Taylor found that aloofness as provoking as his rude gaze and his calculated movements. Besides, she was getting tired of being declared an old acquaintance by men she had no memory of ever meeting.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said. “I do not know you.”

The waitress walked up behind Maxwell with a frothy white drink on her tray. “He ordered you a piña colada,” she said with a nod toward Maxwell in response to Taylor’s inquiring glance.

Taylor caught the flash of adoration in the young woman’s eyes as she looked up at her boss. Unfortunately, Taylor couldn’t help understanding that look. In addition to the attractions she had already noted, his hair fell winsomely across his forehead, and a thatch of sun-blond curls peeked through the open neck of his shirt in disturbing contrast with his tanned skin. He was positively spilling over with masculine charm, and she was keenly aware of the danger in that. She told herself she was determined to avoid such danger and that it was the power of this determination which made her hand tremble as she reached into her purse for her wallet.