Alice Orr - Key West Heat

“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.

“The drink is on the house,” he said and took hold of her wrist before she could pull out her money.

His fingers were warm against the thin skin above her pulse. She felt that pulse quicken as if it might begin at any moment to pump visibly beneath his touch. She pulled her hand away from him before that self-betrayal could happen.

“I prefer to pay my own way,” she said, handing a bill to the waitress, who had watched this exchange with considerable interest.

“Suit yourself,” Maxwell said with a shrug.

“Say, you two, what’s all this sparring about anyway?” Jethro darted halfway up from his seat and yanked the chair opposite Taylor’s away from the table. “Why don’t you sit down and take a load off, Des?”

“What do you say, Ms. Bissett? Should I take a load off, as Jethro puts it, or take a walk?”

Taylor stared straight back at him. She forced herself to be just as cool as he was. “Suit yourself.”

“In that case, I accept your invitation, Jethro,” Maxwell said, sitting. “How’ve you been, anyway?”

“I’ve been super, Des.” Jethro looked bewildered, as if he might be surprised by Maxwell’s acknowledging him at all.

“And how’s Winona?”

“Oh, Ma’s always tip-top.”

“That’s when she isn’t over the top,” Maxwell said almost under his breath.

“Wait a minute,” Taylor interrupted at the sound of the less than common female name. “Is your mother Winona Starling?”

“She sure is,” Jethro said enthusiastically. “That’s who your aunt used to bring you to see when you were a kid, like I told you.”

“I remember that,” Maxwell said.

“Well, I don’t remember any of it.”

Taylor felt her annoyance deflate suddenly. Too many people seemed to know more about her life than she did. Meanwhile, Maxwell was watching her. He appeared more thoughtful than arrogant this time.

“What exactly do you remember?” he asked.

His green-eyed gaze had turned unexpectedly warm as honey, or at least it felt startlingly that way to her.

“I remember almost nothing,” she said.

“Loss of memory can come in handy sometimes.”

The warmth had vanished from his eyes and his voice, as if she might have imagined them there, like one of her visions. Taylor had been about to lower her barriers against him long enough to ask what he might know of her early childhood here in Key West. His renewed coolness put a stop to that.

“Are you accusing me of lying about what I do or do not remember?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I was only making an observation.”

“You really don’t remember anything about being a kid here?” Jethro chimed in.

Taylor didn’t answer him. The fascination in Jethro’s voice and the quizzical way he was looking at her made her feel like a specimen in a jar. Des Maxwell’s smart-aleck detachment had revived the urge to slap him, hard and fast, straight across his sneering face. Taylor wished she had stayed in her room at the guesthouse and taken a bubble bath as April Jane Cooney advised.

Taylor pushed her chair back from the table and stood. “I have to be going.”

Maxwell took a moment to let his smile appear, so slow and wide that she could tell it was insincere. “Don’t let me chase you away.”

Taylor picked up her purse instead of doing what she really wanted to do with her hand to his arrogant smirk.

“I never let anyone chase me anywhere,” she said.

Despite that declaration, Taylor walked fast to the open doorway and out into the street. “Calm down,” she said, then glanced around to see if anybody had noticed her talking to herself. Two young men in T-shirts with beer bottles in their hands turned from lounging against the building to look her up and down in impudent appraisal. She avoided their eyes and would have begun walking back toward Amelia Street, when a recollection of the shuffling bum and his sly laugh kept her riveted where she stood, uncertain for the moment what to do next.

Emotion burned her cheeks. She had kept herself in check through all that had happened these past weeks, so soon after the death of Aunt Netta, Taylor’s last real remaining family. Her sense of loss, the trip down here, her scare outside the guesthouse earlier this evening—each pressure had piled upon the others. She had been closer to her saturation point than she realized when she walked into Maxwell’s bar. Then she saw him, with his brazen attitude, as if he couldn’t care less about any of it. That was the last straw. Tears trembled on Taylor’s lashes. She didn’t want anybody to see her wipe them away or know how upset she was. She wouldn’t give Des Maxwell that satisfaction, even if he didn’t know about it. She willed the tears to dry where they stood and vowed there would be no more.

“Are you all right?”

Taylor whirled around. She half hoped to find Maxwell standing there, so she could deliver the slap she’d resisted giving him in the bar. Instead, it was Jethro Starling.

“You looked so upset when you left. I thought I should come after you.” He seemed pretty agitated himself, with his eyes wide open in a startled expression.

“Thanks,” Taylor said, after a deep breath.

“One reason Des gets to people is that they know they can’t get to him.”

Taylor was surprised to hear such a sober assessment from someone so high-strung he could hardly stand still on the pavement.

“I noticed that.”

“Look. Why don’t you let me give you a ride home? It’s late for you to be out here on your own.”

Taylor hesitated, and that made him fidget more than ever.

“I wouldn’t hurt you or anything like that. I could get you a cab if you don’t want to drive with me.”

Taylor glanced up and down the street. It was late. She didn’t see any taxis, but she could call one as Jethro said. She remembered the creepy guy in the pink cab from the airport, almost as scary as the shuffling bum had been. Her instincts told her Jethro was harmless. Besides, Aunt Netta had known his family.

“I’d like a ride, thank you,” she said.

“Great. My car’s right over there.” He pointed to a red Corvette at the opposite curb.

As they walked across the street, Taylor caught sight of a dark sedan parked farther down the block. She stopped short, but then she saw that the windshield was transparent, not black glass. She continued walking.

“Maxwell really did get to you, didn’t he?” Jethro said as he opened the car door for her.

She didn’t feel like explaining about the sedan. “Maybe,” she said. “Does he ever get to you?”

“As long as I’ve got my good luck going for me, nothing bothers me.”

Taylor couldn’t help smiling as he slammed her car door and hurried around to get in the driver’s side. She would have guessed that there was hardly anything that didn’t bother Jethro. He flipped the car into gear and made a U-turn in the middle of the block, causing a pickup truck to screech to a halt in the opposite lane. The truck honked noisily, and Jethro honked back before taking off southward on Duval Street.

“How did you know my guesthouse was in this direction?” Taylor asked.

“Guesthouse? I thought you’d be staying at your family’s place by the shore.”

“No. I have a room not far from here on Amelia Street.” Aunt Netta might have been able to live with the ghosts of Stormley, but Taylor wasn’t. “Your family must have known mine pretty well.”

“Just about everybody knows my mother.”

“That reminds me,” Taylor said, thinking of the question she’d had earlier, before her encounter with Des Maxwell knocked it out of her mind. “Exactly how old was I when you last saw me?”

“I’d say you were about six or seven.”

Taylor needed a moment to take that in. “I don’t see how that could be possible. I left Key West when I was three years old, and I haven’t been back since.”

“Oh, no. That’s not right. You were six or seven like I said. I remember you used to bring your library book with you sometimes. Three-year-olds don’t read library books. You were old enough to be in school last time I saw you.”

“Maybe you have me mixed up with somebody else,” Taylor said.

“It was you, all right. I wouldn’t get that mixed up. I had kind of a crush on you.” He smiled over at her. He looked embarrassed. “I used to watch you especially.”

Taylor didn’t feel entirely comfortable with Jethro’s infatuation story, whether or not he might be correct in his memory of her as the object of those affections. She was even less comfortable when he took a sudden right turn off Duval Street.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “I told you my guesthouse was off Duval.” She slid her hand onto the door handle and got ready for a fast escape.

“Amelia Street is one-way. I can’t turn onto it from Duval.”

“Oh, I see.”

Taylor relaxed some, but she kept her grip on the door handle. At the end of the block the headlights picked out white letters on a telephone pole. Vertically they read Whitehead Street. Jethro made another turn, to the left this time. It was definitely darker here, with far fewer people around than back on Duval. If Jethro Starling intended to do her harm, she was giving him every opportunity. She could hardly believe she had climbed into a car with a stranger, and a strange-acting stranger at that. She was about to make her move and shove open the door when the car slowed. The pole marker on the corner ahead said Amelia Street, and Jethro was signaling to make a left turn.

Taylor was about to breathe a sigh of relief when she heard sirens. A whirling light reflected in the sports car’s rearview mirror. She turned to see two police cars behind them. Jethro steered to the side of the road. The police cars sped past and around the corner onto Amelia and the block where she was staying. She was surprised by that. This had seemed like such a quiet street, not at all the kind of place she would expect screaming sirens.

Then, Taylor remembered the dark sedan and the certainty that it was stalking her down that same quiet block. A wave of apprehension swept over her even before she saw that the police had stopped in front of the Key Westian and were already headed toward the porch. Jethro turned the Corvette onto the same block and slowed to a stop near the corner.

“Which house are you staying at?” he asked.

Taylor didn’t answer right away.

She lowered the car window to get a clearer view. She didn’t like what she saw. Two policemen had stationed themselves on either side of the guest-house door, and their guns were drawn.