Alice Orr - Key West Heat

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my husband, Jonathan—

always my romantic hero

To my map artist—

Ed Vesneske, who is also my dear son

To my editor—

Julianne Moore, a true jewel

Taylor Loyola Bissett—A woman drawn to the tropics and to the danger awaiting her there.

Des (Destiny) Maxwell—A dashing man who could be the greatest danger of all.

Winona Starling—A Key West psychologist who could be Taylor’s savior.

Jethro Starling—Winona’s very nervous son.

Armand Santos—Key West homicide detective.

April Jane Cooney—Proprietor of the Key Westian guesthouse.

Violetta Ramone—Who knows all about Caribbean cooking…and the past.

Early Rhinelander—Taylor’s confidant for as far back as she can remember.

Desiree Loyola & Paul Lawrence Bissett—Taylor’s late parents.

Pearl & Netta Bissett—Taylor’s late aunts.

Madame Leopold—A Key West psychic.

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Des smelled it before he saw it. He was not quite fourteen, but he knew right off what it was: the thing you smell a few blocks away or on the breeze and hope won’t come close enough to smart your eyes and chafe your throat. The heavy, old-wood scent of it was almost pleasant at first, like bonfires or leaves burning. But there weren’t that many falling leaves in Key West, except those ripped from branches by a blasting hurricane. And there was nothing pleasant about the way this made him feel. He held his breath, as if doing that could make the danger on the wind go away by magic, like when a little kid closes his eyes and thinks that makes him invisible. Pretty soon, Des had to breathe again, and the smoke smell was still there.

The wind was blowing hard. Tonight’s gale hadn’t been upgraded to hurricane from tropical storm yet, but Des guessed it was on the way there. He’d been feeling funny all day. That happens when there’s a wild drop on the barometer. He’d taken it in stride the way any real conch would, conchs being native Key Westers. He was even a little bit excited, like when a big adventure is about to hit and you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. He liked that in the movies, but he knew there was a big difference between the screen and life. In real life, adventures could mess you up bad. Still, the lurking storm and rising wind had his heart beating fast all day—till now.

What made his heart beat fast now was fear.

He knew where the smoke smell was coming from. For a moment, he did nothing, not because he was scared, even though he was. He just couldn’t believe what was happening. The worst time ever to have a fire is in a high wind. Everybody knows that. The flames blow up twice as fast in a storm, and there was no rain yet. And the smell of smoke was coming from the place he loved best in all the world.

Thinking that got Des started running. In the few seconds of his hesitation, flames had broken through the roof at the back of the tall Victorian perched at the edge of the sea, with so much water so nearby, yet too far away to be of help now. By the time Des reached the veranda steps he could hear the fire, cracking and popping and racing through the long, narrow rooms.

Miss Desiree always left the windows open, especially where they looked out onto the water. That meant the sea wind would be howling inside, feeding the hungry fire and helping it grow. Des caught his breath with a gasp of horror that sucked in more smoke and made him choke. Her room was back there too, where the sea view was best, the loveliest room he had ever been in.

He knew by heart where to find the front staircase, even with his eyes already tearing nearly blind. He took the wide steps two at a time. It occurred to him that the thick, rose-colored carpet would turn into an instant river of fire when the flames reached this part of the house. The only way out after that would be the roof. The back stairwell was sure to be an inferno by now. Des hurried faster against the smoke that wanted to stop his lungs. He would do what had to be done when the time came. He would get her out no matter what. He whispered that promise to himself and to her. Praying he could keep it scared him more even than the smoke and flames.

Then there was a sound, faint against the crack and whoosh of the fire, but Des heard it anyway. Until that moment, he had forgotten there was anyone besides Miss Desiree in the house. Now he remembered the little girl was in here, too. That had to be her crying. It was more a child’s sound than a grown woman’s, so it had to be the little girl. He hesitated another instant. Miss Desiree was along the balustrade in the other direction and all the way to the rear of the house, if she hadn’t already gotten herself out. The girl was down the hall to the right from where he now stood and definitely still inside this house that was being rapidly consumed by flame.

He knew he couldn’t wait to decide. The fire was gaining ground too fast for that. He ran down the hall toward the crying sound. All the doors along the hallway were closed. Maybe she had heard that you shouldn’t open a door in a fire. Even a kid her age might know that. Then, he got to the door with the crying behind it and knew the real reason she hadn’t come out. The door was locked, and there was no key in the hole. The child’s cries were more strangled now, rasping with smoke like Des’s throat. He croaked a reassurance that he would get her out even though he wasn’t sure how.

“Under the rug,” the child rasped from the other side of the door. “I think she put the key under the rug.”

Des dropped to his knees and pawed at the hallway carpet. The electric lights had gone out. Probably the system had been burned out by the fire. It was too dark to see, and his streaming eyes were useless anyway. Des fought down his terror as he prayed to find a bump under the rough wool nap. When his fingers touched it he almost cried out with joy and relief. He fished the key out and lunged at the door, feeling for the keyhole. The key took two turns to catch, and Des thought he might go crazy from being so scared in the meantime.

Then the door was open, and the little girl had leapt into his arms.

“Keep low,” he said. “There’s not so much smoke near the floor.”

If that was true, Des couldn’t tell. The smoke was pretty thick everywhere by now. They stumbled and crawled toward the staircase. They had just reached the top of the stairs when, with a roar and a crash, the flames broke through into the hallway at the opposite end from where they had just been. Des saw orange and blue lick up the delicately flowered wallpaper. Then a line of fire shot toward them down the center of the hallway ceiling, like a flaming arrow in a cowboy movie.

The child’s high-pitched scream was right next to his ear, and he wanted to tell her to shut up. Instead, he grabbed her arm and pulled her down the stairs, bumping her from one step to another, knowing that if he lost his grip on her she would fall. He also knew that if he didn’t drag her this rough way they could lose their race against the flames and be caught in the river of burning carpet he had imagined on his way up these same stairs.

Suddenly, he remembered what his mission had been when he first ran into this house. He had come to save the mother, not the child. He had not thought for even a second that he could lose his own life in the attempt. He had only cared about Miss Desiree. He glanced back toward the stairway and the balustrade to the left toward her room. Flames rimmed the opening to the hallway in that direction. In less than a moment they would spread into a wall of fire across the only way he might possibly reach her.

Des continued his plunge down the stairs with the child in tow. He couldn’t afford to hesitate for a second, even though what he was doing could cost the life of the person he loved more than anyone or anything in the world.

She would want you to save her baby, a voice inside him said. She always called the little girl her baby. He knew the voice was speaking truth, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

They had reached the heavy front door. In a flash of premonition, Des saw the etched glass cracking from the heat of the fire and the pale veneer curling into charred blackness. Though none of that had happened yet, he knew it would, and very soon.

Des shoved the door open and dragged himself and the child onto the veranda. Wind was whipping the lime trees that bordered the brick walk from the house to the road. Miss Desiree took such pride in those lime trees. She would hate to see them wracked and bent by the storm, even though she would know they were plenty strong enough to survive.

Des dropped the child’s arm, and she fell onto the bricks. He didn’t pick her up. The child was safe now. He knew that the mother, unlike her trees, would not survive this night. He heard the sirens in the same moment he came to understand that there was no use running back inside. He would only turn to charring blackness along with the white-painted woodwork and the chintz-covered chairs and all the rest of the bright, beautiful things she loved. She wouldn’t want that to happen to him.

“Desiree,” he whispered because his throat was too raw to scream. Her name was so like his own, Desiree and Destiny, that people said they should have been mother and son. But they weren’t. She was only the closest thing he’d had to a mother since his own mom died before he was old enough to know her.

Des reached down and grabbed the child’s arm again and began dragging her along the brick path, getting her away from the house as a second-story window exploded too close above them. He could only move in a crouch now. He was weak from gasping for breath. He felt the hard brick through the soles of his sneakers and then the softer sod as he pulled himself and his burden onto the lawn just inside the gate and the tall fence. He fell to the grass and buried his face in it, surprised that he could smell the greenness through the smoke that filled the wide yard and sooted the flower beds.

Des heard the trucks and the shouts of the men as they dragged heavy hoses down the path to shoot a futile stream of water at the blazing hulk that was already too far gone to save.

It was too late. Too late for her house. Too late for her. Too late for Des, and for the one bright shiny part of his lonely life.

He wrapped his arms around the child who lay sobbing at his side. He needed somebody to hang on to, even this kid he’d always been a little jealous of. She sobbed against him as his eyes continued to stream, not only from the smoke and fire this time, but also from tears he wasn’t ashamed to cry.

Twenty-four years later

She should have come here long ago. Taylor Loyola Bissett knew that the minute she stepped from the cab. She was out of her element, as her Great-Aunt Pearl would have put it, but that was exactly what Taylor wanted to be. “Stay where you know the territory and the territory knows you,” her aunt said over and over, like a chant. “That way you will always be in tune.” Taylor could feel herself out of tune with this place already, and that both frightened and thrilled her.