Where There's Smoke (46 page)

Flustered and confused, she ducked her head.
 
"You don't have to tell me that.
 
Just because of what I said the other day."

He cleared his throat uncomfortably.
 
"I want you to know right now that I'm not holding you to that."

"You're not?"

"No, ma am.

"Oh."
 
The features of her face worked emotionally.
 
Then she lifted her gaze back to his.
 
"How come?"

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
 
"Well, 'cause I know you didn't really mean it, that's how come."

She wet her lips and took a quick breath.
 
"In fact I did, Bowie."

"You did?"

"I meant it from the bottom of my heart.
 
And if you, well, you know, if you ever wanted to kiss me again, it would be all right."

The buzzing inside Bowie's head almost drowned out the pounding rain on the roof.
 
His heart was beating so hard and fast that it hurt.

His throat was tight, but he managed to strangle out, "I do want to kiss you again, Miss Janellen.
 
I surely do."

He slipped his hands beneath her hair and cupped her jaw, then drew her mouth toward his.
 
Her parted lips responded warmly.
 
This time they needed no warm-up, no rehearsal.
 
They skipped getting reacquainted and picked up right where they had left off, engaging in a kiss that left them breathless when they at last pulled apart.

He pressed his mouth against her throat while her hands clutched at his back.
 
"I never knew it could feel like this, Bowie."

"Neither did I. And I've been doing it for some time now.

They kissed again and again, each kiss piercingly sweet and increasingly intimate.
 
They kissed until their lips were swollen, their passions brimming.

He longed to nestle his erection in the cleft of her long thighs, but he curbed the impulse.
 
However, with an eagerness that was instinctual and almost childlike in its innocence, she arched her body against his, in effect accomplishing what he wouldn't do for himself.

The contact was erotically shattering.
 
It would have evoked the animalistic urges of a saint, and that was something Bowie Cato had never claimed to be.

He fumbled beneath her skirt and grabbed a handful of her bottom, kneading the silk-covered flesh once, twice, while mashing his distended fly against her mound.
 
It wasn't premeditated.
 
He didn't weigh the benefits against the consequences.
 
If he'd thought about it at all, he'd never have done it.
 
It was an unthinkable thing to do.

Janellen's soft exclamation brought reality crashing down on his head, and along with it shame and self-disgust.

He released her immediately.
 
Without a word, he crossed the kitchen in three strides, grabbed his boots, his hat, and his jacket, and stomped out the kitchen door and into the downpour.

The moment he reached the truck he'd left parked behind the garage, a jagged fork of lightning rent the darkness, connecting the firmament and the earth with a hot-white brilliance that crackled with wrath and seared the air with ozone.

Bowie figured it was God, meaning to strike him dead.
 
His aim was just a little off.

Thunder rattled the liquor bottles and glassware behind the bar.

"Brewing up a real storm out there," Hap Hollister observed as he poured Key another drink.

"Grounded me.
 
I was supposed to be flying to Midland tonight, taking an oilman and his wife home."

"I'm right proud of you, Key.
 
You've got better sense than to fly in this weather."

"Wasn't me who chickened out.
 
It was the wife.
 
Said she didn't want to die in a plane crash."

Hap, shaking his head over the younger man's derring-do, moved away to serve the other customers who had braved the storm to come to The Palm.

Some were playing billiards, leaning on their cues and drinking longnecks as they awaited their turns.
 
Others were watching a late-season baseball game on the large-screen TV mounted beneath the ceiling in one corner of the bar.
 
Drinkers were grouped in twos and threes.

Only Key drank alone at one end of the bar.
 
His dark expression and hunched shoulders signaled his mood.
 
News of the incident at the Sak'n'Save had reached every ear in town, and so his silent request to be left alone was sympathetically honored by everyone in the tavern.

Jody was the subject on Key's mind as he sipped his fresh drink, but his thoughts weren't running toward the sympathetic.
 
He'd like to give his mother a good swift kick in the butt.
 
At the hospital and later, when he and Janellen had taken her home against the doctor's recommendation and their own better judgment, Jody had griped and complained and staved off all their attempts to make her comfortable.

"I'm hiring a live-in nurse for you, Jody," he'd told her as Janellen urged her to get into bed.
 
"Janellen keeps office hours.
 
I'm away a lot.
 
Maydale's a good housekeeper, but we can't count on her to handle a medical emergency like the one that occurred this morning.

You should have someone with you constantly."

"That's a wonderful idea, Key!"
 
Janellen exclaimed.
 
"Isn't it, Mama?"

Disregarding Janellen, Jody blew smoke at him from her fresh cigarette.

"You took it upon yourself to hire me a nurse?"

"She'll be here around the clock to fetch and carry for you."

"I can fetch and carry for myself, thank you very much.
 
I don't want a busybody fussing over me, bossing me, meddling in my things, and stealing me blind when I'm not looking."

"I went through a top-notch agency in Dallas," he patiently explained.

"They won't send us a thief.
 
I specified our requirements.
 
I made it clear that you're not an invalid, that you're independent and value your privacy.
 
They're checking their files to see who's available, but promised a nurse would be here no later than noon tomorrow."

Jody's eyes narrowed to slits.
 
"Call them back.
 
Cancel.
 
Who the hell gave you the authority to make my decisions for me?"

"Mama, Key's only doing what he thinks is best for you."

"I'll tell him what's best for me.
 
I want him to butt out of my life.

And you too," she said, snatching her jacket away from Janellen, who had assisted her in taking it off.
 
"Get out of my room.
 
Both of you."

At the risk of bringing on another attack, they had left her.

He was worried sick about her.
 
When he'd seen her lying on the floor of the Sak'n'Save, spittle on her chin, her dignity gone, he'd almost passed out himself.
 
But he could hardly remain compassionate when his every attempt at kindness was met with a scornful tonguelashing.

Hell, he could take Jody's crap.
 
He'd been taking it all his life.

When weighed against her precarious health, their verbal skirmishes seemed petty.
 
At issue now was that his mother refused to accept the seriousness of her illness.
 
She could die if she didn't undergo the treatment prescribed for her.
 
Only a fool would flaunt mortality like that.

Then, smiling wryly, Key reminded himself that he'd been willing to fly into a stormy cold front and would have done so if the passengers who'd chartered the plane hadn't nixed it.

But that was gambling, a game of chance with risks involved, the outcome uncertain.
 
It wasn't like being told by medical experts that you were a time bomb with the clock ticking and that if you didn't take care of the problem you could die or, what to Key's mind would be worse, live in a vegetative state for the rest of your life.

The doctor at the county hospital had bluntly laid out the sobering facts of jody's diagnosis to Janellen and him.
 
He would have liked a second opinion.
 
He would have liked having Lara Mallory's opinion.

"Shit."
 
He signaled Hap for another hit.

The last thing he wanted to think about was Lara Mallory.
 
But, like the intoxicating whiskey, she had a way of infusing his head, permeating it, saturating it.
 
Silent and invisible, she was always there, fucking with his mind.

Had his brother sired her child?
 
Had her husband known?
 
Had Clark known?
 
Had knowing that his child died violently precipitated Clark's suicide?

If so, didn't he owe it to Clark-and to Lara to go to Montesangre and find out the details of the child's death?

Hell, no.
 
It was none of his business.
 
Nobody had appointed him Clark's custodian.
 
It was her problem.
 
Let her deal with it.
 
It had nothing to do with him.

But the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that Ashley was his niece.
 
He'd tried not to think about it at all, but that was impossible.
 
Just as impossible was forgetting how devastated Lara had been when she recounted her daughter's violent assassination.

God, how did anyone retain his sanity after experiencing something like that?

A few weeks ago, he would have bet his last nickel that he would never waste a charitable thought on Lara Mallory.
 
After hearing her story, he would have to be a real bastard not to feel charitable.
 
So he had held her.
 
Comforted her.
 
Kissed her.

Angrily, he drained his drink, then stared into the glass as he twirled it around and around over the polished surface of the bar.

He'd kissed her all right.
 
Not a little, meaningless, charitable peck, either.
 
He'd kissed his brother's married lover and the scourge of his family like it counted.
 
She had accused him of taking advantage of her emotional breakdown, but she was wrong.
 
Oh, he'd pretended that she had his motives pegged perfectly, but, honest to God, when he was kissing her, the last thought in his head was that she was a lying, cheating adulteress who had beguiled Clark.
 
In his arms, with her mouth moving pliantly beneath his, she became only a woman he desperately wanted to touch.
 
He'd abided by the ground rules he himself had stipulated he'd forgotten her name.

"Haven't you got anything better to do than watch ice cubes melt?

Like, for instance, buy a lady a drink?"

Frowning over the unwelcome interruption, Key lifted his gaze to find Darcy Winston seated on the barstool beside his.
 
"Where'd you come from?"

"just stopped to get in out of the rain.
 
Do I get that drink or not?"

Hap approached.
 
Key nodded tersely, and the bartender took Darcy's order for a vodka and tonic.
 
Key declined when asked if he wanted another.

"Making me drink alone?
 
How rude!"
 
Darcy's carefully painted lips formed a pout.

"That was the idea.
 
To drink alone.
 
You didn't take the hint."

She sipped the drink Hap slid toward her.
 
"Worried about your mama?"

"For starters.

"I'm really sorry, Key."

He doubted that Darcy gave a damn about anybody's well-being except her own, but he nodded his thanks.