Where There's Smoke

“Christ.” He raised his fists to his eyes and mentally pictured the woman he’d met the night before. She didn’t match the bimbo featured in all the tabloid photographs. None of her deft mannerisms or candid expressions corresponded with the mental images he’d painted of Lara Porter, the woman who’d been his brother’s downfall, the woman who some political analysts hypothesized had changed the course of American history.

Finally Key lowered his hands and gave a helpless, apologetic shrug. “I had no way of knowing. She never gave me her name, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t recognize her from the pictures I’d seen. That all happened… what?—five, six years ago?”

He hated himself for babbling excuses, knowing full well that the damage had been done and that Jody wasn’t going to forgive him no matter what he said now. So he took another tack and asked, “What the hell is Lara Porter doing in Eden Pass?”

“Does it matter?” Jody asked brusquely. “She’s here. And you’re to have nothing to do with her, understand? By the time I get finished with her, she’ll tuck tail and slink out of town the same way she slunk in.

“Until that time, the Tacketts and anybody who wants to stay on speaking terms with us are to treat her with nothing except the contempt she deserves. That includes you. That especially includes you.”

She jabbed her cigarette toward him to make her point. “Have all the sluts you want, Key, as I’m sure you will. But stay away from her.”

Key immediately went on the defensive and raised his voice to match his mother’s. “What are you yelling at me for? I wasn’t caught humping her, Clark was.”

Jody rose slowly to her feet and leaned on the table, bearing down on her younger son over bottles of catsup and Tabasco sauce. “How dare you speak that way about him. Don’t you have an ounce of decency, a smidgen of respect for your brother?”

“Clark,” Key shouted, rising and squaring off against Jody across the table. “His name was Clark, and what kind of respect do you pay him by not even speaking his name out loud?”

“It hurts to talk about him, Key.”

“Why?” He rounded on Janellen, who’d timidly made the comment.

“Well, because… because his death was so untimely. So tragic.”

“Yes, it was. But it shouldn’t cancel out his life.” He turned back to Jody. “Before he died, Daddy saw to it that Clark and I shared some good times. He wanted us to be close in spite of you, and we were. God knows Clark and I were poles apart in everything, but he was my brother. I loved him. I mourned him when he died. But I refuse to pretend that he didn’t exist just to spare your feelings.”

“You aren’t fit to speak your brother’s name.”

It hurt. Even now it cut him to the quick when she said things like that. She left him no recourse except to lash back. “If he was so bloody perfect, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, Jody. There would never have been a Lara Porter in our lives. No bad press. No scandal. No shame. Clark would have remained the Golden Boy of Capitol Hill.”

“Shut up!”

“Gladly.” He shoved the crutches under his arms and headed for the back door.

“Key, where are you going?” Janellen asked in a panicked voice.

“I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.”

Defiantly he glared at Jody, then let the door slam behind him.

Lara had spent a restless night. Even under the best of circumstances she wasn’t a sound sleeper. Frequently her sleep was interrupted by bad dreams and long intervals of wakefulness. She listened for cries that she would never hear again. Sorrow was the basis of her habitual insomnia.

Last night, meeting Key Tackett had made sleep particularly elusive. She had awakened with a dull headache. Encircling her eyes were dark rings, which cosmetics had helped to camouflage but hadn’t eliminated. Two cups of strong black coffee had relieved the headache, but she couldn’t cast off the disturbing thoughts about her late-night caller.

She hadn’t believed it was possible for any other man to be as attractive as Clark Tackett, but Key was. The brothers were different types, certainly. Clark had had the spit-and-polish veneer of a Marine recruit. There was never a strand of his blond hair out of place. His impeccably tailored clothes were always well pressed; his shoes shone like mirrors. He had epitomized the clean-cut guy next door, the all-American boy whom any mother would love her daughter to bring home.

Key was the type from whom mothers hid their daughters. Although just as handsome as Clark, he was as dissimilar to his brother as a street thug to an Eagle Scout.

Key was a professional pilot. According to Clark, he flew a plane by instinct and put more faith in his own judgment and motor skills than he did in aeronautical instruments. He relied on technology only when given no other choice. Clark had boasted that there wasn’t an aircraft made that his brother couldn’t fly, but Key had opted to freelance rather than work for a commercial airline.

“Too many rules and regulations for him,” Clark had said, smiling with indulgent affection for his younger brother. “Key likes answering to no one but himself.”

Having met him and experienced firsthand the compelling allure of his mischievous smile, Lara couldn’t imagine Key Tackett dressed in a spiffy captain’s uniform, speaking to his passengers in a melodious voice about the weather conditions in their destination city.

Sitting in cockpits a great deal of the time had left him with attractive squint lines radiating from his eyes—eyes as blue as Clark’s. But Clark had been blond and fair. Key’s eyes were surrounded with thick, blunt, black eyelashes. He was definitely the black sheep of the family, even in physical terms. His hair was thick and dark and as undisciplined as he. Clark had never sported a five o’clock shadow. Key hadn’t shaved for days. Oddly, the stubble had contributed to, not detracted from, his appeal.

The brothers were fine specimens of the human animal. Clark had been a domesticated pet. Key was still untamed. When angered—or aroused—Lara imagined he would growl.

“Good morning.”