Where There's Smoke

“It’s naughty, I know, but, gosh, Fergus, I just love you so much right now, I want to show it.”

“Heather might—”

“She’ll be at cheerleading practice for another hour. Please, honey? When you show your strong side and shout at me a little, I get all weak inside. Seeing that macho side of you makes me so hot. I get… wet. Down there. You know.”

His large Adam’s apple slid up, then down. “I… I had no idea.”

“Feel.” She guided his hand beneath her skirt and pretended to swoon when he touched her between the thighs. “Oh, my, God!” she gasped.

Within minutes, Fergus had forgotten all about their quarrel and the reason for it. Darcy kissed and stroked and thrust and panted her way back into his good graces.

If Fergus knew he’d been had, he was content to ignore it.

It took a fortnight for Lara to admit that Darcy Winston and Jody Tackett’s threats might have substance. After twenty-one days, she cried uncle. Following the Tuesday morning of Jody Tackett’s collapse in the supermarket, Lara

didn’t see a single patient.

Nancy dutifully reported for work each day, creating busy work for herself to pass the sluggish hours until it was time to go home. Lara filled the days by reading current medical journals. She told herself that this time was valuable, that she was fortunate to have time to keep abreast of new developments and research. But she couldn’t completely delude herself. Doctors with full patient loads rarely had time for reading.

She heard nothing from the young attorney retained by Jack and Marion Leonard. If they were pursuing a medical malpractice suit against her, she hadn’t yet been notified. Should it come to that, she was confident that once the facts were known, she would be exonerated. However, the negative publicity generated by the litigation would be professionally devastating and emotionally demoralizing. She clung to the hope that they had reconsidered.

The school board never contacted her. Darcy had rallied friends and PTA members to petition the school board against allowing any offensive persons or projects to filter into the school system. Daily, the newspaper was filled with letters to the editor, written by parents and community leaders who were incensed by the proposal recently submitted to the school board by Dr. Lara Mallory. The consensus of the letters was that Eden Pass wasn’t ready for such immoral programs to be incorporated into its school curriculum and never would be. The disapproval had been vocal and vehement.

Everywhere she went she was either ignored, sneered at, or leered at by rednecks who assumed she had loose morals because she’d openly discussed such a racy topic with the school board.

She was an outcast. Eden Pass’s Hester Prynne. If she hadn’t experienced it, she wouldn’t have believed shunning this absolute was possible in contemporary America. She began to believe that Jody’s prophecy might be fulfilled: she would live to see Lara Mallory leave town.

But not before she got what she came for.

The Tacketts had made her a pariah. They had sabotaged her medical practice. But she’d be damned before she let Key ignore her demand. He would take her to Montesangre. Now.

Chapter Eighteen

“Is he here?”

The yellow Lincoln was parked outside the hangar.

“No, Doc, he ain’t,” Balky said, earnestly trying to be helpful. “But he was s’posed to come back sometime this evenin’. ’Less he decided to stay in Texarkana. Can’t never tell ’bout Key.”

“Do you mind if I stick around for a while?”

“Not at all. Might be a waste of time, though.”

“I’ll wait.”

He shook his head in a way that suggested people were mysteries to him. He had a much deeper understanding of engines and what made them tick. Muttering to himself, the mechanic ambled back to the gutted airplane he’d been working on when Lara arrived.

She preferred waiting outside the hangar where the air was slightly less stifling. It was half an hour before she saw the blinking lights of the approaching aircraft and heard the drone of its motor. The sky was clear, deep blue on the eastern horizon, lavender overhead, crimson fading to gold in the west. Key once had tried to explain the peacefulness he derived from flying. On nights like tonight, she could almost relate to his mystical bond with the sky.

He executed a faultless landing and taxied the twin-engine Beechcraft toward the hangar. She was standing on the tarmac when he climbed out of the cockpit. He saw her immediately, but his expression registered neither surprise, gladness, disappointment, nor anger, making it impossible for her to gauge his mood.

Flexing his knees and arching his back, he sauntered toward her. “In Hawaii when your arrival is greeted by a pretty girl, you get leied.” He smiled, his teeth showing white in the gathering dusk. “L-e-i-e-d, that is.”

“I get it,” Lara said dryly.

“Smart lady like you, I figured you would.”

She fell into step with him as he moved toward the hangar’s wide entrance. “What do you do now? I mean, now that you’ve landed and your job is finished.”