Where There's Smoke

He knew he had just as well get over this itch for her because he could never scratch it. To want the woman who had tainted his brother’s name and destroyed his future was sinful. And while sin had never been a deterrent to his doing anything he wanted to do, stupidity certainly was.

That was the crux of his anger. He felt like a stupid fool for listening like a trusted old fogy while she poured out her tearful story. He’d brewed coffee, for chrissake! Then he’d gone one step farther and held her. Kissed her.

“Shit.” He hit the steering wheel with his fist.

She was probably still laughing, knowing that she’d built a fire in his gut that he doubted ten other women could extinguish. A woman didn’t let you make love to her mouth like that without knowing damn good and well what it was doing to you. No wonder she’d chosen that moment to make her pitch about a trip to Central America. She figured she had him so wound up he’d agree to take her to Mars if she asked.

Guess again, Doc, he thought with a smirk. He’d been hot for a lot of women, but even in the throes of passion he’d never taken a total departure from his reason.

On second thought, she hadn’t looked particularly complacent when he left. She had seemed as confused and humiliated

as he felt now. True enough, the story of her daughter’s death had been heartbreaking. He still didn’t trust her, but when it came to Ashley’s murder, who could doubt that her suffering was genuine? The kid’s death had shattered her, and she wasn’t over it yet.

When I nursed her, it was as nurturing to me as it was to her.

She seemed destined to make the people around her happy.

She had adored that kid and had taken her death harder than Randall Porter’s brutal execution. Of course, following the nasty scandal involving Clark, their marriage couldn’t have been on solid ground. By her own admission, she’d been miserably unhappy in Montesangre. Only the birth of her daughter had made life there livable. To her, Ashley must have been like a consolation prize, a sign of God’s forgiveness. Having lost Clark, she’d transferred all her love and attention to her baby.

Suddenly Key withdrew his foot from the accelerator. The Lincoln began to slow down. He stared sightlessly into the darkness that was gradually lifting on the eastern horizon. But the imminent sunrise didn’t register on him. Nor did he realize that the Lincoln was straddling the center stripe as it rolled to a stop.

Other things Lara had said echoed in his head.

Blond and blue-eyed.

Her smile was like sunshine.

She beamed.

Key knew of only one other person who’d been described in such radiant, solar terms. Clark Tackett the Third.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered as his hands heedlessly slipped from the steering wheel and landed in his lap.

Lara Mallory’s beloved Ashley had been his brother’s child.

Chapter Fifteen

Ollie Hoskins went to work with his feather duster on the cans of pork ’n’ beans, chili, tamales, and tuna in aisle 6. As manager of the Sak’n’Save supermarket, he could have delegated dusting the shelves to one of the stock-boys, but he enjoyed doing the menial tasks—pricing, stocking, sacking—because the work was clearly defined and easily dispatched. It was mindless labor that he could do while thinking about something else.

He’d served in the United States Navy for fifteen years before mustering out, and while he didn’t miss the months at sea, he looked back fondly on the freedom from responsibility he’d enjoyed as a sailor. He’d never desired to be an officer and was still better at taking orders than issuing them.

One spring while on shore leave in Galveston, he’d met a young woman on the beach, fallen in love, and married her within a month. When it came time for him to reenlist, she urged him not to and relocated them to her hometown of Eden Pass so that she could be close to her mother.

They probably would have been better off staying in the service, Ollie thought now as he moved to aisle 5, where the shelves were neatly stocked with flour, sugar, spices, and shortening. His wife’s family had never welcomed him into the fold. Ollie hailed from “up north somewhar,” and, in their estimation, the only thing worse than being a Yankee would be to have an ethnic heritage. That he was Anglo made him tolerable—barely.

After twenty years, he still wasn’t crazy about his in-laws, and vice versa. The bloom of love had long since faded from his marriage. Now, about the only thing he and his wife had in common was their boy, Tanner.

In their individual ways, they doted on him. His mother frequently embarrassed him with her overt demonstrations of affection. She’d been unable to conceive after Tanner—a condition that she implied was Ollie’s shortcoming, not hers—so she fussed over him like a mama bear with her cub. It tickled her pink that he was Heather Winston’s steady. Having her son dating the most popular girl at the high school somehow elevated her social standing among her friends.

Ollie had nothing against Heather. She was as cute as a button, friendly, full of pep. He only hoped that Tanner didn’t let the romance get out of hand. He’d hate to see his son’s future compromised by healthy lust.

Frequently Ollie looked at Tanner and marveled over the genetic quirk that had produced from his seed, and his wife’s lackluster bloodline, such a smart, good-looking boy. Thank God he was athletic. If he’d wanted to play an instrument in the marching band, or had aspired to be a chemist or a rocket scientist, his relatives would have shunned him as a weirdo. But Tanner could kick and throw and carry a football, so he was affectionately walloped and jabbed and hugged by his rowdy cousins and uncles. They claimed him as theirs and conveniently forgot that Ollie was physically responsible for his origin.

Ollie didn’t mind. Tanner was his, and he nearly busted his buttons every Friday night when number twenty-two charged onto the football field wearing the crimson and black of the Fighting Devils. The approaching season promised to be Tanner’s best one yet.

Ollie finished straightening the cans of Crisco, rounded the sale display of Nabisco cookies at the end of the aisle, and entered aisle 4—coffee, tea, and canned beverages. Two women were moving along the aisle. The younger was pushing the cart while the older consulted a shopping list.

“Good morning, Miss Janellen, Mrs. Tackett,” Ollie said pleasantly. “How are you this morning?” He’d never quite gotten the knack of saying “y’all.” This deficiency in his vocabulary still branded him a Yankee outsider.