Where There's Smoke

Where There's Smoke [067-011-5.0]

By: Sandra Brown

Synopsis:

Doctor Lara Mallory returns to the
Texas
town where she is blamed for a popular senator's suicide, opens the practice he bequeathed her, and pursues his brother, a man with dangerous secrets. By the author of French Silk.

Warner Books;

ISBN: 0446600342 ; copyright 1994

Chapter One.

I'd never particularly liked cats.

His problem, however, was that the woman lying beside him purred like one.
 
Deep satisfaction vibrated through her from her throat to her belly.
 
She had narrow, tilted eyes and moved with sinuous, fluid motion.
 
She didn't walk, she stalked, Her foreplay had been a choreographed program of stretching and rubbing herself against him like a tabby in heat, and when she climaxed, she had screamed and clawed his shoulders.

Cats seemed sneaky and sly and, to his way of thinking, untrustworthy.

He'd always been slightly uncomfortable turning his back to one.

"How was I?"
 
Her voice was as sultry as the night beyond the pleated window shades.

"You don't hear me complaining, do you?"

Key Tackett also had an aversion to postcoital evaluation.
 
If it was good, chatter was superfluous.
 
If it wasn't, well, the less said the better.

She mistook his droll response as a compliment and slithered off the wide bed.
 
Naked, she crossed the room to her cluttered dressing table and lit a cigarette with a jeweled lighter.
 
"Want one?"

"No, thanks."

"Drink?"

"If it's handy.
 
A quick one."
 
Bored now, he gazed at the crystal chandelier in the center of the ceiling.
 
The fixture was gaudy and distinctly ugly.
 
It was too large for the bedroom even with the light bulbs behind the glass teardrops dimmed to a mere glimmer.

The shocking pink carpet was equally garish, and the portable brass bar was filled with ornate- crystal decanters.
 
She poured him a shot of bourbon.
 
"You don't have to rush off," she told him with a smile.
 
"My husband's out of town, and my daughter's spending the night at a friend's house."

"Male or female?"

"Female.
 
For chrissake, she's only sixteen."

It would be unchivalrous of him to mention that she had acquired her reputation for being an easy lay long before reaching the age of sixteen.
 
He remained silent, mostly from indifference.

"My point is, we've got till morning."
 
Handing Key the drink, she sat down beside him, nudging his hip with hers.

He raised his head from the silk-encased pillow and sipped the straight bourbon.
 
"I gotta get home.
 
Here I've been back in town for .
 
. ." he checked his wristwatch, "three and a half hours, and have yet to darken the door of the family homestead."

"You said they weren't expecting you tonight."

"No, but I promised to get home as soon as I could manage it."

She twined a strand of his dark hair around her finger.
 
"But you didn't count on running into me at The Palm the minute you hit town, did you?"

He drained his drink and thrust the empty tumbler at her.
 
"Wonder why they call it The Palm.
 
There isn't a palm tree within three hundred miles of here.
 
You go there often?"

"often enough."

Key returned her wicked grin.
 
"Whenever your old man's out of town?"

"And whenever the boredom of this wide place in the road gets unbearable, which, Cod knows, is practically every day.
 
I can usually find some interesting company at The Palm."

He glanced at her abundant breasts.
 
"Yeah, I bet you can.
 
Bet you enjoy getting every man in the place all worked up and sporting a hard-on."

"You know me so well."
 
Laughing huskily, she bent down to brush her damp lips across his.

He turned his head away.
 
"I don't know you at all."

"Why that's not true, Key Tackett."
 
She sat back, looking affronted.

"We went through school together."

"I went through school with a lot of kids.
 
Doesn't mean I knew all of them beyond saying hello."

"But you kissed me."

"Liar."
 
Chivalry aside, he added, "I didn't like standing in line, so I never even asked you out."

Her feline eyes squinted with malice that vanished in an instant.

As quickly as she extended her claws, they were retracted.
 
"We never actually went on a date, no," she purred.
 
"But one Friday night after a victory against Gladewater, you and the rest of the football team came strutting off the field.
 
My friends and me-with just about everybody else in Eden Pass lined up along the sideline to cheer as you went past on your way to the field house.

"You," she emphasized, digging her fingernail into his bare chest,

"were the outstanding stud among all the studs.
 
You were the sweatiest, and your jersey was the dirtiest, and of course all the girls thought you were the handsomest.
 
You thought so too, I think."

She paused for him to comment, but Key regarded her impassively.

He was remembering dozens of Friday nights like the one she had just described.
 
Pregame jitters and postwin exhilaration.
 
The glare of the stadium lights.
 
The cadence of the marching band.
 
The smell of fresh popcorn.
 
The pep squad.
 
The cheering crowds.

And Jody, cheering louder than anybody.
 
Cheering for him.
 
That had been a long time ago.

"When you went past me," she continued, "you grabbed me around the waist, lifted me clean off the ground, hauled me up against you, and kissed me smack on the mouth.
 
Hard.
 
Kinda barbariclike."

"Hmm.
 
You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure.
 
I creamed my panties."
 
She leaned over him, pressing her nipples against his chest.
 
"I waited a long time to have you finish what you started then."

"Well, I'm glad to have been of service."
 
He swatted her fanny and sat up.
 
"Scoot."
 
Reaching around her, he retrieved his jeans.

"You really are leaving?"
 
she asked, surprised.

"Yep."

Frowning, she ground out her cigarette in a nightstand ashtray.

"Son of a bitch," she muttered.
 
Then, taking a different tack, she came off the bed and swept aside his jeans before he could step into them.
 
She bumped against his middle seductively.

"It's late, Key.
 
Everybody out at your mama 5 house will be sound asleep.
 
You'd just as well stay with me tonight."
 
She reached between his strong thighs and fondled him, with audacity and know-how, boldly looking into his face as her fingers coaxed a response.
 
"You haven't lived until you've partaken of one of my breakfast specialties."

Key's lips twitched with amusement.
 
"Served in bed?"

"Damn straight.
 
With all the trimmings.
 
I even "She broke off suddenly, her hands reflexively clenching hard enough to cause him to grimace.

"Hey, watch out.
 
Them's the family jewels."

"Shh!"
 
Releasing him, she ran on tiptoe toward the open bedroom door.

As she reached it, a male voice called out.
 
"Sugar pie, I'm home."

"Shit!"
 
No longer languid and seductive, she turned toward Key.

"You've got to get out of here," she hissed.
 
"Now!"

Key had already stepped into his jeans and was bending down to search for his boots.
 
"How do you suggest I do that?"
 
he whispered.

"Sugar?
 
You upstairs?"
 
Key heard footsteps on the marble tiles of the entry below, then on the carpet of the stairs.
 
"I got away early and decided to came on home tonight instead of waiting for morning."

She frantically motioned Key toward the French doors on the far side of the --room.
 
Scooping up his boots and shirt, he pulled open the doors and slipped through them.
 
He was outside on the balcony before he remembered that the master bedroom was on the second floor of the house.
 
Peering over the wrought-iron railing, he saw no easy way down.

Swearing beneath his breath, he quickly reviewed his options.

What the hell?
 
He'd faced worse situations.
 
Typhoons, bullets, an earthquake or two, acts of Cod, and man-made mayhem.
 
A husband coming home unexpectedly wasn't a new experience for him, either.

He'd just have to bluff his way through and hope for the best.

He stepped back into the bedroom but pulled up short on the threshold of the French doors.
 
The nightstand drawer was open.
 
His lover was now reclining in bed clutching the satin sheet to her chin with one hand.
 
With the other, shea: was aiming a pistol straight at him.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Her piercing scream stunned him.
 
A second later, a blast from her pistol shattered his eardrums.
 
It was a few pounding heartbeats later before he realized that he'd been hit.
 
He gazed down at the searing wound in his left side, then raised his incredulous eyes back to her.

The running footsteps had now reached the hallway.
 
"Sugar pie!"

Again she screamed, a bloodcurdling sound.
 
Again she aimed the gun.

Galvanized, Key spun around just as she fired.
 
He thought she missed but couldn't afford the time to check.
 
He tossed his boots and shirt over the railing, threw his left leg over, then his right, and balanced on an inch of support before leaping through the darkness to the ground below.

He landed hard on his right ankle.
 
Pain shimmied up through his shin, thigh, and groin before slamming into his gut.
 
Blinking hard, he gasped for breath, prayed he wouldn't vomit, and strove to remain conscious as he swept up his boots and shirt and ran like hell.

Lara jumped at the sound of hard knocking on her back door.

She'd been absorbed in a syrupy Bette Davis classic.
 
Muting the television with the remote control, she listened.
 
The knocking came again, harder and more urgent.
 
Throwing off the afghan covering her legs, she left the comfort of her living room sofa and hurried down the hallway, switching on lights as she went.

When she reached the back room of the clinic, she saw the silhouette of a man against the partially open miniblinds on the door.
 
Cautiously she crept forward and peered through a crack in the blinds.

Beneath the harsh glare of the porch light his face looked waxy and set.
 
The lower half of it was shadowed by a day-old beard.
 
Sweat had plastered several strands of unruly dark hair to his forehead.

Beneath dense, dark eyebrows, he squinted through the blinds.