Taylor’s mind began to understand where she was—in a guest bedroom of the Starling house. Yet, part of her longed to stay, if even for only a moment more, in the place of undulating leaves and plunging passion. The cool of the air conditioner chilled the damp places on her body and banished the warm satin that had stroked her skin only an instant ago. Still, the mood of it was with her. She had been making love with a man of power and lust. She even knew who that man was. It had been a long time since she’d made love in real life. Because of that, she had turned herself off till she seemed not to care much anymore.
One night in the tropics, and she was being tormented by erotic dreams of—
The knocking was more insistent now. Taylor’s gradually clearing mind followed the cadence of it to the wide doors, and through them onto what she guessed must be another veranda. There had been a veranda off her room at the guesthouse, but she wasn’t there now. The colors were different in this room—creamy-golden walls and doorways, rich floral patterns in the bedding and on the floors. A stained-glass skylight echoed those patterns in its design, refracting the morning light into pools of color along the walls. Winona Starling was obviously a woman of sensuous tastes. The thought nudged the longing ache to sharpness again. Taylor sat up straight from the rumpled pillows, intending that rapid movement to dispel the last vestiges of the dream as she calmed her still-ragged breath toward its normal pace. At this new angle, she could make out the figure behind the slanted slats of the wooden blinds at the veranda doors. She almost fell back onto the pillows in surprise.
“Oh, no,” she gasped, though something inside her was saying quite the opposite.
It was the man from her dream. There was no mistaking Des Maxwell’s silhouette. She knew instantly who he was. She didn’t know why he was here. She would have to answer his knock to find out. It was also the only way to keep him from waking the rest of the house. But maybe that would be best. Then Jethro or someone would send Des away. Meanwhile, the warning rhythm from her dream had returned. Its chant of danger, danger, danger droned beneath her thoughts. Still, as her head cleared she knew she didn’t really want a scene involving the entire household. She’d had enough of scenes last night. She eased out of bed and tiptoed to the veranda door.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered through the space between the blind and doorframe.
“I can’t hear you,” Des said, more loudly than she would have preferred.
She suspected he wasn’t telling the truth. After all, she could hear him. Why wouldn’t he be able to hear her? She also suspected he wasn’t going to go away without seeing her face-to-face. Maybe she would have a better chance of getting rid of him that way. She unlocked the door but kept her body behind the closed blinds that covered the glass. She was very aware that her nipples were still visibly aroused beneath the oversize, white T-shirt that Winona had taken for Taylor, along with a change of clothes, from the guesthouse. She definitely didn’t want him to see that. Just considering the possibility made her nipples harder still.
Taylor edged the door open a crack and was greeted by the soft, warm scent of the Key West morning. The sun was up, and already brighter than on the sunniest of northern New York days. She was tempted to throw the door wide and be embraced by the fragrance of jasmine and frangipani from Winona’s garden arbor. Taylor had longed for the exhilaration of pure freedom much of her life. In this first instant of her first tropical morning, she felt the proximity of that freedom sweep over her. Then, Des Maxwell stepped across her line of vision through the crack in the doorway, and the sensation disappeared.
“I apologize for waking you up,” he said.
She put her finger to her lips to shush him into speaking more quietly. The sun might be up and bright, but the hour was early. Roosters crowed at the dawn somewhere in the distance. Before she could ask him what he wanted, he went on, but in a whisper this time.
“I didn’t want you to miss your first morning here. I thought you might sleep through it.” He hesitated a moment, as if just now realizing he might have judged the situation wrong. “And I thought you might want to get your stuff out of the guesthouse, at least anything you don’t want the cops pawing through.”
Taylor had been about to scold him for disturbing her so early after yesterday being such a grueling day for her, but what he was saying made sense. Besides, she agreed with him. She wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, anyway. The warning of danger from her dream tried to intervene upon that thought but she pushed it aside.
“I would like to get my things,” she said.
“You might also like to eat something. I have croissants in my car. There’s a place over on Duval that makes them fresh. They’re the best this side of New Orleans.”
The mention of food reminded Taylor of how long it had been since she’d eaten last. Late yesterday afternoon on the plane, which felt like very long ago indeed. The rumbling in her stomach agreed. She was definitely hungry. Still, she hesitated as another recollection of her dream returned, the memory of another kind of hunger. She might have fantasized about Maxwell in the most intimate of ways, but she didn’t really know him. This early morning visit smacked somewhat of the bizarre. She did have serious questions about his relationship with Netta. It occurred to Taylor that he might be trying to work the same spell on her that had charmed her aging aunt. Taylor’s still-damp body might be more vulnerable to those charms than her will to resist was strong. Perhaps it would be wise to keep a safe distance from Des Maxwell, at least until she felt more her usual in-control self than she did at this moment. She didn’t know what to do, which way to choose—another uncharacteristic state for her to be in.
“We could go to the Key Westian,” he was saying, “then drive up to the beach for a little breakfast.”
“Wait a minute.” Something had suddenly occurred to her. “Didn’t the police say they were sealing the guest-house?”
“We can get past that.”
Taylor hesitated.
“Aren’t you curious to see whether the guy who killed April Jane might have had some special reason to be in your room, after all?” Des asked. “The cops suggested that could be the case. Remember?”
Taylor did remember that, and she was definitely curious about it.
“I figured we’d be smart to go there early, before anybody’s around,” Des said. “Less chance of being stopped that way.”
Taylor nodded. He was right, or maybe she merely couldn’t think of a good argument this early in the morning. The soft air from the veranda had cooled her body from the frenzy of her dream. More practical considerations were supplanting her qualms about being alone with Des Maxwell. She could surely govern her emotions as successfully with him as she always had with other men. She ignored the danger warning yet again.
“I’ll get dressed and be with you in a few minutes,” she said.
“You can come out this way,” he said, indicating the end of the veranda. “There are stairs around the corner of the house and a path to the street. I’m parked out there in the red Jeep.”
She might have known he’d have a car like that. Where she came from, mostly oversexed adolescents drove Jeeps, especially red ones.
* * *
DES HAD the T-top on the Jeep. All of a sudden, he wasn’t sure that had been the right choice. Maybe it would be too breezy for her in the open air. He thought of
