in some deliberately insolent manner, be forcing this blush upon her, all the while enjoying her embarrassment.
“You two know each other. Right?” Jethro asked, glancing from one icy stare to the other.
“Not really,” Taylor said.
“I’m afraid you’re wrong about that. I’m Des Maxwell, and you are Taylor Bissett, which means I’ve known you almost all your life.”
Maxwell sounded so aloof he might not have been there at all, as if his words had been spoken with no connection to the rest of him. Taylor found that aloofness as provoking as his rude gaze and his calculated movements. Besides, she was getting tired of being declared an old acquaintance by men she had no memory of ever meeting.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said. “I do not know you.”
The waitress walked up behind Maxwell with a frothy white drink on her tray. “He ordered you a piña colada,” she said with a nod toward Maxwell in response to Taylor’s inquiring glance.
Taylor caught the flash of adoration in the young woman’s eyes as she looked up at her boss. Unfortunately, Taylor couldn’t help understanding that look. In addition to the attractions she had already noted, his hair fell winsomely across his forehead, and a thatch of sun-blond curls peeked through the open neck of his shirt in disturbing contrast with his tanned skin. He was positively spilling over with masculine charm, and she was keenly aware of the danger in that. She told herself she was determined to avoid such danger and that it was the power of this determination which made her hand tremble as she reached into her purse for her wallet.
“The drink is on the house,” he said and took hold of her wrist before she could pull out her money.
His fingers were warm against the thin skin above her pulse. She felt that pulse quicken as if it might begin at any moment to pump visibly beneath his touch. She pulled her hand away from him before that self-betrayal could happen.
“I prefer to pay my own way,” she said, handing a bill to the waitress, who had watched this exchange with considerable interest.
“Suit yourself,” Maxwell said with a shrug.
“Say, you two, what’s all this sparring about anyway?” Jethro darted halfway up from his seat and yanked the chair opposite Taylor’s away from the table. “Why don’t you sit down and take a load off, Des?”
“What do you say, Ms. Bissett? Should I take a load off, as Jethro puts it, or take a walk?”
Taylor stared straight back at him. She forced herself to be just as cool as he was. “Suit yourself.”
“In that case, I accept your invitation, Jethro,” Maxwell said, sitting. “How’ve you been, anyway?”
“I’ve been super, Des.” Jethro looked bewildered, as if he might be surprised by Maxwell’s acknowledging him at all.
“And how’s Winona?”
“Oh, Ma’s always tip-top.”
“That’s when she isn’t over the top,” Maxwell said almost under his breath.
“Wait a minute,” Taylor interrupted at the sound of the less than common female name. “Is your mother Winona Starling?”
“She sure is,” Jethro said enthusiastically. “That’s who your aunt used to bring you to see when you were a kid, like I told you.”
“I remember that,” Maxwell said.
“Well, I don’t remember any of it.”
Taylor felt her annoyance deflate suddenly. Too many people seemed to know more about her life than she did. Meanwhile, Maxwell was watching her. He appeared more thoughtful than arrogant this time.
“What exactly do you remember?” he asked.
His green-eyed gaze had turned unexpectedly warm as honey, or at least it felt startlingly that way to her.
“I remember almost nothing,” she said.
“Loss of memory can come in handy sometimes.”
The warmth had vanished from his eyes and his voice, as if she might have imagined them there, like one of her visions. Taylor had been about to lower her barriers against him long enough to ask what he might know of her early childhood here in Key West. His renewed coolness put a stop to that.
“Are you accusing me of lying about what I do or do not remember?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. I was only making an observation.”
“You really don’t remember anything about being a kid here?” Jethro chimed in.
Taylor didn’t answer him. The fascination in Jethro’s voice and the quizzical way he was looking at her made her feel like a specimen in a jar. Des Maxwell’s smart-aleck detachment had revived the urge to slap him, hard and fast, straight across his sneering face. Taylor wished she had stayed in her room at the guesthouse and taken a bubble bath as April Jane Cooney advised.
Taylor pushed her chair back from the table and stood. “I have to be going.”
Maxwell took a moment to let his smile appear, so slow and wide that she could tell it was insincere. “Don’t let me chase you away.”
Taylor picked up her purse instead of doing what she really wanted to do with her hand to his arrogant smirk.
“I never let anyone chase me anywhere,” she said.
Despite that declaration, Taylor walked fast to the open doorway and out into the street. “Calm down,” she said, then glanced around to see if anybody had noticed her talking to herself. Two young men in T-shirts with beer bottles in their hands turned from lounging against the building to look her up and down in impudent appraisal. She avoided their eyes and would have begun walking back toward Amelia Street, when a recollection of the shuffling bum and his sly laugh kept her riveted where she stood, uncertain for the moment what to do next.
Emotion burned her cheeks. She had kept herself in check through all that had happened these past weeks, so soon after the death of Aunt Netta, Taylor’s last real remaining family. Her sense of loss, the trip down here, her scare outside the guesthouse earlier this evening—each pressure had piled upon the others. She had been closer to her saturation point than she realized when she walked into Maxwell’s bar. Then she saw him, with his brazen attitude, as if he couldn’t care less about any of it. That was the last straw. Tears trembled on Taylor’s lashes. She didn’t want anybody to see her wipe them away or know how upset she was. She wouldn’t give Des Maxwell that satisfaction, even if he didn’t know about it. She willed the tears to dry where they stood and vowed there would be no more.
“Are you all right?”
Taylor whirled around. She half hoped to find Maxwell standing there, so she could deliver the slap she’d resisted giving him in the bar. Instead, it was Jethro Starling.
“You looked so upset when you left. I thought I should come after you.” He seemed pretty agitated himself, with his eyes wide open in a startled expression.
“Thanks,”
