Where There's Smoke

by Sandra Brown

  “Sure you can, sweetie. You can have them back as soon as we get home. But first let’s stop and have a piece of pie with Daddy. I’ve been a perfect grouch all week and want to make it up to y’all, starting now.”

  Bowie Cato turned off the highway onto the state road that ran along the north end of The Green Pine Motel, where Darcy was alighting from her late model Cadillac. “ ’S that Mrs. Winston?”

  “Yes.” Janellen had turned to wave. “Do you know her?”

  “I’ve seen her. Who’s that with her?”

  “Her daughter, Heather. She’s about the most popular girl at the high school these days.”

  “Pretty,” Bowie commented, glancing back at the two women as they entered the motel lobby.

  “Very. She works part-time at the motel for her daddy. I see her whenever we go to the Sunday buffet after church. She’s friendly and sweet and well liked.”

  Bowie wondered if the daughter was as “well liked” as the mother. He’d seen Darcy Winston in action plenty of times at The Palm, beginning that night Key Tackett had returned to town and as recently as last night when she’d been playing a rowdy game of billiards with three Shriners who were having a night out on the town without their wives.

  Darcy was a tramp, and everybody knew it. Just like everybody knew that Janellen Tackett was a lady. That’s why folks looked askance at them whenever she was with him. They were wondering what Miss Janellen was doing with a no-account ex-con like Bowie Cato.

  He’d been wondering that himself. He both thanked and cursed Key for asking him to keep an eye on her. He thanked him because being near Janellen was about as close to a class act as he was ever going to get. He cursed Key because he was beginning to like being near her too well.

  He enjoyed seeing her every day and having a good excuse for it. But it was temporary bliss. Sure as God made little green apples, something would happen to put an end to it. Waiting for the inevitable and wondering what disastrous form it would take was driving him nuts. Right now he was living a fairy tale. Trouble was, he didn’t believe in fairy tales. They were for kids and fools. He sure as hell wasn’t a kid, but he was beginning to think he was a fool.

  He was letting himself in for a fall. No two ways about it.

  Damned if he could stop himself, though. Every chance he got to be with her, he took. Like today. When word reached him that she was going out to take a look at the number seven well, he’d jumped into the truck and driven like a bat out of hell to get to the office before she left.

  He caught her just as she was leaving and reminded her that Key didn’t want her to be alone. He also said that the truck was more suited to the well site than her compact car. She’d conceded and climbed into the cab of the truck with him.

  But she wasn’t happy about it.

  She was as jittery as a chihuahua passing peach pits and wouldn’t look him in the eye. She was probably ashamed to be seen riding around with a convicted felon. Hell, who could blame her?

  “It gets pretty rough from here,” he warned.

  “I know,” she said acidly. “I’ve driven it myself plenty of times.”

  He ignored that and took the turnoff. The dirt track, carved into the earth by tire treads, ran parallel to the highway several hundred yards away. In between was The Green Pine Motel. He’d heard talk of how Jody Tackett, years ago, had swindled Fergus Winston out of his oil lease.

  Fergus had come to Eden Pass as a young man, bringing with him a small legacy and big dreams. He bought a patch of land that didn’t look like much on the surface but had highway frontage and rumors of oil underneath.

  He met Jody, who at the time was working for Clark Tackett Senior and was already reputed as being a knowledgeable land man. Jody befriended him and offered to let a Tackett Oil geologist check out his lease and give him an expert opinion. After weeks of assessment, she sorrowfully told Fergus that it was doubtful his land had any significant deposit of oil.

  Fergus, somewhat in love with her by then, believed her, but he decided he needed a second, bipartisan opinion. He retained the services of another geologist who sadly informed him that horny toads were about the only thing his patch of ground was likely to harvest.

  Fergus was disappointed but had come to believe that his future lay not in the competitive oil industry but in providing temporary lodging for the folks who wheeled and dealed in it. Jody, still passing herself off as a concerned friend, told him she hated to see him getting stuck with land that wasn’t good for anything. She offered to buy his lease for Tackett Oil, which could use it as a tax write-off. Fergus would then have enough capital to begin building his motel.

  Relieved to be unloading a white elephant and recovering some of his investment, he sold the land and all the mineral rights for next to nothing, keeping only the strip of property that fronted the highway, on which he planned to build his motel.

  But Fergus’s white elephant was sitting on top of a black lake of rich crude. Jody knew that, and so did the Tackett Oil geologist, and so did the one Jody bribed to back up the lie of the first. The ink wasn’t dry on the deed before Tackett Oil erected a drilling rig. When the well came in, Fergus was fit to be tied. He accused Jody and the Tacketts of being thieves and liars. When she married Clark Junior, he cursed her even louder. But he never legally pursued his allegations of dirty dealing, so folks discounted his grievances as sour grapes and jealousy because Jody had jilted him in favor of Clark Junior.

  Fergus built his motel, and it was profitable almost from its opening day. But even if it had been as fancy as a Ritz-Carlton, he’d never be as rich as Jody Tackett. To this day, he carried a grudge.

  Bowie parked the truck outside the chain-link fence that formed a neat square around the pumping well. He alighted and went around to offer assistance to Janellen, but she had already hopped down by the time he reached her. He used his key to unlock the gate.

  The motor driving the horse head pump was chugging away. He’d been out hours earlier to check on it, which he did every day except for his days off, when the relief pumper ran the route. He and Janellen weren’t interested in the pump or the storage tanks, but in the meter box where red, green, and blue pens recorded the line pressure, temperature of the gas, and rate of flow onto circular charts that were changed biweekly. Fortunately the meter box for well number seven was located only yards from the well itself. It could have been miles away.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was feeling like a damn fool. There seemed to be nothing wrong with well number seven. The meter box was functioning properly. There were no discernible leaks between the well and the meter box. Everything appeared to be in perfect working order.

  “I guess you think I’m crazy,” he mumbled.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy, Bowie. In fact, if it would relieve your mind, I’ll authorize you to put a test meter between the well and the recorder.”

  He got the impression that he was being humored. “Okay, I will,” he said, calling her bluff. “Do you know if there was ever a flare line off this well?”

  “If there was, it was capped off when they became illegal. We don’t waste gas that way anymore.”

  They retraced their steps back to the gate. Bowie locked it behind them. “Did you tell your mama about this?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t think it was important enough?”

  By now she had reached the passenger door of the truck and turned to face him, shading her eyes against the sun. “I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth, Bowie. It’s just that these days I don’t worry Mama with anything that I don’t have to.”

  “You sure look pretty, Miss Janellen.”

  “What?” she exclaimed. Her hand remained where it was, with her index finger following the curve of her eyebrows and her palm sheltering her eyes.

  Oh, hell. He’d gone and done it now. He reached beneath his hat to scratch the back of his head. He hadn’t meant to say what he was thinking. The words just popped out. And now an exp
lanation was called for.

  “It just, uh, struck me all of a sudden how pretty you look standing there. With the sun shining in your eyes and the wind whipping your hair around.”

  The hot, arid wind had also plastered her clothes to her body, so, for the first time since meeting her, her shape was clearly defined for him. In his estimation it was a very nice shape, but he didn’t indulge his curiosity for long because her face was crumbling and her eyes were filling up with tears that had nothing to do with the sun’s glare.

  “Oh!” she sobbed. “Oh, Lord! I could just die!”

  Her reaction alarmed him. All a parolee needed was to have a hysterical woman on his hands, bawling and carrying on and saying she could just die. He anxiously rubbed his damp palms against his thighs.

  “Hey, Miss Janellen, don’t get yourself all worked up now.” Nervously he glanced around, hoping no one was witnessing her distress. “When I said… well, I didn’t mean anything disrespectful. You’re safe with me and that’s a fact. What I mean is, I wouldn’t—”

  “Just because he told you to keep an eye on me doesn’t mean you have to shower me with compliments you don’t mean.”

  Bowie squinted his eyes and cocked his head, unsure he’d heard her right. “Come again?”

  “I don’t need him watching over me, or you either.”

  “ ‘Him’? Are you referring to your brother? Key?”

  “Of course Key,” she said with annoyance. “Ever since he asked you to keep an eye on me, I can’t turn around without bumping into you.”

  “Well, I apologize for any inconvenience it’s caused you, but I promised Key I’d look out for you, and I keep my promises. I plan to keep on looking out for you until he tells me to stop.”

  “I’m telling you to stop. As of this minute. All the reporters have left Eden Pass. I’m in no danger of being ambushed by them, so you don’t need to trouble yourself any longer.”

  “It wasn’t any trouble to drive you around, Miss Janellen.”

  “I can drive myself! I have since I was sixteen.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I know that, but—”

  “And I can read a meter box the same as any man. Alone, too.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “While you feel duty-bound to trail me everywhere, I certainly don’t need you throwing out empty compliments that—”

  “It wasn’t empty.”

  “—that you can laugh over later.”

  “Laugh?”

  “I know what the men think of me. They think I’m a dried-up old maid. Muley told me that they laugh at me behind my back. You’re trying to suck up to my brother—”

  “Now hold on just a goddamn minute,” Bowie interrupted angrily. “I don’t suck up to anybody. Got that? And leave your brother out of this, because he doesn’t have a friggin’ thing to do with why I said what I said. And I don’t give a rat’s ass about what any of the other men think. I make up my own mind about things, and if somebody disagrees with my opinion, well then screw ’em. When I told you you looked pretty, it’s because I really thought so.

  “God a’mighty! Most women would have said, ‘Why, thank you, Bowie. What a nice thing to say,’ and let it go at that. But not you. No. You gotta read something into it ’cause you’re prickly and prissy and have a burr up your butt the size of Dallas.”

  His words reverberated in the air between them before the wind snatched them away.

  But not soon enough, Bowie thought dismally. His self-control had snapped, something he’d thought would never happen with her. He’d lost his temper and shot off his mouth. He’d fucked up major big this time. Now she’d fire him, and the fault was all his.

  She faced him, wide-eyed, tremulous, and speechless. Tears had made pools of her blue eyes, pools deep enough for a grown man to drown in. A small shudder rippled through her. She drew in a quick little breath that brought her lower lip in fleeting contact with her teeth.

  It was too damn much.

  Figuring that at this point he’d just as well be hanged for a sinner as a saint, he bent his head and kissed her. It was a hard and swift kiss. It had to be. Any minute now she might start screaming. Besides, he didn’t trust himself to linger and taste. He might do something really stupid that would land his sorry ass right back in jail.

  The instant he pulled back, he turned her about and shoved her up into the truck. He climbed in on the other side, turned on the noisy motor, engaged the grinding gears, and guided the truck over the deeply rutted track.

  They rode in silence all the way back to the ugly company office, where he’d picked her up. After he killed the engine, the silence was as engulfing as the heat that rose from the ground in shimmering waves.

  She was probably still too distressed to speak, so it was up to him to say something. For several moments he stared through the dirty windshield, then said, “I’ll take the truck back to the shop and turn in the keys. You can mail me my final check.”

  He heard her swallow, but he didn’t look at her. He couldn’t bear to see her disgust.

  Finally, in a feeble voice, she asked, “Are you leaving Tackett Oil?”

  He looked at her then, turning his head so quickly that his neck popped. “Aren’t I?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Don’t you want me to?”

  She shook her head and, in a barely audible voice, said, “No.”

  He didn’t dare move for fear of shattering the fragile mood. “Those things I said, Miss Janellen… I never should have used that kind of language in front of you.”

  “I grew up with two brothers. I know all the words, Bowie. And what most of them mean.”

  She flashed a gamine smile, but he didn’t return it. “That, uh, that other—kissing you—well, that’s grounds for firing me for sure. But I want you to know that I only did it because I lost my head.”

  “Oh.” After a moment, while the silence and tension and heat thickened, she added, “Then it was purely an impulsive gesture?”

  Something in her eyes compelled him to answer truthfully. “No, I can’t truly say that it was, Miss Janellen. I’d thought about doing it before.”

  “I’d thought about it, too.”

  He couldn’t believe what she’d just said, yet he was looking straight at her. He’d watched her lips form the words, and because his loins had filled with liquid fire, he knew he wasn’t dreaming.

  But it only got better.

  He shifted slightly. She tilted her head inquisitively. Then they met somewhere in the middle of the bench seat. Within seconds of her soft declaration, he was holding her against him, her arms were twined around his neck, and they were kissing madly.

  Her lips were responsive but shy, which was okay because Bowie wasn’t an experienced kisser anyway. He’d never had a woman of his own, and easy women and whores usually skipped the kissing part. So he and Janellen tutored each other, and when his tongue slipped between her lips and connected with hers, they both murmured in delightful discovery.

  Was her mouth actually sweeter than any other woman’s he’d kissed, or was it that she was the first he’d french kissed with caring and not only as a hasty prelude to getting laid?

  He lowered his hand to her waist and pressed it. Another tiny shudder went through her. God, it was exciting. He wanted to chart that shudder from her breasts, up her throat, and across her mouth. But of course he didn’t.

  Eventually she angled her head back and gazed up at him with rapidly blinking eyes. She was embarrassed. Her cheeks were flushed. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. She rolled her lips inward, then released a breathy little laugh.

  “I’d better go now. If I’m late for supper, Key’s likely to come looking for me.”

  He scooted back behind the steering wheel. “Sure enough.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  There was the slightest inflection of inquiry attached. “Bright and early.” He smiled, although it was a strain because his cock was throbbing like a
son of a bitch.

  She opened the door and was on the verge of getting out when she turned back and said in one gust of breath, “I love you, Bowie.”

  She slammed the truck’s door, ran to her car, scrambled into the driver’s seat, and drove away. Bowie watched the cloud of dust she raised until it had dissipated. Even then he sat behind the steering wheel of the truck, staring through crusty insect carcasses and oil-field grime, unable to move, shell-shocked by her parting words.

  Well, that explained the kissing spree, he thought. Janellen Tackett wasn’t right in the head. In fact, she was plumb crazy.

  Nobody had ever loved Bowie Cato.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Are you awake?”

  “I am now.” Lara’s nightstand clock registered 2:03 A.M. “Who is this?”

  “Key Tackett.”

  She groaned, burrowing her head deeper into her pillow and almost letting the telephone receiver slip from her hand. “Is this another of your emergencies?”

  “Yes.”

  Sensing the strain in his voice, Lara came fully awake. This wasn’t a prank. She sat up and switched on the nightstand lamp. “What is it?”

  “Are you familiar with the state highway everybody calls the Old Ballard Road?”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Go south on it two miles beyond the Dairy Queen. On your right will be a cutoff. There’s an old windmill there, so you can’t miss it. A few hundred feet beyond that, on your left, there’s a farmhouse. My Lincoln is parked out front. Bring your stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Doctor stuff. Hurry.”

  “But—”

  The line went dead. She flung back the covers; her feet hit the floor running. It was second nature to respond to an emergency call. She didn’t pause to consider the advisability of responding to this one until she was speeding down the dark, deserted highway. If the Tacketts really wanted to get rid of her permanently, how better than to trick her into going out in the middle of the night on an emergency call from which she would never return?