Key West Heat. Alice Orr

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 her full, wavy hair, how it had haloed her face last night in curling strands against her long, white neck. Her hair had been wilder a few moments ago. Even through the narrow door opening he could see how tossed and tousled she was. The memory of that wildness, along with the bright flush of her cheeks from sleep, flashed through him now with an intensity that sped straight to his groin. He’d felt the same stab of lust on the veranda, at the first glimpse of her misty blue eyes, so sultry in their sleepy softness. He’d had to hold himself back from shoving through the door and grabbing her. He couldn’t remember ever having the urge to put his hands on a woman come over him so strong. Still, she didn’t strike him as the kind of woman you grabbed.

      But what kind of woman was she? Des smiled at the question and at himself. Obviously, she had to be the kind of woman who could get him out of bed at dawn and off to the Croissanterie before anybody was around but the bird-watchers. The buttery aroma from the pasteboard box on the back seat enticed him, but Taylor Bissett had been the real enticement. For what felt like the hundredth time this morning, Des asked himself what was going on with him, anyway. He didn’t run after women. He didn’t have to. They generally came after him. He didn’t kid himself that they thought of him as some kind of stud. He figured his general lack of interest turned them on. Sandra had told him that. He’d married her thinking she could break through the wall he’d had around him for so long. They’d grown to be friends but nothing more. The deep parts of him remained untouched, no matter how much he’d wished them not only touched but overwhelmed.