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Lara plopped down onto the cool concrete steps, which were speckled with drying drops of blood. She covered her face with damp, trembling hands. The night was seasonably warm and balmy, but she shivered inside her loose white shirt. Goose bumps broke out along her legs. Her mouth had gone dry.
Key Tackett. Clark’s younger brother. He’d finally come home. This was the day she’d been anticipating. He was essential to the daring plan she’d spent the past year developing and cultivating. Now, he was here. Somehow, some way, she must enlist his help. But how?
Dr. Lara Mallory was the last person Key Tackett wanted to know.
Chapter Two
As she did every morning of her life, Janellen Tackett left her solitary bed the instant the alarm went off. The bathtub faucets squeaked, and the hot-water pipes knocked loudly within the walls of the house, but these sounds were so commonplace she didn’t even notice them.
Janellen had spent all of her thirty-three years in this house and couldn’t imagine living anyplace else, or even wanting to. Her daddy had built it for his bride over forty years ago, and although it had been redecorated and modernized with the passing decades, the indelible marks Janellen and her brothers had left on its walls and the scarred hardwood floors remained. These flaws added to its character, like laugh lines in a woman’s face.
Clark and Key had regarded the house as merely a dwelling. But Janellen considered it an integral member of the family, as essential to her heritage as were her parents. With a lover’s attention to detail, she had explored it so many times she intimately knew it from attic to cellar. It was as familiar to her as her own body. Maybe even more so. She never focused her thoughts on her body, never contemplated her own being, never stopped to consider her life and wonder whether she was happy. She simply accepted things as they were.
Following her shower, she dressed for work in a khaki skirt and a simple cotton blouse. Her hosiery had no tint; her brown leather shoes had been designed for comfort, not fashion. She pulled her dark hair into a practical ponytail. Her only article of jewelry was a plain wristwatch. She applied very little makeup. One quick whisk of powder blusher across her cheeks, a little mascara on the tips of her eyelashes, a dab of pink lip gloss, and she was ready to greet the day.
The sun was rising as she made her way down the dim staircase, through the first-story hallway, and into the kitchen, where she switched on the overhead light fixtures, filling every nook and cranny with the blue-white light of an operating room. Janellen despised the invasive cold glare because it kept the otherwise traditional kitchen from being cozy.
But Jody liked it that way.
Mechanically, she started the coffee. She had religiously kept to this morning routine since the last live-in housekeeper had been dismissed. When Janellen was fifteen, she had declared that she no longer needed a baby-sitter, that she was capable of getting herself off to school and of cooking her mother’s breakfast in the process.
Maydale, their current housekeeper, worked only five hours a day. She did the heavy cleaning and the laundry and got dinner started. But for all practical purposes, along with her responsibiliti
es at Tackett Oil and Gas Company, Janellen managed the household.
She checked the refrigerator to make sure there was a pitcher of orange juice ready and poured half-and-half into the cream pitcher. Jody wasn’t supposed to be drinking half-and-half in her coffee because of the fat content, but she insisted on it anyway. Jody always got her way.
While the coffeemaker gurgled and hissed, Janellen filled a watering can with distilled water and went out onto the screened back porch to sprinkle her ferns and begonias.
That’s when she saw the pickup truck. She didn’t recognize it, but it was parked as though it belonged in that particular spot near the back door. It was parked right where Key had always—
She did an about-face, almost spilling the contents of the watering can before returning it to the counter. She raced from the kitchen and down the hallway, grabbed the newel post and executed a childlike spiral around it, then charged up the stairs. Reaching the second floor, she dashed to the last bedroom on the right and, without pausing to knock, barged in.
“Key!”
“What?”
Running his fingers through his dark, tousled hair, he lifted his head off the pillow. He blinked her into focus. Then he moaned, clutched his side, and flopped back down. “Jesus! Don’t sneak up on me like that. Had a bedouin do that to me once, and I almost gutted him before realizing he was one of the few friendly to us.”
Heedless of his reprimand, Janellen quickly threw herself across her brother’s chest. “Key! You’re home. When did you get here? Why’d you sneak in without waking us? Oh, you’re home. Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming.” She hugged his neck hard and pecked several kisses on his forehead and cheeks.
“Okay, okay, I get it. You’re glad to see me.” He grumbled and staved off her kisses, but as he struggled to a sitting position, he was smiling. “Hiya, sis.” Through bloodshot eyes, he looked her over. “Let’s see. No gray hairs. You’ve still got most of your teeth. Haven’t put on more’n five or six pounds. Overall, I’d say you look no worse for wear.”
“I haven’t put on a single ounce, I’ll have you know. And I look just like I always have. Unfortunately.” Without coyness, she added, “You and Clark were the pretty ones of the family, remember? I’m the plain Jane. Or in this case, Janellen.”
“Now why would you want to piss me off first thing?” he asked. “Why go and say something like that?”
“Because it’s true.” She gave a slight shrug as though it was of little or no consequence. “Let’s don’t waste breath talking about me. I want to know about you. Where’d you come from and when did you get in?”
“Your message was channeled to me through that London phone number I gave you,” he told her around a huge yawn. “It caught up with me in Saudi. Been traveling for three, maybe four days. Hard to keep track when you’re crossing that many time zones. Came through Houston yesterday and dropped off the company plane. Got into Eden Pass last night sometime.”
“Why didn’t you wake us up? Who’s truck is that? How long can you stay?”
He raked back his hair and winced as though each follicle were bruised. “One question at a time, please. I didn’t wake you up because it was late and there was no point. I borrowed the truck from a buddy in Houston who has to deliver a plane to Longview in a couple of days. He’ll pick it up then and drive it back. And… what was the last one?”
“How long can you stay?” She folded her hands beneath her chin, looking like a little girl about to say her bedtime prayers. “Don’t say ‘just a few days.’ Don’t say ‘a week.’ Say you’re staying for a long time.”
He reached for her folded hands and clasped them. “The contract I had with that oil outfit in Saudi was almost up anyway. Right now I haven’t got anything cooking. I’ll leave my departure date open. We’ll wait and see how it goes, okay?”
