Where There's Smoke by Sandra Brown

intimate details, but he didn't know her name.   What could it matter to Jody and Janellen?   Unless they were prejudiced against all women in the medical profession because of one.
     
    As he considered that thought, he began to experience a sick gnawing in his gut.   Jesus, it couldn't be.   "What's her name?"
     
    Jody only glared at him.   He looked to Janellen for an answer.   She was nervously wringing out a dry dish towel, misery etched on each feature of her face.   "Lara Mallory is the name she goes by professionally," she whispered.   "Her married name is "Lara Porter," Key finished in a low, lifeless voice.
     
    Janellen nodded.
     
    "Christ."   He raised his fists to his eyes and mentally pictured the woman he'd met the night before.   She didn't match the bimbo featured in all the tabloid photographs.   None of her deft mannerisms or candid expressions corresponded with the mental images he' painted of Lara Porter, the woman who'd been his brother's downfall, the woman who some political analysts hypothesized had changed the course of American history.
     
    Finally Key lowered his hands and gave a helpless, apologetic shrug.
     
    "I had no way of knowing.   She never gave me her name, and I didn't ask.   I didn't recognize her from the pictures I'd seen.   That all happened .   . . what?   five, six years ago?"
     
    He hated himself for babbling excuses, knowing full well that the damage had been done and that Jody wasn't going to forgive him no matter what he said now.   So he took another tack and asked, "What the hell is Lara Porter doing in Eden Pass?"
     
    "Does it matter?"   Jody asked brusquely.   "She's here.   And you're to have nothing to do with her, understand?   By the time I get finished with her, she'll tuck tail and slink out of town the same way she slunk in.
     
    "Until that time, the Tacketts and anybody who wants to stay on speaking terms with us are to treat her with nothing except the contempt she deserves.   That includes you.   That especially includes you.
     
    She jabbed her cigarette toward him to make her point.   "Have all the sluts you want, Key, as I'm sure you will.   But stay away from her."
     
    Key immediately went on the defensive and raised his voice to match his mother's.   "What are you yelling at me for?   I wasn't caught humping her, Clark was.
     
    Jody rose slowly to her feet and leaned on the table, bearing down on her younger son over bottles of catsup and Tabasco sauce.   "How dare you speak that way about him.   Don't you have an ounce of decency, a smidgen of respect for your brother?"
     
    "Clark," Key shouted, rising and squaring off against Jody across the table.   "His name was Clark, and what kind of respect do you pay him by not even speaking his name out loud?"
     
    "It hurts to talk about him, Key."
     
    "Why?"   He rounded on Janellen, who'd timidly made the comment.
     
    "Well, because .   because his death was so untimely.   So tragic."
     
    "Yes, it was.   But it shouldn't cancel out his life."   He turned back to Jody.   "Before he died, Daddy saw to it that Clark and I shared some good times.   He wanted us to be close in spite of you, and we were.
     
    God knows Clark and I were poles apart in everything, but he was my brother.   I loved him.   I mourned him when he died.   But I refuse to pretend that he didn't exist just to spare your feelings."
     
    "You aren't fit to speak your brother's name.
     
    It hurt.   Even now it cut him to the quick when she said things like that.   She left him no recourse except to lash back.   "If he was so bloody perfect, we wouldn't be having this conversation, Jody.
     
    There would never have been a Lara Porter in our lives.   No bad press.
     
    No scandal.   No shame.   Clark would have remained the Golden Boy of Capitol Hill."
     
    "Shut up!"
     
    "Gladly."   He shoved the crutches under his arms and headed for the back door.
     
    "Key, where are you going?"