by Tami Hoag
“Excuse me,” Laurel said. “But could you tell me who that hound belongs to?”
He cast a glance at the dog on the gallery, as did his companions.
“Hey, dat's Jack's dog, ain't it, Taureau?”
“Jack Boudreaux.”
“Mais yeah, dat one's Jack's,” Taureau said. His look softened, and a grin tugged across his wide mouth as he gave Laurel a once-over. “What, you lookin' for Jack, sugar?”
“Yes, I guess I am.” She was looking for justice. If she had to find this Jack Boudreaux to get it, then so be it.
“Dat Jack, he's like a damn magnet, him!” one of the others said.
Taureau snorted. “Son pine!”
They all shared a good male belly laugh over that.
Laurel gave them her best Cool Professional Woman look, hoping it wasn't completely ruined by her baggy dress and lack of makeup. “I didn't come here to see his penis,” she said flatly. “I need to discuss a business matter with him.”
The men exchanged the kind of sheepish looks boys learn in kindergarten and spend the next thirty years honing to perfection, their faces flushing under their tans. Taureau ducked his big head down between his shoulders.
“Am I likely to find him in there?” Laurel nodded toward the bar's front door as it screeched back on its hinges to let out an elderly couple and a wave of noise.
“Yeah, you'll find him here,” Taureau said. “Center stage.”
“Thank you.”
The smoking reform movement had yet to make in-roads in south Louisiana. The instant Laurel stepped into the bar, she had to blink to keep her eyes from stinging. A blue haze hung over the crowd. The scent of burning tobacco mingled with sweat and cheap perfume, barley and boiled crawfish. The lighting was dim, and the place was crowded. Waitresses wound their way through the mob with trays of beers and platters of food. Patrons sat shoulder to shoulder at round tables and overflowing booths, laughing, talking, stuffing themselves.
Laurel instantly felt alone, isolated, as if she were surrounded by an invisible force field. She had been brought up in a socially sterile environment, with proper teas and soirees and cotillions. The Leightons didn't lower themselves to having good common fun, and after her father had died and Vivian had remarried, Laurel and Savannah had become Leightons—never mind that Ross Leighton had never bothered to formally adopt them.
Caught off guard for an instant, she felt the old bitterness hit her by surprise and dig its teeth in deep. But it was shoved aside by newer unpleasant feelings as her strongest misgivings about coming here surfaced and threatened to swamp her—not the fear of no one's knowing her, but the fear of everyone's knowing her. The fear of everyone's recognizing her and knowing why she had come back to Bayou Breaux, knowing she had failed horribly and utterly . . . Her breath froze in her lungs as she waited for heads to start turning.
A waitress on her way back to the bar bumped into her, flashing a smile of apology and reaching a hand out to pat her arm. “Sorry, miss.”
“I'm looking for Jack Boudreaux,” Laurel shouted, lifting her eyebrows in question.
The waitress, a curvy young thing with a mop of dark curls and an infectious grin, swung her empty serving tray toward the stage and the man who sat at the keyboard of an old upright piano that looked as though someone had gone after it with a length of chain.
“There he is, in the flesh, honey. The devil himself,” she said, her voice rising and falling in a distinctly Cajun rhythm. “You wanna join the fan club or somethin'?”
“No, I want restitution,” Laurel said, but the waitress was already gone, answering a call of “Hey, Annie” from Taureau and his cohorts, who had commandeered a table across the room.
Homing in on the man she had come to confront, Laurel moved toward the small stage. The band had slowed things down with a waltz that was being sung by a small, wiry man with a Vandyke and a Panama hat. A vicious scar slashed across his face, from his right eyebrow across his cheek, misshaping the end of his hooked nose and disappearing into the cover of his mustache. But if his face wasn't beautiful, his voice certainly was. He clutched his hands to his heart and wailed out the lyrics in Cajun French as dancers young and old moved gracefully around the small dance floor.
To his right Jack Boudreaux stood with one knee on the piano bench, head bent in concentration as he pumped a small Evangeline accordion between his hands.
From this vantage point Boudreaux looked tall and rangy, with strong shoulders and slim hips. The expression on his lean, tanned face was stern, almost brooding. His eyes were squeezed shut as if sight might somehow hinder his interpretation of the music. Straight black hair tumbled down over his forehead, looking damp and silky under the stage lights.
Laurel skirted the dancers and wedged herself up against the front of the stage. She thought she could feel the inner pain he drew on as he played. Silly. Easily half of Cajun music was about some man losing his girl. This particular waltz—“Valse de Grand Mèche”—was an old one, a song about an unlucky woman lost in the marsh, her lover singing of how they will be together again after death. It wasn't Jack Boudreaux's personal life story, and it wouldn't have concerned her if it had been. She had come to see the man about his dog.
Jack let his fingers slow on the keys of the accordion as he played the final set of triplets and hit the last chord. Leonce belted out the final note with gusto, and the dancers' feet slowed to a shuffle. As the music faded away and the crowd clapped, he sank down on the piano bench, feeling drained. The song brought too many memories. That he was feeling anything at all told him one thing—he needed another drink.
He reached for the glass on the piano without looking and tossed back the last of a long, tall whiskey, sucking in a breath as the liquid fire hit his belly. It seared through him in a single wave of heat, leaving a pleasant numbness in its wake.
Slowly his lashes drifted open and his surroundings came once more into focus. His gaze hit on a huge pair of midnight blue eyes staring up at him from behind the lenses of man-size horn-rimmed glasses. The face of an angel hid behind those ridiculous glasses—heart-shaped, delicate, with a slim retroussé nose and a mouth that begged to be kissed. Jack felt his spirits pull out of their nosedive and wing upward as she spoke his name.
She wasn't the usual type of woman who pressed herself up against the stage and tried to snag his attention. For one thing, there was no show of cleavage. It was difficult to tell if she was capable of producing cleavage at all. The blue cotton sundress she wore hung on her like a sack. But imagination was one thing Jack Boudreaux had never been short on. Scruples, yes; morals, yes; imagination he had in abundance, and he used it now to make a quick mental picture of the woman standing below him. Petite, slim, sleek, like a little cat. He preferred his women to have a little more curve to them, but there was always something to be said for variety.
He leaned down toward her as he set the accordion on the floor and unfurled the grin that had knocked more than a few ladies off their feet. “Hey, sugar, where you been all my life?”
Laurel felt as if he had turned a thousand watts of pure electricity on her.
He looked wicked. He looked wild. He looked as though he could see right through her clothes, and she had the wildest urge to cross her arms over her chest, just in case. Annoyed with herself, she snapped her jaw shut and cleared her throat.
“I've been off learning to avoid Lotharios who use trite come-on lines,” she said, her arms folding over her chest in spite of her resolve to keep them at her sides.
Jack's smile never wavered. He liked a girl with sass. “What, are you a nun or somethin', angel?”
“No, I'm an attorney. I need to speak to you about your dog.”
Someone in the crowd raised a voice in protest against the absence of music. “Hey, Jack, can you quit makin' love long enough to sing somethin'?”
Jack raised his head and laughed, leaning toward the microphone that was attached to the piano. “This ain't love, Dede, it's
a lawyer!” As the first wave of laughter died down, he said, “Y'all know what lawyers use for birth control, doncha?” He waited a beat, then his voice dropped a husky notch as he delivered the punch line. “Their personalities.”
Laurel felt a flush of anger rise up her neck and creep up her cheeks as the crowd hooted and laughed. “I wouldn't make jokes if I were you, Mr. Boudreaux,” she said, trying to keep her voice at a pitch only he could hear. “Your hound managed to do a considerable amount of damage to my aunt's garden today.”
Jack shot her a look of practiced innocence. “What hound?”
“Your hound.”
He shrugged eloquently. “I don't have a hound.”
“Mr. Boudreaux—”
“Call me Jack, angel,” he drawled as he leaned down toward her again, bracing his forearm on his thigh.
They were nearly at eye level, and Laurel felt herself leaning toward him, as if he were drawing her toward him by some personal magnetic force. His gaze slid down to her mouth and lingered there, shockingly frank in its appraisal.
“Mr. Boudreaux,” she said in exasperation. “Is there somewhere we can discuss this more privately?”
He bobbed his eyebrows above dark, sparkling devil's eyes. “Is my place private enough for you?”
“Mr. Boudreaux . . .”
“Here's another trite line for you, angel,” Jack whispered, bending a little closer, holding her gaze with his as he lifted a finger and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “You're pretty when you're pissed off.”
His voice was low and smoky, Cajun-spiced and tainted with the aroma of whiskey.
Drawing in a slow, deep breath to steady herself, she tilted her chin up and tried again. “Mr. Boudreaux—”
He shot her a look as he moved toward the microphone once again. “Lighten up, angel. Laissez les bon temps rouler.”
The mike picked up his last sentence, and the crowd cheered. Jack gave a smoky laugh. “Are we havin' fun yet?”
A chorus of hoots and hollers rose to the rafters. He fixed a long, hot look on the petite tigress glaring up at him from the edge of the stage and murmured, “This one's for you, angel.”
His fingers stretched over the keys of the battered old piano, and he pounded out the opening notes of “Great Balls of Fire.” The crowd went wild. Before the first line was out of his mouth, there were fifty people on the dance floor. They twirled and bounced around Laurel like a scene from American Bandstand, doing the jitterbug as if it had never gone out of style. But her attention was riveted on the singer. Not so much by choice as by compulsion. She was caught in the beam of that intense, dark gaze, held captive by it, mesmerized. He leaned over the keyboard, his hands moving across it, his mouth nearly kissing the microphone as his smoky voice sang out the lyrics with enthusiasm, but all the time his eyes were locked on her. The experience was strangely seductive, strangely intimate. Wholly unnerving.
She stared right back at him, refusing to be seduced or intimidated. Refusing to admit to either, at any rate. He grinned, as if amused by her spunk, and broke off the eye contact as he hit the bridge of the song and turned his full attention to the piano and the frantic pace of the music.
He pounded out the notes, his fingers flying up and down the keyboard expertly. All the intensity he had leveled at her in his gaze was channeled into his playing. The shock of black hair bounced over his forehead, shining almost blue under the lights. Sweat gleamed on his skin, streamed down the side of his face. His faded blue chambray shirt stuck to him in dark, damp patches. The sleeves were rolled back, revealing strong forearms dusted with black hair, muscles bunching and flexing as he slammed out the boogie-woogie piece with a skill and wild physical energy rivaling that of Jerry Lee Lewis himself.
Making music this way looked to be hard work physically and emotionally. As if he were in the throes of exorcism, the notes tore out of him, elemental, rough, sexy, almost frightening in intensity. He dragged his thumb up and down the keyboard, stroking out the final long, frenzied glissando, and fell forward, panting, exhausted as the crowd whistled and howled and screamed for more.
“Whoa—” Jack gulped a breath and forced a grin. “Bon Dieu. It's Miller time, folks. Y'all go sit down while I recuperate.”
As a jukebox kicked in, the rest of the band instantly dispersed, abandoning the stage in favor of a table that was holding up gamely under the weight of more than a dozen long-necked beer bottles and an assortment of glasses.
Leonce clapped Jack's shoulder as he passed. “You're gettin' old, Jack,” he teased. “Sa c'est honteu, mon ami.”
Jack sucked another lungful of hot, smoky air and swatted at his friend. “Fuck you, 'tit boule.”
“No need.” Leonce grinned, hooking a thumb in the direction of the dance floor. “You got one waitin' on you.”
Jack raised his head and shot a sideways look at the edge of the stage. She was still standing there, his little lawyer pest, looking expectant and unimpressed with him. Trouble—that's what she looked like. And not the kind he usually dove into headfirst, either. A lawyer. Bon Dieu, he thought he'd seen the last of that lot.
“You want a drink, sugar?” he asked as he hopped down off the stage.
“No,” Laurel said, automatically taking a half step back and chastising herself for it. This man was the kind who would sense a weakness and exploit it. She could feel it, could see it in the way his dark gaze seemed to catch everything despite the fact that he had been drinking. She drew deep of the stale, hot air and squared her shoulders. “What I want is to speak with you privately about the damage done by your dog.”
His mouth curved. “I don't have a dog.”
He turned and sauntered away from her, his walk naturally cocky. Laurel watched him, astounded by his lack of manners, infuriated by his dismissal of her.
He didn't glance back at her, but continued on his merry way, winding gracefully through the throng, stealing a bottle of beer off Annie's serving tray as he went. The waitress gave an indignant shout, saw it was Jack, and melted as he treated her to a wicked grin. Laurel shook her head in a combination of amazement and disbelief and wondered how many times he had gotten away with raiding the cookie jar as a boy. Probably more times than his poor mother could count. He stepped through a side door, and she followed him out.
Night had fallen completely, bringing on the mercury vapor lights that loomed over the parking lot and cloaking the bayou beyond in shades of black. The noise of the bar faded, competing out here with a chorus of frog song and the hum of traffic rolling past out on the street. The air was fresh with the scents of spring in bloom—jasmine and wisteria and honeysuckle and the ripe, vaguely rank aroma of the bayou. Somewhere down the way, where shabby little houses with thin lawns lined the bank, a woman called for Paulie to come in. A screen door slammed. A dog barked.
The hound leaped out at Laurel from between a pair of parked pickup trucks and howled at her, startling her to a skidding halt on the crushed shell of the parking lot. She slammed a hand to her heart and bit back a curse as the big dog bounded away, tail wagging.
“That dog is an absolute menace,” she complained.
“Don' look at me, sugar.”
He was leaning back against the fender of a disreputable-looking Jeep, elbows on the hood, bottle of Dixie dangling from the fingers of his left hand.
Laurel planted herself in front of him and crossed her arms, holding her silence as if it might force a confession out of him. He simply stared back, his eyes glittering in the eerie silvery light that fell down on him from above. It cast his features in stark relief—a high, wide forehead, sardonically arched brows, an aquiline nose that looked as if it might have been broken once or twice in his thirty-some years.
His mouth was set in sterner lines again above a strong, stubborn-looking chin that sported an inch-long diagonal scar. He looked tough and dangerous suddenly, and the transformation from the laughing, affable, wicked-grinned devil he'd been inside sent a shiver of apprehension do
wn Laurel's back. He looked like a streetwise, predatory male, and she couldn't help second-guessing her judgment in following him out here. Then he smiled, teeth flashing bright in the gloom, dimples cutting into his cheeks, and the world tilted yet again beneath her feet.
“I have it on good authority that hound belongs to you, Mr. Boudreaux.” She dove into the argument, eager for the familiar ground of a good fight. She didn't like being caught off balance, and Jack Boudreaux seemed to be a master at throwing her.
He wagged a finger at her, tilting his head, a grin still teasing the corners of his mouth. “Jack. Call me Jack.”
“Mr.—”
“Jack.” His gaze held hers fast. He looked lazy and apathetic leaning back against the Jeep, but a thread of insistence had woven its way into the hoarse, smoky texture of his voice.
He was distracting her, but more than that, he was trying to do something she didn't want—put the conversation on a more personal level.
He shifted his weight forward, suddenly invading her personal space, and she had to fight to keep from jumping back as her tension level rose into the red zone. She gulped down her instinctive fear and tilted her chin up to look him in the eye.
“I don't even know your name, 'tite ange,” he murmured.
“Laurel Chandler,” she answered, breathless and hating it. Her nerves gave a warning tremor as control of the situation seemed to slip a little further out of her grasp.
“Laurel,” he said softly, trying out the sound of it, the feel of it on his tongue. “Pretty name. Pretty lady.” He grinned as something like apprehension flashed in her wide eyes. “Did you think I wouldn't notice?”
She swallowed hard, leaning all her weight back on her heels. “I—I'm sure I don't know what you mean.”
“Liar,” he charged mildly.
With his free hand he reached up and slid her glasses off, dragging them down her nose an inch at a time. When they were free, he turned them over and nibbled on the earpiece absently as he studied her in the pale white light.