by Tami Hoag
Her bone structure was lovely, delicate, feminine, her features equally so, her skin as flawless as fresh cream. But she wore no makeup, no jewelry, nothing to enhance or draw the eye. Her thick, dark hair had been shorn just above her shoulders and looked as though she gave no thought to it at all, tucking it behind her ears, sweeping it carelessly back from her face.
Laurel Chandler. The name stirred around through the soft haze of liquor in his brain, sparking recognition. Chandler. Lawyer. The light bulb clicked on. Local deb. Daughter of a good family. Had been a prosecuting attorney up in Georgia someplace until her career went ballistic. Rumors had abounded around Bayou Breaux. She'd blown a case. There'd been a scandal. Jack had listened with one ear, automatically eavesdropping the way every writer did, always on the alert for a snatch of dialogue or a juicy tidbit that could work itself into a plot.
“What are you wearing these for?” he asked, lifting the glasses.
“To see with,” Laurel snapped, snatching them out of his hand. She really needed them only to read, but he didn't have to know that.
“So you can see, or so the rest of us can't see you?”
She gave a half laugh of impatience, shifting position in a way that put another inch of space between them. “This conversation is pointless,” she declared as her nerves stretched a little tighter.
He had struck far too close to the truth with his seemingly offhand remark. He appeared to be half drunk and completely self-absorbed, but Laurel had the sudden uncomfortable feeling that there might be more to Jack Boudreaux than met the eye. A cunning intelligence beneath the lazy facade. A sharp mind behind the satyr's grin.
“Oh, I agree. Absolutely,” he drawled, shuffling his feet, inching his way into her space again. His voice dropped a husky, seductive note as he leaned down close enough so his breath caressed her cheek. “So let's go to my place and do something more . . . satisfying.”
“What about the band?” Laurel asked inanely, trembling slightly as the heat from his body drifted over her skin. She held her ground and caught a breath in her throat as he lifted a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
He chuckled low in his throat. “I'm not into sharing.”
“That's not what I meant.”
“They can play just fine without me.”
“I hope the same can be said for you,” Laurel said dryly. She crossed her arms again, drawing her composure around her like a queen's cloak. “I'm not going anywhere with you, and the only satisfaction I intend to get is restitution for the damage your dog caused.”
He dropped back against the Jeep in a negligent pose once more and took a long pull on his beer, his eyes never leaving hers. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don't have a dog.”
As if on cue, the hound jumped up into the driver's seat of the open Jeep and looked at them both, ears perked with interest as he listened to them argue culpability for his crimes.
“A number of people have identified this as your hound,” Laurel said, swinging an arm in the direction of the culprit.
“That don' make him mine, sugar,” Jack countered.
“No less than four people have named you as the owner.”
He arched a brow. “Do I have a license for this dog? Can you produce ownership papers?”
“Of course not—”
“Then all you have are unsubstantiated rumors, Miz Chandler. Hearsay. You and I both know that'll stand up in a court of law about as good as a dead man's dick.”
Laurel drew in a deep breath through her nostrils, trying in vain to stem the rising tide of frustration. She should have been able to cut this man off at the knees and send him crawling to Aunt Caroline's house to apologize. He was nothing but a liquored-up piano player at Frenchie's Landing, for Christ's sake, and she couldn't manage to best him. The anger she had been directing at Jack started turning back her way.
“What'd ol' Huey do, anyhow, that's got you so worked up, angel?”
“Huey?” She pounced on the opening with the ferocity of a starving cat on a mouse. “You called him by name!” she charged, pointing an accusatory finger at Jack, taking an aggressive step forward. “You named him!”
He scowled. “It's short for Hey You.”
“But the fact remains—”
“Fact my ass,” Jack returned. “I can call you by name too, 'tite chatte. That don' make you mine.” Grinning again, he leaned ahead and caught her chin in his right hand, boldly stroking the pad of his thumb across the lush swell of her lower lip. “Does it, Laurel?” he murmured suggestively, dipping his head down, his mouth homing in on hers.
Laurel jerked back from him, batting his hand away. Her hold on her control, slippery and tenuous at best these days, slipped a little further. She felt as if she were hanging on to it by the ragged, bitten-down remains of her fingernails and it was still pulling away. She had come here for justice, but she wasn't getting any. Jack Boudreaux was jerking her around effortlessly. Playing with her, mocking her, propositioning her. God, was she so ineffectual, such a failure—
“You didn't do your job, Ms. Chandler. . . . You blew it. . . . Charges will be dismissed. . . .”
“Come on, sugar, prove your case,” Jack challenged. He took another pull on his beer. Dieu, he was actually enjoying this little sparring match. He was rusty, out of practice. How long had it been since he had argued a case? Two years? Three? His time away from corporate law ran together in a blur of months. It seemed like a lifetime. He would have thought he had lost his taste for it, but the old skills were still there.
Sharks don't lose their instincts, he reminded himself, bitterness creeping in to taint his enjoyment of the fight.
“It—it's common knowledge that's your dog, Mr. Boudreaux,” Laurel stammered, fighting to talk around the knot hardening in her throat. She didn't hold eye contact with him, but tried to focus instead on the hound, which was tilting his head and staring at her quizzically with his mismatched eyes. “Y-You should be man enough to t-take responsibility for it.”
“Ah, me,” Jack said, chuckling cynically. “I don' take responsibility, angel. Ask anyone.”
Laurel barely heard him, her attention focusing almost completely inward, everything else becoming vague and peripheral. A shudder of tension rattled through her, stronger than its precursor. She tried to steel herself against it and failed.
Failed.
“You didn't do your job, Ms. Chandler . . . Charges will be dismissed. . . .”
She hadn't proven her case. Couldn't make the charges stick on something so simple and stupid as a case of canine vandalism. Failed. Again. Worthless, weak. . . . She spat the words at herself as a wave of helplessness surged through her.
Her lungs seemed suddenly incapable of taking in air. She tried to swallow a mouthful of oxygen and then another as her legs began to shake. Panic clawed its way up the back of her throat. She pressed a hand to her mouth and blinked furiously at the tears that pooled and swirled in her eyes, blurring her view of the hound.
Jack started to say something, but cut himself off, beer bottle halfway to his lips. He stared at Laurel as she transformed before his eyes. The bright-eyed tigress on a mission was gone as abruptly as if she had never existed, leaving instead a woman on the verge of tears, on the brink of some horrible inner precipice.
“Hey, sugar,” he said gently, straightening away from the Jeep. “Hey, don' cry,” he murmured, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, casting anxious glances around the parking lot.
Rumor had it she'd been in some posh clinic in North Carolina. The word “breakdown” had been bandied all over town. Jesus, he didn't need this, didn't want this. He'd already proven once in his life that he couldn't handle it, was the last person anyone should count on to handle it. I don' take responsibility. . . . That truth hung on him like chain mail. He leaned toward Frenchie's, wanting to bolt, but his feet stayed rooted to the spot, nailed down by guilt.
The side door slammed, and Leonce's voice came a
cross the dark expanse of parking lot in staccato French. “Hey, Jack, viens ici! Dépêche-toi! Allons jouer la musique, pas les femmes!”
Jack cast a longing glance at his friend up on the gallery, then back at Laurel Chandler. “In a minute!” he called, his gaze lingering on the woman, turmoil twisting in his belly like a snake. He didn't credit himself with having much of a conscience, but what there was made him take a step toward Laurel. “Look, sugar—”
Laurel twisted back and away from the hand he held out to her, mortified that this man she knew little and respected less was witnessing this—this weakness. God, she wanted to have at least some small scrap of pride to cling to, but that, too, was tearing out of her grasp.
“I never should have come here,” she mumbled, not entirely sure whether she meant Frenchie's specifically or Bayou Breaux in general. She stumbled back another step as Jack Boudreaux reached for her arm again, his face set in lines of concern and apprehension, then she whirled and ran out of the parking lot and into the night.
Jack stood flat-footed, watching in astonishment as she disappeared in the heavy shadows beneath a stand of moss-draped live oak at the bayou's edge. Panic, he thought. That was what he had seen in her eyes. Panic and despair and a strong aversion to having him see either. What a little bundle of contradictions she was, he thought as he dug a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and dangled it from his lip. Strength and fire and fragility.
“What'd you do, mon ami?” Leonce shuffled up, tugging off his Panama hat and wiping the sweat from his balding pate with his forearm. “You scare her off with that big horse cock of yours?”
Jack scowled, his gaze still on the dark bank, his mind still puzzling over Laurel Chandler. “Shut up, tcheue poule.”
“Don' let it get you down,” Leonce said, chuckling at his own little pun. He settled his hat back in place, and his fingers drifted down to rub absently at the scar that ravaged his cheek. “Women are easy to come by.”
And hard to shake—that was their usual line. Not Laurel Chandler. She had cut and run. Even as his brain turned the puzzle over and around trying to shake loose an answer, Jack shrugged it off. His instincts told him Laurel Chandler would be nothing but trouble when all he really wanted from life was to pass a good time.
“Yeah,” he drawled, turning back toward Frenchie's with his buddy. “Let's go inside. I need to find me a cold beer and hot date.”
Chapter
Three
“Laurel, help us! Laurel, please! Please! Please . . . please . . .”
She'd had the dream a hundred times. It played through her mind like a videotape over and over, wearing on her, tearing at her conscience, ripping at her heart. Always the voices were the worst part of it. The voices of the children, frantic, begging, pleading. The qualities in those voices touched nerves, set off automatic physiological reactions. Her pulse jumped, her breath came in short, shallow, unsatisfying gasps. Adrenaline and frustration pumped through her in equal amounts.
Dr. Pritchard had attempted to teach her to recognize those signals and defuse them. Theoretically, she should have been able to stop the dream and all the horrible feelings it unleashed, but she never could. She just lay there feeling enraged and panic-stricken and helpless, watching the drama unfold in her subconscious to play out to its inevitable end, unable to awaken, unable to stop it, unable to change the course of events that caused it. Weak, impotent, inadequate, incapable.
“The charges are being dropped, Ms. Chandler, for lack of sufficient evidence.”
Here she always tried to swallow and couldn't. A Freudian thing, she supposed. She couldn't choke down the attorney general's decision any more than she could have chewed up and swallowed the Congressional Record. Or perhaps it was the burden of guilt that tightened around her throat, threatening to choke her. She had failed to prove her case. She had failed, and the children would pay the consequences.
“Help us, Laurel! Please! Please . . . please . . .”
She thrashed against the bed, against the imagined bonds of her own incompetence. She could see the three key children behind the attorney general, their faces pale ovals dominated by dark eyes filled with torment and dying hope. They had depended on her, trusted her. She had promised help, guaranteed justice.
“. . . lack of sufficient evidence, Ms. Chandler . . .”
Quentin Parker loomed larger in her mind's eye, turning dark and menacing, metamorphosing into a hideous monster as the children's faces drifted further and further away. Paler and paler they grew as they floated back, their eyes growing wider and wider with fear.
“Help us, Laurel! Please . . . please . . . please . . .”
“. . . will be returned to their parents . . .”
“No,” she whimpered, tossing, turning, kicking at the bedclothes.
“Help us, Laurel!”
“. . . returned to the custody of . . .”
“No!” She thumped her fists against the mattress over and over, pounding in time with her denial. “No! No!”
“. . . a formal apology will be issued . . .”
“NO!!”
Laurel pitched herself upright as the door slammed shut on her subconscious. The air heaved in and out of her lungs in tremendous hot, ragged gasps. Her nightgown was plastered to her skin with cold sweat. She opened her eyes wide and forced herself to take in her surroundings, busying her brain by cataloging every item she saw—the foot of the half-tester bed, the enormous French Colonial armoire looming darkly against the wall, the marble-topped walnut commode with porcelain pitcher and bowl displaying an arrangement of spring blooms. Normal things, familiar things illuminated by the pale, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't moon shining in through the French doors. She wasn't in Georgia any longer. This wasn't Scott County. This was Belle Rivière, Aunt Caroline's house in Bayou Breaux. The place she had run to.
Coward.
She ground her teeth against the word and rubbed her hands hard over her face, then plowed her fingers back through her disheveled mess of sweat-damp hair.
“Laurel?”
The bedroom door opened, and Savannah stuck her head in. Just like old times, Laurel thought, when they were girls and Savannah had assumed the role of mother Vivian Chandler had been loath to play unless she had an audience. They were thirty and thirty-two now, she and Savannah, but they had fallen back into that pattern as easily as slipping on comfortable old shoes.
It seemed odd, considering it was Laurel who had grown up to take charge of her life, she who had struck out and made a career and a name for herself. Savannah had stayed behind, never quite breaking away from the past or the place, never able to rise above the events that had shaped them.
“Hey, Baby,” Savannah murmured as she crossed the room. The moon ducked behind a cloud, casting her in shadow, giving Laurel only impressions of a rumpled cloud of long dark hair, a pale silk robe carelessly belted, long shapely legs and bare feet. “You okay?”
Laurel wrapped her arms around her knees, sniffed, and forced a smile as her sister settled on the edge of the bed. “I'm fine.”
Savannah flipped on the bedside lamp, and they both blinked against the light. “Liar,” she grumbled, frowning as she looked her over. “I heard you tossing and turning. Another nightmare?”
“I didn't think you were coming home tonight,” Laurel said, railroading the conversation onto other tracks. She tossed and turned every night, had nightmares every night. That had become the norm for her, nothing worth talking about.
Savannah's lush mouth settled into a pout. “Never mind about that,” she said flatly. “Things got over quicker than I thought.”
“Where were you?” Somewhere with smoke and liquor. Laurel could smell the combination over and above a generous application of Obsession. Smoke and liquor and something wilder, earthier, like sex or the swamp.
“It doesn't matter.” Savannah shook off the topic with a toss of her head. “Lord Almighty, look at you. You've sweat that gown clean through. I'll get you anoth
er.”
Laurel stayed where she was as her sister went to the cherry highboy and began pulling open drawers in search of lingerie. She probably should have insisted on taking care of herself, but the truth of the matter was she didn't feel up to it. She was exhausted from lack of sleep and from her encounter with Jack Boudreaux. Besides, wasn't this part of what she had come home for? To be comforted and cared for by familiar faces?
Much as she hated to admit it, she was still feeling physically weak, as well as emotionally battered. Coming unhinged was hard on a person, she reflected with a grimace. But as Dr. Pritchard had been so fond of pointing out, her physical decline had begun long before her breakdown. All during what the press had labeled simply “The Scott County Case” she had been too focused, too obsessed to think of trivial things like food, sleep, exercise. Her mind had been consumed with charges of sexual abuse, the pursuit of evidence, the protection of children, the upholding of justice.
Savannah's disgruntled voice pulled her back from the edge of the memory. “Crimeny, Baby, don't you own a nightgown that doesn't look like something Mama Pearl made for the poor out of flour sacks?”
She came back to the bed holding an oversize white cotton T-shirt at arm's length, as if she were afraid its plainness might rub off on her. Savannah's taste in sleepwear ran to Frederick's of Hollywood. Beneath the gaping front of her short, champagne silk robe, Laurel caught a glimpse of full breasts straining the confines of a scrap of coffee-colored lace. With a body that was all lush curves, a body that fairly shouted its sexuality, Savannah was made for silk and lace. Laurel's femininity was subtle, understated—a fact she had no desire to change.
“Nobody sees it but me,” she said. She stripped her damp gown off over her head and slipped the new one on, enjoying the feel of the cool, dry fabric as it settled against her sticky skin.
An indignant sniff was Savannah's reply. She settled herself on the edge of the bed once again, legs crossed, her expression fierce. “If I ever cross paths with Wesley Brooks, I swear I'll kill him. Imagine him leaving you—”