by Tami Hoag
Jimmy Lee recovered admirably from his shock. “You condone the sin of drink, lost sister? May the Lord have mercy—”
“If I'm not mistaken, it was Christ who changed the water into wine at the wedding at Cana. John, chapter two, verses one to eleven. Liquor itself isn't bad, Reverend, just the foolish acts committed by those who overindulge. And alcoholism is an illness, not a sin. Perhaps God should have mercy on your soul for suggesting otherwise.”
He bared his snowy-white teeth at her in what would pass for a smile on videotape, she supposed, and his fingers tightened on her upper arm, telegraphing his anger. “I come only as God's soldier in the war to save men's souls. Our battlegrounds are the dens of iniquity where men's weaknesses are exploited for monetary gain.”
“If you're only interested in saving men's souls, then perhaps you could take your hand off me,” she said dryly, pulling free of his grasp. “As to exploiting people's weaknesses for monetary gain, my interests run more in the direction of the disposition of monies solicited by television preachers. I wonder what the Lord would have to say about that.”
As the audience on the gallery cheered, Baldwin flushed red. His mouth tightened, and the whiskey-brown eyes, which had moments ago glowed with the bright lights of glory, hardened like amber. He took a step back from her, admitting defeat as far as Laurel was concerned. She gave him one last hard look and started to turn for the steps, but the reporter outflanked her, and she flinched away from the light of the handheld strobe an assistant shot up behind the cameraman.
“Miss, Doug Matthews, KFET-TV, can we please get your name?”
Memories of other times and other cameras flashed through Laurel's mind. Reporters pressing in on her, yapping and jumping at her like a pack of hounds. Questions, accusations, snide remarks, hurled at her from all sides like darts.
“No,” she murmured, fighting the tightness that suddenly squeezed her chest. “No, please just leave me alone.”
Savannah stepped down off the gallery and pushed the cameraman's lens down. “Leave my sister alone, sweetheart,” she said, her gaze leveled on the reporter, “else I'll take that cute little microphone and shove it up your tight little ass.”
Hoots and shouts issued from Frenchie's patrons. Gasps rippled through the crowd of believers as the Chandler sisters went up the steps and into the bar.
Jimmy Lee stepped away from them, dragging Doug Matthews with him. “You'll take that shit out, or I'll beat her to that goddamn microphone,” he growled, looming over Matthews, who was jockey-short and coward-yellow.
Doug Matthews sent him a contentious look, making a token show of journalistic integrity as he smoothed a hand carefully over his blond hair. “It's news, Jimmy Lee.”
“So is your penchant for pretty young men.” His eyes darted to his throng of disgruntled followers who were milling around the parking lot looking as though their parade had been hailed on. “Fuck news. This is supposed to be the launch of my big campaign against sin. I'm not gettin' shown up by some little skirt in horn-rimmed glasses. You take that tape and cut and paste until I look like Christ himself forgiving Mary Magdalene.” He cuffed Matthews on the chest, scowling ferociously. “You got that, Dougie?”
Matthews pouted and rubbed at the sore spot, carefully straightening his turquoise tie. “Yeah, yeah. I got it. I wonder who she was, anyway. She sure as hell cleaned your clock.”
Jimmy Lee rubbed his knuckles against his chin, his gaze on the screen door the two women had gone through. “Sister,” he murmured, the oily wheels of his mind whirring like windmills. “Savannah Chandler's sister.” Awareness dawned, and he brightened considerably as the seeds of a plan took root. “Laurel Chandler.”
“Poor Jimmy Lee,” Savannah said without sympathy as they stepped into the cool, dark interior of Frenchie's. “He's only trying to rid the town of impurities, immoralities, and prurient behavior. He's a firsthand expert on prurient behavior.” Sliding her sunglasses down her nose, she looked at Laurel and smiled wickedly. “And I ought to know, 'cause I've gone to bed with him.”
“Savannah!”
“Oh, Baby, don't look so scandalized.” She chuckled as she glanced around the room for a choice place to roost. “Preachers get the itch too. And let me tell you, Jimmy Lee likes his scratched in some of the most inventive ways. . . .”
She sauntered toward a table, feeling a little bit mean and a little bit vindicated. Coop had rattled her, something she didn't like at all. Making a fool out of Jimmy Lee went a long way toward making up for the scene at Madame Collette's. And truth to tell, shocking Laurel made up the rest. Laurel, such a good girl. Laurel the upstanding citizen. Laurel the golden child. It did her good to get thrown for a loop every once in a while. Let her see how the other half lived. Let her think There but for the grace of God and Savannah. . . .
The crowd in the bar greeted her like the conquering heroine, calling to her, raising their glasses. A sense of warmth and importance flowed through her. This was her turf. These were her people, much to the dismay of Vivian and Ross. Here she was appreciated. She smiled and waved, the kind of all-encompassing, regal gesture of a beauty queen.
“Hey, Savannah!” Ronnie Peltier called from over by the pool table, where he stood leaning on the butt of his cue. “Dat's some tongue you got on you, girl.”
“So I've been told, honey,” she drawled.
He grinned and shifted his weight. “Oh, yeah? Well, why you don' come on over here, jolie fille, and show me?”
Savannah tossed her head and laughed, assessing his charms all the while. Ronnie was big where it counted and cute as could be. Conroy Cooper could go to hell. She had just found herself a fun-loving Cajun boy to play with.
Leonce Comeau swiveled around on his bar stool and slid his hand down her back as she passed. “Hey, Savannah, when you gonna marry me? Me, I can't live without you!”
She slid him a sly look over her shoulder, mentally shuddering at the grotesque scar that bisected his face, the long, shiny-smooth pink line that began and ended in strange knots of flesh. “If you can't live without me, Leonce, then how come you ain't dead yet?”
“I yi yiee!” He clutched his hands to his heart as if she'd shot him, a big grin splitting across his bearded face. “You heartless bitch!”
Laurel watched the proceedings with a sinking heart and a churning stomach. It tore her up to see this side of her sister—the seductress, the slut. Savannah had so much more to offer the world than her sexual prowess. Or she once had. Once she had been full of promise, full of hope, bright-eyed at the possibilities life had to offer. Once upon a time . . .
“You want a toothpick, 'tite chatte?”
The voice was unmistakable. Whiskey and smoke and a vision of black satin sheets. His breath was warm against her cheek, and she jerked around, cursing herself for bolting.
“Why would I want a toothpick?” she demanded indignantly.
Jack grinned at the flash of temper in her dark blue eyes. It was a hell of an improvement over the sadness and guilt he'd glimpsed there a moment before. For a moment she had looked like a lost child, and the impact of that impression had slammed into him like a truck. Not that he really cared about her, he assured himself. Miss Laurel Chandler was hardly his type. Too serious by half. Too driven. He liked a girl who liked her fun. A few good laughs, a nice healthy round of mattress thumping, no strings attached. Laurel Chandler was a whole different breed of cat—as evidenced by the mincemeat she'd made of Jimmy Lee Baldwin.
“Why, to pick all those pieces of Jimmy Lee out your teeth, sugar,” he said. “You sure chewed him up and spit him out. Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
She scowled. “You're already on my bad side, Mr. Boudreaux.”
“Then why I don't just buy you a drink, angel, and we can make up?” he suggested, smiling, leaning down just a little closer than he should have. Her frown tightened, but she held her ground.
“I'd rather be left alone, thank you very much,” Laurel sa
id primly, avoiding those dark eyes that had managed to see past her carefully erected defenses once already. She fixed her gaze on one deep dimple and did her best to ignore its blatant sex appeal.
“Oh, well, then you came to the wrong place, sugar.”
He draped an arm casually around her shoulders and steered her toward the bar, completely ignoring her wishes. She held herself stiffly, resisting his herding. She looked up at him sideways. He wore a battered black baseball cap that had “100% Coonass” machine embroidered on the front in glossy blue thread. A blood red ruby studded the lobe of his left ear. The wild Hawaiian print shirt he wore hung completely open, revealing a broad wedge of tan chest, well-defined muscle lightly dusted with black hair, a belly that looked as hard and ridged as a washboard. A line of silky-looking hair curled around his belly button like a question mark and disappeared into the low-riding waist of his faded jeans, as if beckoning curious female eyes to wonder about the territory that lay beyond.
She jerked her gaze away, pushing her glasses up on her nose in an attempt to hide the blush that bloomed instantly on her cheeks.
He wasn't her type at all, she reminded herself. He wasn't the kind of man she usually allowed to touch her. He wasn't the kind of man she would ordinarily have known at all. And he wasn't charming her. She was only letting him shepherd her toward the bar because she didn't want to watch Savannah seducing the pool players.
“Talk about chewing ass,” he said, an unholy light in his eyes. “What's black and brown and looks good on a lawyer?” Laurel shot him a scowl, which he fielded with an incorrigible grin. “A doberman.”
The laugh that rolled out of him may as well have been a pair of hands that skimmed boldly over her. Laurel ground her teeth at her unwanted reaction, berating her body for its inability to judge character.
“Hey, Ovide!” Jack called. “How 'bout a drink here for our little tigress?”
Laurel blushed again at the name and climbed up on a bar stool, figuring she would at least be rid of Jack Boudreaux's touch now. She was wrong. He merely stood beside her, arm hooked around her loosely but possessively. Worse than standing beside him, she was now at eye level with him, and he didn't hesitate to lean close and murmur in her ear.
“That's Ovide,” he said, his voice as low and intimate as if he were whispering words of seduction. He fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and dangled it from his lip. “‘Frenchie' Delahoussaye. The man you were stickin' up for out there.”
The man behind the bar was in his late sixties, short and stout with sloping shoulders and no neck. He was bald as a cue ball on top, with shaggy steel gray hair ringing the sides of his head and sprouting in fantastic tufts from his ears. A cloud of curly gray hair spilled out of the V of his plaid shirt, and a thick mustache draped across his upper lip and trailed down past the corners of his mouth. His eyebrows were so bushy, they could have been pads of steel wool glued to his forehead. He looked like a nutria that had taken human form by enchantment. He moved purposefully if slowly, filling tall mugs with beer from a tap.
In contrast, the woman behind the bar with him moved at the speed of light, dashing to fill glasses, grab a pack of cigarettes, call an order for a po'boy back through the window to the kitchen. She was younger than Ovide, though not by a lot, and her face showed every day of her years, with lines etched beside her eyes and thin mouth that was painted poppy orange to match her tower of hair. Her skin had the leathery look of a lifelong smoker. It was stretched taut and shiny against the bones of her skull, giving added emphasis to the large dark eyes that bulged out of her head as if she were perpetually startled. Despite her obvious age, she was still petite, with a hard, sinewy body beneath tight designer jeans from the seventies and an electric blue satin western shirt.
She snatched the two mugs from Ovide and plunked one down on the bar in front of Laurel, scolding Frenchie nonstop.
“What'sa matter wit' you, Ovide? Jack, he don' wan' no damn glass, him!”
She snatched a long-neck bottle of Pearl from the cooler and popped the top off while she grabbed a rag with the other hand and wiped a trail of water off the bar, her mouth going a mile a minute.
“Ovide, he don' know which way is up, cher, what wit' all this preacher and ever'ting all the time carryin' on outside our door.” She sucked in a breath and cast a glance heavenward that looked more like annoyance than supplication. “Bon Dieu, what dis world comin' to wit' the like of dat Jimmy Lee callin' himself a man of the cloth? Mais, sa c'est fou! It pains me to see.”
She cocked a thickly penciled brow at Jack and chastised him for being remiss in his manners, as if he could have gotten a word in edgewise. “So, cher, you gonna introduce me to une belle femme or what?”
Jack threw back his head and laughed, his arm automatically tightening around Laurel. She stopped breathing as her breast came into contact with his side.
“T-Grace,” he announced, “meet Miss Laurel Chandler. Laurel, T-Grace Delahoussaye, Frenchie's right hand, left hand, and mouthpiece.”
T-Grace slapped at him with her wet towel, even as her attention held fast on Laurel. “You say some pretty smart things to dat horse's ass Jimmy Lee, chère.”
“Miz Chandler is a lawyer, T-Grace,” Jack offered, a comment that made T-Grace lean back and eye Laurel as dubiously as if he had announced she was from outer space.
Laurel shifted uncomfortably on her stool and tried in vain to discreetly tug some of the wrinkles out of her blouse. “I'm not practicing at the moment. I'm just in town to visit relatives.”
T-Grace eyed Laurel critically, then said, “Ovide, he's jus' beside himself over dis ‘End Sin' thing with dat preacher and all,” as she accepted a tray of empty glasses from a waitress and whirled to set them next to the bar sink.
Laurel glanced at the impassive Ovide, who stood beside his wife, silently pouring drinks and lining them up on the bar for distribution. Either T-Grace was psychic or the man's moods were too subtle for normal human eyes to detect.
“You say some pretty hard things to make a man think, oui?” She gave a snort and swiped a fly off the bar with her rag. “If dat Jimmy Lee can think. He's all the time so busy talkin', him, can't be nothin' much left in his head to think about. So you gonna be our lawyer, chère, or what?” she asked baldly, crossing her arms beneath her bosom impatiently while she waited for an answer.
Laurel gaped, stunned by the question, left speechless by T-Grace herself. The proposition was ludicrous. She wasn't a lawyer here in Bayou Breaux; she was just Laurel Chandler. The idea that she could be both was the furthest thing from her mind right now. She had come here to rest, to heal, not to take up the fight.
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head, nervously stroking a finger through the condensation on her beer mug. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Delahoussaye. I'm only in town for vacation. All you really need to do is file a complaint for trespassing. If you feel you need help, I'm sure there are any number of local attorneys who would be glad to represent you.”
T-Grace sniffed and shot a look at Jack. “Some less than there oughta be.”
He scowled at her, picking the unlit cigarette from between his lips to gesture with it. “I told you, T-Grace, I couldn't if I wanted to. Besides, you don' need no lawyer. Jimmy Lee's just a pest. Ignore him, and he'll go away.”
The older woman stared hard at him, all pretense of teasing gone from her bulging dark eyes, leaving her looking old and tough as boot leather. “Trouble don' just go away, cher. You know dat good as me, c'est vrai.”
Laurel watched the exchange with interest. Jack's bad-boy grin had vanished into that hard, intense look she had glimpsed the night before. A look that clearly told T-Grace to back off, a look that most grown men would have heeded. T-Grace pretended to shrug it off and turned away from him. She glanced sideways at Laurel as she pulled a pair of bottles from the cooler and popped the tops off.
“Why for you wearin' dem big glasses, chère? You in disguise or what?”
She mov
ed off to do a dozen tasks at once before Laurel could formulate any kind of answer. Laurel pushed the glasses up on her nose and frowned.
“It's not much of a disguise, angel,” Jack said.
“Not compared to yours,” Laurel returned. The best defense was a good offense. She didn't like being so easily read, and she had no intention of talking to Jack Boudreaux about her motives for doing anything. She certainly wasn't about to let him escape being questioned himself.
“Mine?” he scoffed. He shook his head, took a long drink of his beer, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No disguises here. What you see is what you get, sugar.”
The wickedness returned, sparkling in his eyes, curling the corners of his mouth, digging those breath-stealing dimples into his cheeks. He leaned close, sliding his hand around to the small of her back. His fingers teased her through the thin cotton of her blouse, rubbing lazy circles.
“You like that promise, no?” he breathed, leaning closer still, his lips just brushing the shell of her ear. Laurel shivered, then gasped as his hand slipped beneath the hem of the loose-fitting blouse.
“No,” she said emphatically, batting his hand away. She gave him a look that had made better men back off and ground her teeth when he only smiled at her. “Don't try to change the subject.”
“I'm not. The subject is us. I'm just tryin' to get past the talkin' stage, angel.”
“When hell freezes over.”
“Well, that devil, he's gonna feel a chill one of these days real soon.”
She arched a brow at him, thwarting the temptation to be either flattered or amused. “Is that a fact?”
“Oh, absolutely,” he drawled, dark eyes shining.
His intent was clear. For reasons Laurel couldn't begin to fathom, he'd set his sights on her. Probably because she was the only female in his territory he had yet to notch his bedpost for. His arrogance was astonishing. But more astonishing was the vague sensation of arousal his words, his touch, his nearness conjured inside her.