by Tami Hoag
He jerked his attention back to the road. They were coming up too fast on a sharp lefthand curve. He let off the gas and touched the brake, shifting down into fourth. The engine roared in protest, but the 'Vette came under control, rocking only slightly as it bent around the curve. They might have made it if it hadn't been for the alligator taking up half the road.
“Shit!”
“Aaaahhh!”
He swerved to miss the gator, but they missed the end of the curve, as well, right-side wheels hitting the shoulder and yanking the 'Vette off the road. Jack fought with the steering wheel to keep the car upright, swearing a blue streak through clenched teeth. Their momentum sent them crashing through the dense undergrowth, the 'Vette bucking and rocking like a spooked horse, brush and grass and cattails whipping at the windshield. They finally came to rest at the base of a sweetgum tree, just inches from smashing into the trunk. Just beyond the tree the land became water.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Laurel muttered over and over. She was shaking like a palsy victim. The gun lay at her feet, and she stared at it, grateful she hadn't taken the safety off.
Jack leaned over and caught her chin in his hand, turning her face toward him. “Are you okay? Are you all right?” he demanded, his voice harsh and low. He was breathing as hard as if he'd carried the car out here on his back.
Laurel looked at him, stunned, shaken. “You're bleeding.”
“What?”
“You're bleeding.”
Lifting a hand, she brushed at a line of red above his left eye, smearing it with her thumb. He caught her by the wrist and drew back to see the blood on her hand, then looked in the cockeyed rearview mirror to check out the wound himself.
“Must'a hit the windshield.”
“You should have worn your seat belt,” Laurel mumbled, still too shaken to be coherent. “You might have been killed.”
“No one would'a missed me, sugar,” he said darkly as he fought to get his door open. Swearing in French, he gave up and climbed over it to survey the damage to the car.
An ominous hiss sounded beneath the long, sleek hood; steam billowed out from under it. The paint job was shot, scratched all to hell by the bushes and saplings they had crashed through. The wheels would be out of alignment, and it would be a pure damn miracle if the undercarriage wasn't twisted.
“Oh, man, Savannah's gonna have my ass.”
“Not if I have it first,” Laurel said, stepping across the console to crawl over Jack's door. Hers was operational, but too near the trunk of a willow to get open. With both feet planted on the squishy, oozy ground, she faced Jack, her hands jammed on her hips and fury lighting a fire in her eyes. “Of all the stupid, irresponsible—”
“Me?” He slapped his hands against his chest, incredulous. “You were the one pointing the gun!”
“—moronic, sophomoric, juvenile things to do. I can't believe anyone would—” She broke off as he started laughing. “What?”
He only laughed harder, wiping at his eyes, holding his stomach.
Laurel frowned. “I don't see the least little thing funny about this.”
“Oh—yeah—you got a lawyer's sense of humor all right.” Jack straightened and tried to compose himself. “The whole thing's ridiculous. Doncha see it? You, you prim little angel, pull a gun on me. We almost hit an alligator—” He broke off and started laughing again.
Laurel watched him, feeling her temper let go by degrees. They were safe. Savannah's car was worse for wear, but no one had been hurt. As anger and fear subsided, she began to see the lunacy of the situation. How would they ever explain it? She put a hand to her mouth and giggled.
Jack caught the motion and the stifled sound. He looked at her, at the sparkle in her eyes and the shaking of her shoulders as laughter tried to escape, and he felt as though he'd been hit in the head all over again. On impulse he reached out and pulled her hand down, grinning like an idiot at the bright smile that lit up her face. Dieu, she was pretty. . . .
“I don't know what I'm laughing about,” she said, embarrassed.
“I don't care.” He shook his head, stepping closer. “But you oughta do it more often, angel.”
Her glasses were askew, and he took them off as he moved closer still. Laurel stopped laughing . . . stopped breathing. Her gaze was locked on his face. Her body was very aware of his nearness, responding to it in ways that were instinctive and fundamentally feminine—warming, melting. She was backed up against the side of the car, caught between an immovable object and an irresistible force. He lifted a hand to stroke her hair, lowering his mouth toward hers inch by inch.
She should have moved. She should have stopped him. She didn't know much about this man, and what she did know was hardly good. He was—what had Savannah called him?—a writer, a rake, a rogue. He was a man with a reputation for seduction and a past that was probably shady, to say the very least. He had no business touching her, and she had no business wanting him to. She should have stopped him. But she didn't.
She shivered at the first touch of his lips, blinking as if the contact had given her a shock. He held her gaze, his eyes dark and intense, mesmerizing. Then he settled his mouth over hers, and thought ceased. Her eyes drifted shut. Her hands wound into the fabric of his shirt. Jack pulled her close, slanting his mouth across hers, taking possession of it. At the first intrusion of his tongue, she gasped a little, and he took full advantage, thrusting slowly, deeply, into the honeyed warmth of her mouth.
She tasted sweet, and she felt like heaven against him. Jack groaned deep in his chest and pressed closer. The scent of her filled his head. Not expensive perfume, but soap and baby powder. He spread his legs and inched closer, fire shooting through him as his thighs brushed the outside of hers and his groin nudged her belly.
The need was instantaneous and stronger than anything he'd known in a long time. Strong enough to make him think, something he generally avoided doing when he was enjoying a lady's charms. It was crazy to want like this.
Crazy . . . She'd had a breakdown. She was vulnerable, fragile. Like Evie had been.
Desire died like a flame that had been suddenly doused. Jesus, what kind of jerk was he? He didn't bother to answer that question. It was a matter of record. He was the kind of man who took what he wanted and never gave a thought to anyone else. Selfish, self-absorbed. He had no business touching her.
Laurel opened her eyes as Jack stepped away. She felt dizzy, weak, as shaken as she had been when the car had finally rolled to a halt. Like a woman in a daze, she lifted a hand and touched her fingers to her lips, lips that felt hot and swollen and thoroughly kissed. Her skin seemed to be melting—warm, wet—then she blinked and realized with no small amount of surprise that it had started to rain.
The sky that had shone in various shades of blue all day like a lovely sapphire had gone suddenly leaden. Weather in the Atchafalaya was always capricious. A perfect afternoon could yield to a hurricane by evening, or a tornado, or a shower. Showers could become torrential downpours in the blink of an eye.
“We should get the top up on the car,” she said blankly, her body not receiving any of her brain's commands to move.
Jack didn't move, either. He stood there in the rain looking tough and sexy. His cap was gone. His tousled black hair glittered with moisture. It ran down off his nose, dripped from his scarred chin. The bleeding on his forehead had stopped, leaving an angry red line. His eyes were dark and unreadable, and Laurel shifted nervously against the side of the car.
“I . . . I don't ordinarily just let men kiss me,” she felt compelled to explain. She didn't even kiss on the first date. It had taken Wesley months to coax her into bed, months before she had trusted him enough.
He grinned suddenly, once again transforming himself. “Hey, I'm no ordinary guy,” he said, shrugging, arms wide, palms up.
They worked together to get the top up and secured on the 'Vette.
“We'll have to walk for help,” Jack said, raising his voice as the
rain began to fall harder. “This car, she's not gonna go nowhere, and the rain could keep up all night.”
Laurel said nothing, but followed him along the path they had mowed back out to the road, glad there was no sign of the alligator. She took a good look at her surroundings, getting her bearings from familiar landmarks. If you followed the dirt path into the woods to the north, you eventually came to the place where Clarence Gauthier kept his fighting dogs. A sign made from a jagged piece of cypress siding was posted on the stump of a swamp oak that had been struck by lightning and killed twenty years ago: “Keep Out—Trespasser Will Be Ate.”
“Come on, sweetheart,” Jack said, nodding toward town.
“No.” Laurel shook her head and swiped at the rain drizzling down across her face. “This way.” She turned and headed east.
“Sugar, there's nothin' that way but snakes and gators,” he protested.
A ghost of a smile turned the corners of her mouth. Snakes and alligators. And Beauvoir, her home.
Beauvoir made Tara look like low-rent housing. It stood at the end of the traditional allée of ancient, moss-draped live oak, a jewel of the old South, immaculately preserved and painted pristine white. A graceful horseshoe-shaped double stairway led from the ground level to the upper gallery of the house. Six twenty-four-foot-tall Doric columns stood straight and white along each of the four sides of the building, supporting the overhang of the Caribbean-style roof. Entrance doors, centered on both the upper and the lower levels of the house, boasted fan lights and sidelights and were flanked by two sets of French doors, which were themselves set off by louvered shutters painted a rich, money green. Three dormers with Palladian windows called attention to the broad-hipped slate roof. A glassed-in cupola crowned the architectural work of art.
Beauvoir was a sight to take the breath away from preservationists. Laurel thought it might have inspired something like awe or love in her, as well, if her father had lived. But the plantation had gone into her mother's control at his death, and Vivian had seen fit to bring Ross Leighton to it. Laurel doubted she would ever feel anything but regret and loss when standing before the facade of Beauvoir—regret for her father's untimely death, for the childhood she had endured instead of enjoyed, loss for the generations of tradition that would die with Vivian. Neither Laurel nor Savannah would ever live here again. The memories were too unhappy.
It was a pity. There were few houses of its ilk left. Fire and flood had claimed many over the years. Neglect had taken its share. The cost of keeping up a house of that size was an enormous financial burden in an area that had suffered too many lean years in the decades since the fall of the Confederacy. In modern times greed had claimed most of the rest. Many a fine old home had survived all else only to fall to the wrecking ball, making way for oil derricks and chemical factories.
Laurel walked up the drive, lost in thought, almost forgetting the man who walked beside her. She jumped a little when he spoke.
“If this is your home, how come you're not stayin' here?”
“That's none of your business, Mr. Boudreaux.”
Mr. Boudreaux again. The bright-eyed angel who had taken him halfway to heaven with a kiss was in full retreat. “Just like it's none of my business why you're carryin' a gun around in your pocketbook?”
Laurel let silence be her answer. She had no intention of telling him the gun had been a necessary fashion accessory back in Georgia, when death threats had come in the mail as often as sweepstakes offers. Wesley had been appalled at the thought of her carrying a handgun. Jack Boudreaux had laughed. She herself saw the gun as a sign of weakness, but she carried it still, unable to part with the security it represented.
“You don' live here. Savannah don' live here. Who's left?”
She walked on for a moment. “Vivian. Our mother. And her husband, Ross Leighton.”
Vivian. Jack arched a brow at the flat tone of voice. Not our mother, Vivian, but Vivian. A name spoken like that of an acquaintance—and one she was not overly fond of at that. There was a story there. Jack had never in his life called his mother anything but Maman right up to the day she died. A matter of respect and love. He heard neither in Laurel's voice, saw neither in her face. Her expression was tightly closed, giving away nothing, and her eyes weren't quite visible to him behind the rain-streaked lenses of her glasses.
She had grown quieter and quieter on the hike, not even rising to the bait of one of his lawyer jokes, but pulling in on herself and drawing a curtain of silence around her. Coming home wasn't eliciting the traditional joyous response. Her step didn't lighten, the closer they got. She marched along like a prisoner being escorted to the penitentiary.
And you would do the same, Jack, if you were walking down the path to that tar-paper shack on Bayou Noir.
It wasn't the dwelling that mattered. It was the memories.
That revelation made him glance once again at the woman who walked beside him. A grand house didn't guarantee happiness. She might have had as bleak a childhood as his own. The possibility stirred the threads that might have formed a bond between them if he hadn't known enough to snap them off. He didn't want bonds.
A white Mercedes sedan was parked in front of the house, looking like an ad layout for the car company, waiting for some elegant couple to emerge from the grand house so they could be whisked away in Bavarian-made opulence to some nearby exclusive restaurant for dinner. It was Saturday night, Laurel reminded herself. Dinner and dancing at the country club. Socializing with peers. As queen bee of Partout Parish society, Vivian had the night to lord it over the less wealthy. She wasn't going to care for an interruption to her plans.
Laurel tried to tamp down the automatic rise of anxiety as she pressed the lighted button beside the door. She could feel Jack's eyes on her, knew he was wondering why she would feel compelled to ring the bell at the house she had grown up in, but she offered nothing in the way of explanation. It was too complicated. She had ceased to feel welcome in this house the night her father died. Beauvoir was not a home; it was a house. The people in it were people she would sooner have considered strangers than family. And those were feelings that brought on an even more complicated mix of emotions—resentment and guilt warring within her for supremacy over her soul.
The servant who answered the door was no one Laurel had ever seen before. Vivian and Ross were not the kind of people who inspired great loyalty in their employees. Vivian fired maids and cooks with regularity, and those she didn't fire were usually driven away by her personality. This maid, a whey-faced zombie in a sober gray uniform, looked at her blankly when she announced herself and left the cool white entry hall without a word, presumably to go find her mistress.
“Fun girl,” Jack muttered, making a face.
Laurel said nothing. She stood where she had stopped just inside the door, dripping rainwater on the black-and-white marble floor. While Jack inspected the portrait of Colonel Beau Chandler that hung in a huge gilt frame over a polished Chippendale hall table, she caught a glimpse of herself in the beveled mirror that hung on the opposite wall above another priceless antique table. There was also a mirror at floor level, where antebellum belles had checked their hems and made certain their ankles weren't showing. Laurel wasn't concerned about her ankles. She winced inwardly as she took in her drenched hair and soggy blouse. A fist of anxiety tightened in her stomach. The same one she had felt as a child coming in from play with a grass stain on her dress.
“. . . what's the matter with you, Laurel? Shame on you! Nice girls don't get stains on their clothing. You're a Chandler, not some common little piece of trash. It's your duty to conduct yourself accordingly. Now go to your room and get changed, and don't come down until I call for you. Mr. Leighton is coming to dinner. . . .”
“Hey, sugar, you okay?”
She jerked her head around and looked up at Jack, who was eyeing her warily.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” he said. “You're whiter than that big boat of a car sittin' outs
ide.”
Laurel didn't answer him. The sound of a sharp, angry voice caught her ear, and she looked toward the door that led to the parlor, her blood pressure jumping higher with every word.
“. . . told you never to disturb me when I'm getting ready for a dinner engagement.”
“Yes, ma'am, but—”
“Don't you talk back to me, Olive.”
Silence reigned for several moments, expectation swelling in the air. Laurel pulled her glasses off and slicked a hand back through her hair, hating herself for giving in to the impulse.
“. . . be a good girl, Laurel. Always look your best, Laurel. . . .”
Vivian stepped out of the parlor. She was fifty-three now, but still looked like Lauren Hutton—cool, elegant, alabaster skin, and eyes the color of aquamarines. What outward beauty God had given her, plastic surgery was preserving well. Only a hint of lines beside her eyes, none near the sharply cut mouth that was painted a rich, enticing red. Her body looked as slender and hard as a marble wand, and was draped to perfection in emerald green silk. The simple sheath masterfully accented the sleek lines of her body.
The heels of her pumps snapped against the marble floor as she came toward them, her attention on the clasp of the diamond bracelet she was fastening. Then her head came up, and she touched a hand to her neatly coiffed ash blond hair, a gesture Laurel remembered from infancy.
Vivian's eyes went wide with shock. “Laurel, what in God's name have you been doing?” she demanded, her gaze sliding down Laurel from the top of her wet head to the tips of her ruined canvas sneakers.
“We had a little accident.”
“Well, for heaven's sake!”
Vivian's gaze flicked to Jack and held hard and fast on him, disapproval beaming from her like sonic waves. Jack met her look with insolence and a slow, sardonic smile. His shirt still hung open. He stood with his hands jammed at the waist of his jeans and one leg cocked. Finally he gave a mocking half bow.