by Tami Hoag
“Jack Boudreaux, at your service.”
Vivian stared at him for a second longer, obviously debating the wisdom of snubbing him. Jack would have laughed if it hadn't been for Laurel. He knew exactly what was going through Vivian Chandler Leighton's mind. He didn't quite fit into any of the neat little pigeonholes she usually assigned people to. He was notorious, disreputable; he wrote gruesome pulp fiction for a living; and he had a past as shady as the backwaters of the Atchafalaya. Women like Vivian would ordinarily have written him off as trash, but he was stinking rich. The Junior League didn't have an official category for riffraff with money.
“Mr. Boudreaux,” she said at last, nodding to him but not offering her hand. The smile was the one she had been trained to give Yankees and liberal democrats. “I've heard so much about you.”
He grinned his wicked grin. “None of it good, I'm sure.”
Ross Leighton chose that moment to make his appearance. He stepped out of his study down the hall, a glass of scotch in his hand, looking dapper and distinguished in a tan linen suit. He was of medium height and sturdy frame, with a ruddy face and a full head of steel gray hair he wore swept back in a style that suggested vanity.
“We have company, Vivian?” he asked, ambling down the hall, lord of the manor, usurper to the throne of Jefferson Chandler. He wore a big smile that tended to fool too many people. It didn't fool Laurel. It never had. It widened as he recognized her, and he came toward her, chuckling. “Laurel! My God, look at you! You look like a drowned mouse.”
He bent to kiss her cheek, and she stepped away from him, sliding her glasses back on and tilting her chin up to a truculent angle.
Jack watched the exchange with interest. There had been no words of greeting or concern from any of them, and if looks could have killed, Ross Leighton would have been dead on the floor. Charming family.
“We had us a li'l car trouble,” Jack said, drawing Leighton's attention away from Laurel. “You got a tractor I could borrow? If we don't get that car out'a where it is quick, the swamp she's gonna swallow it right up tonight.”
“It's a poor night to be out on a tractor,” Ross said, chuckling, bubbling over with condescending bonhomie.
Jack slicked a hand over his damp hair, then clamped it on Ross Leighton's shoulder, flashing a grin as phony as the older man's laugh. “Ah, well, me, I don' mind gettin' a li'l wet,” he said, thickening his accent to the consistency of gumbo. “It's not like I'm wearin' no five-hun'erd-dollar suit, no?”
Ross cast a pained look at the handprint on the shoulder of his jacket as he led the way back down the hall to his study so he could call the plantation manager and order him to go out in the rain with Jack.
Laurel watched them go, wishing she could have been anywhere but here. She wasn't ready to deal with Vivian yet. She would have liked another day, maybe two, just to settle herself and gather her strength. She would at least have liked to look presentable instead of like a drowned mouse. Damn Ross Leighton—with that one offhand remark he had managed to make her feel like a ten-year-old all over again.
“Laurel, what on earth are you doing out with that man?” Vivian asked, her voice hushed and shocked. She pressed a bejeweled hand to her throat as if to make certain Jack hadn't somehow managed to steal the diamond-and-emerald pendant from around her neck.
Laurel sighed and shook her head. “It's nice to see you, too, Mama,” she said with the faintest hint of sarcasm. “Don't worry about our well-being. Jack hit his head, but other than that we're fine.”
“I can see that you're fine,” Vivian snapped.
She turned and went back into the parlor, expecting Laurel to follow, which she did, reluctantly. Vivian lowered herself gracefully onto one of a pair of elegant wing chairs done in cream moiré silk. Laurel ignored the implied dictate to occupy the other. That was a trap. She was wet and presumably dirty. She knew better than to touch the furniture while she was in such an appalling state of dishabille. She stationed herself on the other side of the gold Queen Anne settee, instead, and waited for the show to begin.
“You've been in town for days without so much as calling your mother!” Vivian declared. “How do you think that makes me feel?” She sniffed delicately and shook her head, pretending to blink away tears of hurt. “Why, just this morning, Deanna Corbin Hunt was asking me how you were doing, and what could I say to her? You remember Deanna, don't you? My dear good friend from school? The one who would have written you a letter of recommendation to Chi-O if you hadn't broken my heart and decided not to pledge?”
“Yes, Mama,” Laurel said dutifully and with resignation. “I remember Mrs. Hunt.”
“I can only imagine what they all think,” Vivian went on, eyes downcast, one hand fussing with a loose thread on the arm of the chair. “My daughter home for the first time in how long, and she isn't staying in my home, hasn't even bothered to call me.”
Laurel refrained from pointing out that telephones worked two ways. Vivian was determined to play the tragically ignored mother. She had never been one to see ironies, at any rate. “I'm sorry, Mama.”
“You should be,” Vivian murmured, casting big blue eyes full of hurt up at her daughter. “I've been feeling just ragged with worry, not knowing what to think. I swear, it'd like to have given me one of my spells.”
Guilt nipped at Laurel's conscience at the same time the cynic in her called her a sucker. She'd spent her entire childhood tiptoeing around the danger of causing one of her mother's “spells” of depression, and her feelings had engaged in a constant tug-of-war between pity and resentment. On the one hand, she felt Vivian couldn't help being the way she was; on the other, she felt her mother used her supposed fragility to control and manipulate. Even now, Laurel couldn't reconcile the polarized feelings inside her.
“How do you think it looks to my friends to have my daughter staying in town with her lesbian aunt, instead of with me?”
“You don't know that Aunt Caroline is a lesbian,” Laurel snapped. “And what difference would it make if she were?” she asked, pacing away from the settee, away from her mother, and toward the mahogany sideboard, where half a dozen decanters stood on a silver tray. She wished fleetingly that her stomach could have handled a drink, because her nerves sure as hell could have used one about now. But she turned away from it and went to the French doors to look out at the rain and the gathering gloom of night.
“It's nobody's business who Aunt Caroline sees,” she said. “Besides, I don't hear you complaining about the fact that your other daughter lives with Caroline.”
Vivian's perfectly painted mouth pressed into a tight line. “I quit concerning myself with Savannah's actions long ago.”
“Yes, you certainly did,” Laurel mumbled bitterly.
“What was that?”
She bit her lip and checked her temper. No purpose would be served by pursuing this line of conversation now. Vivian was the queen of denial. She would never accept blame for her daughters' not turning out the way she had planned.
She pulled in a calming breath and turned away from the window, her arms folded tightly against herself, despite the fact that her clothes were soaking wet. “I said, what's so wrong with Jack Boudreaux?”
Vivian gave her a truly scandalized look. “What isn't wrong with him? For heaven's sake, Laurel! The man barely speaks the same language we do. I have it on good authority that he comes from trash, and that's no great surprise to me now that I've met him.”
“If he were wearing a linen suit, would he be respectable then?”
“If he were wearing any less of a shirt, I would ask him to leave the house,” she stated unequivocally. “I don't care how famous he may be. He writes trash, and he is trash. Blood will tell, after all.”
“Will it?”
“My, you're snippy tonight,” Vivian observed primly. “That's hardly the way I raised you.”
She rose and went to the sideboard to prepare herself a drink. For medicinal purposes, of course. Very deliber
ately she selected ice cubes from the sterling ice bucket with sterling ice tongs and dropped them into a chunky crystal glass. “I'm simply trying to guide you, the way any good mother would. You don't always seem to know what's best, but I would have thought you had better sense than to get involved with a man like Jack Boudreaux. God knows, your sister wouldn't hesitate, but you . . . Coming away from your little trouble and all, especially . . .”
“Little trouble.” Laurel watched her mother splash gin over the ice and dilute it with tonic water. The aroma of the liquor, cool and piney, drifted to her nostrils. Cool and smooth and dry, like gin, that was Vivian. Never mar the surface of things with anything so ugly as the truth.
“I had a breakdown, Mama,” she said baldly. “My husband left me, my career blew up in my face, and I had a nervous breakdown. That's more than a ‘little trouble.' ”
True to form, Vivian sifted out the things she didn't want to discuss and discarded them. She settled on her chair once again, crossed her legs, took a sip of her drink. “You married down, Laurel. Wesley Brooks was spineless, besides. You can't expect a man like that to weather much of a storm.”
“Wesley was kind and sweet,” Laurel said in her ex-husband's defense, not impressing her mother in the least.
“A woman should marry strength, not softness,” Vivian preached. “If you had chosen a man of your own station, he would have insisted you give up law and raise his children, and none of this other unpleasantness would have happened.”
Laurel shook her head, stunned at the rationalization. If she had married her social equal, a well-bred chauvinist ass, then she could have avoided dealing with The Scott County Case. She could have given up the pursuit of justice and concentrated on more important things, like picking out a silver pattern and planning garden parties.
“We're having guests for dinner tomorrow.” Checking the slim gold watch she wore, Vivian set her drink aside and rose, delicately smoothing the wrinkles from her dress. “The guest list will provide more suitable company than what you've been keeping lately.”
“I'm really not feeling up to it, Mama.”
“But, Laurel, I've already told people you would be here!” she exclaimed, sounding for all the world like a spoiled, petulant teenager. “I was going to call you today and tell you all about it! You wouldn't deny me the chance to save face with my friends, would you?”
“Yes” hovered on her tongue, but Laurel swallowed it back. Be a good girl, Laurel. Do the proper thing, Laurel. Don't upset Mama, Laurel. She stared down at her squishy sneakers and sighed in defeat. “Of course not, Mama. I'll come.”
Vivian ignored the dolorous tone, satisfied with the answer. A smile blossomed like a rose on her lips. “Wonderful!” she exclaimed, suddenly fluttering with bright energy. She moved from table to mirror and back, smoothing her skirt, checking her earrings, gathering up her evening bag. “We'll sit down at one—after Sunday services, as always. And do wear something nice, Laurel,” she added, casting a sidelong look at her wilted, rumpled daughter. “Now, Ross and I are already late for our dinner reservations, so we've got to rush.”
“Yes, Mama,” Laurel murmured, gritting her teeth as her mother bussed her cheek. “Have a nice evening.”
Vivian swept out of the room, regal, imperious, victorious. Laurel watched her go, feeling impotent and beaten. If she hadn't been such a coward, she would have told her mother years ago to go to hell, as Savannah had. But she hadn't. And she wouldn't. Poor, pathetic little Laurel, still waiting for her mother to love her.
She snatched a glass off the sideboard, intending to hurl it across the room at the fireplace, but she couldn't manage to let herself go even that much.
Don't break anything, Laurel. Mama won't love you. Don't say the wrong thing, Laurel. Mama won't love you. Do as you're told, Laurel, or Mama won't love you.
The front door closed, and she listened to the engine of the Mercedes fire and the car's tires crunch over the crushed shell of the drive. Then she set the glass down, put her hands over her face, and cried.
Chapter
Seven
Jack stood in the doorway to the parlor, in the shadows of the now-darkened entry hall. The sound of Laurel's tears tore at him, raked across his heart, and drew not blood, but compassion. He knew nothing of this house, these people, but he knew what it was to be part of a dysfunctional family. He could remember only too well the bitter words, the angry fights, the air of tension that had made him and his sister tiptoe around the house, afraid that any sound they might make would spark an explosion from their father and bring the wrath of Blackie Boudreaux down on one or all of them.
He knew, and that was all the more reason he should have just left. Beauvoir was a nest of snakes. Only a fool would poke at it. He was no fool. He was many things, few of them admirable, but he was no fool.
Still, he didn't move. He stood there and watched as Laurel scrubbed the tears from her face and fought off the next wave of them. She fought to school her breathing into a regular rhythm, blinked furiously at the moisture gathering in her eyes, busied herself cleaning her glasses off with the tail of her shirt. Dieu, she was a tough little thing. She thought she was alone. There was no reason she shouldn't have just flung herself down on the fancy gold settee and bawled her eyes out if she wanted to. But she struggled to rein her emotions in, fought for control.
Before sympathy could take root too deeply, Jack pushed himself into motion.
“You ready to go, sugar?”
Laurel jumped at the sound of his voice. Fumbling, she put her glasses back on and smoothed a hand over her hair, which had begun to dry. “I . . . I thought you went to pull the car out.”
Jack grinned. “I lied.”
Too aware of being alone with him, she stared at him for several moments while the grandfather clock across the room ticktocked, ticktocked. “Why?”
He was prowling around the room, carelessly picking up knickknacks that had been in the family for generations, absently looking them over, setting them aside. He glanced up at her as he picked up a lead crystal paperweight and hefted it in his hand like a baseball.
“'Cause I didn' like your beau-perè. And I can't say I was all too fond of your maman, either.”
“They'll be crushed.”
“Naw . . .” He grinned that wicked grin again, tossed the paperweight up, and caught it with one hand. Laurel's heart jumped with it. “They'll be pissed. Late for dinner.”
They would be pissed. Vivian especially so. Laurel fought the urge to smile, her mouth quirking like the Mona Lisa's. “Well, you're easily amused.”
“So should we all be, angel. Life's too short.”
He was right beside her now, facing the opposite direction. His arm nearly brushed her shoulder as he reached out to touch something on the sideboard. She told herself to move, but before she could he turned and was behind her, his arms slipping around her, head bending down so he could whisper in her ear.
“So why don' we go find your old bedroom and spend some time amusin' each other, catin? Me, I'd like to get out'a these wet clothes and into somethin' . . . warm. . . .”
A shiver feathered over her skin as his breath trailed down the side of her neck and right on down the front of her blouse, stirring those strange embers of desire inside her. She tried to step away from him, but he held her easily, pressing his hands flat against her stomach. He nibbled his way down the side of her neck, nuzzling aside the collar of her blouse to sample the curve of her shoulder, and her pulse jumped.
Jack gave a low, throaty chuckle. She sure as hell wasn't thinking about Lady Vivian now. “Come on, sugar,” he murmured. “There's gotta be a whole lotta empty beds in this big ol' barn.”
“And they're going to stay that way,” Laurel said. This time when she tried to escape his hold, he let her go. She shied away and turned to face him. “How do you propose we get back to town?” she asked, trying to trample down all her tingling nerve endings with pragmatism.
Jac
k stuck his hands in his pockets and cocked a hip. “I called Alphonse Meyette. Him and Nipper's gonna come tow the 'Vette back to the station. I told him to stop down to the Landing and have Nipper drive my Jeep out. I'll give you a ride home, darlin'.”
Laurel scowled at the devilish grin. “Where have I heard that before?”
He leaned toward her, daring her to hold her ground, dark eyes snapping with mischief. “I'd rather give you a ride upstairs,” he said, his voice dropping to a smoky rumble.
She couldn't help laughing at his audacity. Crossing her arms, she shook her head. “I know all about your reputation with women, Mr. Boudreaux.”
He moved closer still, no more than inches from touching her, and she realized too late that he had her neatly trapped against the back of the settee. He planted a hand on either side of her and tilted his head as he lowered it, his gaze holding hers like a magnet. “Then how come we're not in bed yet?”
“God, the size of your ego is astonishing,” she said dryly.
The dark eyes sparkled, the smile widened, the dimples cut into his cheeks. He bobbed his eyebrows. “You oughta see the rest of me.”
The humor did her in. If his statement had indeed been ego, she might have slapped him, she certainly would have singed his ears with a scathing commentary regarding her opinion of Neanderthals who thought a man's worth and a woman's willingness all came down to a few inches of penis. But it was humor in those dark eyes, inviting her to share the joke, not be the butt of it. She tried to give him a stern look and failed, giving over helplessly to giggles instead.
“If I didn't have such healthy self-esteem,” Jack said as he leaned a hip against the settee and crossed his arms, “I might be offended.”
Laurel sniffed and pushed her glasses up on her nose, feeling better, feeling stronger. Vivian had knocked her badly off balance. Coming to Beauvoir had shaken loose too many feelings she wasn't ready to deal with. But Jack had distracted her from the dark emotional whirlpool that had threatened to suck her in, letting her get her legs back under her. She shot him a sideways glance, wondering if he had any idea she hadn't laughed in this house in twenty years.