by Tami Hoag
Savannah stared out at the heat. It seemed so thick, so oppressive, she thought she could see it hanging in the air above the bayou, pressing down on everything. It permeated the cabin, seeping in through the screens, soaking into everything, bringing with it the wild, feral scent of the swamp.
She brushed at the stray tendrils of hair that had escaped her topknot and shifted restlessly from one bare foot to the other. Sweat coated her skin like a fine mist, despite the fact that she wore nothing but a pair of ragged cutoff jeans and a black bandeau bikini top with a sheer white blouse hanging open over it.
The quiet was getting to her. She had promised Coop she wouldn't disturb him, but the day had come to a complete standstill. Even the birds had fallen silent beneath the blanket of heat. The sense of expectation that was so much a part of the swamp had thickened until everything waited, breath held, for something unknown, unseen.
The two-room cabin squatted on stilts above the murky green water. From Savannah's vantage point, no solid land was visible, only bald cypress, their thick hard trunks thrusting up from the water, scruffy, stubby branches sticking out like deformities, knobby knees jutting out at the bases. They looked like tortured creatures that had been cast under an enchantment and petrified so that they resembled death. Floating on the surface around their trunks were sheets of delicate green duckweed and rafts of water hyacinth, shimmering violet and looking deceptively fragile beneath the brutal sun. Lily pads lay scattered like an array of deep green Frisbees tossed randomly across the bayou.
She could see a partially submerged log lying at the edge of a thicket of cattails and knew it could well be an alligator. Not far to the south, the jagged stump of a dead cypress had become home to a nest of herons, and the pair posed there, motionless, looking like a woodcarver's exquisite craftings, their long necks arched and tucked, black beaks as straight and slender as fencing foils.
The birds' stillness irritated Savannah. She wanted them to squawk and fly away, huge wings beating the air. She wanted the gator to lunge for one of the fish that dimpled the surface of the water as they rose unseen to catch insects. She wanted the air to stir, wanted to see the reeds sway. Most of all she wanted Coop to move.
He sat at a rough plank table that was pushed up against one screened wall, staring out, making notes from time to time, nearly as motionless as the surroundings. He had bought the cabin as a fish camp, but he never fished when he met her here. He mostly stared. “Absorbing the profound intensity of life in the swamp,” he'd explained once. He would sit there for hours, seemingly doing nothing, then he would come to her and they would make love on the old moss-stuffed mattress.
This was their secret hideaway; an idea that usually appealed to Savannah. She liked going out on the bayou in her old flat-bottomed aluminum boat, not saying anything to anybody, winding her way into the dense, lush wilderness to meet her lover. But today something about the arrangement grated on her. She blamed it on the fight she'd had with Laurel.
“Why do you have to do that? Why do you have to degrade yourself that way?”
She jerked around and burned a hole in Cooper's broad back with her glare. “Haven't you stared out that screen long enough?”
Coop sat back, wincing a little at the stiffness that had settled in his joints. He scratched a hand back through his blond hair like a man just waking from a long, deep sleep, and looked at Savannah over his shoulder. He was struck as always by her raw sexuality and by the soft, stunning natural beauty she had seen fit to make slightly grotesque with collagen and silicone. She was so alluring, so flawed, she never failed to captivate him utterly.
He longed to turn and jot those thoughts down in his notebook, but he refrained. Savannah's mood seemed as volatile as the weather—a tense stillness that hid a building storm. Instead, he put down his pen, rose and stretched.
“I don't mean to ignore you, love,” he mumbled in his low, smooth voice. “But I have to get my notes made. I'm doing an APR broadcast from N'Awlins next weekend.”
Savannah's eyes lit up like a child's. “You'll take me with you?”
It was more a statement than a question. Coop doubted she even heard him when he said, “We'll see.” She was already racing ahead, making plans for them to meet in one of the cottages of the Maison de Ville, chattering about dinner in her favorite restaurants, the shopping she would do, the clubs they might visit.
Of course, he wouldn't take her. While he loved her, he knew that love must be contained within very definite boundaries. If he allowed it to escape the small pen of Bayou Breaux, it would run wild and in its delirium destroy itself and them. Like a fine wine, it was something to be sipped and savored. Savannah would drink it all in greedy, sloppy gulps, spilling it down her, splashing it all over, laughing madly.
He stroked a hand over the back of her head down to her neck and smiled with pleasure as she arched into his touch like a cat.
“Let's get you out of these clothes,” he murmured, stepping away from her, reaching for one cuff of the gossamer blouse she wore.
“No.” Savannah pulled her hand back, smiling shyly to cover her shame. Laurel's words were too fresh in her mind. Coop would think the same when he saw the marks on her wrists—that she degraded herself. She didn't want to hear that from him, not today. Today she wanted to pretend they had a normal life. She sent him a coy look. “I want to wear it for you.”
He said nothing, but stood and watched as she shed the bikini top and the cutoffs, leaving only the sheer white blouse to cover her. The picture she presented was more tantalizing than if she had been completely naked. She knew because she had stood in front of the mirror in her room and studied the look. Provocative. Dressed but not decent. The sheer fabric was a misty barrier that invited a man to reach past it to the treasures of her lush feminine body.
Time lost its meaning for her. They could have been in bed a week. She wanted it to last forever. With his slow, gentle lovemaking, Cooper made her think it could last forever, that they had all the time in the world instead of just a few stolen hours.
And time meant nothing as they lay together afterward, skin sticky with their mingled sweat, the air redolent with the exotic musk of sex and perfume, the dusty scent of the moss-stuffed mattress. They lay touching, despite the heat, limbs tangled, hearts thudding slowly, their breathing shallow, as if to keep from disturbing the peace that had settled around them.
This was happiness, Savannah thought, being here with Coop. She loved him so much it frightened her. Too good to be true. Too good to be hers. Sex with him was so different from what she sought out with others. With others she felt wild, wicked. With Coop there was nothing depraved, debauched, dissipated, dissolute. She felt all the things she had spent her life yearning for but never finding. She shivered a little at the thought. Too good to be true.
“Will you marry me, Coop?” The words seemed to spill directly out of her overflowing heart, and instantly a part of her wished them back, because she knew deep down what his answer would be.
The air hummed with silence for a few moments, then with the electric whine of cicadas, then with the tension of an answer unspoken. Tears stung Savannah's eyes and seared her heart like acid, and all the gold wore off the afterglow, leaving her feeling like what everyone said she was—a slut, a whore, not deserving of anything like the love of a good man.
“Why do you have to degrade yourself that way?”
Because that's what whores, do, Baby.
Coop sighed and sat up with his back against the headboard as Savannah got out of bed. “I can't give you that commitment, Savannah,” he said sadly. “You know that. I have a wife.”
She stepped into her shorts and jerked them up, her fingers fumbling with the fastenings as she shot him a burning look from under her lashes. “You have a vegetable.”
“I can't abandon her, Savannah. Don't ask me to.”
Frustration swelled and burst inside her like a festered wound, its hot, caustic poison shooting through her, pene
trating every muscle, every fiber. Unable to stand it, she clamped her hands on her head and doubled over, a wild animal scream tearing from her throat.
“She doesn't even know who you are!” she sobbed.
He just sat there, looking handsome and sad, his blue eyes locked on her as if he were gazing at her for the very last time, memorizing her every feature.
“But I know who I am,” he whispered, that low, smooth voice capturing futility and fatalism and a sense of inevitability she recognized but didn't want to hear.
He would never leave Astor as long as she was alive. And Savannah knew he would never marry her because wife was not the role he had cast her in in his real-life drama of the South. Unless she could purge herself somehow, cut out and dispose of what she had been all these years, and that seemed as impossible a task as cutting out a piece of the ocean.
She stared at him through tear-washed eyes for several silent moments, thinking she could feel her heart shatter like a glass ornament. Then she turned and left the cabin without a word, hating him, hating herself for what she was . . . and for what she would never be.
Chapter
Fifteen
Frenchie's was a madhouse. Annie had failed to show up for work, and one of the other waitresses was out sick, leaving T-Grace to wait tables herself. She stormed around the bar at a lightning pace, slinging plates of red beans and rice, serving beer, taking orders and barking out her own as she went. The heat and humidity had combined with her short temper to leave her looking frazzled and dangerous. Her red hair was a cloud of frizz around her head. Her eyes looked ready to pop out of her heat-polished face. She stopped in a clearing between tables and brushed her bangs off her forehead with the back of a hand, blowing a cooling breath upward as Laurel approached her.
“You get dat Jimmy Lee thrown in jail or what, chère?” she asked without preamble.
“He's been officially warned off,” Laurel said, raising her voice to be heard above the racket of pool games, loud talk, and jukebox Zydeco.
T-Grace gave a derisive snort and propped a hand on her skinny hip. “Ovide, he warn dat bastard's ass off with some buckshot next time he come 'round.”
“I wouldn't advise that,” Laurel said patiently, silently thankful the Delahoussayes hadn't already resorted to such measures. The Cajuns had their own code of folk justice, a tradition that predated organized law enforcement in these parts. “If he bothers you again, call the sheriff and press charges.”
“If he bothers us again,” T-Grace said, a sly smile pulling at one corner of her thin mouth, “we're gonna need to hire more help. All dat rantin' and ravin' what he done on television was like free advertisin' for Frenchie's. My Ovide, he's in a panic tryin' to serve ever'body.”
Laurel turned to see Ovide, stoic as ever, planted behind the bar, filling mugs and popping the tops off long-neck bottles, sweat beading on his bald spot like dew on a pumpkin. Leonce was playing backup bartender, his Panama hat tipped back on his head. As he slid a bottle across the bar to a customer, a grin slashed white across his close-cropped beard in counterpoint to the scar that ran red across his cheek.
“So what's the difference between a dead lawyer and a dead skunk in the middle of the road?” the customer asked. “There's skid marks in front of the skunk.”
Leonce howled at the old joke and moved to dig another beer out of the cooler. Jack swiveled around on his bar stool, grinning like the Cheshire cat as his gaze landed smack on Laurel. He had made a token concession to the “No Shirt, No Shoes, Get the Hell Out” sign that hung on the wall behind the bar, but the red team shirt from the Cypress Lanes Bowling Alley hung open down the front, framing a wedge of muscular chest and flat belly.
T-Grace reached out and patted Laurel's cheek, her eyes glowing as they darted between une belle femme and Jack. “Merci, ma petite. You done a fine job, you. Now come sit you pretty self down and have some supper before the wind comes up and blows you away, you so little!”
She took hold of Laurel's arm with a grip that could have cracked walnuts and ushered her to the bar, where she ordered Taureau Hebert to go in search of some other place to sit his lazy behind, thereby vacating the seat next to Jack.
“Hey, Ovide!” Jack called, his devilish gaze on Laurel. “How 'bout a champagne cocktail for our heroine here?”
Laurel gave him a look and busied her hands arranging her skirt. Ovide slid a foaming mug of beer in front of her. Jack leaned over conspiratorially and murmured, “What he lacks in sophistication, he makes up for in sensitivity.”
A chuckle bubbled up, and Laurel shook her head. She couldn't seem to stay mad at him, no matter what he did or said or made her feel.
“Don't you ever work, Boudreaux?” she asked, frowning at him.
His grin stretched, dimples biting deep in his lean cheeks. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. All the time.” He leaned closer, bracing one hand on the back of her stool, resting the other on her knee. His voice dropped a husky notch, and his breath tickled the side of her neck. “I'm workin' on you now, 'tite chatte.”
Laurel arched a brow. “Is that right? Well,” she drawled, poking him hard in the ribs with her thumb, “you've been laid off, hot shot.”
Jack rubbed his side and pouted. “You're mean.” His scowl, however, was ruined by the gleam in his eyes as he added, “I like that in a woman.”
“You mind your manners, Jack,” T-Grace said with a wry smile as she set a steaming plate of food down in front of Laurel. “This one, she's gonna show you what's what, just like what she did wit' dat damn preacher.”
Jack grinned and winked at Laurel, and she felt a wave of warmth sweep through her that had nothing to do with the heat of the day. It had to do with laughter, with friends, with a sense of belonging. The realization flashed like a lightbulb going on above her head. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt welcome anywhere besides Aunt Caroline's house.
In Scott County she had always been an outsider, and then a pariah as she had leveled accusations at people no one wanted to believe capable of evil. She had told herself it didn't matter, that the only thing that mattered was justice, but it had mattered. She would have given anything back then to have someone in the community believe in her, support her, smile at her, joke with her.
She thought back to the first night she had come in here and remembered the sense of isolation that had enveloped her and the loneliness that had accompanied it. In just a matter of days the people here had accepted her, and acceptance was something she had ached for. She had called that need a weakness, but maybe it wasn't so much weak as it was human.
Dr. Pritchard's voice came back to her, soft and steady. “You're not perfect, Laurel, you're human.”
“So, you managed to save the day again, did you, Baby?”
Savannah's voice cut sharply into her thoughts. Laurel turned toward her sister, a fist of anxiety tightening in her belly. Savannah stood with a tall drink in one hand, the other propped on her hip. Her breasts were threatening to spill over the edge of her black bikini top, the sheer blouse she wore over it offering no backup modesty. Her hair was a mess, falling out of its topknot in curling dark ribbons.
“It was nothing so dramatic as that,” Laurel said, automatically downplaying her accomplishment, as she had done all her life.
“Come on, Baby,” Savannah said with a tight, unpleasant smile, her pale blue eyes shining too bright. “Don't be modest. We're a helluva team, you and me. You knock 'em on their butts, and I screw their brains out.”
Laurel clenched her jaw and squeezed her eyes shut for an instant, trying to gather strength and patience. Jack caught the action and turned to Savannah with a frown.
“Hey, sugar, why you don' give it a rest for one night, huh?”
“Ooooh!” Savannah drew back with an exaggerated expression of mock fear, pressing her free hand to her throat. “What's this? Jack Boudreaux rising to an occasion that doesn't have its legs spread for him?”
“Bon Dieu,” he muttered, s
haking his head.
“What?” Savannah demanded, two vodka tonics beyond reason, too upset with the turns her life was taking to give a damn. “I'm too crude for you, Jack? That's hard to imagine, considering the way you butcher people in your books. I can't imagine anything offending you.”
She wedged herself between his stool and Laurel's, deliberately brushing his arm with her breast, sending him her most sultry expression. “We ought to go a couple rounds, Jack,” she purred, raking a hot gaze from his crotch to his belly to his bare chest, finally landing on his face. “Just to find out.”
He met her look evenly, his dark eyes intense, his mouth set in a grim line.
Laurel slipped down off her stool, doing her best to control the fine trembling in her limbs. “Sister, come on,” she said, trying to take the glass from Savannah's fingers. “Let's go home.”
Savannah turned on her, angry that Laurel was always the one with the cooler head, always in control, always respectable and bright and perfect.
“What's the matter, Baby? Am I being an embarrassment?” she asked, as angry with herself as she was with Laurel. “You'll never say so in here, will you? Don't make a public scene. Don't call attention to yourself. Never air the dirty laundry in plain sight. Christ,” she sneered, “you're just as bad as Vivian.”
She jerked her hand free of Laurel's grasp, sloshing vodka and tonic over the rim of her glass, her expression something that bordered so closely on hate that it took Laurel's breath away.
“You go on and be little Miss Prim and Proper,” she sneered, her voice laced with venom. “Always do the right thing, Laurel. Me, I've got better ways to spend my time.”
She whirled around, almost losing her balance, the vodka numbing her equilibrium, as well as her inhibitions. Willing the floor to stop pitching, she walked away, her sights set on the pool players, her hips swinging, a hard laugh ringing out of her as she caught sight of Ronnie Peltier.
Laurel pressed a hand to her mouth and tensed against the emotions that were buffeting her like hurricane winds. She couldn't seem to get ahead. Every time she thought she was getting her feet under her, she got knocked back a step. She pulled in on herself, not hearing the noise of the bar, not seeing the look of concern Jack was giving her. All she heard was her pulse roaring in her ears. All she saw was the mistake she had made in coming home.