by Tami Hoag
“People who get up this early shouldn't look so happy.”
Savannah stood in the open French doors to the hall, looking sleep-rumpled and groggy in her champagne silk robe. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders in wild disarray, and mascara smudges ringed her eyes. She looked tough, dissipated by dissolute living, like a hooker the morning after. The glow of excitement had diffused, the allure had vanished with the moon.
She pushed herself away from the door and stepped out onto the gallery, barefoot, one hand tucked into the deep pocket of her robe, the other toying with the heart on her necklace.
Laurel tried to think of an innocuous comeback line, but she couldn't get past the hurt that still lingered from the night before. “Would you like some tea?” she asked quietly.
Savannah shook her head, her lips tightening against a bittersweet smile. That was Baby, falling back on good manners to hide her feelings. If all else failed her, she would at least be a gracious hostess. Such a little belle. Vivian would have been proud of her.
“I want to apologize for yesterday. I said a lot of things I shouldn't have.” The words came out in a rush of embarrassment and contrition. She busied her fingers twisting the sash of her robe. “And I never should have been such a bitch to you last night, but I was just feeling so hurt and so damn angry—”
Laurel set her cup down and rose, concern knitting her brows. “I didn't mean to hurt you, Sister—”
“No, not you, Baby. Cooper.” She stared down at the table through a bright sheen of tears, feeling as fragile as Laurel's china teacup. “I don't know what I'm going to do,” she said, trying to smile, shaking her head at the futility of it all. “I love that man something awful.”
She turned and walked away a few steps, breathing deep of the sweet, dew-damp scents of the garden—flowers and sweet olive and boxwood—green, vibrant scents of life. As if she could scrub away the feeling of despair that clung to her, she rubbed her hands over her face. But a dozen other feelings gurgled up inside her like tainted water from an underground spring—guilt and anger, remorse and jealousy. She didn't want any of it.
Trying to tamp it all down, she turned back toward Laurel, who stood watching her with wide eyes and a serious face. For just an instant she was that same little waif who had looked to Savannah for love and support when they had no one else to turn to, and Savannah felt a welcome rush of strength.
“It doesn't matter,” she said, finding a smile for her baby sister. “It doesn't have anything to do with us. I won't let anything come between us.”
Laurel went into her sister's arms, vowing to say nothing about Conroy Cooper or any other man Savannah involved herself with. She couldn't change Savannah, couldn't change the way Savannah thought about her past, and those were not the reasons she had come home in the first place. This was what she had come for, she thought as she hugged her sister—unconditional love and support. That had to work both ways. And so she said nothing about the scent of stale perfume and stale sex that clung to Savannah.
“I won't let anything come between us,” Savannah said again, vehemently, her embrace tightening around Laurel's slender frame.
“You might let some air come between us,” Laurel teased. “You're squeezing the life out of me.”
A nervous laugh rattled out of her, and she loosened her hold, stepping back, settling her hands on Laurel's shoulders. “Maybe I will have a cup of that tea, after all. We can sit out here and chat. You've made the garden so pretty again. We'll make some plans.”
She rushed back into the house, hurrying as if she were afraid the moment would pass and the wall of tension would rise up between them again. Laurel settled into her chair, reaching for the matchbook she had found on the seat of her car the night before. Savannah's, she supposed. She turned it around and around in her fingers, absently, just something to busy her hands. Not five minutes passed before Savannah returned with a tray bearing the teapot, a cup for herself, and a plate heaped with powdery beignets.
“These are left over from yesterday,” she chattered, arranging everything to her satisfaction on the table. “I just popped them into the microwave to warm them up and sprinkled fresh sugar on them. Have one,” she ordered, suddenly full of life and hope. “Have half a dozen. If anyone ever needed to load up on Mama Pearl's cooking, it's you, Baby. You don't have an ounce to spare.”
Laurel tossed the matchbook down on the tabletop between them and reached for a beignet. “You left that in the car.”
Savannah picked it up and sat back, studying it idly as she nibbled on the corner of her breakfast. She said nothing for a long moment, staring at the bloodred square blankly, then dropped it. “I use a lighter.”
A vague sense of unease shifted through Laurel. She set her beignet aside on her napkin, her gaze moving from her sister's expressionless face to the matchbook. An elaborate Mardi Gras mask was stamped in black above the words “Le Mascarade” and a French Quarter address in New Orleans. “If it's not yours, then how did it get in my car?”
A careless shrug was her only answer. Savannah pushed her chair back from the table and rose. “I forgot the sugar for my tea.”
As she padded back into the house, Laurel fingered the matchbook, a strange chill pebbling the flesh of her arms with goose bumps.
“Bonjour, mon ange. For you.”
Laurel gasped as a perfect red rose appeared before her. She hadn't heard Jack's approach, hadn't even caught a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye. His ability to appear and disappear seemingly from and into thin air rattled her, and she narrowed her eyes to compensate with annoyance.
“You damn near gave me a heart attack.”
Jack frowned, leaning over her, breathing in the clean scent of her hair. “Is that any way to thank a man for bringing you flowers?”
She gave a little sniff of disdain but accepted the rose. “You probably stole it from one of Aunt Caroline's bushes.”
“It's no less a gift,” he said, leaning closer, his gaze fastening on her lips.
Anticipation fluttered in her throat. “How can it be a gift if it's something I already possessed?”
He lowered his head another fraction of an inch, closing the space between them to little more than a deep breath. His lashes drifted down, thick and black. “Isn't that just like a lawyer?” he whispered. “If I offered you the moon, you'd probably want to see my deed to it.”
Any retort she might have made was lost. Any thought she might have had in her head vanished as Jack settled his mouth against hers. He kissed her deeply, intimately, leisurely, reminding her graphically and frankly of the intimacy they had shared the night before.
When he lifted his mouth from hers at last, he made a low, purring sound of satisfaction in his throat, then chuckled wickedly. “Why you blushin', ma jolie fille?” he asked, his voice dark and smoky. “You gave me a helluva lot more than a kiss last night.”
“But you probably didn't have an audience, did you, Jack?” Savannah asked sharply. She stepped out from behind a pillar and set a silver sugar bowl on the table, never taking her eyes off him. She picked up the red matchbook and tapped it against her cheek. “Or have you led my baby sister that far astray?”
He straightened, his eyes cold, his face set in a stony mask. “That's none of your damn business, Savannah.”
“Yes, it is,” she argued. “I won't have you fucking my baby sister, Jack.”
“Why is that? Because I didn't do you first?”
She threw the matchbook down, color rising high into her cheeks. “You son of a bitch.”
“Stop it!” Laurel snapped, shoving her chair back and rising to her feet. She turned toward her sister, a part of her shocked by the pure hatred she saw burning like pale blue flame in Savannah's eyes as she stared at Jack, a part of her too annoyed to pay attention to it. “Sister, I appreciate your concern, but I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
Savannah blinked at her, looking stunned. “No, you can't. You need me.”
“I need your support,” Laurel qualified. “I don't need you screening my dates.”
Savannah picked out four words from the rest and drove them through her own heart like a stake. “I don't need you.” Baby didn't need her, didn't want her, preferred the company of Jack Boudreaux. Panic clawed through her, and fury poured out of the wounds as hot and red as blood. Her one chance to do something important was being snatched away from her. Everything she wanted was always beyond her reach. Coop. Laurel. Baby was turning away from her for a man. And she was left with nothing, just another slut like every other slut in south Louisiana.
“After all I've done for you,” she muttered, her lush mouth twisting at the bitterness, at the irony. “After all I've done for you, you don't need me.”
Laurel's jaw dropped. “That's not what I said!”
“Well, fine,” Savannah went on. “You go on and have a high old time with him and just forget about me. I don't need you, either. You're nothing but an ungrateful little hypocrite, and I can't think why I ever would have saved you from anything.”
Tears shone like diamonds in her eyes. She caught at her artificially plump lower lip with her teeth, raking color into it. “I never will again,” she vowed, her voice choked and petulant. “You can count on that. I never will again.”
“Savannah!” Laurel started after her as she whirled and ran into the house, but Jack caught her by the shoulder.
“Let her go, angel. She's in no mood to listen. Let her cool off.”
Seconds later the Acura roared to life at the side of the house, and then came the angry screech of tires on asphalt.
Laurel turned and slammed her fist into Jack's shoulder, not to punish him, but because she needed to hit something, anything. “I don't understand what's going on with her!”
“She's jealous.”
“No,” she murmured, leaning into him as the anger seeped out of her muscles, leaving her trembling. “It's not as simple as that.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He heaved a sigh and slipped his arms around her, resting his chin atop her head. “C'est vrai, life's a bitch. Nothin's ever simple. . . .”
Certainly not in Laurel's life. She seemed interminably tangled in a web of obligations. He wanted to cut her loose, if only for a little while, give her a break . . . have her all to himself so he might pretend she could be his.
“Except fishin',” he said, going with the impulse that had brought him here at this ungodly hour in the first place. “You ready to come fishin' with me, ma petite?”
“I never said I'd go fishing with you,” Laurel said, frowning.
“Sure you did. Last night.” He tucked a knuckle under her chin and tipped her face up. “You whispered it in my ear while we were makin' love. You said I could take you anywhere. I'm taking you fishin'.”
They went out in a pirogue Laurel had more than a few reservations about. Slender and shallow as a pea pod, it was made of weathered cypress planking and bobbed like a cork on the inky, oily surface of the bayou. Laurel stood on the dock for a long moment, looking dubious, as Jack loaded fishing gear into the bow.
“Are you sure this thing is safe?”
“Oh, absolutely,” he drawled, adding a cooler to the cargo in the nose of the boat. The pirogue dipped and swayed on the water as if protesting even that slight load. Unconcerned, Jack climbed in, braced his feet, and reached a hand up to help her aboard. “An old friend of mine made this pirogue for me. As he would say, ‘This boat, she rides the dew.' ”
Laurel swallowed hard as she stepped down into the craft and felt it bob beneath her. She grabbed hold of Jack's biceps for an instant to steady herself and to pull him with her if she went overboard. “Was he sober at the time?”
“Hard to say,” Jack mused, easing her down on the boat's plank seat. He jammed a red USL Ragin' Cajuns baseball cap down on her head and stepped deftly over the seat to take up the push-pole at the stern. “Ol' Lucky Doucet, he used to be some kind of wild.”
He pushed off, and they moved away from the dock, the pirogue seeming to skate across the water, as graceful as a blade on ice. Laurel took a deep breath and willed herself to relax.
“Used to be?” Tipping the oversize cap back on her head, she twisted around to look at him. “Is he dead?”
“Naw, he's married. Got himself a beautiful wife, a little daughter, another baby on the way.”
“Busy man,” Laurel said dryly.
Happy man, Jack thought, sinking the fork of the push-pole into the muddy bottom and sending the pirogue gliding forward. A hard, hollow ball of longing lodged in his chest, taking up valuable air space, and he scowled and did his best to smash it with a mental mallet of self-punishment. He'd had his chance, and he'd blown it in the worst possible way. He didn't deserve another.
Pushing the dark thoughts from his mind, he turned his attention on Laurel and all the little puzzle pieces he had yet to find to complete his picture of her. She sat on the hard plank seat of the pirogue with the posture of a debutante, her gaze scanning the far bank of the bayou, where an alligator was sunning itself. Even in her baggy clothes and the too-big cap she looked feminine and graceful. He shook his head at that, a wry smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
She wasn't his type. Not at all. These days he usually went for curvy, carefree girls with big breasts and uncomplicated brains, women who wanted nothing more from him than a good tussle between the sheets. He didn't know what Laurel Chandler would want. She claimed she wanted nothing from him, and yet he felt something about her drawing on him like a magnet. Instinct told him his curiosity could be dangerous, but the warning wasn't strong enough to overpower the attraction. Besides, he told himself smugly, he couldn't get in any deeper than he wanted to.
He piloted the pirogue to a favorite fishing hole, a place where willows shaded the banks, and bass, bream, and crappie cruised among the cypress stands and wallowed in the sluggish water edging the thickets of reeds and cattails. Laurel passed on the offer of a pole and instead pulled Evil Illusions out of the canvas tote bag she had brought with her. The morning passed to the trill of cicadas, the whine of a fishing reel, the splash of fish fighting against a future in a frying pan. Conversation became as sporadic and desultory as the breeze.
Laurel found the quiet soothing in the wake of Savannah's blowup. With an effort she pushed the questions about her sister's behavior to the back of her mind and tried to lose herself in the pages of Jack's book. Not a difficult thing to do. Despite his show as a simple Cajun boy, he was an excellent writer, talented, clever. He had the ability to pull the reader into the story as if through a portal into another dimension. The visual images were sharp, dark; the emotions so thick and electric, they left her skin tingling. The fear that built from paragraph to paragraph was almost unbearably intense. The sense of evil that overshadowed it all was at once subtle, insidious, and overwhelming.
Strong impressions from a man who claimed he didn't care much about anything that went on in the world around him except having a good time. No, she thought, watching as he cast gracefully toward the edge of a tangle of water hyacinth, these impressions, these dark fantasies didn't come from Jack the Party Animal. They came from the other Jack. The man with the burning gaze and the aura of danger. The man who stood silent and watchful behind the facade of the rogue.
“Where does it come from?” she asked as they spread a blanket on shore, preparing to have lunch.
“What?”
“What you write.”
Everything about him went utterly still for a split second, as if her question had literally stopped him cold. But he recovered so quickly, Laurel almost convinced herself she had imagined the response.
“It's just made up,” he said, smoothing a corner of the blue plaid blanket. “That's why they call it fiction, sugar.”
“I don't believe you just sit down, put your hands on a keyboard, and come up with that stuff.”
“Why not?”
“Because it's too good.�
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He gave a dismissive shake of his head. “It's a talent, a trick, that's all.” Some trick, he thought bitterly. Just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein. Bleed out all the poison that simmered inside him.
Laurel knelt on the blanket, studying him with her head tilted on one side. “Some writers say it's like method acting. That they mentally live through every action and emotion.”
“And others will tell you it's like doing paint-by-numbers.”
“What do you say?”
“I say, I'm too damn hungry to play twenty questions,” he growled, stalking her across the blanket on his knees. A wicked smile played at the corners of his mouth and carved his dimples into his lean cheeks.
Nerve endings on red alert, Laurel held her ground as he approached. It seemed amazing to her, the way her body came alive and aware of him. Her heart picked up a beat, her breasts grew heavy and tingled with electricity.
“What's for lunch?” she asked breathlessly as he stopped before her, a scant inch of charged air separating them.
“You.”
He knocked the baseball cap from her head with a flick of his wrist. Then she was in his arms, immersed in his embrace, lost in his kiss. It occurred to her vaguely that he was trying to distract her from her line of questioning, but she couldn't bring herself to object to his method. His touch unleashed a host of needs that had lain dormant inside her until last night. Now they leaped and twisted, wild with the prospect of freedom.
Afterward they dozed exhausted, replete. Jack settled on his side with one leg thrown across Laurel's. She turned toward him and curled one small hand against his chest, too hot to cuddle, but needing to maintain contact with him. And they lay there in the quiet, in the heat, listening to the cicadas and the songbirds and the pounding of their own hearts.