Authors: Tami Hoag
“I told you I was bad, angel,” he said, stepping back from her. “You know what they say, blood will tell. Ol' Blackie, he always told me I'd be no good. I shoulda listened. I coulda saved a whole lotta people a whole lotta grief.”
He drifted away from her in body and mind, losing himself in a past that was as murky as the bayou. Wandering across the room, past the heavy four-poster with its sensuous drape of white netting and its tangle of bedclothes, he found his way to another set of French doors and stood looking out into the dark. The wind had come up again and chattered in the branches of the trees, a natural teletype of the next storm boiling up from the Gulf. Lightning flashed in the distance, casting his hard, hawkish profile in silver.
Laurel moved toward him, skirting the foot of the bed. She should have left him. Regardless of the details she was waiting to hear, he was trouble. She may even have had cause to be frightened of him—Jack, with his dual personality and his dark secrets, a temper as volatile as the weather in the Atchafalaya. But she took another step and another, her heart drumming behind her breastbone. And the question slipped past her defenses and out of her mouth.
“What was her name?”
“Evangeline,” he whispered. Thunder rattled the glass in the windows, and rain began to fall, the scent of it cool and green and sweet. “Evie. As pretty as a lily, as fragile as spun glass,” he said softly. “She was another of my trophies. Like the house, like the Porsche, like crocodile shoes and suits from Italy. It never penetrated the fog that she loved me.” He ducked his head, as if he still couldn't believe it.
“She was the perfect corporate wife for a while. Dinner parties and cocktail hours. Iron my shirts and brew my coffee.”
Amazed by the sting of his words, Laurel wrapped an arm around an elegantly carved bedpost and anchored herself to it. This woman had shared his life, his bed, had known all his habits and quirks. But she was gone now, forever. “What happened?”
“She wanted a life with me. I loved my work. I loved the game, the challenge, the rush. I was in the office by seven-thirty. Didn't go home most nights until eleven, or one, or two. The job was everything.
“Evie started telling me she wasn't happy, that she couldn't live that way. I thought she was temperamental, cloying, selfish, punishing me for working hard so I could give her fine things.”
Regret burned like acid in his throat, behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw against it, whipped himself mentally to get past it. “The first Sweetwater story had broken, and I was working like mad to cover the company's ass in triplicate. I barely took time to shave or eat.”
Tension rattled through him like the thunder shaking the windowpanes as the scenes played out in his memory. His emotions rushed ahead frantically, knowing the ending, torn between the need to protect himself and the need to punish. He drew in a sharp breath through his nostrils and curled a fist into the fragile old lace of the curtain.
“One night I came home in a bitch of a mood. Two o'clock. Hadn't had a meal all day. There wasn't anything in the kitchen. I went looking for Evie, spoiling for a fight. Found her in the bathroom. In the tub. She'd slit her wrists.”
“Oh, God, Jack.” Laurel's arm tightened around the pillar. She brought a hand to her mouth to hold back the cry that tore through her, but the tears still flooded and fell. Through them she watched Jack struggle with the burden of his guilt. His broad shoulders were braced against it, trembling visibly. In the lightning glow she could see his face, his mouth twisting as he fought, chin quivering.
“The note she left was full of apologies,” he said, his voice thickening, cracking. He cleared his throat and managed a bitter smile. “‘I'm sorry I couldn't make you need me, Jack. I'm sorry I couldn't make you love me, Jack.' Sorry for the inconvenience. I think she did it in the bathtub so she wouldn't leave a mess.”
This time when the urge came, Laurel let go of the post and let herself go to him. “She made her own choice, Jack,” she murmured. “It wasn't your fault.”
When she started to lay her hand against the taut muscles of his back, he twisted away and swung around to face her. His eyes were burning with anger and shame, swimming with tears he refused to let fall.
“The hell it wasn't!” he roared. “She was
my
responsibility!
I
was supposed to take care of her.
I
was supposed to look out for her.
I
was supposed to be there when she needed me.
Bon Dieu,
I might as well have taken the blade to her myself!”
He whirled and cleared a marble-topped table with a violent sweep of his arm, sending antique porcelain figurines crashing to their doom on the cypress floor. Laurel flinched at the sound of shattering china, but didn't back away.
“You couldn't have known—”
“That's right, I couldn't have,” he snapped. “I was never there. I was too busy manipulating the illegal disposal of toxic waste.” He threw back his head and laughed in sardonic amazement. “Jesus, I'm a helluva guy, aren't I? Huh? A helluva match for you, Lady Justice.”
She pressed her lips together and said nothing. She couldn't condone what he'd done at Tristar—it was both illegal and immoral—but neither could she find it in her to condemn him. She knew what it was to get caught up in the job, to be driven to it by demons from the past. And she knew what guilt could do to a person, the changes it could wreak, the pain of it eating inside.
“You didn't kill her, Jack. She had other choices.”
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice thin and trembling, his face a mask of torment. “And what about the baby she was carrying? Did he have a choice?”
The pain was as sharp as ever. As sharp as the razor blade that had ended his dream of a wife and a family. It sliced at his heart, severed what was left of his strength. He turned back to the French doors and leaned into the one that stood closed, pressing his face against the cool glass, crying silently while rain washed across the other side, soft and cleansing, never touching him. He could still see the pathologist's face, could still hear the disbelief in his voice.
“You mean she hadn't told you? She was nearly three months along. . . .”
His child. His chance to atone for all his father's sins. There and gone before he even had the joy of knowing. Gone because of him, just as Evie was gone because of him.
Not for the first time he thought he was the one who should have sliced open a vein and drained his life away.
Laurel slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his back, her tears dampening the soft cotton of his T-shirt. She could see it all so clearly. Jack, so eager to prove himself, scrambling up that sheer granite face of the odds that were stacked against his making anything of himself. Then all of it crumbling beneath him, sucking him down and crushing him with the weight of the debris. He must have thought he'd had everything he ever wanted right in the palm of his hand, and then it was swept away, and every line of degradation his father had ever hammered into him must have come rushing back.
He shoved her away so suddenly, so unexpectedly, Laurel nearly fell. She stumbled back against the table, her shoes crunching over a fortune in shattered porcelain. Jack wheeled on her, his face dark with rage.
“Get out! Get outta here! Get outta my life!” he shouted in her face. “Get out before I kill you too!”
Laurel just stared at him, at the wild gleam of pain in his eyes, the muscles and tendons that stood out in his neck, the heavy rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. She should have run like hell. Inside he was as fractured as any of the statuettes grinding to dust beneath her feet. She wasn't in much better shape herself. She certainly wasn't strong enough to take on his healing too.
She should have run like hell. She didn't.
She fell in love.
He was trying to push her away, not because he didn't care, but because he cared too much; not because he didn't feel, but because his heart was so badly battered. Losing her heart to him wasn't the smart thing or the timely thing. It wasn't the choice she would have made with her logical, practical attorney's mind, but logic had nothing to do with it.
She met his pain and fury with her chin up and her eyes clear. “Why should I go?”
Jack stared at her, dumbfounded. He thought he could actually feel the gears in his mind slipping. “Why?” he repeated, incredulous. He swept his hands back over his hair, turned around in a circle, stared at her some more. “How can you ask that? After all I've just told you, how can you stand there and ask that?”
“You didn't kill your wife, Jack,” she said gently. “You didn't kill your child. You're not going to kill me, either. Why should I leave?”
“I can't have you,” he whispered, more to himself than to Laurel.
She stepped up to him, calm and fearless, and whispered, “Yes, you can.”
He wanted to tell her she didn't understand. He couldn't have her, couldn't care, because he didn't deserve her and because everything he ever wanted was ripped away from him in the end anyway. He didn't need the pain, didn't think he could stand it. But he said none of those things. The words simply wouldn't come.
All he could think as he stared down into that earnest, angelic face was that he wanted to hold her. Just for a little while. Just for what was left of the night. He wanted to hold her, and kiss her, and find some comfort in her body.
Use her.
He'd be a bastard to the very end, he thought. No use fighting his true nature. It wasn't as if he hadn't warned her.
It wasn't as if he didn't need her. . . .
Longing welled inside him, and he reached out to touch her, to ease the ache, to fill the hole in his heart if only temporarily. She sank against him, so small, so fragile. His . . . for the moment . . . for the night . . . for a memory he could hold forever.
Outside, the storm shook the night with sound and fury, but in this room all was stillness except the beating of hearts, the caress of flesh against flesh. Mist blew in through the open door and settled like silver dew, shimmering on the cypress floor when the lightning flashed, but all that touched them was a warmth that glowed from needs within.
Every sense was heightened. Every sense was filled. The fragrance of her skin. The hardness of his muscle. The taste of tears, of gentleness, of desire. The sound of breath catching. The growl of passion. The contrast of light skin on dark. The delicate lacework of her lashes as they swept against her cheek. The planes and angles of his beard-shadowed jaw. Laurel immersed herself in it all. Jack soaked it up greedily.
He touched her like a blind man trying to see with his fingertips, tracing the lines and gentle curves. Fingers fanned wide, he skimmed her jaw, her throat, the slope of her shoulders. He cradled her breasts then let his touch flow downward, over her ribs to her tiny waist, along the subtle flare of her hips.
As he mouthed phantom kisses across her eyelids, along her jawline, his fingers explored her most tender flesh. Laurel whispered his name, and need shuddered through them both.
He wouldn't be an easy man to love. He had branded himself unworthy, thought of himself only in terms of his flaws. He would push her away in the name of caring, break her heart and call it fate. But she went to him. She went to him and offered him everything she was, everything her heart could hold. Without words. Without strings.
He took her in his arms, and they fell across the bed. Springs creaked, linens rustled. The storm rolled on toward Lafayette, thunder sounding like the faint echo of hoofbeats, rain hissing like the sound of steam.
One arm hooked behind her gracefully arching back, Jack bent himself over her and took her breast in his mouth. Her nipple budded beneath the coaxing of his tongue, beneath the wet silk of her camisole, and he drew on it hotly, greedily.
His fingers caught in the hem of the garment and pulled it up. She lay back and stretched her arms above her head. He pushed the camisole to her wrists and held it there, held her there, pinned to the mattress. His eyes locked on hers as he kneed her legs apart and settled his hips against hers.
Laurel's breath fluttered in her throat, not with fear but with anticipation. He would never hurt her physically. He would break her heart—of that she had little doubt—but she trusted him implicitly with her body. She offered herself totally, opened herself, wound her legs around his hips.
And he filled her. Slowly. Inch by inch. His eyes on hers. Giving her the essence of his maleness, being welcomed and embraced by the warm, tight glove of her woman's body. Pressing deeper, deeper, until she gasped his name. When the joining was complete, he cast the silk aside and gathered her to him in a crushing embrace.
It went on forever. It could never have lasted long enough. They moved together, body to body, need to need, heart to heart. Scaling peaks of pleasure, soaring from height to dizzying height.
Jack lost himself in the heat, in the bliss, in the comfort she offered him without words. He gave himself over to desire, thought nothing of right or wrong, only of Laurel. So sweet, so strong. He wanted to give her everything, be everything for her. He wanted to press her to his heart and never let her go. She filled up the hole inside him, flooded all the pain away, made him believe for a moment he could start over . . . with her . . . have a family . . . have peace . . . find forgiveness.
Foolish thoughts. Foolish heart. But for this night he would cling to them as he clung to the woman in his arms, and soothe his aching soul with visions of love.
Chapter
Twenty-One
Laurel slipped from the bed at dawn and dressed silently in the soft light that filtered through the French doors and lace curtains. For a long while she stood by the balcony door and just studied him, as an artist might study a subject before putting brush to canvas, taking in everything about the man, the mood. The light seemed the color and consistency of fine sand, golden and grainy, and it didn't quite penetrate the shadows of the graceful four-poster. Jack lay sprawled on his belly, taking up most of the bed, his face buried in the crook of his arm. His bronzed back was a sculpture of lean, rippling muscle. The sheet, a drift of white, covered only a section of thigh and hips. One leg was bent at the knee, thigh and calf strong, masculine, dusted with rough, dark hair.
Laurel memorized the way he looked in that moment, this first morning after she'd fallen in love with him. It didn't seem any wiser today than it had in the night. She had no idea where these feelings would lead, but she wouldn't deny to herself that she felt them. She'd lied to herself enough in her lifetime. She had, however, refrained from telling Jack, knowing without being told that he wouldn't want to hear it.
Her heart squeezed painfully at the thought, but she pushed the pain away. She would let things take their natural course. The feelings were too new, too sensitive to be trod upon by something as heavy as practicality or an awkward morning-after scene.
She touched two fingers to her kiss-swollen lips and wondered how she had gotten in so deep so fast with a man like Jack Boudreaux. They were opposites in many ways, too alike in others. An unlikely match drawn together by pain, bound by something neither of them would speak of—love.
It had to have been love in his touch during the long, sultry night. The tenderness, the poignancy, the sweetness, the desperation—in her logical, analytical mind, those components added up to more than mere lust, she was sure. Just as she was sure Jack would never acknowledge it and she would never speak the word. Not now. Not when he was so certain he didn't deserve anything good. She wouldn't try to bind him to her with words and guilt. He had enough guilt of his own.
Unbidden, thoughts came of the wife and child he had lost, and she ached for him so, she nearly cried out. She knew about loss, and she knew about blame. She thought of the unloved, battered boy he had been, and the frightened, emotionally neglected little girl in her wanted to reach out and gather him close. And she knew if Jack had suspected any of what she was thinking, he would have done his damnedest to chase her away. He hoarded his pain like a miser, stored it deep inside, and shared it with no one. It stayed stronger that way, more potent, more punishing. She knew.
God, why him? Why did she have to go and fall in love with a man like Jack at a time like this, when all she really wanted to do was get her feet back under her and get her life back on track—any track?
No answer came to her as dawn broke over the bayou in ribbons of soft color. No answer but her heartbeat.
In the frame of the open French door a small dark spider was carefully spinning a web of hair-fine silk that glistened in the new light with crystal beads of morning dew. Laurel watched for a moment, thinking of her own attempt to build a new life. She had come home to heal, to start over, and she felt as if she were as fragile, as vulnerable as that newly spun web. She looked for toe holds and tried to weave back together all that had been torn asunder inside her, but the slightest outside force would tear it all apart again, and once again she would be left with nothing.
Her gaze shifted to Jack, who was still asleep—or pretending to be—and she felt that tenuous foundation tremble beneath her. With a heavy, tender heart, she tiptoed out of the room and left the house.
As he heard the hollow echo of the front door closing, Jack turned over slowly and stared up at the morning shadows on the ceiling. He wanted to love her. His heart ached for it so, it nearly took his breath. It surprised him after all this time, after all the hard lessons, that he could still be vulnerable. He should have been able to steel himself against it. He should have known enough to turn her away last night. But he had wanted so badly just to hold her, just to take some comfort in her sweetness.
He had wanted her from the first. Desire he understood. It was simple, basic, elemental. But this . . . this was something he could never be trusted with again. And because he knew that, he had somehow believed he would never be tempted. Now he felt like a fool, betrayed by his own heart, and he kicked himself mercilessly for it.
Stupid, selfish bastard
. . . He couldn't allow himself to fall in love with Laurel Chandler. She deserved far better than him.
And maybe, a lost, lonely part of him thought as the pain of those self-inflicted blows burst through him, maybe after all the penance he had done, he deserved to be left in peace.
Laurel went up to her room via the courtyard and balcony, not wanting to alert anyone else in the house that she was only just returning. Preoccupied with turbulent thoughts of Jack and the night they had spent together, she took a long, warm shower, then dressed for the day in a pair of black walking shorts and a loose white polo shirt. She assessed her looks in the mirror above the walnut commode, seeing a woman with troubled eyes and damp, dark hair combed loosely back.
There should have been some external sign of the changes made inside her during the last few days—the strength she had regained fighting for her new friends, the humility that remained after her pompous ideas concerning Savannah's life had been shattered, the uncertainty in her heart about her own future.
With a sigh she dropped her gaze to the small china tray on the commode where she had left the little pile of oddities she'd come across recently. The gaudy earring no one would lay claim to, the matchbook from Le Mascarade she had found in her car, the necklace that had come in the plain white envelope. At a glance they seemed unrelated, harmless, but something about the way they had simply appeared made her uneasy. Looks could be deceiving. An earring with no mate. A matchbook with a name that conjured images of people in disguise. A necklace. There was no thread to tie the items to one another other than the mystery of their origin.
She lifted the necklace, draping the flimsy chain over her index finger. The little butterfly wobbled and danced in a bar of light that slanted through the door. It was probably Savannah's, she told herself again. She'd left it somewhere with a lover. She was notoriously careless with her things. The man had
sent it . . . in an envelope with no address. No. It had to have been left in the car. Unless the Bayou Breaux post office was employing psychics, blank envelopes didn't get delivered.
The obvious solution was to simply ask Savannah herself. Forgetting the hour, Laurel marched down the balcony to her sister's room and let herself in.
The bed was empty. The sheets were tangled. The same abandoned clothes littered the chairs and floor. The same sense of stillness as had been there the night before hung, damp and musty in the air.
The memory of that stillness hit Laurel like a wall. It had seemed so surreal, she had almost convinced herself it had been a dream, but here it was again with panic hard on its heels. Savannah hadn't slept in this bed. When was the last time anyone in the house had seen her? She had returned the Acura sometime Tuesday night or Wednesday morning—How did anyone know that? The car had been in the drive Wednesday morning, but no one had actually seen Savannah that day.
“Murders?” “. . . four now in the past eighteen months . . . women of questionable reputation . . . found strangled out in the swamp . . .”
“Oh, God,” Laurel whispered as tears swam in her eyes and crowded her throat till it ached.
She clutched the little necklace in her fist and bit down hard on a knuckle as wild, terrible, conflicting images roared around in her head like debris caught up in a tornado wind. Savannah lying dead someplace. Savannah locked in combat with Annie Gerrard, her eyes glazed with blood lust. T-Grace screaming on the gallery at Frenchie's. Vivian relating the tale of the vandal at St. Joseph's Rest Home.
“Blood will tell.”
Blood. Blood from wounds. Bloodred—the color of the matchbook from Le Mascarade. Savannah's face blank as she tossed it on the table.
“I use a lighter. . . .”
Savannah, finally pushed over that mental edge after all these years because of that son of a bitch Ross Leighton. Savannah, used by men, by Conroy Cooper, by Jimmy Lee Baldwin, who liked his women bound. . . .
All of it whirled around and around in Laurel's mind like fractured bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, every picture uglier than the one before it, every possibility too terrible to be true. And over it all came the harsh voice of logic, scolding her for her foolishness, for her lack of faith, for her lack of evidence. All she really knew was that her sister wasn't home, and no one in the family had seen her since Tuesday. The only logical thing was to go looking for her.
She seized on the notion with a rush of relief and resolve. Don't fall apart,
do something
. Get results. Solve the mystery.
Focused, all the tension drawn into a tight ball of energy that lodged in her chest, she left the room and went to her own to get shoes and her purse. She would leave the back way, she thought as she trotted down the steps to the courtyard. No use alarming Aunt Caroline or Mama Pearl. She would find Savannah, and everything would be all right.
Mama Pearl was up already, shuffling out onto the gallery with a cup of coffee and the latest
Redbook
. She caught sight of Laurel the instant her sneaker touched ground at the foot of the stairs.
“Chile, what you doin' up dis hour?” she demanded, her brow furrowing under the weight of her worry.
Laurel pasted on a smile and stepped toward the back gate. “Lots to do, Mama Pearl.”
The old woman snorted her disgust for modern femininity and tossed her magazine down on the table. “You come eat breakfast, you. You so little, the crows gonna carry you 'way.”
“Maybe later!” Laurel called, waving, picking up the pace as she turned for the back gate.
She thought she could still hear Mama Pearl grumbling when she was halfway to L'Amour. It might have been her stomach, but she doubted it; it had gotten too used to being empty. Out of habit, she dug an antacid tablet out of her pocketbook and chewed it like candy.
She had left Jack to avoid the awkwardness of morning-after talk. What had passed between them during the night had gone far beyond words and into a realm of unfamiliar territory. But this was safe ground. She wanted to ask his opinion, tap his knowledge. It was like business, really. And friendship. She wanted his support, she admitted as Huey bounded between a pair of crepe myrtle trees and bore down on her with his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth and a gleam in his mismatched eyes.
The hound crashed into her, knocking her into the front door with a thud. As she called him a dozen names that defamed his character and his lineage, he pounced at her feet, yipping playfully, snapping at her shoelaces. He whirled around and leaped off the front step, running in crazy circles with his tail tucked, clearly overjoyed to see her. Laurel scowled at him as he dropped to the ground at the foot of the step and rolled over on his back, inviting her to scratch his blue-speckled belly.
“Goofy dog,” she muttered, giving in and bending over to pat him. “Don't you know when you're being snubbed?”
“Love is blind,” Jack said sardonically, swinging the door open behind her.
He was in the same rumpled jeans. No shirt. He hadn't shaved. A mug of coffee steamed in his hand. As Laurel stood, she could see that the brew was as black as night. She breathed in its rich aroma and tried to will her heartbeat to steady. He didn't look pleased to see her. The man who had held her and loved her through the night was gone, replaced by the Jack she would rather not have known, the brooding, angry man.
“If you've got some milk to cut that motor oil you're drinking, I could use a cup myself.”
He studied her for a minute, as if trying to decipher her motives, then shrugged and walked into the house, leaving her to follow as she would. Laurel trailed after him down a long hall, catching glimpses of rooms that had stood unused for decades. Water-stained wallpaper. Moth-eaten draperies. Furnishings covered with dust cloths, and dust cloths thick with their namesake.
It was as if no one lived here, and the thought gave her an odd feeling of unease. Certainly Jack,
The New York Times
best-selling author, could afford to have the place renovated. But she didn't ask why he hadn't, because she had a feeling she knew. Penance. Punishment. L'Amour was his own personal purgatory. The idea tugged at her heart, but she didn't go to him as she longed to. His indifference to her presence set the ground rules for the morning—no clinging, no pledges.
He led her into a kitchen that, unlike the rest of the house, was immaculate. The red of the walls had faded to the color of tomato soup, but they were clean and free of cobwebs. The refrigerator was new. Cupboards and gray tile countertops had been cleaned and polished. The only sign of food was a rope of entwined garlic bulbs and one of red peppers that hung on either side of the window above the sink, but it was a place where food could be prepared without threat of ptomaine.
He pulled a mug down from the cupboard and filled it for her from the old enamel pot on the stove. Laurel helped herself to the milk—a perfect excuse to snoop. Eleven bottles of Jax, a quart of milk, a jar of bread-and-butter pickles, and three casseroles, each bearing a different name penned on a strip of masking tape like offerings for a church potluck supper. Lady friends taking care of him, no doubt. The thought brought a mix of jealousy and amusement.
She leaned back against the counter, stirring her coffee. “Have you seen Savannah since the other morning when she left in such a huff?”
“No. Why?”