Cry Wolf

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, shaking 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.

Without a word she turned and walked out of the bar. She didn't allow herself to think of anything at all as she crossed the parking lot. She just put one foot in front of the other until she had reached the levee, then she stood on the bank and stared out at the bayou, working furiously to tamp down the feelings Savannah had torn loose. It didn't do any good to get upset. Savannah was who she was. Her problems were rooted in a past she refused to let go of, was perhaps incapable of letting go of. She had her moments when she would say anything, do anything, and damn the consequences. It was pointless to let any of that get to her.

But it hurts, a small voice inside her said. The voice of a little girl who had only her big sister to rely on for love and comfort. The big sister who looked out for her, who protected her, who sacrificed for her.

But who looked out for Savannah?

Laurel bit her lip against the pain, squeezed her eyes shut against it. She pressed her hands over her face and stood there trembling, afraid if she even breathed, the dam would burst and she would dissolve into a quivering mass of weakness and guilt and pain.

Jack stood behind her on the levee, his feet rooted to the spot as he watched her struggle. He should have left her alone. There was no way in hell he wanted to get caught in the middle of what had gone on in the bar. But he couldn't seem to make himself turn around. He damned Savannah for being such a bitch, damned Laurel for being so brave, damned himself for caring. No good could come of it for any of them. But even as he was convincing himself of that fact, his feet were moving forward.

"She's drunk," he said.

Laurel hugged herself, her eyes fixed on the far bank of the bayou. "I know. She's got problems that go back a long way. I've been gone a long time. I didn't realize she was this… troubled," she murmured, searching desperately for a word that seemed safe, a word that skirted way around the one that came strongest to mind. "If I'd known, I don't think I would have come back now."

She braced herself against the wave of guilt that admission brought. Selfish, weak, coward. She should have been willing to help Savannah, regardless of her own fragile state. She owed her sister that much and more. Much, much more.

Jack stepped closer. His hands settled on her shoulders, so slim, so delicate, so strong, and still he told himself he should just go on back into Frenchie's and order himself another beer. "I can't see you running from trouble, 'tite chatte."

Laurel stood still for his touch, while she told herself not to. His hands were big and warm, his long, musician's fingers gentle and soothing. Comforts she didn't deserve. Despair rose on a tide inside her. "Why do you think I came home in the first place?" she asked, her voice choked with the shame of it.

Because she needed a place to hide, a place to heal, Jack thought, but he said nothing of the sort. It didn't seem wise to let her know he'd been reading up on her, thinking about her. She didn't need a mercenary right now. She needed a shoulder. Cursing himself for a fool, he turned her around and offered his.

"Come here," he growled as he pulled her glasses off and folded his arms around her.

Laurel squeezed her eyes shut against the tears, refusing to let them fall. She told herself not to succumb to the temptation of leaning on him, but her arms slipped around Jack's lean waist just the same. It felt too good to be held, to let someone else be strong for a minute or two. Ironic that that someone was Jack, the self-professed antihero. She might have pointed that out to him if she hadn't felt so damn weak.

Trembling with the effort of holding it all at bay, she pressed her cheek to his chest, to the soft washed cotton of his bowling shirt. She concentrated on the sound of his heartbeat, the feel of the taut muscles in the small of his back, the scent of Ivory soap underlying the subtle tang of male sweat.

"You've had a hard day, huh, mon coeur?" Jack murmured, his lips brushing her temple, her faint perfume filling his head. She was so delicate in his arms, he couldn't believe she was strong enough to take on the burdens she had. It killed him to think of her trying. "You oughta be more like me," he muttered. "Don't give a damn about anyone but yourself. Let people do what they will. Take what you want and leave the rest."

"Oh, yeah?" Laurel scoffed, leaning back to look up at him. "If you're so tough, what are you doing standing here holding me?"

He grinned and swooped down to nip at the side of her neck, surprising a little squeal out of her. "I like the way you smell," he whispered, nuzzling her cheek, skimming his hands up and down her back.

Laurel squirmed and wriggled, laughing, finally breaking free of his hold. Snatching her glasses out of his hand, she danced a couple of steps back from him, her gaze suddenly catching on his. While her heart beat a little harder, her laughter faded away, and something warm and seductive and invisible pulled at her, like the allure of the moon on the tides.

"I told you, sugar," he said, lifting his shoulders in a lazy shrug. "Me, I just like to have a good time. And you strike me as a lady in serious need of a good time." He shuffled a step closer, held a hand out to her. "Come on, angel. Let's you and me go and have us some fun."

She eyed him warily. "Fun? What's that?"

She couldn't remember the last time she'd done anything just for fun. Her work had consumed her life for so long, then had come the struggle just to keep herself from falling into a million tiny broken bits. And since she had come home, her focus had been on doing constructive things. She had enjoyed her time in the garden, but the goal had been to accomplish something tangible, a success she could see.

Jack ducked around behind her and got her by the shoulders, steering her down the levee toward the dock. "You need a lesson from the master, sweetheart. I'll teach you all about havin' fun."

Reluctantly letting him herd her along, Laurel shot him a skeptical look over her shoulder. "Would this 'fun' you're alluding to be of a sexual nature?"

His dimples flashed. "I sincerely hope so."

"I'm out of here." She changed directions deftly, ducking under his arm and marching back up the levee toward the parking lot.

"Aw, come on, 'tite ange," Jack begged, jogging around to cut her off. He gave her his most sincere look, pressing his hands to his heart. "I'll behave myself. Promise."

Laurel gave a sniff of disbelief. "Are you going to try to sell me swampland, too?"

"No, but I'll show you some. I thought we could take a nice relaxing sunset boat ride."

"Go into the swamp at sunset? Are you crazy? The mosquitoes will cart us off and carve us up for dinner!"

"Not in the boat I have in mind."

She gave him a long, considering look, amazed that she could even be considering his offer. She didn't trust him an inch. But the idea of a leisurely cruise on the bayou, of escaping to the wilderness that had been her refuge as a child, held a strong appeal. And Jack himself was temptation personified.

"Come on, sugar," he cajoled, his head tipped boyishly, an irresistible smile canting his lips. He held his hand out to her. "We'll pass a good time."

Three minutes later they were climbing aboard a boat that was essentially a small screened porch on pontoons. The roof was waterproof canvas in a jaunty red-and-white stripe. A pair of redwood planters filled with geraniums and vinca vines sat as decoration flanking the door to the screened area.

"This is your boat?" Laurel asked, not bothering to hide her skepticism.

Jack reached under the velvety leaves of a geranium, plucked out the starter key, and blew the dirt off it. "No."

"No?" she followed him into the cabin. "What do you mean, no? You're stealing this boat?"

He frowned at her as he started the engine and gunned the throttle. "I'm not stealing it. I'm borrowing it." Laurel rolled her eyes. "Lawyers," he grumbled, scowling as he concentrated on piloting the pontoon away from the dock. "Relax, will you, angel? The boat belongs to Leonce."

With the issue of ownership out of the way, Laurel sank down on one of the deep cushioned benches that faced each other in front of the console. She tried to concentrate on the passing scenery-the businesses that backed onto the bayou and the ramshackle boathouses that were tucked along the bank behind them; the houses that lined the bank farther down, many with people in the yard gardening or talking with neighbors or watching children play. Normal scenes of people with normal lives. People who had ordinary backgrounds and boring jobs.

The thought struck a pang of envy inside her that hummed and vibrated like a tuning fork. If she had had a boring job, an ordinary background, maybe she and Wesley would still be together. Maybe they would have a child by now.

Sighing, she toed her shoes off, pulled her feet up on the bench, and tucked them under her, settling in, unconsciously letting go of the tension and easing into melancholy. Slowly, the fierce grip she held on her mind eased, and her thoughts drifted. They passed L'Amour, the brick house looking vacant and lonely standing amid the moss-draped live oak and magnolia trees. Huey watched them pass from the bank, a woebegone expression on his face. Then civilization grew scarce-the occasional plantation house visible in the distance, the odd tar-paper shack teetering above the black water on age-grayed pilings.

The scenery grew lusher, wilder. Trees crowded what land there was, shoulder to shoulder, their crowns entangling into a dense canopy of green that blotted out the evening sun, leaving the ground below them veiled in darkness. Sweet gum and persimmon and water locust, ironwood and redbud and a dozen other species with buttonbush and thorny dewberry and greenbriar skirting their bases. The banks were thick with patches of yellow spiked cane and coffee weed, fan-fronded palmetto trees and verdant ferns. Vines and flame-flowered trumpet creeper braided together along the edge like embroidery, and the shallows grew thick with spider lilies and water lettuce.

The bayou branched off again and again, each arm reaching into another pocket of wilderness. Some of the channels were as wide as rivers, others narrow trickles of streams, all of them part of a vast labyrinth of no-man's-land. The Atchafalaya was a place where it seemed the world was still forming, ever-changing, metamorphosing, and yet always primitive. Laurel could never come out here without feeling transported back in time. That had always been the appeal for her, to escape to a time when none of her problems existed. The swamp worked its magic on her again, pulling her into another dimension, leaving all her troubles in the distance as the pontoon chugged along.

They passed through a shadowy corridor of trees where no land was visible at all, giving testimony to the constant battle here between water and earth. A cat squirrel vaulted from one gray trunk to the next, skittering around behind it to peek its head around and stare at the passing boat. Birds darted everywhere, warblers and wildly painted buntings and orioles; flashes of color in the gloom, flitting among the lacework of branches.

Finally, they emerged from the natural bower into an area where the bayou grew wide, looking more like a lake than a stream. Jack maneuvered the pontoon into a spot near the south bank, positioning them so they had a panoramic view of the swamp as the sun slid down in the west. He cut the grumbling motor and stepped out of the cabin to cast the anchor over the side. When he returned, he sank down beside Laurel, stretching his legs out in front of him, laying his arms along the back of the bench.

"It's beautiful, no?" he said softly.

"Mmmm…"

The sky was an artist's palette of color. The eastern horizon was a deep, luxurious purple that gave way to azure that faded into a smoky white that grew deeper and deeper orange to the west, where the sun was a huge ball of flame. Before them lay the swamp, desolate, beautiful, full of secrets. Laurel soaked it all in, absorbed the quiet of it, let the peace of it seep into her. The pontoon swayed gently on the current and the tension leeched out of her, leaving her limbs feeling heavy and relaxed.

In the absence of motor noise, the bayou chorus began. Crickets trilled in the reeds, an unseen string section. Then came the bass chug-a-rum of the bullfrog, then the rattling banjo twang of the green frog. From a distance came the occasional accompaniment of bird calls, and nearer the boat the low hum of mosquito squadrons lifting off the surface of the dark water to fly their sunset sorties.

" Savannah and I used to come out here when we were kids," Laurel said softly. "Never too far from home. Just far enough so we thought we were in another world."

To escape. Jack heard the words. They hung in the air, there for anyone who knew the secret desires of unhappy children. "Me too," he said. "I grew up over on Bayou Noir. I spent more time in the swamp than I did in the house."

To escape, Laurel thought. They had that in common.

"I had a secret hideout," he admitted, staring out past the swamp to another time. "Built it out of peach crates and planks I robbed from a neighbor's pasture fence. I used to go out there and read my stolen comic books and make up stories of my own."

"Did you write them down?"

"Sometimes."

All the time. He had scribbled them down in notebooks and read them aloud to himself with a kind of shy pride he had never experienced in anything else. He'd never had anything to be proud of. His daddy was a piss-mean, drunken, good-for-nothing son of a bitch who had told him time and again he would never be anything but a good-for-nothing son of a son of a bitch. But his stories were good. That realization had been a surprise as wonderful as the Christmas his maman had given him a real cap gun-which he also kept at his hideout. More wonderful, really, because the stories came from him and proved he was worth something.

Then had come the day Blackie had followed him out to his secret hideaway. Drunk, as usual. Mean, as always. And the hideout was smashed, and the comic books and his stories and the dreams that were attached to them plunged into the bayou.

As worthless and useless as you are, T-Jack…

Laurel watched his face, saw the way his jaw hardened against some unpleasant memory, saw the anger in his dark eyes and the vulnerability that lay beneath it, and her heart ached for him. The few words he had spoken about his childhood had sketched a bleak picture. She could only guess that what was passing before his mind's eye now was a chapter from that time.

"Daddy had an old bâteau with a little trolling motor on it," she murmured to break his tension. "He taught Savannah how to work it. It was our secret, because Vivian would never have approved of her daughters doing such a thing. After he died, we used to sneak away and go out in it all the time. It made us feel closer to him somehow."

And far away from Beauvoir.

Jack turned toward her, shifting his weight on the bench, searching her face with his gaze. She looked a little embarrassed, as if she had never told anyone this particular secret before. The idea pleased him in a way he shouldn't have allowed, but he didn't try to stop it.

"When I was a kid, I used to think my family would be great if only we had money," he said. "I thought every problem we had was because we were poor. That wasn't true at all, was it?"

"No," she whispered, bleakly.

She stared down at her hands, fingering a thumbnail that had been bitten to the quick. She looked small and tired and vulnerable, not strong enough to fight off all the feelings coming home had churned up. She had gone off to create a life for herself, never suspecting that life would chase her right back to the problems she had been escaping from.

"Dieu," Jack muttered, letting his arm slip off the bench and around Laurel 's shoulders. "I'm not doin' my job very well, am I?" he asked in a teasing voice while he massaged her shoulder. He leaned down close and nuzzled her ear. "I brought you out here to have fun, to make you happy."

Warmth bloomed inside Laurel. She told herself she didn't want it, but the voice wasn't stern enough to make her move away from him. She shot him a wry look. "I think you brought me out here with ideas of raiding my panties."

He grinned an unholy grin, his eyes shining like polished onyx in the fading light. "Mais oui, mon coeur," he murmured, his smoky voice purring deep in his throat as he slipped his other arm around her. "That's how I plan to make you happy."

Had any other man made such a statement to her, she would have cut him off at the knees with her rapier tongue and sent him crawling home. Jack's arrogance, tempered with his sense of humor, only made her want to go along on whatever wild adventure he suggested. That wasn't the smart thing or the safe thing, but it was the most tempting thing. As his lips found her throat and he began to kiss her with teasing little taste-testing kisses, the temptation grew stronger.

"I thought-" She broke off at the breathless sound of her voice, cleared her throat, and tried again. "I thought you were going to be on your best behavior."

He chuckled wickedly against her neck, sliding a hand up and down her upper arm, his thumb brushing seductively against the side of her breast. "Sugar, this is my best behavior."

A shudder of pure longing went through her. She had ignored her physical needs for so long, she had forgotten what it was to want a man.

No, her mind insisted, the correction cutting through the haze of desire, she had never known what it was to want a man. Not the way she wanted Jack. She had grown up subduing herself sexually, avoiding something she had seen only the ugly side of. Her marriage to Wesley had been a marriage of friends, passionless on her part because she didn't think herself capable of passion.

She'd been wrong. As Jack trailed kisses down the column of her throat to the sensitive curve of her shoulder, passion came to life inside her like a fire that had been smoldering beneath cold ash. It startled her, frightened her. She didn't want to want him. She had never wanted to think of herself as being vulnerable to the lure of sex.

"You told me not to trust you," she said, trying to stiffen muscles that had begun to melt with the warmth of desire. "You said yourself, you're bad for me."

"Well, you can't listen to me, darlin'," he murmured, kissing his way back up her neck to her ear. He traced the tip of his tongue around the rim of the delicate shell, drew the lobe between his lips and sucked gently. "I'm a writer; I tell lies for a livin'."

"Then I should know better than to get within an arm's length of you."

"Why? We don't need to talk at all for making love. Bodies don't tell lies, sweetheart." To prove his point he caught her hand and drew it to the front of his jeans, pressing her palm against his erection, holding her there while he feathered kisses along her jaw to the corner of her mouth and probed delicately with the tip of his tongue. "I want you, angel," he whispered seductively. "That's no lie."

She snatched a breath and forced herself to stand instead of succumb. Her legs wobbled beneath her, and she was glad her flowing, gauzy skirt hid her quaking knees. She folded her arms across her middle, holding herself together, keeping her hands from reaching out to him.

"I don't have casual sex with men who are admittedly liars and bastards," she said, struggling for and not quite managing the calm, cutting voice that had won her more than one court case.

Jack looked up at her from the bench, eyes wide with false innocence. He splayed his hands against his chest and rose with careless grace, stalking her across the narrow confines of the pontoon.

"Did I say I was a liar?" he asked with disbelief. "Oh, no, chère," he purred, backing her into the console. "I meant to say I was a lover. Come here and let me show you."

Laurel shook her head, sidestepping him as he reached for her, amazed at his ability to change personas-teasing, then sober, then seductive, then teasing again. It was almost more unnerving than his ability to make her want him. "Last night you warned me away from you. Today you act as if it never happened. Who are you this time, Jack?"

His expression grew serious, intense, as he stared down at her, and a tremor went through her. This Jack looked like a dominant male, a predator, capable of anything. "I'm the man whose gonna make love to you until you forget every stupid thing I ever said," he muttered.

If he had tried to snatch her against him, she would have bolted. If he had stepped too close, she would have kneed him. If he had tried to force her, she would have done her best to get her hands on the gun in her purse and shoot him. But he did none of those things. Instead, he lifted his hand and cupped her cheek, the fire in his eyes softening to tenderness.

"Let yourself live a little bit, angel," he whispered. "Live. Not for work, not for somebody else's cause. For the moment. For yourself. Reach out and take something you want for once."

Then he lowered his head and kissed her, softly, gently, experimentally. His lips, firm and smooth and oh-so-clever, moved against hers, rubbed over hers, seduced hers into softening and responding. He inched a step closer, raising his other hand and sliding his fingers back into her silky hair.

"Kiss me back, mon coeur," he commanded on a phantom breath. "There's no reason you shouldn't."

Just that she didn't trust him or respect him or want the complication of an affair in her life, she thought dimly. But she gave voice to none of those reasons, thinking that they didn't really have much to do with the here and now. "Let yourself live a little bit, angel…"

She'd been so careful for so long, she couldn't believe she was being seduced by a rogue like Jack. But then that was his allure, wasn't it? He was bad for her. He was wicked. And she had always followed the rules, made the correct choices, done the right thing.

"Reach out and take something you want for once."

Jack's mouth moved insistently over hers, coaxing, luring, tempting, offering pleasure, promising bliss, guaranteeing an hour or two of blessed oblivion of the problems in her life. And God knew she wanted him.

Hesitantly, she obeyed his command, rising on tiptoe, relaxing her lips beneath his. Her fingers curled into fists, gathering the fabric of his shirt in bunches. Then he slid his arms around her, anchoring her against him, holding her safe and secure as she opened to him.

Jack groaned at her surrender and deepened the kiss. With a slow, sensuous stroke, he eased his tongue into her mouth, probing deeply, suggestively. She answered him with a tentative foray of her own, her tongue tracing his lower lip, dipping inside his mouth.

He wanted her, had wanted her from the first, this angel with her alluring combination of fire and fragility. He wanted her in a way he hadn't wanted a woman in a long time-possessively, obsessively. He wanted her to be his in a way she had never been any other man's. He would have seen it as dangerous thinking if he had been able to think at all.

Without breaking the kiss, he took her glasses off and set them aside on the steering console, then guided her hands down to his waist and abandoned them there as he shrugged his shirt off and tossed it aside. He gasped a little at the feel of her hands, so cool and soft, gliding back up his chest.

Laurel explored the smooth, hard planes and ridges of his body, marveling at the strength there, marveling at her own response to his fever-hot skin. She couldn't get enough of touching him, wanted to press into him and feel that strength and heat against the length of her and absorb it through her skin. When he lifted the hem of her top, the sound she made in her throat wasn't protest, but the eager anticipation of pleasure. Naked from the waist up, she moved into him, what was left of her breath vaporizing in her lungs as her breasts flattened against him.

Jack growled low in his throat as he kissed her. Like a sculptor admiring a work of art, he traced his hands down her back, caressing, exploring, interpreting every graceful curve, every plane and hollow. Lifting her into him, he pressed her hips to his, pressed her into his arousal, letting her know how badly, how urgently, he wanted her. He felt her tongue dip into the hollow at the base of his throat, and the flames of desire licked at his sanity.

Need making his fingers clumsy, he fumbled with the button and zipper at the back of her skirt and pushed the garment out of his way. At last she was naked in his arms. He stood back for a moment and drank in the sight of her with greedy eyes.

She was slender and sleek, but there was no mistaking her feminine curves-or her uncertainty about showing them to him. A delicate blush rose up her neck into her cheeks as he studied her, as if she were afraid he would somehow find her lacking.

"Viens ici, chérie," he whispered, holding out his hand to her. "Come here before your beauty undoes me."

He pulled her tight against him, kissing her greedily, hungrily, letting her know his words were more than just the clever prattle of an experienced Lothario. They were truth.

Slowly he lowered her to the red flowered cushions of the bench that was directly behind her, following her down, sprawling over her. She arched her back off the cushion as he found her breast with his mouth, capturing her nipple between his lips and sucking hard on the turgid tip, then sucking gently, massaging her with his tongue.

Laurel tangled her hands in his dark hair and moved restlessly beneath him, soft, wild sounds of yearning keening in her throat. She wrapped her legs around him, lifting her hips against his belly, seeking contact, seeking to assuage the urgent ache that burned at the core of her desire.

He stroked the swollen petals of her woman's flesh tenderly, seductively, opening her to his touch like a precious, fragile flower. She gasped with pleasure as he eased two fingers into the hot, tight silken pocket between her thighs. Then he found the sensitive bud of her desire with his thumb, tapping against it with the slightest of touches, then rubbing gently until she was breathless.

"You like this, sugar?" he whispered, stroking deep, then easing slowly out of her, opening her, stretching her.

"Yes-no-" she gasped, lifting her hips.

"Enjoy it, darlin'. Let yourself go," he coaxed. "Let me make you happy," he murmured. He kissed her quivering stomach, mouth open, hot, wet, tongue dipping into her navel. "Are you ready for me, angel?"

"Yes. Jack, please…"

She gulped a breath and strained against the fist of desire that tightened and tightened within her. She'd never wanted like this. When Jack sat up, reaching for the button on his jeans, Laurel reached out to help him. Sitting up, she pressed fervent kisses to his chest as she closed her fingers around his thick, pulsing shaft.

Jack's control broke at the feel of her small hand stroking him. He tumbled her back on the cushion, pushed her hand aside and guided himself, squeezing his eyes shut as he eased into her.

"Mon Dieu, you're tight!"

Laurel moaned. "I'm a little tense," she said breathlessly. "It's been a long time for me."

Her admission caught Jack by the heart and squeezed. "No," he said, bending down to kiss her. "It's the first time. Our first time. Just relax and enjoy, darlin'."

Laurel closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around him as he began to move against her and within her. He kissed her deeply, then playfully. He nipped the side of her neck, murmured hot, sexy words to her as they moved together. The pleasure built and intensified, swelling inside her until she could barely breathe for the pressure of it.

Jack's kisses grew more urgent, more carnal, his thrusts deeper, driving, straining, filling her to bursting. The time for play faded, paled in the face of something hot and intense that enveloped them and threatened to consume them. Something like fear gripped Laurel by the throat, and she tightened her hold on him, not sure where this was taking her or what would happen after.

"Don't fight it, sweetheart," he whispered urgently. He rubbed his cheek against hers, swept her hair back from her face, kissed her temple. "Don't fight it. Let it happen. Take us to heaven, angel."

Not giving her a choice, he slipped a hand between them and touched the tender nerve center of her desire, taking her over the edge. Taking them both over the edge.

"Mon Dieu, angel."

Even in the dim light of dusk he could see the color rise into her cheeks as she turned her face away from him. "Oh, no, sweetheart," he said softly, skimming his fingertips along her jaw. "Don' be shy with me now. Don' be embarrassed. That was beautiful. That was perfect."

"I'm not very good at this," she mumbled, still not looking at him, despite the gentle pressure he applied to her chin.

"At what? Sex?"

That, too, Laurel thought, chagrined. "Talking afterward."

"Your ex-husband, he was a mute, or what?"

She laughed at that because she was still feeling embarrassed and because laughter was what Jack had been aiming for with his teasing. He tickled the side of her neck, and she cringed, turning toward him at last. "No. He just never had much to say afterward."

Jack looked down into her face, reading vulnerability there in her wide dark eyes, and it tugged at his heart. So fiery, so sure of herself in other ways, she was uncertain about this most natural and basic aspect of her femininity. How different she was from Savannah, whose expertise in the bedroom was the stuff of legends. He wanted to know what forces had shaped their lives to make them so different from one another, but this wasn't the time to ask. This was the time to reassure.

"What was he-paralyzed from the neck down?" he queried dryly.

No, Laurel thought, he was sweet and kind and honest, and he'd tried his best to make their marriage work, but she had failed him in so many ways. What she had felt with Wes was friendship and a sense of emotional security, not all-consuming passion. She had used him to anchor her life and had given him little in return, had in fact turned on him when The Case had been at its most stressful, all but pushing him out of her life.

"Hey, sugar..," Jack murmured. "Don' look sad, angel. I didn' mean to drag up bad memories."

If it weren't for bad memories, I'd have no memories at all. She looked away from him and tensed herself against the ridiculous urge to cry at his concern.

"We've all of us got bad memories," he said. "But they don' belong here, between us. We came out here to have fun, remember?" His fingers found another ticklish spot along her ribs and tortured a little smile out of her. "We were doin' pretty damn good there for a while, no?"

"Yes," she whispered, the corners of her mouth turning up in pleasure, in embarrassment.

"That's it," he praised her in a warm, seductive voice. Settling himself on top of her, he lowered his head until they were nose to nose, lips to lips. "Smile for me." He smiled as she did. "Kiss me," he whispered, groaning with pleasure as she complied.

Her breath caught as he shifted his hips and eased into her again. Need took precedence over old memories. "Reach out and take something you want for once." She wanted this. She wanted Jack-for now, for the pleasure he could give her and the bliss that transported her mind away from the problems that plagued her. Heaven, he called it. She arched her hips against his, closed her eyes, and held on to him for the return trip.

Midnight was nearing when they finally dressed. The process was complicated with much touching and teasing and long pauses for kisses and hot, whispered words. Laurel felt like a teenager-not the quiet, serious teenager she had been, but an ordinary, hormone-crazed teenager out for a night of forbidden fooling around with the class bad boy. Jack played his role to the hilt, trying to take off every article of clothing she put on, trying to talk her into spending the night on the bayou with him.

"Come on, sweetheart, stay with me," he coaxed, murmuring the words against her throat as he dragged the hem of her blouse upward, stroking his fingers up her sides toward her breasts. "We're just gettin' started…"

Laurel 's sense of responsibility was too ingrained, and she wriggled out of his grasp and reached for her glasses on the steering console, settling them on her nose and settling the issue.

"If I don't get back soon, Aunt Caroline and Mama Pearl will worry," she said, brushing futilely at the wrinkles in her clothes. "You don't want them sending the sheriff out looking for us, do you?"

Jack jammed his hands at his waist, the picture of a disgruntled male who was too sexy for his own good. He wore nothing but his jeans, and they weren't quite zipped. " Kenner couldn't find his own ass in the dark, let alone us."

"He could get lucky."

"But I'm not gonna," he grumbled.

"You already have."

Instantly he grinned his wicked grin and backed her against the console. "Mais yeah, angel." He chuckled, dipping his head to nibble her neck again. "And I like my odds for another go."

Laurel ducked away before he could get his arms around her. "Go weigh anchor, sailor, before I pull my gun on you."

Purring low in his throat, he sprang toward her and stole a kiss, dancing deftly away when she would have slugged him. "I love it when you boss me around."

She snatched up a pillow from the bench and hurled it at his head. Jack darted outside and used the door for a shield, chuckling the whole time.

Giving up on the idea of seducing her again, he went about the business of pulling up the anchor, cursing under his breath as it caught on something tangled in the reeds. He hauled back on the nylon rope, damning people who used the swamp for a garbage dump. The anchor finally pulled free, and he hauled it aboard. Minutes later the motor was puttering and the pontoon eased away from the bank and headed west…

… and the body of a naked woman, brutally tortured, cruelly slain, buoyed by the dense growth beneath her, floated out of the reeds and bobbed in the wake of the boat, her sightless eyes staring after them, her arm outstretched toward them in a plea for help that was much too silent and far too late.