Cry Wolf

Chapter Thirty-One

He remembered in dreamlike bits and pieces. A force of will pushing, prodding, begging, swearing, goading him to move his feet. Take a step and another. The pain was blocked out, but not the weakness or the sense of disconnection between his mind and his body. He remembered feeling as if the essence of him were floating free, connected to his physical shell by the finest of threads. He remembered the powerful temptation to sever that tie and just drift away, but Laurel kept yanking him back. He remembered wondering vaguely how she could be so little and be so strong.

There was a boat in the fragments of memory. And rain. Rain and tears. Laurel crying over him. He wanted to tell her not to. He couldn't stand the thought of making her cry, even though he knew he had done it more than once, bastard that he was. There were many things he wanted to tell her, but he couldn't gather more than the urgency. The words bounced around in his head like bubbles. He had forgotten how to use his voice. The frustration exhausted him.

Darkness, light. The murmured voices of men and women in white clothes. Couldn't be heaven; he never would have gotten in the gate. Had to be a hospital.

Cool hands touching his arm, his cheek. Soft lips and whispers of love. Laurel.

Laurel had stayed with him, Nurse Washington had told him as she shuffled around his room, fussing and checking things. She was a short, squat, cube of a woman with mahogany skin and little sausage fingers that read his pulse with the feather-light touch of expertise. Miz Chandler had visited during the days he had spent in deep, drugged sleep. But didn't she have a lot on her plate, the poor little thing, what with her sister being killed and the sheriff's investigation and all? And weren't they lucky to have escaped with their lives? Mr. Danjermond a killer-Lord have mercy!

Jack tuned out the memory of her chatter now as he stood on his front step and watched Leonce drive away. As the Monte Carlo rolled out of sight, his gaze was drawn inexorably to Belle Rivière. At the core of his pounding head were thoughts of Laurel. She had sat with him, kissed his cheek, whispered that she loved him. He didn't deserve her love, but he knew without a doubt it was what had made him hang on to life when he could have easily let go. Laurel's voice coming to him through the mists, begging him to live, bribing him with her love.

Huey crawled out from under a tangle of long-neglected azalea bushes and climbed up on the step to give Jack's hand a sniff and a lick of welcome. Jack stared down at the hound, meeting the pair of weirdly mismatched eyes, and grudgingly scratched the dog's ear. Huey groaned and thumped his tail against the bricks.

"You're all the welcome I get, eh, Huey? That's what I get for breaking out."

He pushed the door open and wandered into the house, letting the dog trail after him. Huey abandoned him to nose around the old draped furniture in search of mice. Jack took as deep a breath as he could manage and climbed the stairs one excruciating step at a time.

Somehow, he had expected to feel at home once he made it to his bedroom, but as he looked around, he realized this wasn't his home at all. It was still Madame Deveraux's boudoir. He was just marking time here. He hadn't done much more than change the sheets on the bed. He hadn't made this house his home, he admitted as he sank down on the mattress, wincing at the bite of his broken rib and the stab wound that sliced the tissue around it. It was his prison, the place where he turned on himself and endlessly cracked the whips of self-flagellation. The one thing he had done to make the place his own was hanging all his neckties in the live oak out front, and that had been more a sign of shame than of freedom. Like a flag on the door of a plague victim, it was a warning to those who would venture near that he couldn't handle a life that required ties of any kind.

That life had blown up in his face, and he had had to live with the fact that he'd been the one to lay the powder and light the fuse. What he had rebuilt for himself in the aftermath of the debacle was simple and safe for all concerned, he reminded himself as he stared up at the intricate plaster medallion on the ceiling. He had his writing, his pals at Frenchie's, enough willing lady friends to warm his bed when he wanted.

He had an empty house and an empty heart and no one to share them with save the ghosts of his past and a dog that wasn't his.

Jack shoved the thought away with an effort that had him squinting against the pain. His life swung on a pendulum between penance and parties, and it suited him fine. He was accountable to no one, responsible for nothing.

And still Laurel Chandler had managed to fall in love with him. The irony of it was too much-Laurel, the champion for justice, upholder of the law, in love with a man who had broken so many so carelessly, a man for whom justice was a sentence to emotional exile. She offered him everything he had ever wanted, everything he'd told himself he could never have.

If he had a shred of honor, he would walk away and leave her to fall in love with a better man than he could ever be.

The service was private. A blessing and a curse, Laurel thought. The pain went too deep for her to share it with people she hardly knew, but some of the deepest wounds had been inflicted by the only people present.

She sat with Caroline and Mama Pearl on one side of the chapel. Vivian and Ross sat on the other side, in the same pew but not together. Separated by an invisible wall of hate, together only out of Vivian's automatic attempt to put a "normal" face on ugly family secrets. She would never confirm or deny the rumors once they began to spread-a lady didn't lower herself to airing the dirty laundry in public. She would most likely divorce Ross quietly and go on with her life as if he had never been a part of it, leaving him hanging alone on the gallows of public opinion.

Ross stared dully at the casket with its blanket of pink tea roses and baby's breath. Laurel wondered if he felt remorse or just regret for being exposed after all this time. She wouldn't have allowed him to come, regardless, but the choice hadn't been hers to make.

She wondered how he would weather the storm of accusation and condemnation once the story of the abuse became common knowledge-and she would damn well make certain it became common knowledge. Caroline had told her once that Ross was a weak man. If there was a God in heaven, the shame of the truth would crush him.

Reverend Stipple had pitifully little to say in the way of a eulogy. Laurel would have preferred he say nothing, but it was his church, this church where she and Savannah had been christened, where their father had pledged to love their mother until death. Where death had brought them all and half the parish to see Jefferson Chandler off to the next world.

She looked down at the lace-edged handkerchief she held and remembered too well how Savannah had sat beside her and taken her hand and whispered to her. "Daddy's gone, but we'll always have each other, Baby."

Always.

Now death had brought them here again, these people whose lives were tied together in a painful knot of common experience.

Toward the end of the ceremony, Conroy Cooper slipped in the back and took a seat by himself. Laurel met his somber, soul-deep blue gaze as she walked out of the church, and saw the regret there, and the love, and she ached at the irony that of all the men her sister had known, she would love the one whose nobility put him out of her reach.

When everyone else had gone out, Laurel lingered in the shadows of the vestibule and watched Cooper lay a single white rose on the casket. For a long while he just stood there, head bent, one hand on the polished wood, saying good-bye in his low, smooth voice.

Laurel had labeled him an adulterer and condemned him for not being able to give Savannah the kind of commitment she wanted. But he had loved her as best he could, he said, while trying to keep a vow to a wife who no longer knew him. He had given Savannah all he could. It wasn't his fault she had needed so much more.

There was no coffee served after the burial. No time for normalcy to dilute the grief with talk of crops and babies and everyday things. Caroline drove them home to Belle Rivière in silence.

Mama Pearl went into her kitchen to take solace in the familiar ritual of brewing a pot of café noir. Caroline laid her keys on the hall table, turned and took Laurel's hands in hers. "I'm going upstairs to lie down for a while," she said, her strong voice softened by strain to a whisper. "You should do the same, darlin'. It's been a terrible few days."

Laurel struggled for a game smile and shook her head. "I'm too restless to sleep. I was thinking I'd go into the courtyard for a while."

Dark eyes shining with the kind of love and wisdom a mother should possess, Caroline nodded and squeezed Laurel's fingers. "You've got it so pretty out there. It's a good place to look for a little peace."

Laurel didn't expect to find any, but it was true she was going to look, to hope.

She strolled the pathways slowly, with her hands tucked deep in the pockets of her flowered skirt. A fitful breeze swirled the hem around her calves and brushed the ends of her hair across her shoulders. The day was warm and muggy with a sky that couldn't decide whether it should be a clear blue bowl or a tumble of angry gray clouds.

Despite the moods of the weather and the aura of sadness that hung on Laurel like a shroud, the garden offered what it always did. The rich scents of green growth, the soft, sweet perfumes of flowers bathed her senses, trying to soothe, offering comfort. Even the weeds tried to distract her, reminding her they needed pulling. Tomorrow, she promised, moving on down the path, searching for something she couldn't hope to find today.

She felt as if a crucial, turbulent chapter of her life had been abruptly closed. Savannah was gone. The secret they had shared all these years had been unlocked. Danjermond was dead, and while the investigation continued into the dark shadows of his past, and the headlines were still selling papers, the bottom line had been drawn. Between her testimony and the evidence in his home, and at the scene, Stephen Danjermond, Partout Parish district attorney, son of the Garden District Danjermonds of New Orleans, had been established as a serial killer.

She should have felt a sense of closure, she thought as she took a seat on the corner bench. But she felt more as if something had started to unravel and had been discarded with loose threads trailing all around. Savannah was gone. They would never have the chance to repair the cracks in their relationship; it would remain forever broken. The secret had been revealed, but she would go on being Vivian's daughter; Ross Leighton would forever be a part of her past, if not her future. Danjermond was dead, but every life he had touched would be indelibly marked by his betrayal.

And then there was Jack. The man who was bent on paying with his life for the sins of his past.

If she had a brain in her head, she would walk away, make a clean break, start over somewhere new. What had happened between her and Jack had happened too quickly, too intensely. A relationship had been the last thing she'd come home looking for, and Jack was far from the kind of man she had pictured herself with. He had used, abused, and derided the profession they once had in common. She didn't respect him because of it-but she respected the way he had turned himself around in the end, even if he claimed his motives were selfish. He lived a life built on shirking responsibility, another trait that irritated her strong sense of duty, but she had seen him defy that role time and again.

She kept seeing him in her mind's eye-not the rogue male with the wicked grin and the ruby in his earlobe, but the lonely, haunted man whose hidden needs reached deep into a loveless boyhood. She kept feeling the ache inside him that had touched her own heart, the ache of longing for things he thought he shouldn't have.

Jack painted himself as a user and a cad, good for nothing but a good time, but the fact of the matter was he had saved her life and shown a heroism that was exceedingly rare in this world.

He was so distinctly two different people. The trouble was convincing the "bad" Jack that the "good" Jack existed and deserved to have a chance at something better than a half life filled with pain.

Laurel closed her eyes and let her head fall back, turning her face up to the sky as the sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds. For a moment she let herself picture a life where they could truly start over, where people really did rise above their pasts and lived beyond the shadows, where she and Jack could simply have happiness without all the baggage attached.

"Dreamin' about me, sugar?"

It took a moment for Laurel to realize the voice had not come from inside her mind. Her eyes flew open, and she swung around on the bench to see him standing there leaning against one of Aunt Caroline's armless goddess statues in faded jeans and a chambray shirt hanging open down the front. He was pale beneath his tan, and there were lines of strain etched deep beside his dark eyes that combined with the shadow of his beard to make him look tough and dangerous. He smiled his pirate's grin, but there was too much pain in his eyes for him to quite pull it off.

"What the devil are you doing here?" Laurel exclaimed, shooting up off the bench. "Don't you even try to tell me Dr. Broussard released you!"

He winced a little as the volume of her voice set off hammers in his head. "Mais non," he drawled. "Me, I sorta escaped."

"Why does that not surprise me?"

"It's no big deal, 'tite chatte," he grumbled, rubbing a thumb against the goddess's forehead. "All's I got is a boomer of a headache and a busted rib."

Laurel scowled at him, jamming her hands on her hips. "Your lung collapsed! You've got a concussion and stab wounds and-"

"Bon Dieu!" he gasped in mock surprise, black hair tumbling across his forehead as he looked up at her with wide eyes. "Then mebbe I oughta sit down."

He caught an arm around her waist and pulled her down with him, his actions stiff and slightly awkward, but effective enough to land her on his lap as he took her seat on the bench. She immediately scooted off him, but swung her legs around and remained on the bench beside him.

Jack frowned, shooting her a sideways look. "I must be losin' my touch."

Laurel sniffed. "Losing your mind is more like it. You belong in a hospital. My God, you weren't even conscious the last time I saw you!"

"I'll live."

Dismissing the topic, he looked down at her, taking in the deep shadows beneath her eyes. She couldn't have looked more exquisitely feminine or fragile, like a priceless piece of porcelain. That fragility had frightened him once, before he had discovered the strength that ran through it like threads of steel. But he had a feeling the strength was flagging today.

"How about you, sugar? How you doin'?"

"Savannah's funeral was today," she said quietly.

Jack slipped an arm around her shoulders and eased her against him, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. It was all he needed to do. Laurel splayed her hand against his warm bare chest, above the pristine white bandage that bound his ribs, and simply cherished the way his heartbeat felt beneath her hand.

"I would have been there for you if I could have."

She looked up at him, her face carefully blank as she tried to assess the shift of feelings in him and between them. "You don't do funerals."

"Yeah, well…" He sighed, fixing his gaze on the roses that climbed the brick wall beside them. "That doesn't stop me from losin' friends, does it? It only stops me from being one."

"Is that what we are?" Laurel asked quietly. "Friends?"

"You saved my life."

"And you saved mine," she returned, rising to pace in front of the bench with her arms crossed tight against her. "What does that make us? Even?"

"What do you want it to make us?" Jack asked, hearing the edge in his voice and cursing himself for it. He hadn't come here to fight with her. He had come for-what? And why? Because he couldn't stay away? Because he thought he had to end what had taken root and twined around his heart like the ivy that curled around the foot of the bench? You can't have it both ways, Jack.

"I want more," Laurel admitted. If that made her a fool, then she was a fool. If it made her weak, then she was weak. It was the truth. Too much of her life had been tied up in lies. She stopped her pacing and looked him in the eye, as sober as a judge. "I love you, Jack. I keep telling myself I shouldn't, but I do."

"You're right, angel." Gritting his teeth against the pain, he rose slowly. "You shouldn't," he murmured and moved toward the gate, avoiding looking at her. If he looked at her, he would never be able to walk away.

"Not because you don't deserve it, Jack," Laurel said, catching hold of his arm. "Because it would be easier not to. But I had an easy relationship once, and it might have been safe, but it wasn't fair to either of us.

"I can't take the easy way out, Jack," she murmured, already trembling inside in anticipation of his answer. "Will you?"

"Sure," he said, his voice little more than rough smoke, his eyes trained on some indistinguishable point in the middle distance. "Haven't you figured it out by now, sugar? I'm a coward and a cad-"

"You're neither," Laurel said strongly. "If you were a coward, they would have buried me beside my sister today. If you were a cad, you wouldn't be trying so damn hard to do the noble thing and walk away from this."

Tears rose effortlessly in her eyes, riding on the crest of her emotions. She tightened her grip on the solid muscle of his biceps, her small fingers barely making a dent. "In a lot of ways you're as good a man as I've ever known, Jack Boudreaux," she said hoarsely. "I'd like a chance to make you believe that."

And he wanted to believe it. God in heaven, how he wanted to believe it. The need was an ache within him he had spent a lifetime trying to bury. The need to be worth something, the need to be important to somebody.

He closed his eyes against it now, terrified the need would swallow him whole, terrified this moment was just a dream, a cruel joke, as every small hope of his childhood had been a cruel joke. It didn't make sense that she should love him. It didn't follow the plot line of his life that he should have this chance at happiness. There had to be a catch. The other shoe would drop on his head any minute now.

He just stood there, waiting, staring past her. His chin was quivering as he pressed his lips into a thin line. He blinked to clear his vision.

"Haven't you paid enough, Jack?" Laurel whispered. "Haven't we both?"

"I dunno." He tried to shrug, winced at the pain. "You want a husband? You want babies?"

More than anything, she thought. The idea of giving him a second chance at those dreams, the idea of giving him a child, of the two of them creating a brand-new life that would begin with no mistakes and no regrets was a wish she had scarcely let herself imagine.

"I want a future," she said simply, the wish too precious, too fragile to voice. "I want to go beyond the past. I want you to go with me."

A life beyond the past. A life he had told himself he could have only in his dreams. He stepped back from her, slicking a hand back through his hair to rub the back of his neck.

Laurel watched him, holding her breath while her heart raced.

Jack turned and faced her, seeing all her hope, her fear, her pure, sweet beauty.

"I told myself if I had a drop of honor in me, I'd walk away from you," he said softly. His lips twisted at the corners into a crooked, ironic smile. "Lucky me, I never had much to start with."

Laurel went into his arms, her heart overflowing. She pressed her cheek against his chest. "You've got more than you know," she whispered.

"I've got all I need if I've got you," he said, and he lowered his mouth to hers for a kiss that was both bonding and beginning, promise and fulfillment… and love.