Cry Wolf

Chapter Six

He hopped over the door and settled easily into the driver's seat, his graceful hands smoothing over the leather-wrapped steering wheel. Huey bounded over the passenger door and sat in the bucket seat, head up, mismatched eyes bright, ears perked, alert, and eager for adventure.

Laurel rushed around the hood of the car. "Get that mangy hound out of my sister's car!" she demanded, yanking the door open. She tried to shoo the dog, but he only thought it was a game and yipped at her and wagged his tail in Jack's face as he play-bowed and batted a big paw at the hand she was waving.

"Get out, you flea-bitten, garden-digging, contrary mutt!" She leaned into the car and tried to haul him out bodily, straining and swearing as the dog wriggled and twisted and got his head up in her face and started to lick her.

"Uck!" Laurel jumped back, wiping slime off her face, shooting a glare at Jack. "You could be a little more helpful."

He shrugged and grinned. "He's not my dog."

A growl rumbled between Laurel 's teeth. Huey gave her an incredulous look, whined a little, and jumped out of the 'Vette. Jack laughed, amused by her pique and glad to see something in her expression other than the bleakness that had been there a moment ago as she'd stood looking out at the bayou.

He had followed her out of the bar, intrigued by her reaction to Savannah 's sudden "date." After the way she'd torn into Jimmy Lee Baldwin, he fully expected to see her chasing her sister down to give her what-for. He hadn't expected to see her standing by the car looking lost and in pain.

Not that that was the reason he had stepped forward and taken the keys from her hand. He wanted to put the Corvette through its paces, that was all. He had given up his Porsche when Evie died. It was too much a symbol of the attitude that had led to her death. He didn't miss the car, but he sometimes missed the raw power, the feel of a sleek machine jumping beneath him, hugging the curves, roaring down the highway. His Jeep got him where he was going, but there was nothing quite like a hot sports car for unleashing something wild in a man.

That was the reason he had snatched the keys from Laurel 's hand. It wasn't because he wanted to offer her any kind of comfort. Hell, he wasn't even sure what her problem was. And he didn't want to know. He didn't get involved. If she had a beef with Savannah 's taste in men-which encompassed almost the whole of the gender-then she would just have to take it up with Savannah. All he wanted from her was a little fun and the chance to study an intriguing character.

She stood looking at him with stern expectation, her small hand extended. "The keys, Mr. Boudreaux."

He had already put the key in the ignition and looked down now, flicking the little alligator into motion. "But you can't drive this car, can you, sugar?"

"What makes you say that?"

"'Cause you would'a left already. Hop in. I'll drive you home."

"I have no intention of going anywhere with you. Give me the keys. I'll walk home."

"Then I'll walk with you," Jack said stubbornly. He pulled the keys back out and stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans as he climbed out. "Pretty ladies shouldn't go walking 'round these parts alone just now," he said, giving her a look of concern he would never admit to. "But I'll warn you, sugar, Savannah 's gonna be none too pleased to hear you left her pet 'Vette in the parking lot at Frenchie's. There ain't liable to be nothin' left come morning."

Laurel heaved a sigh and weighed her options. She could ride home with Jack Boudreaux, or she could walk home with Jack Boudreaux. There was no reliable taxi service in Bayou Breaux; a town where people were seldom in a hurry to get anywhere didn't warrant it. She didn't know anyone else at Frenchie's to ask for a ride home, and Aunt Caroline wasn't likely to be back from Lafayette to come and get her.

"Women shouldn't accept rides from men they barely know, either," she said, easing herself down in the bucket seat, her gaze fixed on Jack.

"What?" he asked, splaying a hand across his bare chest, the picture of hurt innocence. "You think I'm the Bayou Strangler? Oh, man…"

"You could be the man."

"What makes you think it's a man? Could be a woman."

"Could be, but not likely. Serial killers tend to be white males in their thirties."

He grinned wickedly, eyes dancing. "Well, I fit that bill, I guess, but I don' have to kill ladies to get what I want, angel."

He leaned into her space, one hand sliding across the back of her seat, the other edging along the dash, corralling her.

That strange sense of desire and anticipation crept along her nerves. If she leaned forward, he would kiss her. She could see the promise in his eyes and felt something wild and reckless and completely foreign to her raise up in answer, pushing her to close the distance, to take the chance. His eyes dared her, his mouth lured-masculine, sexy, lips slightly parted in invitation. What fear she felt was of herself, of this attraction she didn't want.

"It's power, not passion," she whispered, barely able to find her voice at all.

Jack blinked. The spell was broken. "What?"

"They kill for power. Exerting power over other human beings gives them a sense of omnipotence… among other things."

He sat back and fired the 'Vette's engine, his brows drawn pensively as he contemplated what she'd said. "So, why are you going with me?"

"Because there are a dozen witnesses standing on the gallery who saw me get in the car with you. You'd be the last person seen with me alive, which would automatically make you a suspect. Patrons in the bar will testify that I spurned your advances. That's motive. If you were the killer, you'd be pretty stupid to take me away from here and kill me, and if this killer was stupid, someone would have caught him by now."

He scowled as he put the car in gear. "And here I thought you'd say it was my charm and good looks."

"Charming men don't impress me," she said flatly, buckling her seat belt.

Then what does? Jack wondered as he guided the car slowly out of the parking lot. A sharp mind, a man of principles? He had one, but wasn't the other. Not that it mattered. He wasn't interested in Laurel Chandler. She would be too much trouble. And she was too uptight to go for a man who spent most of his waking hours at Frenchie's-unlike her sister, who went for any man who could get it up. Night and day, those two. He couldn't help wondering why.

The Chandler sisters had been raised to be belles. Too good for the like of him, ol' Blackie would have said. Too good for a no-good coonass piece of trash. He glanced across at Laurel, who sat with her hands folded and her glasses perched on her slim little nose and thought the old man would have been right. She was prim and proper, Miss Law and Order, full of morals and high ideals and upstanding qualities… and fire… and pain… and secrets in her eyes…

"Was I to gather from that conversation with T-Grace that you used to be an attorney?" she asked as they turned onto Dumas and headed back toward downtown.

He smiled, though it held no real amusement, only cynicism. "Sugar, 'attorney' is too polite a word for what I used to be. I was a corporate shark for Tristar Chemical."

Laurel tried to reconcile the traditional three-piece-suit corporate image with the man who sat across from her, a baseball cap jammed down backward on his head, his Hawaiian shirt hanging open to reveal the hard, tanned body of a light heavyweight boxer. "What happened?"

What happened? A simple question as loaded as a shotgun that had been primed and pumped. What happened? He had succeeded. He had set out to prove to his old man that he could do something, be something, make big money. It hadn't mattered that Blackie was long dead and gone to hell. The old man's ghost had driven him. He had succeeded, and in the end he had lost everything.

"I turned on 'em," he said, skipping the heart of the story. The pain he endured still on Evie's behalf was his own private hell. He didn't share it with anyone. "Rogue Lawyer. I think they're gonna make it into a TV movie one of these days."

"What do you mean, you turned on them?"

"I mean, I unraveled the knots I'd tied for them in the paper trail that divorced them from the highly illegal activities of shipping and dumping hazardous waste," he explained, not entirely sure why he was telling her. Most of the time when people asked, he just blew it off, made a joke and changed the subject. "The Feds took a dim view of the company. The company gave me the ax, and the Bar Association kicked my ass out."

"You were disbarred for revealing illegal, potentially dangerous activities to the federal government?" Laurel said, incredulous. "But that's-"

"The way it is, sweetheart," he growled, slowing the 'Vette as the one and only stoplight in Bayou Breaux turned red. He rested his hand on the stick shift and gave Laurel a hard look. "Don' make me out to be a hero, sugar. I'm nobody's saint. I lost it," he said bitterly. "I crashed and burned. I went down in a ball of flame, and I took the company with me. I had my reasons, and none of them had anything to do with such noble causes as the protection of the environment."

"But-"

"'But,' you're thinking now, 'mebbe this Jack, he isn't such a bad guy after all,' yes?" His look turned sly, speculative. He chuckled as she frowned. She didn't want to think he could read her so easily. If they'd been playing poker, he would have cleaned her pockets for her.

"Well, you're wrong, angel," he murmured darkly, his mouth twisting with bitter amusement as her blue eyes widened. "I'm as bad as they come." Then he flashed his famous grin, dimples biting into his cheeks. "But I'm a helluva good time."

The light had not yet turned green, but he floored the accelerator, sending the Corvette lunging forward like a thoroughbred bolting from the starting gate. A pickup coming down Jackson had to skid sideways to avoid hitting them. Its driver stuck his head out the window and shouted obscenities after them. Laurel grabbed the armrest and gaped at Jack. He laughed as he shifted the car, feeling wicked, feeling reckless. Miz Laurel Chandler needed some shaking up, and he was just the guy to do it.

They barreled down Dumas, the business district a blur. Laurel cut a glance toward the courthouse, fully expecting to see beacons flash on one of the parish cruisers in the parking lot, but they shot past without incident and headed toward the edge of town. Past the brick town houses, past the shrines to Mary, past the cutoff to L'Amour, past Belle Rivière, and into the country, where planters warred with the Atchafalaya for control of the land.

Apprehension clutched Laurel 's stomach. She had taken a calculated risk getting in the car with Jack Boudreaux, but she thought her logic had been sound. Now other possibilities flashed in her mind. Maybe the killer hadn't been smart, just lucky. Maybe Jack was just plain crazy. Nothing he'd said or done so far in their short acquaintance could have convinced her otherwise.

God, wouldn't that be just the way? She would have survived every rotten thing that had happened in her life to date, fought her way through a breakdown, only to be done in by a disbarred lunatic.

She pushed the fear aside and let anger take hold.

"What the hell are you doing?" she yelled, twisting toward him on her seat. The needle on the speedometer had gone out of her range of vision.

"Taking you for a ride, angel!"

He pushed a cassette into the tape player, then settled back in his seat, right hand resting lightly on the steering wheel, left arm propped on the door frame. Harry Connick, Jr., blared out of the speakers-"Just Kiss Me. " The road stretched out before them like a ribbon, flat and snaking around canebrakes and copses of trees, skipping over fingers of Bayou Breaux. Driveways to plantations blinked past, and the countryside grew wilder with every second.

Laurel looked behind her, toward rapidly retreating civilization, and kicked herself mentally for taking such a ridiculous chance.

"I don't want to go for a ride! I want to go home!" she shouted, smacking Jack hard on the shoulder with a fist. "Turn this car around right now!"

"Can't!" he called back to her.

"The hell you can't!"

Jack started to shoot her another grin, but swallowed it as she reached into her purse and pulled out a gun.

"Jesus!"

"Stop the damn car!"

She looked mad enough to shoot him. Her dark brows were drawn together in a furious scowl, her mouth pressed into a thin white line. Her glasses were slipping down her nose, and the wind was tearing at her hair and making her blink, but none of that negated the fact that she had a stainless steel Lady Smith clutched between her dainty little hands.

He jerked his attention back to the road. They were coming up too fast on a sharp lefthand curve. He let off the gas and touched the brake, shifting down into fourth. The engine roared in protest, but the 'Vette came under control, rocking only slightly as it bent around the curve. They might have made it if it hadn't been for the alligator taking up half the road.

"Shit!"

"Aaaahhh!"

He swerved to miss the gator, but they missed the end of the curve, as well, right-side wheels hitting the shoulder and yanking the 'Vette off the road. Jack fought with the steering wheel to keep the car upright, swearing a blue streak through clenched teeth. Their momentum sent them crashing through the dense undergrowth, the 'Vette bucking and rocking like a spooked horse, brush and grass and cattails whipping at the windshield. They finally came to rest at the base of a sweetgum tree, just inches from smashing into the trunk. Just beyond the tree the land became water.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God," Laurel muttered over and over. She was shaking like a palsy victim. The gun lay at her feet, and she stared at it, grateful she hadn't taken the safety off.

Jack leaned over and caught her chin in his hand, turning her face toward him. "Are you okay? Are you all right?" he demanded, his voice harsh and low. He was breathing as hard as if he'd carried the car out here on his back.

Laurel looked at him, stunned, shaken. "You're bleeding."

"What?"

"You're bleeding."

Lifting a hand, she brushed at a line of red above his left eye, smearing it with her thumb. He caught her by the wrist and drew back to see the blood on her hand, then looked in the cockeyed rearview mirror to check out the wound himself.

"Must'a hit the windshield."

"You should have worn your seat belt," Laurel mumbled, still too shaken to be coherent. "You might have been killed."

"No one would'a missed me, sugar," he said darkly as he fought to get his door open. Swearing in French, he gave up and climbed over it to survey the damage to the car.

An ominous hiss sounded beneath the long, sleek hood; steam billowed out from under it. The paint job was shot, scratched all to hell by the bushes and saplings they had crashed through. The wheels would be out of alignment, and it would be a pure damn miracle if the undercarriage wasn't twisted.

"Oh, man, Savannah 's gonna have my ass."

"Not if I have it first," Laurel said, stepping across the console to crawl over Jack's door. Hers was operational, but too near the trunk of a willow to get open. With both feet planted on the squishy, oozy ground, she faced Jack, her hands jammed on her hips and fury lighting a fire in her eyes. "Of all the stupid, irresponsible-"

"Me?" He slapped his hands against his chest, incredulous. "You were the one pointing the gun!"

"-moronic, sophomoric, juvenile things to do. I can't believe anyone would-" She broke off as he started laughing. "What?"

He only laughed harder, wiping at his eyes, holding his stomach.

Laurel frowned. "I don't see the least little thing funny about this."

"Oh-yeah-you got a lawyer's sense of humor all right." Jack straightened and tried to compose himself. "The whole thing's ridiculous. Doncha see it? You, you prim little angel, pull a gun on me. We almost hit an alligator-" He broke off and started laughing again.

Laurel watched him, feeling her temper let go by degrees. They were safe. Savannah 's car was worse for wear, but no one had been hurt. As anger and fear subsided, she began to see the lunacy of the situation. How would they ever explain it? She put a hand to her mouth and giggled.

Jack caught the motion and the stifled sound. He looked at her, at the sparkle in her eyes and the shaking of her shoulders as laughter tried to escape, and he felt as though he'd been hit in the head all over again. On impulse he reached out and pulled her hand down, grinning like an idiot at the bright smile that lit up her face. Dieu, she was pretty…

"I don't know what I'm laughing about," she said, embarrassed.

"I don't care." He shook his head, stepping closer. "But you oughta do it more often, angel."

Her glasses were askew, and he took them off as he moved closer still. Laurel stopped laughing… stopped breathing. Her gaze was locked on his face. Her body was very aware of his nearness, responding to it in ways that were instinctive and fundamentally feminine-warming, melting. She was backed up against the side of the car, caught between an immovable object and an irresistible force. He lifted a hand to stroke her hair, lowering his mouth toward hers inch by inch.

She should have moved. She should have stopped him. She didn't know much about this man, and what she did know was hardly good. He was-what had Savannah called him?-a writer, a rake, a rogue. He was a man with a reputation for seduction and a past that was probably shady, to say the very least. He had no business touching her, and she had no business wanting him to. She should have stopped him. But she didn't.

She shivered at the first touch of his lips, blinking as if the contact had given her a shock. He held her gaze, his eyes dark and intense, mesmerizing. Then he settled his mouth over hers, and thought ceased. Her eyes drifted shut. Her hands wound into the fabric of his shirt. Jack pulled her close, slanting his mouth across hers, taking possession of it. At the first intrusion of his tongue, she gasped a little, and he took full advantage, thrusting slowly, deeply, into the honeyed warmth of her mouth.

She tasted sweet, and she felt like heaven against him. Jack groaned deep in his chest and pressed closer. The scent of her filled his head. Not expensive perfume, but soap and baby powder. He spread his legs and inched closer, fire shooting through him as his thighs brushed the outside of hers and his groin nudged her belly.

The need was instantaneous and stronger than anything he'd known in a long time. Strong enough to make him think, something he generally avoided doing when he was enjoying a lady's charms. It was crazy to want like this.

Crazy… She'd had a breakdown. She was vulnerable, fragile. Like Evie had been.

Desire died like a flame that had been suddenly doused. Jesus, what kind of jerk was he? He didn't bother to answer that question. It was a matter of record. He was the kind of man who took what he wanted and never gave a thought to anyone else. Selfish, self-absorbed. He had no business touching her.

Laurel opened her eyes as Jack stepped away. She felt dizzy, weak, as shaken as she had been when the car had finally rolled to a halt. Like a woman in a daze, she lifted a hand and touched her fingers to her lips, lips that felt hot and swollen and thoroughly kissed. Her skin seemed to be melting-warm, wet-then she blinked and realized with no small amount of surprise that it had started to rain.

The sky that had shone in various shades of blue all day like a lovely sapphire had gone suddenly leaden. Weather in the Atchafalaya was always capricious. A perfect afternoon could yield to a hurricane by evening, or a tornado, or a shower. Showers could become torrential downpours in the blink of an eye.

"We should get the top up on the car," she said blankly, her body not receiving any of her brain's commands to move.

Jack didn't move, either. He stood there in the rain looking tough and sexy. His cap was gone. His tousled black hair glittered with moisture. It ran down off his nose, dripped from his scarred chin. The bleeding on his forehead had stopped, leaving an angry red line. His eyes were dark and unreadable, and Laurel shifted nervously against the side of the car.

"I… I don't ordinarily just let men kiss me," she felt compelled to explain. She didn't even kiss on the first date. It had taken Wesley months to coax her into bed, months before she had trusted him enough.

He grinned suddenly, once again transforming himself. "Hey, I'm no ordinary guy," he said, shrugging, arms wide, palms up.

They worked together to get the top up and secured on the 'Vette.

"We'll have to walk for help," Jack said, raising his voice as the rain began to fall harder. "This car, she's not gonna go nowhere, and the rain could keep up all night."

Laurel said nothing, but followed him along the path they had mowed back out to the road, glad there was no sign of the alligator. She took a good look at her surroundings, getting her bearings from familiar landmarks. If you followed the dirt path into the woods to the north, you eventually came to the place where Clarence Gauthier kept his fighting dogs. A sign made from a jagged piece of cypress siding was posted on the stump of a swamp oak that had been struck by lightning and killed twenty years ago: "Keep Out-Trespasser Will Be Ate."

"Come on, sweetheart," Jack said, nodding toward town.

"No." Laurel shook her head and swiped at the rain drizzling down across her face. "This way." She turned and headed east.

"Sugar, there's nothin' that way but snakes and gators," he protested.

A ghost of a smile turned the corners of her mouth. Snakes and alligators. And Beauvoir, her home.

Beauvoir made Tara look like low-rent housing. It stood at the end of the traditional allée of ancient, moss-draped live oak, a jewel of the old South, immaculately preserved and painted pristine white. A graceful horseshoe-shaped double stairway led from the ground level to the upper gallery of the house. Six twenty-four-foot-tall Doric columns stood straight and white along each of the four sides of the building, supporting the overhang of the Caribbean-style roof. Entrance doors, centered on both the upper and the lower levels of the house, boasted fan lights and sidelights and were flanked by two sets of French doors, which were themselves set off by louvered shutters painted a rich, money green. Three dormers with Palladian windows called attention to the broad-hipped slate roof. A glassed-in cupola crowned the architectural work of art.

Beauvoir was a sight to take the breath away from preservationists. Laurel thought it might have inspired something like awe or love in her, as well, if her father had lived. But the plantation had gone into her mother's control at his death, and Vivian had seen fit to bring Ross Leighton to it. Laurel doubted she would ever feel anything but regret and loss when standing before the facade of Beauvoir-regret for her father's untimely death, for the childhood she had endured instead of enjoyed, loss for the generations of tradition that would die with Vivian. Neither Laurel nor Savannah would ever live here again. The memories were too unhappy.

It was a pity. There were few houses of its ilk left. Fire and flood had claimed many over the years. Neglect had taken its share. The cost of keeping up a house of that size was an enormous financial burden in an area that had suffered too many lean years in the decades since the fall of the Confederacy. In modern times greed had claimed most of the rest. Many a fine old home had survived all else only to fall to the wrecking ball, making way for oil derricks and chemical factories.

Laurel walked up the drive, lost in thought, almost forgetting the man who walked beside her. She jumped a little when he spoke.

"If this is your home, how come you're not stayin' here?"

"That's none of your business, Mr. Boudreaux."

Mr. Boudreaux again. The bright-eyed angel who had taken him halfway to heaven with a kiss was in full retreat. "Just like it's none of my business why you're carryin' a gun around in your pocketbook?"

Laurel let silence be her answer. She had no intention of telling him the gun had been a necessary fashion accessory back in Georgia, when death threats had come in the mail as often as sweepstakes offers. Wesley had been appalled at the thought of her carrying a handgun. Jack Boudreaux had laughed. She herself saw the gun as a sign of weakness, but she carried it still, unable to part with the security it represented.

"You don' live here. Savannah don' live here. Who's left?"

She walked on for a moment. "Vivian. Our mother. And her husband, Ross Leighton."

Vivian. Jack arched a brow at the flat tone of voice. Not our mother, Vivian, but Vivian. A name spoken like that of an acquaintance-and one she was not overly fond of at that. There was a story there. Jack had never in his life called his mother anything but Maman right up to the day she died. A matter of respect and love. He heard neither in Laurel 's voice, saw neither in her face. Her expression was tightly closed, giving away nothing, and her eyes weren't quite visible to him behind the rain-streaked lenses of her glasses.

She had grown quieter and quieter on the hike, not even rising to the bait of one of his lawyer jokes, but pulling in on herself and drawing a curtain of silence around her. Coming home wasn't eliciting the traditional joyous response. Her step didn't lighten, the closer they got. She marched along like a prisoner being escorted to the penitentiary.

And you would do the same, Jack, if you were walking down the path to that tar-paper shack on Bayou Noir.

It wasn't the dwelling that mattered. It was the memories.

That revelation made him glance once again at the woman who walked beside him. A grand house didn't guarantee happiness. She might have had as bleak a childhood as his own. The possibility stirred the threads that might have formed a bond between them if he hadn't known enough to snap them off. He didn't want bonds.

A white Mercedes sedan was parked in front of the house, looking like an ad layout for the car company, waiting for some elegant couple to emerge from the grand house so they could be whisked away in Bavarian-made opulence to some nearby exclusive restaurant for dinner. It was Saturday night, Laurel reminded herself. Dinner and dancing at the country club. Socializing with peers. As queen bee of Partout Parish society, Vivian had the night to lord it over the less wealthy. She wasn't going to care for an interruption to her plans.

Laurel tried to tamp down the automatic rise of anxiety as she pressed the lighted button beside the door. She could feel Jack's eyes on her, knew he was wondering why she would feel compelled to ring the bell at the house she had grown up in, but she offered nothing in the way of explanation. It was too complicated. She had ceased to feel welcome in this house the night her father died. Beauvoir was not a home; it was a house. The people in it were people she would sooner have considered strangers than family. And those were feelings that brought on an even more complicated mix of emotions-resentment and guilt warring within her for supremacy over her soul.

The servant who answered the door was no one Laurel had ever seen before. Vivian and Ross were not the kind of people who inspired great loyalty in their employees. Vivian fired maids and cooks with regularity, and those she didn't fire were usually driven away by her personality. This maid, a whey-faced zombie in a sober gray uniform, looked at her blankly when she announced herself and left the cool white entry hall without a word, presumably to go find her mistress.

"Fun girl," Jack muttered, making a face.

Laurel said nothing. She stood where she had stopped just inside the door, dripping rainwater on the black-and-white marble floor. While Jack inspected the portrait of Colonel Beau Chandler that hung in a huge gilt frame over a polished Chippendale hall table, she caught a glimpse of herself in the beveled mirror that hung on the opposite wall above another priceless antique table. There was also a mirror at floor level, where antebellum belles had checked their hems and made certain their ankles weren't showing. Laurel wasn't concerned about her ankles. She winced inwardly as she took in her drenched hair and soggy blouse. A fist of anxiety tightened in her stomach. The same one she had felt as a child coming in from play with a grass stain on her dress.

"… what's the matter with you, Laurel? Shame on you! Nice girls don't get stains on their clothing. You're a Chandler, not some common little piece of trash. It's your duty to conduct yourself accordingly. Now go to your room and get changed, and don't come down until I call for you. Mr. Leighton is coming to dinner…"

"Hey, sugar, you okay?"

She jerked her head around and looked up at Jack, who was eyeing her warily.

"You look like you saw a ghost," he said. "You're whiter than that big boat of a car sittin' outside."

Laurel didn't answer him. The sound of a sharp, angry voice caught her ear, and she looked toward the door that led to the parlor, her blood pressure jumping higher with every word.

"… told you never to disturb me when I'm getting ready for a dinner engagement."

"Yes, ma'am, but-"

"Don't you talk back to me, Olive."

Silence reigned for several moments, expectation swelling in the air. Laurel pulled her glasses off and slicked a hand back through her hair, hating herself for giving in to the impulse.

"… be a good girl, Laurel. Always look your best, Laurel…"

Vivian stepped out of the parlor. She was fifty-three now, but still looked like Lauren Hutton-cool, elegant, alabaster skin, and eyes the color of aquamarines. What outward beauty God had given her, plastic surgery was preserving well. Only a hint of lines beside her eyes, none near the sharply cut mouth that was painted a rich, enticing red. Her body looked as slender and hard as a marble wand, and was draped to perfection in emerald green silk. The simple sheath masterfully accented the sleek lines of her body.

The heels of her pumps snapped against the marble floor as she came toward them, her attention on the clasp of the diamond bracelet she was fastening. Then her head came up, and she touched a hand to her neatly coiffed ash blond hair, a gesture Laurel remembered from infancy.

Vivian's eyes went wide with shock. " Laurel, what in God's name have you been doing?" she demanded, her gaze sliding down Laurel from the top of her wet head to the tips of her ruined canvas sneakers.

"We had a little accident."

"Well, for heaven's sake!"

Vivian's gaze flicked to Jack and held hard and fast on him, disapproval beaming from her like sonic waves. Jack met her look with insolence and a slow, sardonic smile. His shirt still hung open. He stood with his hands jammed at the waist of his jeans and one leg cocked. Finally he gave a mocking half bow.

"Jack Boudreaux, at your service."

Vivian stared at him for a second longer, obviously debating the wisdom of snubbing him. Jack would have laughed if it hadn't been for Laurel. He knew exactly what was going through Vivian Chandler Leighton's mind. He didn't quite fit into any of the neat little pigeonholes she usually assigned people to. He was notorious, disreputable; he wrote gruesome pulp fiction for a living; and he had a past as shady as the backwaters of the Atchafalaya. Women like Vivian would ordinarily have written him off as trash, but he was stinking rich. The Junior League didn't have an official category for riffraff with money.

"Mr. Boudreaux," she said at last, nodding to him but not offering her hand. The smile was the one she had been trained to give Yankees and liberal democrats. "I've heard so much about you."

He grinned his wicked grin. "None of it good, I'm sure."

Ross Leighton chose that moment to make his appearance. He stepped out of his study down the hall, a glass of scotch in his hand, looking dapper and distinguished in a tan linen suit. He was of medium height and sturdy frame, with a ruddy face and a full head of steel gray hair he wore swept back in a style that suggested vanity.

"We have company, Vivian?" he asked, ambling down the hall, lord of the manor, usurper to the throne of Jefferson Chandler. He wore a big smile that tended to fool too many people. It didn't fool Laurel. It never had. It widened as he recognized her, and he came toward her, chuckling. " Laurel! My God, look at you! You look like a drowned mouse."

He bent to kiss her cheek, and she stepped away from him, sliding her glasses back on and tilting her chin up to a truculent angle.

Jack watched the exchange with interest. There had been no words of greeting or concern from any of them, and if looks could have killed, Ross Leighton would have been dead on the floor. Charming family.

"We had us a li'l car trouble," Jack said, drawing Leighton's attention away from Laurel. "You got a tractor I could borrow? If we don't get that car out'a where it is quick, the swamp she's gonna swallow it right up tonight."

"It's a poor night to be out on a tractor," Ross said, chuckling, bubbling over with condescending bonhomie.

Jack slicked a hand over his damp hair, then clamped it on Ross Leighton's shoulder, flashing a grin as phony as the older man's laugh. "Ah, well, me, I don' mind gettin' a li'l wet," he said, thickening his accent to the consistency of gumbo. "It's not like I'm wearin' no five-hun'erd-dollar suit, no?"

Ross cast a pained look at the handprint on the shoulder of his jacket as he led the way back down the hall to his study so he could call the plantation manager and order him to go out in the rain with Jack.

Laurel watched them go, wishing she could have been anywhere but here. She wasn't ready to deal with Vivian yet. She would have liked another day, maybe two, just to settle herself and gather her strength. She would at least have liked to look presentable instead of like a drowned mouse. Damn Ross Leighton-with that one offhand remark he had managed to make her feel like a ten-year-old all over again.

"Laurel, what on earth are you doing out with that man?" Vivian asked, her voice hushed and shocked. She pressed a bejeweled hand to her throat as if to make certain Jack hadn't somehow managed to steal the diamond-and-emerald pendant from around her neck.

Laurel sighed and shook her head. "It's nice to see you, too, Mama," she said with the faintest hint of sarcasm. "Don't worry about our well-being. Jack hit his head, but other than that we're fine."

"I can see that you're fine," Vivian snapped.

She turned and went back into the parlor, expecting Laurel to follow, which she did, reluctantly. Vivian lowered herself gracefully onto one of a pair of elegant wing chairs done in cream moiré silk. Laurel ignored the implied dictate to occupy the other. That was a trap. She was wet and presumably dirty. She knew better than to touch the furniture while she was in such an appalling state of dishabille. She stationed herself on the other side of the gold Queen Anne settee, instead, and waited for the show to begin.

"You've been in town for days without so much as calling your mother!" Vivian declared. "How do you think that makes me feel?" She sniffed delicately and shook her head, pretending to blink away tears of hurt. "Why, just this morning, Deanna Corbin Hunt was asking me how you were doing, and what could I say to her? You remember Deanna, don't you? My dear good friend from school? The one who would have written you a letter of recommendation to Chi-O if you hadn't broken my heart and decided not to pledge?"

"Yes, Mama," Laurel said dutifully and with resignation. "I remember Mrs. Hunt."

"I can only imagine what they all think," Vivian went on, eyes downcast, one hand fussing with a loose thread on the arm of the chair. "My daughter home for the first time in how long, and she isn't staying in my home, hasn't even bothered to call me."

Laurel refrained from pointing out that telephones worked two ways. Vivian was determined to play the tragically ignored mother. She had never been one to see ironies, at any rate. "I'm sorry, Mama."

"You should be," Vivian murmured, casting big blue eyes full of hurt up at her daughter. "I've been feeling just ragged with worry, not knowing what to think. I swear, it'd like to have given me one of my spells."

Guilt nipped at Laurel 's conscience at the same time the cynic in her called her a sucker. She'd spent her entire childhood tiptoeing around the danger of causing one of her mother's "spells" of depression, and her feelings had engaged in a constant tug-of-war between pity and resentment. On the one hand, she felt Vivian couldn't help being the way she was; on the other, she felt her mother used her supposed fragility to control and manipulate. Even now, Laurel couldn't reconcile the polarized feelings inside her.

"How do you think it looks to my friends to have my daughter staying in town with her lesbian aunt, instead of with me?"

"You don't know that Aunt Caroline is a lesbian," Laurel snapped. "And what difference would it make if she were?" she asked, pacing away from the settee, away from her mother, and toward the mahogany sideboard, where half a dozen decanters stood on a silver tray. She wished fleetingly that her stomach could have handled a drink, because her nerves sure as hell could have used one about now. But she turned away from it and went to the French doors to look out at the rain and the gathering gloom of night.

"It's nobody's business who Aunt Caroline sees," she said. "Besides, I don't hear you complaining about the fact that your other daughter lives with Caroline."

Vivian's perfectly painted mouth pressed into a tight line. "I quit concerning myself with Savannah 's actions long ago."

"Yes, you certainly did," Laurel mumbled bitterly.

"What was that?"

She bit her lip and checked her temper. No purpose would be served by pursuing this line of conversation now. Vivian was the queen of denial. She would never accept blame for her daughters' not turning out the way she had planned.

She pulled in a calming breath and turned away from the window, her arms folded tightly against herself, despite the fact that her clothes were soaking wet. "I said, what's so wrong with Jack Boudreaux?"

Vivian gave her a truly scandalized look. "What isn't wrong with him? For heaven's sake, Laurel! The man barely speaks the same language we do. I have it on good authority that he comes from trash, and that's no great surprise to me now that I've met him."

"If he were wearing a linen suit, would he be respectable then?"

"If he were wearing any less of a shirt, I would ask him to leave the house," she stated unequivocally. "I don't care how famous he may be. He writes trash, and he is trash. Blood will tell, after all."

"Will it?"

"My, you're snippy tonight," Vivian observed primly. "That's hardly the way I raised you."

She rose and went to the sideboard to prepare herself a drink. For medicinal purposes, of course. Very deliberately she selected ice cubes from the sterling ice bucket with sterling ice tongs and dropped them into a chunky crystal glass. "I'm simply trying to guide you, the way any good mother would. You don't always seem to know what's best, but I would have thought you had better sense than to get involved with a man like Jack Boudreaux. God knows, your sister wouldn't hesitate, but you… Coming away from your little trouble and all, especially…"

"Little trouble." Laurel watched her mother splash gin over the ice and dilute it with tonic water. The aroma of the liquor, cool and piney, drifted to her nostrils. Cool and smooth and dry, like gin, that was Vivian. Never mar the surface of things with anything so ugly as the truth.

"I had a breakdown, Mama," she said baldly. "My husband left me, my career blew up in my face, and I had a nervous breakdown. That's more than a 'little trouble.' "

True to form, Vivian sifted out the things she didn't want to discuss and discarded them. She settled on her chair once again, crossed her legs, took a sip of her drink. "You married down, Laurel. Wesley Brooks was spineless, besides. You can't expect a man like that to weather much of a storm."

"Wesley was kind and sweet," Laurel said in her ex-husband's defense, not impressing her mother in the least.

"A woman should marry strength, not softness," Vivian preached. "If you had chosen a man of your own station, he would have insisted you give up law and raise his children, and none of this other unpleasantness would have happened."

Laurel shook her head, stunned at the rationalization. If she had married her social equal, a well-bred chauvinist ass, then she could have avoided dealing with The Scott County Case. She could have given up the pursuit of justice and concentrated on more important things, like picking out a silver pattern and planning garden parties.

"We're having guests for dinner tomorrow." Checking the slim gold watch she wore, Vivian set her drink aside and rose, delicately smoothing the wrinkles from her dress. "The guest list will provide more suitable company than what you've been keeping lately."

"I'm really not feeling up to it, Mama."

"But, Laurel, I've already told people you would be here!" she exclaimed, sounding for all the world like a spoiled, petulant teenager. "I was going to call you today and tell you all about it! You wouldn't deny me the chance to save face with my friends, would you?"

"Yes" hovered on her tongue, but Laurel swallowed it back. Be a good girl, Laurel. Do the proper thing, Laurel. Don't upset Mama, Laurel. She stared down at her squishy sneakers and sighed in defeat. "Of course not, Mama. I'll come."

Vivian ignored the dolorous tone, satisfied with the answer. A smile blossomed like a rose on her lips. "Wonderful!" she exclaimed, suddenly fluttering with bright energy. She moved from table to mirror and back, smoothing her skirt, checking her earrings, gathering up her evening bag. "We'll sit down at one-after Sunday services, as always. And do wear something nice, Laurel," she added, casting a sidelong look at her wilted, rumpled daughter. "Now, Ross and I are already late for our dinner reservations, so we've got to rush."

"Yes, Mama," Laurel murmured, gritting her teeth as her mother bussed her cheek. "Have a nice evening."

Vivian swept out of the room, regal, imperious, victorious. Laurel watched her go, feeling impotent and beaten. If she hadn't been such a coward, she would have told her mother years ago to go to hell, as Savannah had. But she hadn't. And she wouldn't. Poor, pathetic little Laurel, still waiting for her mother to love her.

She snatched a glass off the sideboard, intending to hurl it across the room at the fireplace, but she couldn't manage to let herself go even that much.

Don't break anything, Laurel. Mama won't love you. Don't say the wrong thing, Laurel. Mama won't love you. Do as you're told, Laurel, or Mama won't love you.

The front door closed, and she listened to the engine of the Mercedes fire and the car's tires crunch over the crushed shell of the drive. Then she set the glass down, put her hands over her face, and cried.