Cry Wolf (10 page)

She jerked her gaze away, pushing her glasses up on her nose in an attempt to hide the blush that bloomed instantly on her cheeks.

He wasn't her type at all, she reminded herself. He wasn't the kind of man she usually allowed to touch her. He wasn't the kind of man she would ordinarily have known at all. And he wasn't charming her. She was only letting him shepherd her toward the bar because she didn't want to watch Savannah seducing the pool players.

“Talk about chewing ass,” he said, an unholy light in his eyes. “What's black and brown and looks good on a lawyer?” Laurel shot him a scowl, which he fielded with an incorrigible grin. “A doberman.”

The laugh that rolled out of him may as well have been a pair of hands that skimmed boldly over her. Laurel ground her teeth at her unwanted reaction, berating her body for its inability to judge character.

“Hey, Ovide!” Jack called. “How 'bout a drink here for our little tigress?”

Laurel blushed again at the name and climbed up on a bar stool, figuring she would at least be rid of Jack Boudreaux's touch now. She was wrong. He merely stood beside her, arm hooked around her loosely but possessively. Worse than standing beside him, she was now at eye level with him, and he didn't hesitate to lean close and murmur in her ear.

“That's Ovide,” he said, his voice as low and intimate as if he were whispering words of seduction. He fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and dangled it from his lip. “‘Frenchie' Delahoussaye. The man you were stickin' up for out there.”

The man behind the bar was in his late sixties, short and stout with sloping shoulders and no neck. He was bald as a cue ball on top, with shaggy steel gray hair ringing the sides of his head and sprouting in fantastic tufts from his ears. A cloud of curly gray hair spilled out of the V of his plaid shirt, and a thick mustache draped across his upper lip and trailed down past the corners of his mouth. His eyebrows were so bushy, they could have been pads of steel wool glued to his forehead. He looked like a nutria that had taken human form by enchantment. He moved purposefully if slowly, filling tall mugs with beer from a tap.

In contrast, the woman behind the bar with him moved at the speed of light, dashing to fill glasses, grab a pack of cigarettes, call an order for a po'boy back through the window to the kitchen. She was younger than Ovide, though not by a lot, and her face showed every day of her years, with lines etched beside her eyes and thin mouth that was painted poppy orange to match her tower of hair. Her skin had the leathery look of a lifelong smoker. It was stretched taut and shiny against the bones of her skull, giving added emphasis to the large dark eyes that bulged out of her head as if she were perpetually startled. Despite her obvious age, she was still petite, with a hard, sinewy body beneath tight designer jeans from the seventies and an electric blue satin western shirt.

She snatched the two mugs from Ovide and plunked one down on the bar in front of Laurel, scolding Frenchie nonstop.

“What'sa matter wit' you, Ovide? Jack, he don' wan' no damn glass, him!”

She snatched a long-neck bottle of Pearl from the cooler and popped the top off while she grabbed a rag with the other hand and wiped a trail of water off the bar, her mouth going a mile a minute.

“Ovide, he don' know which way is up,
cher,
what wit' all this preacher and ever'ting all the time carryin' on outside our door.” She sucked in a breath and cast a glance heavenward that looked more like annoyance than supplication. “
Bon Dieu,
what dis world comin' to wit' the like of dat Jimmy Lee callin' himself a man of the cloth?
Mais, sa c'est fou!
It pains me to see.”

She cocked a thickly penciled brow at Jack and chastised him for being remiss in his manners, as if he could have gotten a word in edgewise. “So,
cher,
you gonna introduce me to
une belle femme
or what?”

Jack threw back his head and laughed, his arm automatically tightening around Laurel. She stopped breathing as her breast came into contact with his side.

“T-Grace,” he announced, “meet Miss Laurel Chandler. Laurel, T-Grace Delahoussaye, Frenchie's right hand, left hand, and mouthpiece.”

T-Grace slapped at him with her wet towel, even as her attention held fast on Laurel. “You say some pretty smart things to dat horse's ass Jimmy Lee,
chère
.”

“Miz Chandler is a lawyer, T-Grace,” Jack offered, a comment that made T-Grace lean back and eye Laurel as dubiously as if he had announced she was from outer space.

Laurel shifted uncomfortably on her stool and tried in vain to discreetly tug some of the wrinkles out of her blouse. “I'm not practicing at the moment. I'm just in town to visit relatives.”

T-Grace eyed Laurel critically, then said, “Ovide, he's jus' beside himself over dis ‘End Sin' thing with dat preacher and all,” as she accepted a tray of empty glasses from a waitress and whirled to set them next to the bar sink.

Laurel glanced at the impassive Ovide, who stood beside his wife, silently pouring drinks and lining them up on the bar for distribution. Either T-Grace was psychic or the man's moods were too subtle for normal human eyes to detect.

“You say some pretty hard things to make a man think,
oui
?” She gave a snort and swiped a fly off the bar with her rag. “If dat Jimmy Lee can think. He's all the time so busy talkin', him, can't be nothin' much left in his head to think about. So you gonna be
our
lawyer,
chère,
or what?” she asked baldly, crossing her arms beneath her bosom impatiently while she waited for an answer.

Laurel gaped, stunned by the question, left speechless by T-Grace herself. The proposition was ludicrous. She wasn't a lawyer here in Bayou Breaux; she was just Laurel Chandler. The idea that she could be both was the furthest thing from her mind right now. She had come here to rest, to heal, not to take up the fight.

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head, nervously stroking a finger through the condensation on her beer mug. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Delahoussaye. I'm only in town for vacation. All you really need to do is file a complaint for trespassing. If you feel you need help, I'm sure there are any number of local attorneys who would be glad to represent you.”

T-Grace sniffed and shot a look at Jack. “Some less than there oughta be.”

He scowled at her, picking the unlit cigarette from between his lips to gesture with it. “I told you, T-Grace, I couldn't if I wanted to. Besides, you don' need no lawyer. Jimmy Lee's just a pest. Ignore him, and he'll go away.”

The older woman stared hard at him, all pretense of teasing gone from her bulging dark eyes, leaving her looking old and tough as boot leather. “Trouble don' just go away,
cher
. You know dat good as me,
c'est vrai
.”

Laurel watched the exchange with interest. Jack's bad-boy grin had vanished into that hard, intense look she had glimpsed the night before. A look that clearly told T-Grace to back off, a look that most grown men would have heeded. T-Grace pretended to shrug it off and turned away from him. She glanced sideways at Laurel as she pulled a pair of bottles from the cooler and popped the tops off.

“Why for you wearin' dem big glasses,
chère
? You in disguise or what?”

She moved off to do a dozen tasks at once before Laurel could formulate any kind of answer. Laurel pushed the glasses up on her nose and frowned.

“It's not much of a disguise, angel,” Jack said.

“Not compared to yours,” Laurel returned. The best defense was a good offense. She didn't like being so easily read, and she had no intention of talking to Jack Boudreaux about her motives for doing anything. She certainly wasn't about to let him escape being questioned himself.

“Mine?” he scoffed. He shook his head, took a long drink of his beer, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No disguises here. What you see is what you get, sugar.”

The wickedness returned, sparkling in his eyes, curling the corners of his mouth, digging those breath-stealing dimples into his cheeks. He leaned close, sliding his hand around to the small of her back. His fingers teased her through the thin cotton of her blouse, rubbing lazy circles.

“You like that promise, no?” he breathed, leaning closer still, his lips just brushing the shell of her ear. Laurel shivered, then gasped as his hand slipped beneath the hem of the loose-fitting blouse.

“No,” she said emphatically, batting his hand away. She gave him a look that had made better men back off and ground her teeth when he only smiled at her. “Don't try to change the subject.”

“I'm not. The subject is us. I'm just tryin' to get past the talkin' stage, angel.”

“When hell freezes over.”

“Well, that devil, he's gonna feel a chill one of these days real soon.”

She arched a brow at him, thwarting the temptation to be either flattered or amused. “Is that a fact?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he drawled, dark eyes shining.

His intent was clear. For reasons Laurel couldn't begin to fathom, he'd set his sights on her. Probably because she was the only female in his territory he had yet to notch his bedpost for. His arrogance was astonishing. But more astonishing was the vague sensation of arousal his words, his touch, his nearness conjured inside her.

It was a simple matter of physical needs, she rationalized, needs too long ignored and a handsome man all too willing to rectify the situation.

“You think too much, angel,” Jack said, replacing his cigarette. She was as transparent as glass, working out in her mind a logical excuse for the physical attraction that arced between them like electric sparks. He bumped her glass closer. “Have a drink. Have a good time. Lighten up.”

His philosophy in a nutshell, Laurel thought. She was about to give him her opinion on the subject when Savannah appeared to her right, draped all over the Cro-Magnon pool player like a vine.

“Baby,” she drawled, her gaze fastened hungrily on Mr. Cuestick as she rubbed the flat of her hand over his chest. “Me and Ronnie got plans for the evening.”

She sounded drunk, though they hadn't been in the bar long enough for that to have been the case. Drunk on arousal. Drunk on the need for sex. Laurel sighed and glanced down, finding no relief as Savannah's bare knee came into view—sliding up and down Ronnie's muscular thigh.

“What about supper?” she asked shortly.

“Oh . . . we'll eat later.” The pair of would-be lovers shared a laugh over that, ending the joke with a kiss, open mouths meeting briefly, tongues teasing. Ronnie's hand slid down from the small of Savannah's back to grope her ass, and she groaned deep in her throat.

“Fine,” Laurel murmured, turning to stare at her untouched beer. “Just how am I supposed to get home?”

“Here. You can take the 'Vette.” The keys landed on the bar with a rattle. “I'll get my own ride.”

Another round of salacious laughter. Laurel shook her head.

Savannah caught the action from the corner of her eye. Putting her enjoyment of Ronnie on hold for an instant, she turned her head, taking in the total package of sisterly disapproval.

“Don't knock it till you've tried it,” she said peevishly, forgetting about love, forgetting about Laurel's current state of frailty and her own vow to help her baby sister through it all. Right now
her
needs were all that mattered, and what she needed most was to get naked with Ronnie Peltier and forget all about her good girl sister and Conroy Cooper and wanting to be something she wasn't. “Loosen up, Laurel. Have a little fun of your own for a change.

“Come on, Ronnie, sweetie,” she said, disentangling herself from him and taking him by the hand to lead him away like a prized stallion. “Let's go.”

Laurel didn't turn to watch her leave. She sat staring at her drink, staring at Savannah's key ring with the little rubber alligator hanging from it by his tail. The gator looked up at her, jaws open, with a tiny boot lying on its red tongue. It was supposed to be a joke, but she didn't feel like laughing. There wasn't anything funny about people being swallowed up—by alligators or by their own demons.

The noise level in the bar suddenly seemed to increase in volume, the clank of glasses, the noise of the jukebox, the sounds of voices all becoming too loud for her ears. She grabbed the keys and pushed herself away from the bar.

Outside, the protesters had gone, and the news van with them. There was no sign of Savannah and Ronnie Beefcake. Out on the bayou someone was fishing among the spider lilies and water lettuce along the far bank. The sky that had been a fine clear blue earlier was now striped with clouds tumbling up from the Gulf. The wind had come up as well and shook the heart-shaped leaves of a redbud tree that grew at the edge of the parking lot, flipping them inside out.

Laurel stood for a long moment beside the door of the Corvette, just staring across the bayou, wondering if she'd made a mistake in coming back here. Time away had somehow softened memories of Savannah's penchant for self-destruction. The lure of familiar faces had outweighed the potential for resurrecting old pains, old guilt.

“It's not your fault, Baby.”

“But he doesn't hurt me.”

“You're lucky and I'm not, that's all. Besides, I'd never let him hurt you. I'd kill him first.”

“Killing's wrong.”

“Lots of things are wrong. That doesn't stop people from doing them.”

She raked a hand through her hair and rubbed at the tension in the back of her neck. She should have stayed home, stayed in the quiet seclusion of the courtyard at Belle Rivière. Maybe she could have talked Savannah into it, and they would still be there now as afternoon edged toward evening, sipping iced tea and lounging on the chaises, talking of nothing important. Or she could have taken her sister up on the idea of shopping. Anything would have been better than this outcome.

The
if onlys
piled up one atop the other, adding to the pile she'd started as a child, like live coral settling on dead to form a reef. The layers below were thick with remorse, hard with guilt.
If only she had stopped Daddy from going out in the field that day . . . If only she could make Mama see the
truth . . . If only she could make the attorney general believe
. . .