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.