"I'm sorry!" she cried, grabbing handfuls of his shirt in her fists. "I'm so, so sorry!"
"Hush," he whispered, his voice low and smooth and soothing. "Don't cry so, darlin', you're breaking my heart."
"You break my heart," Savannah said, aching so, she felt completely raw inside. "All the time."
"No," he murmured. "I love you."
"Love me." She drew a shuddering breath and whispered the words again and again as scalding tears squeezed through the barrier of her tightly closed eyelids. "Love me. Love me."
Wasn't that all she had ever wanted? To be loved. To be cherished. And yet she gave herself away time and again to men who would never love her. Confusion boiled and swelled inside her, and she cried it out against Cooper's solid chest, wrapping herself in his warmth, anchoring herself against his strength. She felt so lost. She wanted to be strong, but she wasn't. She wanted to be good, but she couldn't. The only thing she was good at was sex, and that wasn't enough to make Coop forsake his vows.
"Hush, hush," he whispered, rocking her.
She smelled of sex and cheap cologne. She'd been with another man. He was neither surprised nor dismayed for his own sake. He didn't expect fidelity from Savannah. She was, by her own definition, a harlot. It saddened him, though, in a deeply fundamental way. Savannah was in many ways the embodiment of the South, he thought. Beautiful, wanton, stubborn, victimized…
"… Cooper?"
Savannah leaned back and looked up into his face, her fists still wound into the fabric of his shirt. He blinked at her, his thick blond lashes sweeping down behind his spectacles, clearing the glaze from his too-blue eyes.
"Damn you," she snarled, pushing herself away. "You're not even listening to me! You're off with her in your mind, aren't you? Off with Lady Astor. Pure, chaste Lady Astor."
"I wasn't," he said calmly. He went to the desk, dismissing her, and went about the business of putting his notebook and pen away, tamping out the last of a good cigar that had gone to waste.
"You'd rather she were here," Savannah said bitterly. "She wasn't off fucking Ronnie Peltier eight ways from Sunday tonight. No, she's sitting over at St. Joseph 's, pretty as an orchid, dumb as a post-"
"Stop it!" Cooper's voice tore like thunder through the air. He wheeled and grabbed her by the arms and gave her a rough shake. He caught himself before he could shake her again and reined his temper in with an effort that made him tremble.
"Damn you, Savannah, why do you do this?" he demanded, his voice harsh, his fingers biting into the flesh of her arms. "You beg for my love, then you make me want to hate you. Why can't you just take what I can give you and be happy with that?"
"Happy?" she whispered bleakly, looking up at him, her heart in her eyes. "I don't know what that is."
Cooper closed his eyes against a hot wave of emotion and pulled her against him, holding her tight.
"Don't hate me, Coop," she said softly, sliding her arms around his waist. "I do enough of that for both of us."
"Shhh… Hush…" He brushed her hair back from her cheek and pressed a kiss to her temple, then to her mouth. "I love you," he said, the words barely more than a breath as his lips brushed against hers. "I love you."
"Show me."
The hall clock ticked away the seconds of the night. Savannah listened to it in the stillness as she lay curled against Cooper's side. He was asleep, breathing deeply, one arm still holding her close. He looked older sleeping. With his vitality turned off, his athletic energy refueling, there was nothing left but the face that had weathered fifty-eight years of life.
For just a moment she imagined he was her father lying there, alive, holding her next to him. Jeff Chandler would have been fifty-eight if he had lived. And for a moment she allowed herself to wonder what her life would have been like. How different she might have been. She might have been the famous one of the Chandler sisters. She might have been an actress or a fashion designer. And Laurel… Laurel might not have needed to fight so hard for justice.
Poor Baby. Guilt nipped her as she thought of the way she'd left Laurel at Frenchie's. She really should have been home now, seeing to it that Laurel was getting some rest. Seeing to her sister's recuperation was her job now. But she had needed this time with Coop. Time without fighting, without words, with nothing but love between them.
There was never anything less than gentleness in his lovemaking. He was always so careful with her. No hurry. No frantic grappling. No rough urgency. Tenderness. Reverence. As if every time was her first time.
No, she thought, her mouth twisting into a parody of a smile. Her first time had been nothing like that.
"You want me, Savannah. I've seen the way you look at me."
"I don't know what you mean-"
"Liar. You're a little tease, that's what you are."
"I'm not-"
"Well, I'm going to give you what you're asking for, little girl."
"No! I don't want you to touch me. I don't like that."
"Yes, you do. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to yourself. This is what you were made for, Savannah…"
And she had closed her eyes against the first burning pain and damned Ross Leighton to eternal hell.
Lady-killer… Killer… "The only place I kill people is on paper."… Liar… You're a liar, Jack…
He paced the halls of L'Amour, oblivious of the wallpaper that was peeling off the walls, oblivious of the dust, the dank odor of mildew and neglect, oblivious of everything but his own inner torment. It snarled and snaked inside him like a caged beast, and there was nothing he could do about it but stalk the dark halls of the house. He couldn't set the beast loose because it terrified him to think what he might do-go mad, kill himself.
Kill himself. The idea had crossed his mind more than once. But he dismissed it. He didn't deserve the freedom death would offer. It was his punishment to live, knowing he was worthless, knowing he had killed the one person who had seen good in him.
Evie. Her face floated before his mind's eye, soft, pretty, her dark eyes wide and trusting. Trust-that cut at him like a razor. She had trusted him. She was as fragile as fine blown glass, and she had trusted him not to break her. In the end he had destroyed her, shattered her. Killed her.
A wild, indistinguishable cry tore up from the depths of him, and he turned and slammed his fist against the wall, the sounds of agony and impact echoing through the empty house. Empty, like his heart, like his soul, like the bottle of Wild Turkey dangling from the fingers of his left hand. The beast lunged at its barriers, and he whirled and flung the bottle and listened to it smash against a door down the hall.
"Worthless, useless, rotten…"
The image of Blackie Boudreaux rose up from one of the dark corners of his mind to taunt, and he stumbled from the hall, through a dark room, and out onto the upper gallery to escape it.
"Bon à rien, tu, bon à rien…"
The memory came after him like a demon, painfully sharp and so bright, he squeezed his eyes closed against it. He pressed his back against the brick wall, braced himself, held himself rigid until every muscle quivered with the effort, but nothing stopped the memory from coming.
His mother stood doubled over by the kitchen sink, blood running from her nose and lip. Tears swam in her eyes and streamed down her cheeks, but she didn't cry aloud. She knew better. Blackie didn't want to hear caterwauling; it made him meaner. Le bon Dieu knew he was mean enough in the best of times.
Jack clutched at her skirt, frightened, angry, ten years old. Too small to do anything. Worthless, useless, good for nothing. Good for hating. He figured he was an expert at that. He hated his father with every cell of his body, and that hate launched him away from his mother's trembling legs and into Blackie's path as he advanced, arm drawn back for another blow.
A high-pitched scream pierced the air as Marie came running in. Jack didn't glance at his little sister, but yelled for her to get out as he flung himself at their father. He wished he were bigger, stronger, big enough to hit Blackie as hard as Blackie hit Maman, but he wasn't. He was just a puny runt kid, just like Papa always told him.