That didn't mean he wouldn't try.
He balled his fists, meaning to pound his old man as best he could, but Blackie had other ideas. He swung the arm he had pulled back to strike his wife with, instead backhanding Jack across the face, knocking him aside like a doll.
Jack hit the floor, his head spinning and throbbing, tears clouding his vision, hate burning through him like acid.
Then suddenly he wasn't ten anymore. He was a teenager, and he got to his feet and grabbed the iron skillet off the stove and swung it with both hands as hard as he could…
He jerked as his mind slammed the door on the memory.
"The only place I kill people is on paper, sugar…"
From where he stood in the deep shadows of the gallery he could see Belle Rivière. He could see across the darkened courtyard to the back door, where the outside light was still burning. All the windows were dark. Sane people were in bed at this hour. Laurel was in bed.
"And I sit in the still of the night and howl at the moon," he mumbled, sliding down to sit on the weathered floor of the gallery. Huey materialized from the shadows and sat down beside him, a grave look on his face, pendulous lips hanging down.
"You don' know enough to stay away from the like of me, do you, stupid hound?"
Laurel knew enough. She was wary of him.
"And well you should be, mon ange," he murmured, staring across at the black windows of Belle Rivière.
She had let him kiss her, had let him get close, but in the end she had shied away. Just as well for her sake. He was a user and a cad. Lady-killer… killer.
The word simmered in his brain as he pushed himself to his feet and went inside to work.
Chapter Eight
Savannah took the demise of her Corvette with remarkable good grace. It was news of who had been driving she took exception to.
"Jack?" She arched a brow, stiffening slowly but visibly, her back straightening. She sat on Laurel 's bed, wearing her champagne silk robe open over a black lace teddy, looking like an ad for Victoria 's Secret with her hair mussed and her lips kiss-swollen. "What the hell were you doing out on the bayou road with Jack Boudreaux?"
"A question I asked myself as we hurtled along like some kind of rocket test car on the salt flats," Laurel grumbled as she studied herself with a critical eye in the cheval glass.
The skirt she wore was soft and flowing with a pattern of mauve cabbage roses and deep green leaves on an ivory background. The waist was riding at the top of her hips, and the hem hung nearly to her ankles. Weight loss was hell on the wardrobe. It would have to do. She hadn't brought many good outfits with her. At any rate, the petal pink cotton summer sweater was baggy enough to hide the sagging waist. She heaved a sigh of resignation and looked at her sister via the glass.
"I can't drive a stick. He offered-no, he commandeered," she corrected, irritated all over again with his highhandedness. If he hadn't been so pushy, she never would have ended up kissing him, never would have ended up staring at the ceiling half the night.
Savannah frowned, hit unaware by a jolt of jealousy. Frenchie's was her territory, her little kingdom of men. Jack Boudreaux was a member of her court. She didn't like the idea of his sniffing around her baby sister, especially when he had yet to come sniffing around her. And she didn't like the idea of sharing Laurel, either. Laurel had come home to her big sister for love and comfort, not to Jack Boudreaux.
"He's trouble," she said, rising to come and stand behind Laurel. "Stay away from him."
Laurel shot a curious look over her shoulder as Savannah fussed with the lace collar of her sweater. "Yesterday you seemed charmed enough by him."
"It's one thing for me to be charmed by him. I don't want him charming you, Baby. The man's a cad."
Savannah the great protector. Always watching out for her while no one watched out for Savannah. A cad was good enough for Savannah, or a pool shark ten years her junior, or a married Pulitzer Prize-winner old enough to be her father. Laurel chewed back the urge to say something she knew she would regret. She loved her sister, wanted something better for her than the life Savannah had chosen for herself, but now was not the time to say so. She had enough on her mind thinking of the dinner she had no appetite for.
"You said he was a writer. What does he write?"
"Oooh," Savannah cooed, a wicked smile curling the corners of her mouth and sparkling in her eyes. "Deliciously gruesome horror novels. The kind of stuff that makes you wonder how the man sleeps nights. Don't you ever go to the bookstores, Baby? Jack's practically always on the best-seller lists."
Laurel couldn't remember the last time she'd read anything that wasn't written in legalese. The Case had consumed all her time, pushing all else out of her life-her hobbies, her friends, her husband, her perspective… at any rate, she wasn't given to reading the kinds of books that kept people up wide-eyed with fear of everything that went bump in the night. She didn't need to pay money to be horrified and get depressed. She dealt with enough real-life horrors. Depression was something she could get for free.
She tried to reconcile her image of Jack, the piano-playing, car-stealing, kiss-stealing rogue, with her mental image of what a horror novelist would be like, and couldn't. But there was another Jack, the man she had caught glimpses of at odd moments. A harder, darker man with an inner intensity that unnerved her. Just the memory of that man brought out a strange skittishness in her, and so she dismissed all thoughts of him and concentrated instead on the matter at hand.
She looked at herself in the mirror again, deciding she looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother's clothes. Not that Vivian had ever allowed them to do such a thing. Savannah rummaged through a drawer in the walnut commode and came back with two safety pins. She made a pair of pleats in the front waist of the skirt and secured them, hiding the pins with the hem of the sweater.
"Instant fit. Old fashion-model's trick," she said absently, studying Laurel with sharp scrutiny.
"Why didn't you stick with it?" Laurel asked.
"You'll wear my new gold earrings," she muttered, then snapped her head up. "What? Modeling?"
"You had a good thing going with that agency in New Orleans."
Savannah sniffed, lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug while she picked up a makeup brush and a pat of blusher and expertly dusted soft mauve along Laurel 's cheekbones. "Andre loved me for my blow jobs, not my portfolio. I wasn't good enough-at modeling, that is. I happen to give the world's greatest blow job."
Laurel didn't comment, but Savannah caught the tightening of her jaw, the thinning of her mouth. Disapproval. It stung, and she resented it. "Do what you do best, Baby," she said, a fine razor edge to her voice. "Your thing is justice. My talents lie elsewhere.
"Now, let's take a look at you," she said briskly, setting the makeup aside. "I can't imagine why you're going to this. I would have told Vivian to go to hell."
"You have," Laurel said flatly. "On numerous occasions."
"So it's your turn. She jerks you around like a dog on a leash-"
"Sister, please." She closed her eyes briefly. Lord, if she wasn't up to this fight, what in hell would she do at Beauvoir? A tremor of nerves rattled through her. Dinner with Vivian and company was like dancing through a minefield. God, she thought derisively, how had she ever survived in the courtroom when she was such a coward?
"I could have said no," she said wearily, "but I don't need the trouble. One meal, and I'm off the hook. I might as well get it over with."
Savannah made a noncommittal sound. "Well, please borrow my new gold earrings, and for chrissakes, don't wear those awful Buddy Holly glasses. They make you look like that little chicken in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons."