"How old were you?" he asked.
Laurel pulled up a black-eyed Susan and began plucking off the petals methodically. "Ten."
He wanted to offer some words of sympathy, tell her he knew how tough it was. But the fact of the matter was, he had hated his father and hadn't mourned his passing for even a fraction of a second.
"What about you?" Laurel asked, giving in to her curiosity on the grounds of good manners. He had asked her first. It would have been rude not to ask in return. "Do your parents live around here?"
"They're dead," Jack said flatly. "Did he want you to be a lawyer, your daddy?"
Laurel looked down at the mutilated flower in her hand, thinking of it as a representation of her life. The petals were like the years her father had been alive, all of them stripped away, leaving her with nothing but ugliness. "He wanted me to be happy."
"And the law made you happy?"
She shook her head a little, almost imperceptibly. "I went into law to see justice done. Why did you go into it?"
To show my old man. "To get rich."
"And did you?"
"Oh, yeah, absolutely. Me, I had it all." And then I killed it, crushed it, threw it all away.
Jack shifted his weight restlessly from one squishy wet sneaker to the other. She was turning the tables on him, neatly, easily, subtly. He shot her a glance askance. "You're good, counselor."
Laurel blinked at him in innocence. "I don't know what you mean."
"I mean, I'm the one asking the questions, so how come I'm all of a sudden giving answers?"
Her mouth turned down in a frown. "I thought this was a conversation, not an interrogation. Why can't I ask questions?"
"Because you won' like my answers, sugar," he said darkly.
"How will I know until I hear them?"
"Trust me."
Laurel took advantage of the silence to study him for a moment as he stared out at the brown water, that intense, brooding look on his face. The feeling that he was two very different men struck her once again. One minute he was the wild-eyed devil who wanted nothing more than to get into trouble and have a good time; the next he was this closed, dark man who kept the door shut on the part of himself he didn't want anyone to see. She found herself wanting to know what was on the other side of that door. A dangerous curiosity, she thought, pulling herself back from asking more questions.
Down the bank Huey suddenly bounded out of a stand of cattails and coffee weed, baying excitedly. The children who had been chasing around their parents' cars farther downstream came running, squealing with excitement to see what the hound had discovered, shrieking delightedly when they found the dog's quarry was a painted turtle with a spotted salamander riding on its back.
The turtle lumbered along, ignoring the sniffing hound, its lethargic gait seeming out of sync with its gaudy coloring. Its ebony-green shell shone like a bowling ball and was crisscrossed with a network of reddish-yellow lines. A broad red stripe stroked down the center of it from head to tail. The salamander flicked its long tongue out at the dog, sending Huey into another gale of howls that in turn set the children off again.
Poor Huey couldn't seem to figure out why the turtle didn't spring away from him so he could give chase. He batted a paw at it and yipped in surprise as the salamander shot off its hard-shelled taxi and skittered into the tall weeds. The hound wheeled and ran, bowling over a toddler in his haste to escape.
Being the closest adult, Laurel automatically went to the little girl's aid. She hefted up twenty pounds of squalling baby fat and perched the child on her hip as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Don't cry, sweetie, you're okay," she cooed, stroking a mop of black curls that were as soft as a cloud.
The little girl let out a last long wail, just to let the world know she had been sorely mistreated, then subsided into hiccups, her attention suddenly riveted on her rescuer. Laurel smiled at the swift change of mood, at the innocence in the chubby face and the wonder in the round, liquid dark eyes. A muddy little hand reached up and touched her face experimentally.
"Jeanne-Marie, are you okay, bébé?" The child's mother rushed up, her brows knit with worry, arms reaching out.
"I think she was just startled," Laurel said, handing the baby over.
After a quick inspection satisfied her parental concern, the young woman turned back to Laurel with a sheepish look. "Oh, look! Jeanne-Marie, she got you all dirty! I'm so sorry!"
"It's nothing. Don't worry about it," Laurel said absently, reaching out to tickle Jeanne-Marie's plump chin. "What a pretty little girl."
The mother smiled, pride and shyness warring for control of her expression. She was herself very pretty in a curvy, Cajun way. "Thank you," she murmured. "Thank you for picking her up."
"Well, I'm sure the dog's owner would apologize to you," Laurel said dryly, shooting Jack a glance over her shoulder. "If he would ever admit the dog is his."
The woman was understandably baffled, but nodded and smiled and backed away toward the rest of her group, telling Jeanne-Marie to wave as they went.
Laurel waved back, then turned toward Jack, a smart remark on the tip of her tongue. But he had a strange, stricken look on his face, as if he had seen something he hadn't been at all prepared for.
"What's the matter with you?" she said instead. "Do you have a phobia of children or something?"
Jack shook himself free of the emotion that had gripped him as he had watched Laurel with little Jeanne-Marie. Dieu, he felt as though he'd taken an unexpected boot to the solar plexus. She had looked so natural, so loving. The thought had crossed his mind instantly, automatically, that she would make a wonderful mother-as Evie would have if she had ever gotten the chance. If their child had ever been born. Thoughts he didn't usually allow himself during daylight hours. Those were for the night, when he could dwell on them and beat himself with them and cut his soul to ribbons with their razor-sharp edges.
"A-no," he stammered, blinking hard, scrambling for a mental toehold. He shrugged and flashed her a smile that was pale in comparison to his usual. "Me, I just don' know much about babies, that's all."
Laurel gave him a look. "I'll bet you know all about making them, though, don't you?"
"Ah, c'est vrai. I'm a regular expert on that subject." His grin took hold, cutting his dimples deep into his cheeks. He looped his arms around her, catching her by surprise, and shuffled closer and closer, until they were belly to belly. "You want for me to give you a demonstration, sugar?" he drawled, his voice stroking over her like long, sensitive fingers.
Laurel swallowed hard as raw, sexual heat swept through her.
"You certainly have a high opinion of your own abilities," she said, grabbing frantically for sass to ward off the other, more dangerous feelings.
He lowered his head a fraction, his dark eyes shining as he homed in on her mouth. "It ain't bragging if you can back it up."
Laurel 's pulse jumped. "I'll back you up," she threatened with a look of mock consternation. She planted both hands against his chest and shoved.
He didn't budge. Just grinned at her, laughing. Fuming, she pushed again. He abruptly unlocked his hands at the small of her back and she let out a little whoop of surprise as she stumbled backward. Momentum carried her faster than her feet could catch up, and she landed on her fanny in a patch of orange-blossomed trumpet creeper. Peals of high-pitched laughter assured her that the children had witnessed her fall from dignity. Before she could even contemplate resurrecting herself, Huey bounded out of a tangle of buttonbush and pounced on her, knocking her flat and licking her face enthusiastically.