An image of Jack came to her, unbidden, dark, brooding, intense. Intensely male in a more basic, primal way than Stephen Danjermond… and desire stirred when she thought of him.
It made no sense. She had never been attracted to bad boys, no matter how seductive the gleam in their eyes, no matter how wicked their grins. She was a person who lived by the rules, stuck to them no matter what. There hadn't been a rule made Jack Boudreaux wouldn't go over, under, or around. She had always been one of the world's doers, tackling problems head-on. Jack's credo was to avoid as much responsibility as he could, to lay back and have a good time. Laissez le bon temps rouler.
It made no sense that she should feel anything toward him except contempt, but she did. The attraction was there, pulling at her every time he looked at her. Strong, magnetic, beyond her control. And that made her uneasy all over again. He was trouble on the hoof. A man with secrets in his eyes and a dark side he took great pains to camouflage. A man whose baser instincts ran just beneath the surface. Dangerous. She'd thought so more than once.
"Dreamin' about me, sugar?"
Laurel started, clutching at her heart as she whirled around. Jack stood just inside the back gate, leaning indolently against the brick gatepost. Shadows fell across his face, but she could feel him watching her reaction, and willed herself to relax and stand calm.
"You don't give a fig how much it sells," she said, dryly. "You write horror because you love to scare people. I'll bet you were the kind of little boy who hid in the closet and jumped out at his mother every time she walked past."
"Oh, I hid often enough." His voice came so softly, Laurel thought she was imagining it. Low and smoky and laced with old bitterness. "My old man locked me in a closet for a couple of days once. I never tried to scare anybody, though. Mais non. My sister, Maman, and me-we were pretty much scared all the time as it was."
His words, so casually delivered, hit Laurel with the force of a hammer. In just those few sentences he had painted a vivid and terrible picture of his childhood. With just those few words he had stirred within her compassion for a small, frightened boy.
He stepped out of the shadows, into the silvery light, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders sagging. He looked beat, drained. She had no idea what he had been doing in the time since he had stormed away from Frenchie's, but it had sapped his energy and etched lines of fatigue across his face.
"Oh, Jack…"
"Don't," he said sharply, shaking off her sympathy. "I'm not a little boy anymore."
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Why? You were Blackie Boudreaux in another life?" He shook his head again, took a step closer. "Non, 'tite ange. You weren't there."
No. She had been busy surviving her own nightmare, but she wouldn't say that, wouldn't share it… had never shared it with anyone.
"What are you doing here?" she asked. "What are you doing out at this hour?"
"Prowling." He smiled slowly, his gaze roaming deliberately down from the top of her head to her tiny bare toes. "On the lookout for ladies in their nightclothes."
Laurel had forgotten her state of undress. Now that Jack had so graciously pointed it out to her, she was acutely conscious of the fact that beneath a thin T-shirt that fell shorter than a miniskirt, she wore nothing but a pair of lavender panties. His grin deepened and he bobbed his eyebrows, an expression that clearly said "Gotcha."
She crossed her arms and scowled at him. "People can get shot creeping around backyards in the dead of night."
Jack let his gaze melt down over her again, lingering on the plump curves of her breasts. "Mmmm… you don' look armed, sugar, but you could be dangerous-to my sanity," he growled.
Laurel tried to scoot away from him and found he had backed her around into a position that trapped her between an armless statue of a Greek goddess and the bench where he had caught her reading his book.
"I wasn't aware your sanity was in question," she said sarcastically. "The general consensus seems to be that you're crazy."
He chuckled and inched a little closer to her. "You got a lotta sass, 'tite chatte. Come here and give me a taste."
He didn't give her a chance to say no, but closed the distance between them and stole a kiss, slipping his arms quickly around her. Laurel reacted with an unfamiliar mix of desire and pique. Temper overruled temptation, and she started to bring her knee up to teach him the wisdom of asking for permission. Jack reacted instantly, twisting out of harm's way, throwing Laurel off balance. Before she could realize what he was doing, she was sprawled on top of him on the stone bench, her chin on his chest, eyes round with astonishment.
He sat with his back propped against the wall, one foot planted on the bench, one on the ground. He grinned at her. "All right, sugar, have your way with me."
"I'll thank you to let me up," Laurel said primly, shoving against his chest.
"No," Jack murmured, holding her, pulling her back down when she would have shot to her feet and stormed away. He wanted to hold her, needed to feel her softness against him. He pulled her close and nuzzled her ear while he rubbed a hand gently over her back. "Stay," he whispered. "Don't go, angel. It's late, and I don' wanna be alone with myself."
His strength wouldn't have kept her there, but the need in his voice was another matter altogether. It was subtle, couched in threads of humor, but there nevertheless. Laurel stilled against him, her eyes finding his in the moonlight, searching, wondering, a little wary.
"I never know who you are, Jack," she said softly.
She wouldn't want to know who he really was, he thought. If she knew everything about him, she wouldn't stay. If she knew anything about him, she would steer clear, and he would never have the chance to hold her, to take some solace in the feel of her against him-never have the chance to lose himself, however briefly, in the sweet bliss of kissing her.
He couldn't run that risk tonight. He had spent too much time tearing up what was left of his conscience and flogging what was left of his soul. He felt too beaten, too battered, and she was too pretty and too good.
Too good for the like of you, Jack…
She stared at him, her eyes as dark as midnight, as uncertain as a child's. In spite of all she'd been through, an aura of innocence still clung about her like a fading perfume. Like Evie. God, what pain that thought brought with it! If he touched her, he would sully her innocence, destroy it as he had destroyed Evie. But he wasn't strong enough to be noble, wasn't good enough to do the right thing. He was a bastard and a user and worse, a man caught between what he was and what he wanted. And he was so damn tired of being alone…
"You don' trust me," he whispered, tenderly brushing her hair from her eyes. He grazed his fingertips along the delicate line of her cheekbone. "You shouldn't. I'm bad for you."
The warning was diluted to nothing by the sadness in his face. His mouth twisted into a half smile that was cynical and weary. His dark eyes looked a hundred years old. Bad Jack Boudreaux. The devil in blue jeans. Self-professed cad. Warning her away. He didn't see the paradox, but Laurel did. He was nobody's hero, but he would save her from himself.
She had spent too much of her life with people who claimed to be good and weren't. Jack claimed to be bad, but if he were truly bad, she would have known, would have sensed, wouldn't have wanted him to kiss her, to touch her, to hold her while the night lay warm and fragrant around them.
He's dangerous…
Yes, she had thought that. And if Jack himself wasn't dangerous, then what she felt when he was this near surely was. She couldn't fall for him, not for his body or his tarnished soul or his allure of the forbidden. There was no room in her life for a rogue. She couldn't have her heart broken again; she was still trying to glue the pieces back together from the last time she had come apart.