"Bon Dieu!" Jack exclaimed with exaggerated shock. "There's some words comin' out your mouth I never seen in the Bible!"
"I doubt you ever cracked the spine of a Bible, Boudreaux," Jimmy Lee snarled. He hauled himself to his feet, trying in vain to dust his clothes off. His eyes locked on Jack in a stare as hard and cold as a billiard ball.
"Well," Jack drawled, "mebbe I never have read it, but I looked at the pictures." He put on a quizzical look and scratched his head. "Do you think Jesus got his tan at Suds 'n' Sun too?"
Jimmy Lee glared at him for a second, his jaw working to chew back his rage.
"What do you think, Miz Chandler?" Jack arched a brow at Laurel.
Laurel stared at him for several seconds, caught completely off guard by his appearance, to say nothing of his question. She hadn't expected to see him here, hadn't finished preparing herself for speaking to him after what had happened in the courtyard. She had strategies filed away in her brain for every kind of courtroom situation, but she had no strategies for near-miss sexual encounters. She had no string of lovers in her past to draw experience from. Her ex-husband was the only man she had ever been seriously involved with, and while Wesley was a good man, an intelligent man, a kind man, he wasn't the kind of man Jack was.
He was shirtless and tan. He held a cherry Popsicle in his left hand, his elegant musician's fingers deftly holding the stick so the thing wouldn't drip on him. He brought it to his mouth and nipped off a corner.
"This is quite a day for me," he said, his dark eyes glittering with mischief. "I get to see a lawyer speechless and a television preacher wearing his dirt on the outside for once."
"I don't have to take this from you, Boudreaux," Jimmy Lee said, his voice low and thrumming with anger. He raised an accusatory finger and shook it in Jack's face. "Mr. Big-Shot Best-Selling Author. You're nothing but a no-account, alcoholic piece of trash. All the money in the world can't change that."
"Naw," Jack said, his pose deceptively casual, one leg cocked, his right hand propped at his waist. He heaved an exaggerated sigh and hung his head. "A man is what he is."
In the blink of an eye, he had Baldwin by the shirt front and slammed up against the side of the building. That quickly the mask of humor was gone, and in its place was a fury that burned like hot coals in the depths of his eyes.
"A man is what he is, Jimmy Lee." He ground the words out between his teeth, his face inches from Baldwin 's. "You, you're a piece-of-shit con man. Me, I'm the guy who's gonna kick your balls up to your throat and knock your teeth down to meet 'em if you ever lay a hand on Miz Chandler again." He let the fire shimmer in his eyes for a moment longer, then flashed an unholy smile. "Have I made myself perfectly clear, Jimmy Lee?"
Slowly he loosened his hold on Baldwin 's shirt front. Smiling affably, he made a token attempt to smooth out the fabric and brush off some of the dirt, then stepped back and dropped his hands to the waist of his jeans.
"Mebbe you just better go on home and change, Jimmy Lee. You don' want people lookin' at you and thinkin' you had a run-in with the devil and lost."
He walked away a few paces and poked his toe at the Popsicle he had dropped, frowning. Dismissing Baldwin entirely, he dug some change out of his pocket and headed for the little white freezer that hummed laboriously beside the Coca-Cola cooler. He could feel Baldwin 's eyes boring into his back, but didn't give a damn. There was nothing any two-bit cable TV preacher could do to him. He didn't run a business, and he already had a bad reputation. He shot an inquiring look at Laurel.
"You want a Popsicle, 'tite chatte?"
"You're messing with the wrong man, Boudreaux," Baldwin said, his voice trembling with rage and humiliation. "You don't want to tangle with me."
Jack flicked a glance at him, looking supremely bored with the whole scene. "That's right, preacher. I don' want to tangle with you. I got better things to do with my time than scrape you off the bottom of my shoe, so mebbe you oughta just stay the hell outta my sight."
Jimmy Lee shook his head, a strange look of amazement dawning on his face. "You don't know who you're dealing with," he muttered, then turned on the heel of his wingtip and stalked off toward his car.
Laurel watched him walk away, then turned toward Jack, stepping up onto the gallery. He stared down into the freezer as cold billowed up out of it in a cloud.
"For someone who claims not to be anybody's hero, you seem to spend an awful lot of time coming to my rescue," she said.
"Mais non," Jack mumbled, reaching in for a Fudgsicle. "Me, I was just having a little fun with Jimmy Lee while my carburetor gets looked at."
He didn't want her reading anything into his actions, he told himself. But the truth was that he didn't want to look at those actions too closely himself. He didn't want to dig too deep for the reason behind the rush of anger he'd felt when Baldwin had put his hand on her. He didn't own her, would never have any claim on her, and therefore had no business feeling jealous or overprotective.
Conditioned response. That was what it was. How many times had he rushed at Blackie when the old man reached out and put a hand on Maman or Marie? Countless times. They had called him their hero, too. But he hadn't been anything but a kid full of rage and hate. Small and weak and worthless, and Blackie had shaken him off more times than not. He wasn't small or weak anymore. The feeling of slamming Baldwin up against the building had sent a rush of adrenaline and power through him that was still buzzing in his veins.
He glanced at Laurel as he unwrapped his treat, trying to defuse her concentration with a teasing smile. "Besides, I didn't want you to pull your gun out and shoot him. Day's too hot to have a corpse laying around out in the sun." She made a disgusted face, and he chuckled to himself. "Popsicle or Fudgsicle, angel? What do you think?"
Laurel narrowed her eyes as he blatantly dismissed her line of questioning. "I think you ought to make up your mind, Jack," she said. "Are you a good guy or a bad guy?"
"That all depends on what you want me for, darlin'," he murmured, his voice rough and smooth at once, beckoning a woman to reach out and touch him.
Laurel 's heart beat a little harder; nerve endings he had awakened and tantalized the night before stirred restlessly. She frowned at him. "I don't want you for anything."
Jack leaned across the open freezer. "It's a good thing you're not under oath, counselor," he whispered.
"Close the freezer, Boudreaux," she said sarcastically, "before your hot air melts all the Popsicles."
She went into the station and paid for her gas, spending a few moments chatting with Mrs. Meyette, who asked after Aunt Caroline and Mama Pearl, told her she was too thin, and made her take half a dozen sticks of boudin with her. When she came out, Jack was nowhere in sight.
She staunchly refused to acknowledge the disappointment that slid down through her. She had better things to do with her time than spar with him, and she had to assume he had better things to do, as well. He was supposed to be some hot-shot best-selling author, but he never seemed to work. It seemed to her he was always at Frenchie's or giving her a hard time. And it took no imagination at all to picture him spending the rest of his time sprawled in a hammock asleep with that awful hound sacked out right beneath him.
Trying like a demon not to picture him at all, she drove home and changed out of her slacks into a cool gauzy blue skirt and a loose-fitting pale blue cotton tank. The house was silent, the shades drawn. Mama Pearl had left a note on the hall table: Gone to card club. Red beans and rice in the pot. Eat, you! Monday. Wash day. Red beans and rice for supper. Laurel smiled at the comfort of tradition.
There was no sign of Savannah. Laurel wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. She didn't like the memories from their morning's argument lingering in her mind like acrid smoke, but she didn't know how they would clear the air, either. They had both said things that would have been better left unsaid. They couldn't go back and change their childhoods. Laurel wanted to leave it all in the past, to start fresh, but Savannah dragged her past around with her like an enormous, overloaded suitcase.