Everything about him went utterly still for a split second, as if her question had literally stopped him cold. But he recovered so quickly, Laurel almost convinced herself she had imagined the response.
"It's just made up," he said, smoothing a corner of the blue plaid blanket. "That's why they call it fiction, sugar."
"I don't believe you just sit down, put your hands on a keyboard, and come up with that stuff."
"Why not?"
"Because it's too good."
He gave a dismissive shake of his head. "It's a talent, a trick, that's all." Some trick, he thought bitterly. Just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein. Bleed out all the poison that simmered inside him.
Laurel knelt on the blanket, studying him with her head tilted on one side. "Some writers say it's like method acting. That they mentally live through every action and emotion."
"And others will tell you it's like doing paint-by-numbers."
"What do you say?"
"I say, I'm too damn hungry to play twenty questions," he growled, stalking her across the blanket on his knees. A wicked smile played at the corners of his mouth and carved his dimples into his lean cheeks.
Nerve endings on red alert, Laurel held her ground as he approached. It seemed amazing to her, the way her body came alive and aware of him. Her heart picked up a beat, her breasts grew heavy and tingled with electricity.
"What's for lunch?" she asked breathlessly as he stopped before her, a scant inch of charged air separating them.
"You."
He knocked the baseball cap from her head with a flick of his wrist. Then she was in his arms, immersed in his embrace, lost in his kiss. It occurred to her vaguely that he was trying to distract her from her line of questioning, but she couldn't bring herself to object to his method. His touch unleashed a host of needs that had lain dormant inside her until last night. Now they leaped and twisted, wild with the prospect of freedom.
Afterward they dozed exhausted, replete. Jack settled on his side with one leg thrown across Laurel 's. She turned toward him and curled one small hand against his chest, too hot to cuddle, but needing to maintain contact with him. And they lay there in the quiet, in the heat, listening to the cicadas and the songbirds and the pounding of their own hearts.
A belated tremor of fear rumbled through Laurel. Fear of the control she had lost so completely. Fear of the incredible pleasure Jack had given her. An old fear that had its roots in a time of her life when she had seen sex as only a negative experience. She knew better now, but old fears never quite died-they just hid in dark corners of the mind and waited for the chance to slip out. Deliberately, she dismissed it and blinked her eyes open to look at Jack.
He lifted a hand and touched her cheek, idly brushing back a strand of hair. "Where'd you go, 'tite chatte?" he whispered, his brows drawing together.
"Nowhere important," she said, dodging his gaze.
"Back to Georgia?"
"No."
"But you do go back there, in your mind, oui?"
She thought about that for a moment, debating the wisdom of revealing anything about that time in her life. A part of her wanted to guard the secrets, hide the past, protect herself. But it seemed ironic to try to hide anything from a man who had shared the most private parts of her body, who had taken her to dizzying heights of pleasure and held her safe in his arms as they floated together to earth. She had opened her body to him, now she opened another part of her, tentatively, hesitantly, feeling more vulnerable than a virgin.
"It comes to me sometimes," she said at last. She sat up and began dressing, not wanting to feel any more naked than was necessary.
Jack hitched his jeans up and zipped them, leaving the button undone. "Can you talk about it?"
She shrugged, as if it were unimportant or easy, when it was far from being either. "I guess you read about it in the papers."
"I read some of what the papers had to say, but I've been around the block a time or two, sugar. I know there's a helluva lot more to any story than sound bites and photo ops."
Dressed, Laurel sat on the blanket with her arms wrapped around her knees and stared at the bayou. A squadron of wood ducks banked around in tight formation and came down with wings cupped and feet outstretched. They hit the water in unison and skied several feet, finally settling down to paddle away, chuckling among themselves.
"It started with three children and a story about a 'club' that met once a week," she began, bracing herself inwardly against what was to come. Even now, months after the case had been taken away from her, the details had the power to sicken her, the images came back as bright and ugly as ever. Her hands tightened against her shins until her knuckles turned white.
"The allegations were incredible. Child pornography. Sexual abuse. The children had been sworn to secrecy. Small animals had been slaughtered in front of them, killed and torn apart, as a demonstration of what might happen if they talked. But eventually they became more frightened of what might happen if they didn't talk.
"They came to me because I had been to their school during career week. I had talked about justice, about doing the right thing and fighting for the truth." Her mouth twisted at the irony. "The poor little things believed me. I believed myself."
She could still see them, all those little faces staring up at her from the floor of the gymnasium, their eyes round as they absorbed her sermon on the pride and nobility of working to see justice served. She could still feel that sense of pride and self-righteousness and naivete. She had still believed then that right would always win out if one worked hard enough, believed strongly enough, fought with a pure heart.
"Nobody wanted me to touch their story. The adults they were accusing were above reproach. A teacher, a dentist, a member of the Methodist church council. Fine, upstanding citizens-who just happened to be pedophiles," she said bitterly.
"What made you believe them?"
How could she explain? How could she describe the sense of empathy? She knew what it was to hold a terrible secret inside, because she had held one of her own. She knew what courage it took to let the secret out, because she had never been able to muster it.
The guilt twisted like a knife inside her, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. She had never found the strength to brave her mother's unpredictable temperament or risk her mother's love.
"Don't tell Mama, Laurel. She won't believe you. She'll hate you for telling. She'll have one of her spells, and it will be all your fault."
If she hadn't been such a coward, if she had done the right thing, the brave thing…
A picture of Savannah swam before her eyes, rumpled, seductive, playing the harlot with a tragic sense of reckless desperation underlying her sexuality.
She pushed to her feet and walked down to the edge of the water, wanting to escape not only Jack and his questions, but her past, herself. He followed her. She could sense him behind her, feel his dark gaze on her back.
"Why did you believe them, Laurel?"
"Because they needed me. They needed justice. It was my job."
The denial of her own feelings built a sense of pressure in her chest that grew and grew, like an inflating balloon. It crowded against her lungs, squeezed her heart, closed off her throat, pushed hard on the backs of her eyes. She had crushed it out before, time and again. She had railed at Dr. Pritchard for trying to make her let it out.
"I wasn't atoning for anything. I had a job to do, and I did it. My childhood had nothing to do with it."
He just gave her that long, patient look that held both pity and disappointment. And she wanted to pick up one of the fat psychology books from his desk and hit him in the face with it.
"I didn't come here to talk about ancient history. I want help for what's happening now."
"Don't you see, Laurel? The past is what this is all about. You wouldn't be where you are today if not for where you started and what went on there."