"I told you, sugar, I don' get involved."
"What a crock," she challenged, toe to toe with him now, leaning up toward him with her chin out and fire in her eyes. She might have been uncertain treading the uneven ground of their suddenly formed relationship, but she knew what to do in an argument. "You're dabbling around the edges everywhere, Jack-with Frenchie's, with the Delahoussayes, with Baldwin, with me. You're just too big a coward to do more than get your feet wet."
"Coward?" He gaped at her, at the sound of the word. He described himself in many ways, few of them flattering, but "coward" was not on the list.
Laurel pressed on, shooting blind, fighting on instinct. Her skills were rusty, and she had never been good at keeping her heart out of a fight, anyway. It tumbled into the fray now, tender and brimming with new emotion. The words were out of her mouth before she could even try to rope them back. "Every time it starts looking like you might have a chance at something good, you turn tail and run behind that I-don't-give-a-damn facade."
"A chance at something good?" Jack said, his gaze sharp on hers, his heart clenching in his chest. "Like what? Like us?"
She bit her tongue on the answer, but it flashed in her eyes just the same. Jack swore under his breath and turned away from her. Struggling for casual indifference, he shook a cigarette out from a pack lying on the counter and dangled it from his lip. "Mon Dieu, a couple' a good rolls in the sack and suddenly-"
"Don't!" Laurel snapped. She held a finger up in warning and pressed her lips together hard to keep them from trembling. "Don't you dare." She gulped down a knot of tears and struggled to snatch a breath that didn't rattle and catch in her throat. "I didn't come here to have this fight," she said tightly. "I came here because I thought you might be able to help me, because I thought we were friends."
Jack blew out a huff of air and shook his head. "I can't help anybody."
Laurel tugged her composure tight around herself. Damned if she'd let him make her cry. "Yeah? Well, forgive me for asking you to breach the asshole code of conduct," she sneered. "I'll just go ask Jimmy Lee Baldwin flat out if he had my sister tied to his bed the past two nights. I'll just go knock on every goddamn door in the parish until I find her!" She held up a hand as if to ward off an offer that was not forthcoming. "Thanks anyway, Jack," she said bitterly, "but I don't need you after all."
He watched her storm out of the kitchen and down the hall, a frown tugging at his mouth, a lead weight sinking in his chest. "That's what I've been tellin' you all along, angel," he muttered, then he turned and went in search of matches.
Coop stared into his underwear drawer, frowning at the array of serviceable cotton Jockey shorts and boxers and the little silk things Savannah had bought him. He lifted out a white silk G-string, dangling it from his finger, shaking his head. He'd felt stupid as hell wearing it, too big and too old and too set in his ways. But as he dropped it in the wastebasket beside the dresser, he felt a little twinge of regret, just the same.
She wouldn't be back this time. The fight to end all fights had been fought. It was over, once and for all.
Too bad, he thought as he stared out the window. He had loved her. If only she had been able to take that love for what it was worth and find happiness. Of course, that restless, insatiable quality had been one of the things to draw him to her in the first place. So needy, so desperate to assuage that need, so utterly, pitiably incapable of filling that gaping hole within her heart.
He sighed as his mind idly drew character sketches of Savannah, and his gaze fell through the window, taking in the details of the setting. The bayou was a strip of bottle green beyond the yard, and beyond the banks lay the tangled wilderness of the Atchafalaya. Wild and sultry, like Savannah, unpredictable and deceivingly delicate, fragility in the guise of unforgiving toughness.
He thought he ought to write the image down, but he couldn't work up the ambition to go and get his notebook. Instead, he let the lines fade away and tended to his packing. Five pairs of shorts, five pairs of socks, the tie bar Astor had given him the Christmas before she forgot his name.
Astor. God, how different she had been from Savannah. She had always worn her fragility like a beautiful orchid corsage, as if it were the badge of a true lady, a sign of breeding. Her toughness had been inside, a stoic strength that had borne her through the stages of her decline with dignity. She would have disapproved of Savannah-silently, politely, with a tip of her head and a cluck of her tongue. But he imagined Astor would have forgiven Savannah her sins. He wasn't so sure the same could be said for his case. He had made his wife a pledge, after all.
The doorbell intruded on his musings, and Coop abandoned the closet and his shirt selections to answer it, never expecting to find Laurel Chandler standing on the stoop.
"Mr. Cooper, I'm Laurel Chandler," she said, all business, no seductive smile, no gleam of carnal fire in the eyes behind the oversize, mannish spectacles.
"Yes, of course," he said. Remembering his manners, he stepped back from the door. "Would you care to come in?"
"I'll be blunt, Mr. Cooper," Laurel said, making no move to enter the house. "I'm looking for my sister."
Coop sighed heavily, wearily, feeling his age and the weight of his infidelity bearing down on his broad shoulders. "Yes. Do come in, Miz Chandler, please. I'm afraid I'm in a bit of a hurry, but we can talk as I pack."
Determined to dislike him, Laurel stepped past him and into the entry hall of a lovely old home that held family heirlooms and an ageless sense of loneliness with equal grace. Everything was in its place and polished to a shine, with no one here to see it. A grandfather clock ticked the seconds away at the foot of the stairs, marking time to the end of a family. Cooper and his wife had no children. When they were gone, so would be the memories the family had made in this house over the generations.
She cast a hard glance at Conroy Cooper. Behind the lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses, he met her gaze with the bluest, warmest, saddest eyes she had ever seen, and he smiled, wistfully, regretfully. It wasn't difficult to see what had attracted her sister. He was a big, strong, athletic man, even at an age that had to be near sixty. His face had probably taken young ladies' breath in his hey-day. A strong jaw and a boyish grin. Now it was a map etched with lines of stress and living. No less handsome; more interesting. He stood there in rumpled chinos with one leg cocked, his head tipped on one side. A gray T-shirt with a faded Tulane logo spanned his shoulders and hung free of his pants.
"I am certain you are well aware of my relationship with your sister," he drawled, that smooth, wonderful voice rolling out of him, rolling over Laurel like sunwarmed caramel. She steeled herself against its effects. "And you think less of me for it."
"You're an adulterer, Mr. Cooper. What am I supposed to think of you?"
"That perhaps I loved Savannah as best I could while trying to keep a promise to a woman who no longer remembers me or anything of the life we once had together."
Laurel pressed her lips together and looked down at her shoes, dodging the steady blue gaze.
"Savannah once told me you thought in absolutes," he said. "Right or wrong. Guilty or not guilty. Life isn't quite so black and white as you would like for it to be, Laurel. Nothing is as absolute in reality as it is in our minds in our youth."
"Loved," Laurel repeated, seizing on the thought to fend off any pangs of contrition his words may have inspired. She raised her head and looked at him sharply again. "You said loved. Past tense."
"Yes. It's over." He ran a hand back through his blond hair, glancing at the clock as it ticked away another few seconds. "I don't mean to be rude, but I have to be in N'Awlins this afternoon. If you'll excuse my back, I'll lead the way."