"I like to see you laugh, 'tite ange," he said, lifting a hand to straighten her glasses. He brushed gently at the smudge of mud Jeanne-Marie had left on her cheek. His fingertips grazed the corner of her mouth and stilled. Slowly, deliberately, he hooked his thumb beneath her chin and tilted her face up as he lowered his mouth to hers.
Not smart, Laurel told herself, even as she felt her lips soften beneath his. She wasn't strong enough for a relationship, wasn't looking for a relationship. She couldn't have found a more unlikely candidate in any event. Jack Boudreaux was wild and irreverent and unpredictable and mocked the profession and system she held such respect for. But none of those arguments dispelled the fire that sparked to life as he tightened his hold on her and eased his tongue into her mouth.
Jack groaned deep in his throat as she melted against him. His little tigress who hissed and scratched at him more often than not. She didn't want him getting close, but once the barrier had been crossed, she responded to him with a sweetness that took his breath away. He wanted her. He meant to have her. To hell with consequences. To hell with what she would think of him after. She wouldn't think anything that wasn't the truth-that he was a bastard, that he was a user. All true. None of it changed a damn thing.
He tangled one hand in her short, silky hair and started the other on a quest for buttons. But his hand stilled as a high-pitched, staccato burst of sound cut through the haze in his mind. Laughter. Children's laugher. Jack raised his head reluctantly, just in time to see round eyes and a button nose disappear behind the trunk of a willow tree.
Laurel blinked up at him. Stunned. Dazed. Disoriented. Her glasses steamed. "What?" she mumbled, breathless, her lips stinging and burning, her mouth feeling hot and wet and ultrasensitive-sensations that were echoed in a more intimate area of her body.
"Much as I like an audience for some things," Jack said dryly, "this ain't one of those things."
Another burst of giggles sounded behind the tree, and Laurel felt her cheeks heat. She shot him a look of disgust and gave him an ineffectual shove. "Go soak your head in the bayou, Boudreaux."
He grinned like a pirate. "It ain't my head that's the problem, ma douce amie."
She rolled her eyes and sidled around him, lest he try anything funny, heading back to the Jeep and her boots. "Come on, Casanova. Let's see if you can catch anything besides hell from me."
They went back into the water, and Jack lifted the first of the nets, revealing a good catch of fifteen to twenty crawfish. The little creatures scrambled over one another, hissing and snapping their claws. They looked like diminutive lobsters, bronze red with black bead eyes and long feelers. Laurel held an onion sack open while Jack poured their catch in. They moved down their row of nets, having similar luck with each. When they were through, they had three bags full.
By then the sun had turned orange and begun sliding down in the sky. Dusk was coming. With it would come the mosquitoes. Ever present in the bayou country, they lifted off the water in squadrons at sunset to fly off on their mission for blood.
Laurel arranged things neatly and efficiently on her side in the back of the Jeep. Jack tossed junk helter-skelter. The bags of crawfish were stowed with the rest of the gear, an arrangement Huey was extremely skeptical of. The hound jumped into his usual spot and sat with his ears perked, head on one side, humming a worried note as he poked at the wriggling onion sacks with his paw.
On their way back out to the main road Jack stopped by the old Cadillac and gave one bulging bag to the families, who probably relied on their catch for a few free meals. The gift was offered without ceremony and accepted graciously. Then the Jeep moved on, with several children chasing after it, flinging wildflowers at Huey, who had garnered a daisy chain necklace in the deal.
The whole process was as natural as a handshake. Reciprocity, a tradition that dated back to the Acadian's arrival in Louisiana, a time when life had been unrelentingly harsh, the land unforgiving. People shared with friends, neighbors, relatives, in good times and bad. Laurel took in the proceedings, thinking that since her father's death, no one at Beauvoir had ever offered anyone anything that didn't have strings attached.
"That was nice," she said, sitting sideways on the seat so she could study his response.
He shrugged off the compliment, slowed the Jeep for the turn onto the main road, pulled his cigarette out from behind his ear, and dangled it from his lip. "We caught more than we need. They got a lotta mouths to feed. Besides," he said, cutting her a wry look, "I don' want 'em gettin' any ideas about suing me for Huey traumatizing their bébé."
"How could they sue if he's not your dog?" Laurel asked sweetly.
"Tell it to the judge, angel."
"I may just do that," she said, crossing her arms and fighting a smile. "There's still the little matter of my aunt's flower garden…"
"Only through God may you be set free, brothers and sisters!" Jimmy Lee let the line echo a bit, loving the sound of his own voice over loudspeakers. Never mind that they were cheap, tinny-sounding loudspeakers. Once the money started rolling in for his campaign against sin, he would go out and buy himself new ones. And a new white suit or two. And a fancy French Quarter whore for a weekend… Yes, indeedy, life was sure as hell going to be sweet once the money came rolling in.
He had no doubt he would be rich and famous. Despite the betrayal of that little faggot Matthews, who had run the "news" version of Saturday's debacle instead of the version Jimmy Lee had envisioned on the ten o'clock report. Jimmy Lee was too good-looking not to make it, too charismatic, too good at pretending sincerity. He had it all over the other televangelists. Jim Bakker was a fool and had gotten his ass thrown in prison to prove it. Swaggart was careless, picking up prostitutes on the street. They had both fallen by the wayside, opening the road to fame and fortune for Jimmy Lee Baldwin. In another five years he'd have himself a church that would make the Crystal Cathedral look like an outhouse.
The followers of the True Path cheered him, looking up at him as though he were Christ himself. Some wore looks of near-rapture. Some had tears in their eyes. All of them were saps. In another era he would have made a fortune selling snake oil or the empty promise of rain to drought-plagued farmers. He was a born con man. But in this the age of self-awareness and the search for inner peace, religion was the ticket. As L. Ron Hubbard had once said, if a man wanted to get rich, the best way was to form his own religion. Jimmy Lee looked out on the pathetic, avid faces of his followers and smiled.
"That's right, my friends in Christ," he said, walking to the other end of the rented flatbed truck that was serving as his stage for the afternoon. "Only through faith. Not through liquor or drugs or sins of the flesh!"
He loved the way he could build a sentence to a thundering crescendo. So did his faithful. There were women in the crowd who looked positively orgasmic over the magic of his voice.
"That's why, my beloved brothers and sisters," he said softly.
He raised his crumpled handkerchief to his face and blotted away the sweat that was running down his forehead. The day had turned into a damn steambath. His white shirt was soaked through. His cheap linen-look jacket hung on him like damp wallpaper. He wanted desperately to take a cool shower and lie naked on his bed with a lovely young thing reviving his energies with her sweet hot mouth. But for the moment he was stuck on the back of this flatbed truck with the sun beating down on him, boiling the sweat on his skin. The first thing he was going to do when he was rich and famous was move his ministry the hell away from Louisiana.
"That's why we have to do this battle. That's why we have to vanquish our wicked foe who would lead us all into temptation and deliver us into the hands of evil. That's why we must smite down the dens of iniquity!"
He swung his arm in the direction of Frenchie's, which was across the parking lot behind him, and his small gathering of devout cheered like the mob at Dr. Frankenstein's door. Such eager little sheep. Jimmy Lee grinned inwardly.