He looked surprised and pleased at her parry. "Was I interrogating you? I thought we were getting acquainted."
"Getting acquainted is generally a reciprocal process. You haven't told me anything about yourself."
"I'm sorry." He sent her a dazzling smile that had doubtless knocked more than one simple belle off her feet. Laurel reminded herself she was no simple belle, had never been. "I'm afraid I find you such an interesting and enchanting creature, I lost my head."
The sincerity in his voice was too smooth, too polished to be real. Laurel had the unnerving feeling that nothing on this earth could rattle Stephen Danjermond. There was that sense of calm around him, in his eyes, in the core of him. She wondered if anything could ever penetrate it.
"False flattery will get you nowhere, Mr. Danjermond," she said, glancing away from him to her reflection in the mirror on the visor. "I hardly look enchanting tonight."
"Fishing for a compliment, Laurel?"
"Stating a fact. I have no use for compliments."
He turned in at the drive to the carriage house that served as Belle Rivière's garage and let the Jag idle in park. "Practicality and idealism," he said, turning toward her, sliding his arm casually along the back of the seat. "An intriguing mix. Fascinating."
Laurel 's fingers curled over the door handle as he studied her with those steady, peridot eyes. "I'm so glad I could amuse you," she said, her tone as dry as a good martini.
Danjermond shook his head. "Not amuse, Laurel. Challenge. You're a challenge."
"You make me feel like a Rubik's Cube."
He laughed at that, but his enjoyment of her spunk was cut short as his pager went off. "Ah, well, duty calls," he said with a sigh of regret, punching a button on the small black box that lay on the seat between them. "Might I beg the use of a telephone?"
He made his call in the privacy of Caroline's study and left immediately after, leaving Laurel feeling a mix of relief and residual tension. She had dreaded the prospect of introducing him to Aunt Caroline and Mama Pearl and having to sit through coffee and conversation. She had escaped that fate, but the tension lingered.
It lingered, still, as she wandered the cobbled paths of the garden in her bare feet. What a nightmare that Vivian saw them as a match.
Even if she had been in top form, Laurel wouldn't have wanted anything to do with him personally. He made her uneasy with those cool green eyes and that smooth drawl that never altered pitch or tempo. He was too composed when she felt as if she were scrambling on the side of a steep hill, scratching for a handhold. He was too intensely male, she supposed.
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.