"These are left over from yesterday," she chattered, arranging everything to her satisfaction on the table. "I just popped them into the microwave to warm them up and sprinkled fresh sugar on them. Have one," she ordered, suddenly full of life and hope. "Have half a dozen. If anyone ever needed to load up on Mama Pearl's cooking, it's you, Baby. You don't have an ounce to spare."
Laurel tossed the matchbook down on the tabletop between them and reached for a beignet. "You left that in the car."
Savannah picked it up and sat back, studying it idly as she nibbled on the corner of her breakfast. She said nothing for a long moment, staring at the bloodred square blankly, then dropped it. "I use a lighter."
A vague sense of unease shifted through Laurel. She set her beignet aside on her napkin, her gaze moving from her sister's expressionless face to the matchbook. An elaborate Mardi Gras mask was stamped in black above the words "Le Mascarade" and a French Quarter address in New Orleans. "If it's not yours, then how did it get in my car?"
A careless shrug was her only answer. Savannah pushed her chair back from the table and rose. "I forgot the sugar for my tea."
As she padded back into the house, Laurel fingered the matchbook, a strange chill pebbling the flesh of her arms with goose bumps.
"Bonjour, mon ange. For you."
Laurel gasped as a perfect red rose appeared before her. She hadn't heard Jack's approach, hadn't even caught a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye. His ability to appear and disappear seemingly from and into thin air rattled her, and she narrowed her eyes to compensate with annoyance.
"You damn near gave me a heart attack."
Jack frowned, leaning over her, breathing in the clean scent of her hair. "Is that any way to thank a man for bringing you flowers?"
She gave a little sniff of disdain but accepted the rose. "You probably stole it from one of Aunt Caroline's bushes."
"It's no less a gift," he said, leaning closer, his gaze fastening on her lips.
Anticipation fluttered in her throat. "How can it be a gift if it's something I already possessed?"
He lowered his head another fraction of an inch, closing the space between them to little more than a deep breath. His lashes drifted down, thick and black. "Isn't that just like a lawyer?" he whispered. "If I offered you the moon, you'd probably want to see my deed to it."
Any retort she might have made was lost. Any thought she might have had in her head vanished as Jack settled his mouth against hers. He kissed her deeply, intimately, leisurely, reminding her graphically and frankly of the intimacy they had shared the night before.
When he lifted his mouth from hers at last, he made a low, purring sound of satisfaction in his throat, then chuckled wickedly. "Why you blushin', ma jolie fille?" he asked, his voice dark and smoky. "You gave me a helluva lot more than a kiss last night."
"But you probably didn't have an audience, did you, Jack?" Savannah asked sharply. She stepped out from behind a pillar and set a silver sugar bowl on the table, never taking her eyes off him. She picked up the red matchbook and tapped it against her cheek. "Or have you led my baby sister that far astray?"
He straightened, his eyes cold, his face set in a stony mask. "That's none of your damn business, Savannah."
"Yes, it is," she argued. "I won't have you fucking my baby sister, Jack."
"Why is that? Because I didn't do you first?"
She threw the matchbook down, color rising high into her cheeks. "You son of a bitch."
"Stop it!" Laurel snapped, shoving her chair back and rising to her feet. She turned toward her sister, a part of her shocked by the pure hatred she saw burning like pale blue flame in Savannah 's eyes as she stared at Jack, a part of her too annoyed to pay attention to it. "Sister, I appreciate your concern, but I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."
Savannah blinked at her, looking stunned. "No, you can't. You need me."
"I need your support," Laurel qualified. "I don't need you screening my dates."
Savannah picked out four words from the rest and drove them through her own heart like a stake. "I don't need you." Baby didn't need her, didn't want her, preferred the company of Jack Boudreaux. Panic clawed through her, and fury poured out of the wounds as hot and red as blood. Her one chance to do something important was being snatched away from her. Everything she wanted was always beyond her reach. Coop. Laurel. Baby was turning away from her for a man. And she was left with nothing, just another slut like every other slut in south Louisiana.
"After all I've done for you," she muttered, her lush mouth twisting at the bitterness, at the irony. "After all I've done for you, you don't need me."
Laurel 's jaw dropped. "That's not what I said!"
"Well, fine," Savannah went on. "You go on and have a high old time with him and just forget about me. I don't need you, either. You're nothing but an ungrateful little hypocrite, and I can't think why I ever would have saved you from anything."
Tears shone like diamonds in her eyes. She caught at her artificially plump lower lip with her teeth, raking color into it. "I never will again," she vowed, her voice choked and petulant. "You can count on that. I never will again."
" Savannah!" Laurel started after her as she whirled and ran into the house, but Jack caught her by the shoulder.
"Let her go, angel. She's in no mood to listen. Let her cool off."
Seconds later the Acura roared to life at the side of the house, and then came the angry screech of tires on asphalt.
Laurel turned and slammed her fist into Jack's shoulder, not to punish him, but because she needed to hit something, anything. "I don't understand what's going on with her!"
"She's jealous."
"No," she murmured, leaning into him as the anger seeped out of her muscles, leaving her trembling. "It's not as simple as that."
"Yeah, well…" He heaved a sigh and slipped his arms around her, resting his chin atop her head. "C'est vrai, life's a bitch. Nothin's ever simple…"
Certainly not in Laurel 's life. She seemed interminably tangled in a web of obligations. He wanted to cut her loose, if only for a little while, give her a break… have her all to himself so he might pretend she could be his.
"Except fishin'," he said, going with the impulse that had brought him here at this ungodly hour in the first place. "You ready to come fishin' with me, ma petite?"
"I never said I'd go fishing with you," Laurel said, frowning.
"Sure you did. Last night." He tucked a knuckle under her chin and tipped her face up. "You whispered it in my ear while we were makin' love. You said I could take you anywhere. I'm taking you fishin'."
They went out in a pirogue Laurel had more than a few reservations about. Slender and shallow as a pea pod, it was made of weathered cypress planking and bobbed like a cork on the inky, oily surface of the bayou. Laurel stood on the dock for a long moment, looking dubious, as Jack loaded fishing gear into the bow.
"Are you sure this thing is safe?"
"Oh, absolutely," he drawled, adding a cooler to the cargo in the nose of the boat. The pirogue dipped and swayed on the water as if protesting even that slight load. Unconcerned, Jack climbed in, braced his feet, and reached a hand up to help her aboard. "An old friend of mine made this pirogue for me. As he would say, 'This boat, she rides the dew.' "
Laurel swallowed hard as she stepped down into the craft and felt it bob beneath her. She grabbed hold of Jack's biceps for an instant to steady herself and to pull him with her if she went overboard. "Was he sober at the time?"
"Hard to say," Jack mused, easing her down on the boat's plank seat. He jammed a red USL Ragin' Cajuns baseball cap down on her head and stepped deftly over the seat to take up the push-pole at the stern. "Ol' Lucky Doucet, he used to be some kind of wild."
He pushed off, and they moved away from the dock, the pirogue seeming to skate across the water, as graceful as a blade on ice. Laurel took a deep breath and willed herself to relax.