Regret burned like acid in his throat, behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw against it, whipped himself mentally to get past it. "The first Sweetwater story had broken, and I was working like mad to cover the company's ass in triplicate. I barely took time to shave or eat."
Tension rattled through him like the thunder shaking the windowpanes as the scenes played out in his memory. His emotions rushed ahead frantically, knowing the ending, torn between the need to protect himself and the need to punish. He drew in a sharp breath through his nostrils and curled a fist into the fragile old lace of the curtain.
"One night I came home in a bitch of a mood. Two o'clock. Hadn't had a meal all day. There wasn't anything in the kitchen. I went looking for Evie, spoiling for a fight. Found her in the bathroom. In the tub. She'd slit her wrists."
"Oh, God, Jack." Laurel 's arm tightened around the pillar. She brought a hand to her mouth to hold back the cry that tore through her, but the tears still flooded and fell. Through them she watched Jack struggle with the burden of his guilt. His broad shoulders were braced against it, trembling visibly. In the lightning glow she could see his face, his mouth twisting as he fought, chin quivering.
"The note she left was full of apologies," he said, his voice thickening, cracking. He cleared his throat and managed a bitter smile. "'I'm sorry I couldn't make you need me, Jack. I'm sorry I couldn't make you love me, Jack.' Sorry for the inconvenience. I think she did it in the bathtub so she wouldn't leave a mess."
This time when the urge came, Laurel let go of the post and let herself go to him. "She made her own choice, Jack," she murmured. "It wasn't your fault."
When she started to lay her hand against the taut muscles of his back, he twisted away and swung around to face her. His eyes were burning with anger and shame, swimming with tears he refused to let fall.
"The hell it wasn't!" he roared. "She was my responsibility! I was supposed to take care of her. I was supposed to look out for her. I was supposed to be there when she needed me. Bon Dieu, I might as well have taken the blade to her myself!"
He whirled and cleared a marble-topped table with a violent sweep of his arm, sending antique porcelain figurines crashing to their doom on the cypress floor. Laurel flinched at the sound of shattering china, but didn't back away.
"You couldn't have known-"
"That's right, I couldn't have," he snapped. "I was never there. I was too busy manipulating the illegal disposal of toxic waste." He threw back his head and laughed in sardonic amazement. "Jesus, I'm a helluva guy, aren't I? Huh? A helluva match for you, Lady Justice."
She pressed her lips together and said nothing. She couldn't condone what he'd done at Tristar-it was both illegal and immoral-but neither could she find it in her to condemn him. She knew what it was to get caught up in the job, to be driven to it by demons from the past. And she knew what guilt could do to a person, the changes it could wreak, the pain of it eating inside.
"You didn't kill her, Jack. She had other choices."
"Yeah?" he asked, his voice thin and trembling, his face a mask of torment. "And what about the baby she was carrying? Did he have a choice?"
The pain was as sharp as ever. As sharp as the razor blade that had ended his dream of a wife and a family. It sliced at his heart, severed what was left of his strength. He turned back to the French doors and leaned into the one that stood closed, pressing his face against the cool glass, crying silently while rain washed across the other side, soft and cleansing, never touching him. He could still see the pathologist's face, could still hear the disbelief in his voice. "You mean she hadn't told you? She was nearly three months along…"
His child. His chance to atone for all his father's sins. There and gone before he even had the joy of knowing. Gone because of him, just as Evie was gone because of him.
Not for the first time he thought he was the one who should have sliced open a vein and drained his life away.
Laurel slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his back, her tears dampening the soft cotton of his T-shirt. She could see it all so clearly. Jack, so eager to prove himself, scrambling up that sheer granite face of the odds that were stacked against his making anything of himself. Then all of it crumbling beneath him, sucking him down and crushing him with the weight of the debris. He must have thought he'd had everything he ever wanted right in the palm of his hand, and then it was swept away, and every line of degradation his father had ever hammered into him must have come rushing back.
He shoved her away so suddenly, so unexpectedly, Laurel nearly fell. She stumbled back against the table, her shoes crunching over a fortune in shattered porcelain. Jack wheeled on her, his face dark with rage.
"Get out! Get outta here! Get outta my life!" he shouted in her face. "Get out before I kill you too!"
Laurel just stared at him, at the wild gleam of pain in his eyes, the muscles and tendons that stood out in his neck, the heavy rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. She should have run like hell. Inside he was as fractured as any of the statuettes grinding to dust beneath her feet. She wasn't in much better shape herself. She certainly wasn't strong enough to take on his healing too.
She should have run like hell. She didn't.
She fell in love.
He was trying to push her away, not because he didn't care, but because he cared too much; not because he didn't feel, but because his heart was so badly battered. Losing her heart to him wasn't the smart thing or the timely thing. It wasn't the choice she would have made with her logical, practical attorney's mind, but logic had nothing to do with it.
She met his pain and fury with her chin up and her eyes clear. "Why should I go?"
Jack stared at her, dumbfounded. He thought he could actually feel the gears in his mind slipping. "Why?" he repeated, incredulous. He swept his hands back over his hair, turned around in a circle, stared at her some more. "How can you ask that? After all I've just told you, how can you stand there and ask that?"
"You didn't kill your wife, Jack," she said gently. "You didn't kill your child. You're not going to kill me, either. Why should I leave?"
"I can't have you," he whispered, more to himself than to Laurel.
She stepped up to him, calm and fearless, and whispered, "Yes, you can."
He wanted to tell her she didn't understand. He couldn't have her, couldn't care, because he didn't deserve her and because everything he ever wanted was ripped away from him in the end anyway. He didn't need the pain, didn't think he could stand it. But he said none of those things. The words simply wouldn't come.
All he could think as he stared down into that earnest, angelic face was that he wanted to hold her. Just for a little while. Just for what was left of the night. He wanted to hold her, and kiss her, and find some comfort in her body.
Use her.
He'd be a bastard to the very end, he thought. No use fighting his true nature. It wasn't as if he hadn't warned her.
It wasn't as if he didn't need her…
Longing welled inside him, and he reached out to touch her, to ease the ache, to fill the hole in his heart if only temporarily. She sank against him, so small, so fragile. His… for the moment… for the night… for a memory he could hold forever.
Outside, the storm shook the night with sound and fury, but in this room all was stillness except the beating of hearts, the caress of flesh against flesh. Mist blew in through the open door and settled like silver dew, shimmering on the cypress floor when the lightning flashed, but all that touched them was a warmth that glowed from needs within.
Every sense was heightened. Every sense was filled. The fragrance of her skin. The hardness of his muscle. The taste of tears, of gentleness, of desire. The sound of breath catching. The growl of passion. The contrast of light skin on dark. The delicate lacework of her lashes as they swept against her cheek. The planes and angles of his beard-shadowed jaw. Laurel immersed herself in it all. Jack soaked it up greedily.
He touched her like a blind man trying to see with his fingertips, tracing the lines and gentle curves. Fingers fanned wide, he skimmed her jaw, her throat, the slope of her shoulders. He cradled her breasts then let his touch flow downward, over her ribs to her tiny waist, along the subtle flare of her hips.