The side door slammed, and Leonce's voice came across the dark expanse of parking lot in staccato French. "Hey, Jack, viens ici! Dépêche-toi! Allons jouer la musique, pas les femmes!"
Jack cast a longing glance at his friend up on the gallery, then back at Laurel Chandler. "In a minute!" he called, his gaze lingering on the woman, turmoil twisting in his belly like a snake. He didn't credit himself with having much of a conscience, but what there was made him take a step toward Laurel. "Look, sugar-"
Laurel twisted back and away from the hand he held out to her, mortified that this man she knew little and respected less was witnessing this-this weakness. God, she wanted to have at least some small scrap of pride to cling to, but that, too, was tearing out of her grasp.
"I never should have come here," she mumbled, not entirely sure whether she meant Frenchie's specifically or Bayou Breaux in general. She stumbled back another step as Jack Boudreaux reached for her arm again, his face set in lines of concern and apprehension, then she whirled and ran out of the parking lot and into the night.
Jack stood flat-footed, watching in astonishment as she disappeared in the heavy shadows beneath a stand of moss-draped live oak at the bayou's edge. Panic, he thought. That was what he had seen in her eyes. Panic and despair and a strong aversion to having him see either. What a little bundle of contradictions she was, he thought as he dug a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and dangled it from his lip. Strength and fire and fragility.
"What'd you do, mon ami?" Leonce shuffled up, tugging off his Panama hat and wiping the sweat from his balding pate with his forearm. "You scare her off with that big horse cock of yours?"
Jack scowled, his gaze still on the dark bank, his mind still puzzling over Laurel Chandler. "Shut up, tcheue poule."
"Don' let it get you down," Leonce said, chuckling at his own little pun. He settled his hat back in place, and his fingers drifted down to rub absently at the scar that ravaged his cheek. "Women are easy to come by."
And hard to shake-that was their usual line. Not Laurel Chandler. She had cut and run. Even as his brain turned the puzzle over and around trying to shake loose an answer, Jack shrugged it off. His instincts told him Laurel Chandler would be nothing but trouble when all he really wanted from life was to pass a good time.
"Yeah," he drawled, turning back toward Frenchie's with his buddy. "Let's go inside. I need to find me a cold beer and hot date."
Chapter Three
" Laurel, help us! Laurel, please! Please! Please… please…"
She'd had the dream a hundred times. It played through her mind like a videotape over and over, wearing on her, tearing at her conscience, ripping at her heart. Always the voices were the worst part of it. The voices of the children, frantic, begging, pleading. The qualities in those voices touched nerves, set off automatic physiological reactions. Her pulse jumped, her breath came in short, shallow, unsatisfying gasps. Adrenaline and frustration pumped through her in equal amounts.
Dr. Pritchard had attempted to teach her to recognize those signals and defuse them. Theoretically, she should have been able to stop the dream and all the horrible feelings it unleashed, but she never could. She just lay there feeling enraged and panic-stricken and helpless, watching the drama unfold in her subconscious to play out to its inevitable end, unable to awaken, unable to stop it, unable to change the course of events that caused it. Weak, impotent, inadequate, incapable.
"The charges are being dropped, Ms. Chandler, for lack of sufficient evidence."
Here she always tried to swallow and couldn't. A Freudian thing, she supposed. She couldn't choke down the attorney general's decision any more than she could have chewed up and swallowed the Congressional Record. Or perhaps it was the burden of guilt that tightened around her throat, threatening to choke her. She had failed to prove her case. She had failed, and the children would pay the consequences.
"Help us, Laurel! Please! Please… please…"
She thrashed against the bed, against the imagined bonds of her own incompetence. She could see the three key children behind the attorney general, their faces pale ovals dominated by dark eyes filled with torment and dying hope. They had depended on her, trusted her. She had promised help, guaranteed justice.
"… lack of sufficient evidence, Ms. Chandler…"
Quentin Parker loomed larger in her mind's eye, turning dark and menacing, metamorphosing into a hideous monster as the children's faces drifted further and further away. Paler and paler they grew as they floated back, their eyes growing wider and wider with fear.
"Help us, Laurel! Please… please… please…"
"… will be returned to their parents…"
"No," she whimpered, tossing, turning, kicking at the bedclothes.
"Help us, Laurel!"
"… returned to the custody of…"
"No!" She thumped her fists against the mattress over and over, pounding in time with her denial. "No! No!"
"… a formal apology will be issued…"
"NO!!"
Laurel pitched herself upright as the door slammed shut on her subconscious. The air heaved in and out of her lungs in tremendous hot, ragged gasps. Her nightgown was plastered to her skin with cold sweat. She opened her eyes wide and forced herself to take in her surroundings, busying her brain by cataloging every item she saw-the foot of the half-tester bed, the enormous French Colonial armoire looming darkly against the wall, the marble-topped walnut commode with porcelain pitcher and bowl displaying an arrangement of spring blooms. Normal things, familiar things illuminated by the pale, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't moon shining in through the French doors. She wasn't in Georgia any longer. This wasn't Scott County. This was Belle Rivière, Aunt Caroline's house in Bayou Breaux. The place she had run to.
Coward.
She ground her teeth against the word and rubbed her hands hard over her face, then plowed her fingers back through her disheveled mess of sweat-damp hair.
" Laurel?"
The bedroom door opened, and Savannah stuck her head in. Just like old times, Laurel thought, when they were girls and Savannah had assumed the role of mother Vivian Chandler had been loath to play unless she had an audience. They were thirty and thirty-two now, she and Savannah, but they had fallen back into that pattern as easily as slipping on comfortable old shoes.
It seemed odd, considering it was Laurel who had grown up to take charge of her life, she who had struck out and made a career and a name for herself. Savannah had stayed behind, never quite breaking away from the past or the place, never able to rise above the events that had shaped them.
"Hey, Baby," Savannah murmured as she crossed the room. The moon ducked behind a cloud, casting her in shadow, giving Laurel only impressions of a rumpled cloud of long dark hair, a pale silk robe carelessly belted, long shapely legs and bare feet. "You okay?"
Laurel wrapped her arms around her knees, sniffed, and forced a smile as her sister settled on the edge of the bed. "I'm fine."
Savannah flipped on the bedside lamp, and they both blinked against the light. "Liar," she grumbled, frowning as she looked her over. "I heard you tossing and turning. Another nightmare?"
"I didn't think you were coming home tonight," Laurel said, railroading the conversation onto other tracks. She tossed and turned every night, had nightmares every night. That had become the norm for her, nothing worth talking about.
Savannah 's lush mouth settled into a pout. "Never mind about that," she said flatly. "Things got over quicker than I thought."
"Where were you?" Somewhere with smoke and liquor. Laurel could smell the combination over and above a generous application of Obsession. Smoke and liquor and something wilder, earthier, like sex or the swamp.
"It doesn't matter." Savannah shook off the topic with a toss of her head. "Lord Almighty, look at you. You've sweat that gown clean through. I'll get you another."
Laurel stayed where she was as her sister went to the cherry highboy and began pulling open drawers in search of lingerie. She probably should have insisted on taking care of herself, but the truth of the matter was she didn't feel up to it. She was exhausted from lack of sleep and from her encounter with Jack Boudreaux. Besides, wasn't this part of what she had come home for? To be comforted and cared for by familiar faces?