Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

And still Laurel Chandler had managed to fall in love with him. The irony of it was too much-Laurel, the champion for justice, upholder of the law, in love with a man who had broken so many so carelessly, a man for whom justice was a sentence to emotional exile. She offered him everything he had ever wanted, everything he'd told himself he could never have.

If he had a shred of honor, he would walk away and leave her to fall in love with a better man than he could ever be.

The service was private. A blessing and a curse, Laurel thought. The pain went too deep for her to share it with people she hardly knew, but some of the deepest wounds had been inflicted by the only people present.

She sat with Caroline and Mama Pearl on one side of the chapel. Vivian and Ross sat on the other side, in the same pew but not together. Separated by an invisible wall of hate, together only out of Vivian's automatic attempt to put a "normal" face on ugly family secrets. She would never confirm or deny the rumors once they began to spread-a lady didn't lower herself to airing the dirty laundry in public. She would most likely divorce Ross quietly and go on with her life as if he had never been a part of it, leaving him hanging alone on the gallows of public opinion.

Ross stared dully at the casket with its blanket of pink tea roses and baby's breath. Laurel wondered if he felt remorse or just regret for being exposed after all this time. She wouldn't have allowed him to come, regardless, but the choice hadn't been hers to make.

She wondered how he would weather the storm of accusation and condemnation once the story of the abuse became common knowledge-and she would damn well make certain it became common knowledge. Caroline had told her once that Ross was a weak man. If there was a God in heaven, the shame of the truth would crush him.

Reverend Stipple had pitifully little to say in the way of a eulogy. Laurel would have preferred he say nothing, but it was his church, this church where she and Savannah had been christened, where their father had pledged to love their mother until death. Where death had brought them all and half the parish to see Jefferson Chandler off to the next world.

She looked down at the lace-edged handkerchief she held and remembered too well how Savannah had sat beside her and taken her hand and whispered to her. "Daddy's gone, but we'll always have each other, Baby."

Always.

Now death had brought them here again, these people whose lives were tied together in a painful knot of common experience.

Toward the end of the ceremony, Conroy Cooper slipped in the back and took a seat by himself. Laurel met his somber, soul-deep blue gaze as she walked out of the church, and saw the regret there, and the love, and she ached at the irony that of all the men her sister had known, she would love the one whose nobility put him out of her reach.

When everyone else had gone out, Laurel lingered in the shadows of the vestibule and watched Cooper lay a single white rose on the casket. For a long while he just stood there, head bent, one hand on the polished wood, saying good-bye in his low, smooth voice.

Laurel had labeled him an adulterer and condemned him for not being able to give Savannah the kind of commitment she wanted. But he had loved her as best he could, he said, while trying to keep a vow to a wife who no longer knew him. He had given Savannah all he could. It wasn't his fault she had needed so much more.

There was no coffee served after the burial. No time for normalcy to dilute the grief with talk of crops and babies and everyday things. Caroline drove them home to Belle Rivière in silence.

Mama Pearl went into her kitchen to take solace in the familiar ritual of brewing a pot of café noir. Caroline laid her keys on the hall table, turned and took Laurel's hands in hers. "I'm going upstairs to lie down for a while," she said, her strong voice softened by strain to a whisper. "You should do the same, darlin'. It's been a terrible few days."

Laurel struggled for a game smile and shook her head. "I'm too restless to sleep. I was thinking I'd go into the courtyard for a while."

Dark eyes shining with the kind of love and wisdom a mother should possess, Caroline nodded and squeezed Laurel's fingers. "You've got it so pretty out there. It's a good place to look for a little peace."

Laurel didn't expect to find any, but it was true she was going to look, to hope.

She strolled the pathways slowly, with her hands tucked deep in the pockets of her flowered skirt. A fitful breeze swirled the hem around her calves and brushed the ends of her hair across her shoulders. The day was warm and muggy with a sky that couldn't decide whether it should be a clear blue bowl or a tumble of angry gray clouds.

Despite the moods of the weather and the aura of sadness that hung on Laurel like a shroud, the garden offered what it always did. The rich scents of green growth, the soft, sweet perfumes of flowers bathed her senses, trying to soothe, offering comfort. Even the weeds tried to distract her, reminding her they needed pulling. Tomorrow, she promised, moving on down the path, searching for something she couldn't hope to find today.

She felt as if a crucial, turbulent chapter of her life had been abruptly closed. Savannah was gone. The secret they had shared all these years had been unlocked. Danjermond was dead, and while the investigation continued into the dark shadows of his past, and the headlines were still selling papers, the bottom line had been drawn. Between her testimony and the evidence in his home, and at the scene, Stephen Danjermond, Partout Parish district attorney, son of the Garden District Danjermonds of New Orleans, had been established as a serial killer.

She should have felt a sense of closure, she thought as she took a seat on the corner bench. But she felt more as if something had started to unravel and had been discarded with loose threads trailing all around. Savannah was gone. They would never have the chance to repair the cracks in their relationship; it would remain forever broken. The secret had been revealed, but she would go on being Vivian's daughter; Ross Leighton would forever be a part of her past, if not her future. Danjermond was dead, but every life he had touched would be indelibly marked by his betrayal.

And then there was Jack. The man who was bent on paying with his life for the sins of his past.

If she had a brain in her head, she would walk away, make a clean break, start over somewhere new. What had happened between her and Jack had happened too quickly, too intensely. A relationship had been the last thing she'd come home looking for, and Jack was far from the kind of man she had pictured herself with. He had used, abused, and derided the profession they once had in common. She didn't respect him because of it-but she respected the way he had turned himself around in the end, even if he claimed his motives were selfish. He lived a life built on shirking responsibility, another trait that irritated her strong sense of duty, but she had seen him defy that role time and again.

She kept seeing him in her mind's eye-not the rogue male with the wicked grin and the ruby in his earlobe, but the lonely, haunted man whose hidden needs reached deep into a loveless boyhood. She kept feeling the ache inside him that had touched her own heart, the ache of longing for things he thought he shouldn't have.

Jack painted himself as a user and a cad, good for nothing but a good time, but the fact of the matter was he had saved her life and shown a heroism that was exceedingly rare in this world.

He was so distinctly two different people. The trouble was convincing the "bad" Jack that the "good" Jack existed and deserved to have a chance at something better than a half life filled with pain.