Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

It was a pity. There were few houses of its ilk left. Fire and flood had claimed many over the years. Neglect had taken its share. The cost of keeping up a house of that size was an enormous financial burden in an area that had suffered too many lean years in the decades since the fall of the Confederacy. In modern times greed had claimed most of the rest. Many a fine old home had survived all else only to fall to the wrecking ball, making way for oil derricks and chemical factories.

Laurel walked up the drive, lost in thought, almost forgetting the man who walked beside her. She jumped a little when he spoke.

"If this is your home, how come you're not stayin' here?"

"That's none of your business, Mr. Boudreaux."

Mr. Boudreaux again. The bright-eyed angel who had taken him halfway to heaven with a kiss was in full retreat. "Just like it's none of my business why you're carryin' a gun around in your pocketbook?"

Laurel let silence be her answer. She had no intention of telling him the gun had been a necessary fashion accessory back in Georgia, when death threats had come in the mail as often as sweepstakes offers. Wesley had been appalled at the thought of her carrying a handgun. Jack Boudreaux had laughed. She herself saw the gun as a sign of weakness, but she carried it still, unable to part with the security it represented.

"You don' live here. Savannah don' live here. Who's left?"

She walked on for a moment. "Vivian. Our mother. And her husband, Ross Leighton."

Vivian. Jack arched a brow at the flat tone of voice. Not our mother, Vivian, but Vivian. A name spoken like that of an acquaintance-and one she was not overly fond of at that. There was a story there. Jack had never in his life called his mother anything but Maman right up to the day she died. A matter of respect and love. He heard neither in Laurel 's voice, saw neither in her face. Her expression was tightly closed, giving away nothing, and her eyes weren't quite visible to him behind the rain-streaked lenses of her glasses.

She had grown quieter and quieter on the hike, not even rising to the bait of one of his lawyer jokes, but pulling in on herself and drawing a curtain of silence around her. Coming home wasn't eliciting the traditional joyous response. Her step didn't lighten, the closer they got. She marched along like a prisoner being escorted to the penitentiary.

And you would do the same, Jack, if you were walking down the path to that tar-paper shack on Bayou Noir.

It wasn't the dwelling that mattered. It was the memories.

That revelation made him glance once again at the woman who walked beside him. A grand house didn't guarantee happiness. She might have had as bleak a childhood as his own. The possibility stirred the threads that might have formed a bond between them if he hadn't known enough to snap them off. He didn't want bonds.

A white Mercedes sedan was parked in front of the house, looking like an ad layout for the car company, waiting for some elegant couple to emerge from the grand house so they could be whisked away in Bavarian-made opulence to some nearby exclusive restaurant for dinner. It was Saturday night, Laurel reminded herself. Dinner and dancing at the country club. Socializing with peers. As queen bee of Partout Parish society, Vivian had the night to lord it over the less wealthy. She wasn't going to care for an interruption to her plans.

Laurel tried to tamp down the automatic rise of anxiety as she pressed the lighted button beside the door. She could feel Jack's eyes on her, knew he was wondering why she would feel compelled to ring the bell at the house she had grown up in, but she offered nothing in the way of explanation. It was too complicated. She had ceased to feel welcome in this house the night her father died. Beauvoir was not a home; it was a house. The people in it were people she would sooner have considered strangers than family. And those were feelings that brought on an even more complicated mix of emotions-resentment and guilt warring within her for supremacy over her soul.

The servant who answered the door was no one Laurel had ever seen before. Vivian and Ross were not the kind of people who inspired great loyalty in their employees. Vivian fired maids and cooks with regularity, and those she didn't fire were usually driven away by her personality. This maid, a whey-faced zombie in a sober gray uniform, looked at her blankly when she announced herself and left the cool white entry hall without a word, presumably to go find her mistress.

"Fun girl," Jack muttered, making a face.

Laurel said nothing. She stood where she had stopped just inside the door, dripping rainwater on the black-and-white marble floor. While Jack inspected the portrait of Colonel Beau Chandler that hung in a huge gilt frame over a polished Chippendale hall table, she caught a glimpse of herself in the beveled mirror that hung on the opposite wall above another priceless antique table. There was also a mirror at floor level, where antebellum belles had checked their hems and made certain their ankles weren't showing. Laurel wasn't concerned about her ankles. She winced inwardly as she took in her drenched hair and soggy blouse. A fist of anxiety tightened in her stomach. The same one she had felt as a child coming in from play with a grass stain on her dress.

"… what's the matter with you, Laurel? Shame on you! Nice girls don't get stains on their clothing. You're a Chandler, not some common little piece of trash. It's your duty to conduct yourself accordingly. Now go to your room and get changed, and don't come down until I call for you. Mr. Leighton is coming to dinner…"

"Hey, sugar, you okay?"

She jerked her head around and looked up at Jack, who was eyeing her warily.

"You look like you saw a ghost," he said. "You're whiter than that big boat of a car sittin' outside."

Laurel didn't answer him. The sound of a sharp, angry voice caught her ear, and she looked toward the door that led to the parlor, her blood pressure jumping higher with every word.

"… told you never to disturb me when I'm getting ready for a dinner engagement."

"Yes, ma'am, but-"

"Don't you talk back to me, Olive."

Silence reigned for several moments, expectation swelling in the air. Laurel pulled her glasses off and slicked a hand back through her hair, hating herself for giving in to the impulse.

"… be a good girl, Laurel. Always look your best, Laurel…"

Vivian stepped out of the parlor. She was fifty-three now, but still looked like Lauren Hutton-cool, elegant, alabaster skin, and eyes the color of aquamarines. What outward beauty God had given her, plastic surgery was preserving well. Only a hint of lines beside her eyes, none near the sharply cut mouth that was painted a rich, enticing red. Her body looked as slender and hard as a marble wand, and was draped to perfection in emerald green silk. The simple sheath masterfully accented the sleek lines of her body.

The heels of her pumps snapped against the marble floor as she came toward them, her attention on the clasp of the diamond bracelet she was fastening. Then her head came up, and she touched a hand to her neatly coiffed ash blond hair, a gesture Laurel remembered from infancy.

Vivian's eyes went wide with shock. " Laurel, what in God's name have you been doing?" she demanded, her gaze sliding down Laurel from the top of her wet head to the tips of her ruined canvas sneakers.

"We had a little accident."

"Well, for heaven's sake!"

Vivian's gaze flicked to Jack and held hard and fast on him, disapproval beaming from her like sonic waves. Jack met her look with insolence and a slow, sardonic smile. His shirt still hung open. He stood with his hands jammed at the waist of his jeans and one leg cocked. Finally he gave a mocking half bow.