by JoAnn Ross
Never a demonstrative man, he began to build an emotional wall around himself. Not for the reasons he had during those early months, when he'd viewed Danielle as a burden he'd never asked for, but because he couldn't bear the idea of losing the one person who meant the world to him. The only problem with that behavior, he'd come to realize, was that by protecting his own heart, he'd gravely wounded Dani's over the course of her life.
Judge Victor Dupree had been brought up surrounded by the mysteries of the Roman Catholic Church. He knew he was supposed to believe in one God, the forgiveness of sins, and life everlasting. Even having witnessed the aftermath of some of the worst things man could inflict upon his fellow man, he'd never bought into the idea of heaven and hell, having come to the conclusion in law school that it was nothing more than a fanciful concept humans had created in response to an inner need for reassurance that something existed beyond the here and now.
But seven years in near solitary confinement had given Victor Dupree a lot of time for introspection. Now, approaching death, possibly facing a judicial review far more crucial than any over which he'd ever presided, he feared he might be called upon to defend the actions of a lifetime.
He'd spent years being on guard for echoes of Danielle's mother in her, signs that he was losing control of his daughter (if she even was his daughter) as he'd lost control of his wife. Yet he had to admit, except for that reckless Romeo and Juliet teenage love affair with Jack Callahan, she'd never given him a lick of trouble. She'd been a model child, pretty, amiable, and obedient, even when he could tell it was hard on her. Even when he'd sent her away to Atlanta to give birth to Callahan's child, assuring her that he was protecting her reputation, when he realized now that it had been his own he'd been more concerned about.
Surprisingly, without having had any maternal role model to follow, other than Marie Callahan for those few years during her teens, Danielle had turned out to be a good mother. Her son—his grandson, the judge reminded himself—was a bright, inquisitive, interesting little boy who, along with possessing much of the attributes of his mother, in some ways reminded the judge of himself when he was Matthew's age.
Hell. Victor Dupree dragged a hand down his face. He had some fences to mend. Some ties to bind. Which is why, the judge decided, he wasn't going to die. At least not just yet.
Of course, staying alive had its own problems, now that Bad Jack was back in Blue Bayou, stirring things up again. The judge had never thought of himself as a coward, but he didn't want to think what might happen if the entire truth of what had happened that past summer came out.
Jack snagged the white plastic ball that came sailing off the yellow bat. “You're gettin' better.”
“I know.” Matt's face could have lit up Blue Bayou for a month of Sundays with wattage left over. “Huh, Grandpa?”
“You sure are,” the judge agreed robustly, unable to recall when he'd enjoyed himself more. “Keep it up and you'll be in the majors before you know it.”
“I'm too young,” Matt said with the literal mindedness of an eight-year-old. “I just want to be picked at recess.”
“You keep working on the fundamentals, and you'll be the star of the sandlot.” Jack threw a slow looping, underhand pitch, which floated under the wild swing. “That was close.”
“I still missed.”
“Hey, even the greatest hitters of all time strike out twice as often as they hit.”
“Really?” Matt tossed the ball back with surprising accuracy for a kid who hadn't even known how to properly hold it an hour ago.
“Sure.” He really was a great kid, and the fact that his father hadn't realized that was more proof of what Jack had already figured out. That the congressman had been swamp scum and the world, particularly Danielle's little corner of it, was a helluva lot better off without him. “Ever hear of anyone battin' a thousand?”
“I never thought of it that way.” Matt resumed his stance, standing a lot closer to the plate than he had when they'd first begun.
“It's something to keep in mind.”
Jack threw another pitch, which was clipped and went rolling across the lawn. Turnip, lying nearby, watched it, as if trying to decide whether to go chasing after it, ultimately opting to remain where she was.
“That was closer. Hard to believe you've never played before.”
“Dad was too busy.” This time the return throw went wild, but Jack managed to catch it before it rolled into the water. “Making up laws.”
“That's real important work.” Jack only gave Danielle's ex that small credit for the kid's sake.
“That's what Mom always said.” He frowned. But, Jack suspected, not in concentration. “But Dad was mostly interested in politics. Which was the only reason he wanted me.”
“I think you may be a bit confused, sport.”
“No, I'm not. It was because of the polls. Mom said more people vote for you if you're a family man.”
“Loosen your grip,” Jack suggested mildly as he unclenched his own hands, which had fisted. “You've got that gorilla hold thing goin' again.”
When they'd first begun, Matt had a death grip on the bat. He'd begun to loosen up. Until the conversation had shifted to his father.
“Okay.” Matt flexed his fingers. Drew in a breath.
“I can't believe your mother told you that about your father,” the judge said.
“She didn't say it to me.” He swung, managing to connect again for a nice little squibbed bunt up the imaginary third base line that might have earned him a single if they'd been playing a real game. “I heard her say it to dad. On the phone before he died. It was the day after I had to go to the Watergate to visit them because of the lawyers and accidently ran my scooter into Robin's new car.
“She's the lady Dad was going to marry. She called me a rotten little brat, but I never told Mom about that, because I didn't want to make her cry.”
“I don't think that would have made her cry, Sport.” Jack could, however, imagine Danielle marching over to the Watergate and ensuring no one ever dared talk to her son that way again.
“Dad made her cry a lot. When she was talking to him on the phone, she said that the devil would be making snowballs in hell before she let me go live with him and Robin.”
Jack scooped up the rolling ball and exchanged a look with the judge.
“You shouldn't be eavesdropping on your mother's phone calls,” the judge scolded without heat.
“I didn't mean to. I just had to get up to go to the bathroom and I heard her say that. Then she hung up. Then she cried.”
“Well, this is certainly a surprise.” All three males looked up as they heard the voice of the woman in question.
“Hi, Mom,” Matt greeted her. “Did you see me hit the ball?”
“I did. It was quite impressive.” Her voice was calm, her eyes were not.
“I hit it harder earlier.” Excited about his accomplishments, he appeared oblivious to the tension swirling around the adults. “Didn't I, Jack?”
“You sure enough did, cher. Slammed it nearly out of the park.”
“Kid's a natural,” the judge said helpfully.
“Isn't that lovely.” Dani's gaze settled on Jack. “Could I talk to you inside, please?”
“Mom, me and Jack were just getting good.”
“Jack and I,” she corrected.
“Jack and I,” he repeated obediently. “Did you know that when Barry Bonds was just a little kid, he could hit a whiffle ball hard enough to break windows?”
“Mrs. Bonds was undoubtedly thrilled by that achievement.” Dani knew she should be showing more interest, but it was difficult to keep her mind on a conversation about baseball when hornets were buzzing around in her head and she was shaking from the inside out. “I'm sorry to break up the inning, but it's important.”
“Sure.” Jack tossed the ball to Matt, who amazed Dani by dropping the yellow plastic bat and catching it with a one-handed snag that did, indeed, appear almost
natural.
“Why don't you play some catch with your grandfather,” Jack suggested. “Then, after your mom and I have ourselves a little chat, we can pick up some pizzas and take 'em out to Beau Soleil for supper.”
“Really?”
“ 'Bout time you see where your maman grew up. And now that the road's finally in, we can drive there in half the time as winding through the bayou in a boat.”
“That's an excellent idea,” the judge said heartily. “I haven't had pizza in a coon's age.”
“And you won't be having it tonight, either,” Dani said. “I have your dinner in here.” She lifted the white plastic bag from the Cajun Market.
“If I have to eat any more egg whites I'm going to start clucking.”
Dani had to admit that she'd perhaps been overly strict since her meeting with the doctor. But she was determined to turn her father's heart disease around so he could live long enough to get to know his grandson.
“No need.” Orèlia came out the kitchen door to weigh in on the discussion. “I'm cookin' my special spaghetti that I invented for my Leon's high blood pressure. I've got a whole cookbook full of recipes so good you'll be askin' me to marry you in no time.”
Dani's father narrowed his eyes. “Never realized you were such a forward woman.”
“Lot you didn't realize about me, you,” she retorted, her hands on her hips.
Dani left them to the bickering they'd been doing since her father's arrival at the house.
Jack took the grocery bags from her hands and carried them into the kitchen. “You're pissed at me,” he diagnosed as he put them on the wooden butcher-block counter.
“You're very observant.” She took an onion out of the bag.
“I like looking at you, so I don't miss much. . . . Why don't you give me these.” He took the cans of salt-free tomato sauce she'd pulled from the sack away. “Jus' in case you decide to throw 'em at my handsome head.”
“I should.” Her hands clenched into unconscious fists at her side. “You had no right . . .” Her voice choked. She could only toss her head in the direction of the backyard. “With Matt.”
“Teach him to play ball? Hell, I'm only tryin' to help the kid get along better in a new school.”
“I also heard at the market that he'd been telling the other boys that you were teaching him how to brawl.”
“It was boxing.” He reached down, took hold of her hand, and unfolded the tightly curled fingers, one by one. “I was only showin' him how to keep his guard up.”
Like she should do, Dani thought, remembering the gossip she'd overheard at the market about a long-going affair between Jack and Desiree Champagne. She'd been insisting, not just to Jack, but to herself, that she didn't want to get involved with him. But the hurt she'd felt hearing about him with another woman, especially one built like a Penthouse centerfold, definitely suggested that she was, on some level, already involved.
“Whatever you want to call it, the result is the same. I don't want my son viewing violence as a solution to any problem. And I'm definitely not happy the way you've been insinuating yourself into his life in order to pump him for information about my marriage.”
“I'd never do such a thing.” Appearing honestly shocked, Jack dropped her hand. “He volunteered the information. When he told me that the reason he didn't know how to play ball was because his daddy didn't like him.”
“Hell.” She let out a ragged breath, briefly closed her eyes, and shook her head. “It was never him personally. Lowell never cared about anyone—or anything—who couldn't help his career.”
“Then it's true? About him wanting a kid because he thought it might win him a few votes?”
It sounded even worse hearing it from someone else, Dani considered. Seeing the dark disapproval on Jack's face. How had she been so foolish?
Because, she answered her own rhetorical question, she'd been desperate to get over this man standing so close she could smell the scent of leather balm from his baseball glove on the hand that was skimming over her shoulder.
Close enough she could feel the warmth of his sunwarmed body and catch the tang of male sweat that was strangely, in its own way, appealing.
She'd never known Lowell to perspire. Not even in the heat of a Washington summer. Not even when making love.
She could live with knowing that her husband had never loved her. But how could she have married a man who wouldn't love her son? How could she have stayed with him without realizing the damage living with such a man might do to the one person she loved most in the world?
With the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, Dani realized that she should have cut her losses when Matthew had been born the day of Lowell's second-term election.
Steeped in her southern upbringing of putting others first, she hadn't thought to utter a single word of complaint when he'd refused to cut his final day's campaigning short to be by her side as she labored to bring their son into the world.
And despite having felt as alone and abandoned as the first time she'd given birth, the very next day, between feeding her newborn and writing out thank-you notes for the mountain of infant gifts that had arrived at the hospital, she'd dutifully telephoned the wives of each and every one of Lowell's major financial contributors, personally thanking them for their political support.
“It's not that simple.” She turned away.
“Few things in life are simple.” Jack came up behind her, pulled her against him, rested his chin on the top of her head. “Look at you and me.”
“I try not to.”
“Doesn't do much good, does it? Because whether you want to admit it or not, you keep thinkin' about me. The same way I keep thinkin' about you.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair. She could feel his breath on her neck. “During the day when I'm pounding nails.”
He turned her in his arms and skimmed work-roughened fingertips up the side of her face. “During the evening, when I should be workin' on my book.” He circled her lips with his thumb. “At night, when I should be sleeping.”
“Sleeping with Desiree Champagne?” She could have bitten off her tongue when she heard that thought escape.
“Desiree and I are friends, sure enough. And I'm not gonna lie and say that we haven't passed some good times together, since you've undoubtedly heard some gossip. But I haven't been with her since you came out to Beau Soleil.”
“Why not? She's certainly a beautiful woman and isn't exactly wearing widow's weeds, mourning her dear departed late husband.”
“Desiree's a survivor,” Jack said mildly. “She's had to be. But as appealing as she admittedly is, I'm not interested in her that way, because I don't want to be with anyone else but you, chère.”
His eyes held hers as he cupped the nape of her neck in his hand. “I promise I'll answer any question you have about Desiree or any other woman in my past later. Right now there's something we need to get out of the way.”
Jack lowered his head and kissed her. There was heat, burning through every cell of her body; smoke clouded thoughts she was struggling to form in her mind. The scent of Confederate jasmine and honeysuckle floated on the soft warm air. Somewhere in the chinaberry tree, a bird warbled a sad song while sweet desire sang in Dani's blood.
His clever, wonderfully wicked mouth beguiled. Seduced. His stunningly tender hands caressed. Persuaded.
When his lips left hers, and journeyed along her jaw, up her neck, to create a blissful havoc behind her ear, Dani's breath caught in her lungs.
“I thought you were a pretty girl before,” he murmured as he glided his fingers down her throat, lingering in the hollow where her blood was wildly pulsing. “But you definitely blossomed into a beauty, mon ange.”
The skimming caress continued downward, creating sparks of heat in the triangle of skin framed by the neckline of her blouse. Dani trembled as his fingertips brushed against the aching tip of her breast, a faint rasp of calluses against ivory silk.
The male scrape of afternoon
beard against her cheek as his lips trailed back to hers sent her nerves skittering. “We still fit,” he murmured.
“I'm on my toes.” Linking her fingers together behind his neck, she sank into the deepening kiss. Into him.
“Height don' got a thing to do with it.” His hands settled at her waist, drew her closer, fitting softness to strength. “We fit together in all the ways that count.”
She drew in a surprised breath when he lifted her up onto the counter, then began to move between her legs. He stopped when he got a close look at her thighs, revealed by her hitched-up skirt.
“Nice.” He skimmed a light touch along the lace top of her summer sheer stocking. “You wear these for me, sugar?”
“Hardly. Since I didn't expect you to be here when I got home.” She sucked in a sharp breath as he slipped a treacherous finger between the elasticized lace and her too hot flesh. “They're cooler than panty hose. And more practical.”
“I can see how that'd be.” The hot desire that had simmered in his eyes only a moment earlier changed to a devilish laughter that nearly was her undoing. “Nothin' more frustrating than tryin' to unwrap your woman from a pair of damn panty hose.”
“I happen to be my own woman.” She batted at his hand. “And stop that before someone comes in.”
She'd no sooner spoken when the screen door opened with a bang. “Hey, Jack,” Matt asked, “who do you think's the best shortstop? Grandpa thinks it's Nomar Garciaparra, but I say Alexander Rodriguez.”
“That's a no-brainer.” Jack shifted gears with an alacrity Dani, who was busily tugging down her skirt, had to admire. “A-Rod, he's second behind Cal Ripken in home runs by active shortstops and isn't just the best shortstop in the game, he's the best offensive player money can buy.
“Nomar's averages are great, but the guy's injury prone. Then you gotta factor in Jeter, who's a notch behind the other two in offense, but he's more durable over a long season.”
“Grandpa called Jeter a damn Yankee.”
“Well, there is that,” Jack allowed.
