Cry Wolf

by Tami Hoag

  Her mouth turned down in a frown. “I thought this was a conversation, not an interrogation. Why can't I ask questions?”

  “Because you won' like my answers, sugar,” he said darkly.

  “How will I know until I hear them?”

  “Trust me.”

  Laurel took advantage of the silence to study him for a moment as he stared out at the brown water, that intense, brooding look on his face. The feeling that he was two very different men struck her once again. One minute he was the wild-eyed devil who wanted nothing more than to get into trouble and have a good time; the next he was this closed, dark man who kept the door shut on the part of himself he didn't want anyone to see. She found herself wanting to know what was on the other side of that door. A dangerous curiosity, she thought, pulling herself back from asking more questions.

  Down the bank Huey suddenly bounded out of a stand of cattails and coffee weed, baying excitedly. The children who had been chasing around their parents' cars farther downstream came running, squealing with excitement to see what the hound had discovered, shrieking delightedly when they found the dog's quarry was a painted turtle with a spotted salamander riding on its back.

  The turtle lumbered along, ignoring the sniffing hound, its lethargic gait seeming out of sync with its gaudy coloring. Its ebony-green shell shone like a bowling ball and was crisscrossed with a network of reddish-yellow lines. A broad red stripe stroked down the center of it from head to tail. The salamander flicked its long tongue out at the dog, sending Huey into another gale of howls that in turn set the children off again.

  Poor Huey couldn't seem to figure out why the turtle didn't spring away from him so he could give chase. He batted a paw at it and yipped in surprise as the salamander shot off its hard-shelled taxi and skittered into the tall weeds. The hound wheeled and ran, bowling over a toddler in his haste to escape.

  Being the closest adult, Laurel automatically went to the little girl's aid. She hefted up twenty pounds of squalling baby fat and perched the child on her hip as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “Don't cry, sweetie, you're okay,” she cooed, stroking a mop of black curls that were as soft as a cloud.

  The little girl let out a last long wail, just to let the world know she had been sorely mistreated, then subsided into hiccups, her attention suddenly riveted on her rescuer. Laurel smiled at the swift change of mood, at the innocence in the chubby face and the wonder in the round, liquid dark eyes. A muddy little hand reached up and touched her face experimentally.

  “Jeanne-Marie, are you okay, bébé?” The child's mother rushed up, her brows knit with worry, arms reaching out.

  “I think she was just startled,” Laurel said, handing the baby over.

  After a quick inspection satisfied her parental concern, the young woman turned back to Laurel with a sheepish look. “Oh, look! Jeanne-Marie, she got you all dirty! I'm so sorry!”

  “It's nothing. Don't worry about it,” Laurel said absently, reaching out to tickle Jeanne-Marie's plump chin. “What a pretty little girl.”

  The mother smiled, pride and shyness warring for control of her expression. She was herself very pretty in a curvy, Cajun way. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you for picking her up.”

  “Well, I'm sure the dog's owner would apologize to you,” Laurel said dryly, shooting Jack a glance over her shoulder. “If he would ever admit the dog is his.”

  The woman was understandably baffled, but nodded and smiled and backed away toward the rest of her group, telling Jeanne-Marie to wave as they went.

  Laurel waved back, then turned toward Jack, a smart remark on the tip of her tongue. But he had a strange, stricken look on his face, as if he had seen something he hadn't been at all prepared for.

  “What's the matter with you?” she said instead. “Do you have a phobia of children or something?”

  Jack shook himself free of the emotion that had gripped him as he had watched Laurel with little Jeanne-Marie. Dieu, he felt as though he'd taken an unexpected boot to the solar plexus. She had looked so natural, so loving. The thought had crossed his mind instantly, automatically, that she would make a wonderful mother—as Evie would have if she had ever gotten the chance. If their child had ever been born. Thoughts he didn't usually allow himself during daylight hours. Those were for the night, when he could dwell on them and beat himself with them and cut his soul to ribbons with their razor-sharp edges.

  “A—no,” he stammered, blinking hard, scrambling for a mental toehold. He shrugged and flashed her a smile that was pale in comparison to his usual. “Me, I just don' know much about babies, that's all.”

  Laurel gave him a look. “I'll bet you know all about making them, though, don't you?”

  “Ah, c'est vrai. I'm a regular expert on that subject.” His grin took hold, cutting his dimples deep into his cheeks. He looped his arms around her, catching her by surprise, and shuffled closer and closer, until they were belly to belly. “You want for me to give you a demonstration, sugar?” he drawled, his voice stroking over her like long, sensitive fingers.

  Laurel swallowed hard as raw, sexual heat swept through her.

  “You certainly have a high opinion of your own abilities,” she said, grabbing frantically for sass to ward off the other, more dangerous feelings.

  He lowered his head a fraction, his dark eyes shining as he homed in on her mouth. “It ain't bragging if you can back it up.”

  Laurel's pulse jumped. “I'll back you up,” she threatened with a look of mock consternation. She planted both hands against his chest and shoved.

  He didn't budge. Just grinned at her, laughing. Fuming, she pushed again. He abruptly unlocked his hands at the small of her back and she let out a little whoop of surprise as she stumbled backward. Momentum carried her faster than her feet could catch up, and she landed on her fanny in a patch of orange-blossomed trumpet creeper. Peals of high-pitched laughter assured her that the children had witnessed her fall from dignity. Before she could even contemplate resurrecting herself, Huey bounded out of a tangle of buttonbush and pounced on her, knocking her flat and licking her face enthusiastically.

  “Ugh!” Laurel snapped her head from side to side, in a futile attempt to dodge the slurping dog tongue, swatting blindly at the hound with her hands.

  “Arrête sa! C'est assez! Va-t'en!” Jack was laughing as he shooed Huey out of the way. The hound jumped and danced and wiggled around their legs as Jack stretched out a hand to Laurel and helped her up. “You can't get the better of me, catin.”

  Laurel shot him a disgruntled look. “There is no ‘better' of you,” she complained, struggling to keep from bursting into giggles. She never allowed herself to be amused by rascals. She was a level-headed, practical sort of person, after all. But there was just something about this side of Jack Boudreaux, something tempting, something conspiratorial. The gleam in his dark eyes pulled at her like a magnet.

  “You only say that 'cause we haven't made love yet,” he growled, that clever, sexy mouth curling up at the corners.

  “You say that like there's a chance in hell it might actually happen.”

  The smile deepening, the magnetism pulling harder, he leaned a little closer. “Oh, it'll happen, angel,” he murmured. “Absolutely. Guar-un-teed.”

  Laurel gave up her hold on her sense of humor and chuckled, shaking her head. “Lord, you're impossible!”

  “Oh, no, sugar,” he teased, slipping his arms around her once again. “Not impossible. Hard, mebbe,” he said, waggling his brows.

  The innuendo was unmistakable and outrageous. Their laughter drifted away on the sultry air, and awareness thickened the humidity around them. Laurel felt her heart thump a little harder as she watched the rogue's mask fall away from Jack's face. He looked intense, but it was a softer look than she had seen there before, and when he smiled, it was a softer smile, a smile that made her breath catch in her throat.

  “I like to see you laugh, 'tite ange,” he said, lif
ting a hand to straighten her glasses. He brushed gently at the smudge of mud Jeanne-Marie had left on her cheek. His fingertips grazed the corner of her mouth and stilled. Slowly, deliberately, he hooked his thumb beneath her chin and tilted her face up as he lowered his mouth to hers.

  Not smart, Laurel told herself, even as she felt her lips soften beneath his. She wasn't strong enough for a relationship, wasn't looking for a relationship. She couldn't have found a more unlikely candidate in any event. Jack Boudreaux was wild and irreverent and unpredictable and mocked the profession and system she held such respect for. But none of those arguments dispelled the fire that sparked to life as he tightened his hold on her and eased his tongue into her mouth.

  Jack groaned deep in his throat as she melted against him. His little tigress who hissed and scratched at him more often than not. She didn't want him getting close, but once the barrier had been crossed, she responded to him with a sweetness that took his breath away. He wanted her. He meant to have her. To hell with consequences. To hell with what she would think of him after. She wouldn't think anything that wasn't the truth—that he was a bastard, that he was a user. All true. None of it changed a damn thing.

  He tangled one hand in her short, silky hair and started the other on a quest for buttons. But his hand stilled as a high-pitched, staccato burst of sound cut through the haze in his mind. Laughter. Children's laugher. Jack raised his head reluctantly, just in time to see round eyes and a button nose disappear behind the trunk of a willow tree.

  Laurel blinked up at him. Stunned. Dazed. Disoriented. Her glasses steamed. “What?” she mumbled, breathless, her lips stinging and burning, her mouth feeling hot and wet and ultrasensitive—sensations that were echoed in a more intimate area of her body.

  “Much as I like an audience for some things,” Jack said dryly, “this ain't one of those things.”

  Another burst of giggles sounded behind the tree, and Laurel felt her cheeks heat. She shot him a look of disgust and gave him an ineffectual shove. “Go soak your head in the bayou, Boudreaux.”

  He grinned like a pirate. “It ain't my head that's the problem, ma douce amie.”

  She rolled her eyes and sidled around him, lest he try anything funny, heading back to the Jeep and her boots. “Come on, Casanova. Let's see if you can catch anything besides hell from me.”

  They went back into the water, and Jack lifted the first of the nets, revealing a good catch of fifteen to twenty crawfish. The little creatures scrambled over one another, hissing and snapping their claws. They looked like diminutive lobsters, bronze red with black bead eyes and long feelers. Laurel held an onion sack open while Jack poured their catch in. They moved down their row of nets, having similar luck with each. When they were through, they had three bags full.

  By then the sun had turned orange and begun sliding down in the sky. Dusk was coming. With it would come the mosquitoes. Ever present in the bayou country, they lifted off the water in squadrons at sunset to fly off on their mission for blood.

  Laurel arranged things neatly and efficiently on her side in the back of the Jeep. Jack tossed junk helter-skelter. The bags of crawfish were stowed with the rest of the gear, an arrangement Huey was extremely skeptical of. The hound jumped into his usual spot and sat with his ears perked, head on one side, humming a worried note as he poked at the wriggling onion sacks with his paw.

  On their way back out to the main road Jack stopped by the old Cadillac and gave one bulging bag to the families, who probably relied on their catch for a few free meals. The gift was offered without ceremony and accepted graciously. Then the Jeep moved on, with several children chasing after it, flinging wildflowers at Huey, who had garnered a daisy chain necklace in the deal.

  The whole process was as natural as a handshake. Reciprocity, a tradition that dated back to the Acadian's arrival in Louisiana, a time when life had been unrelentingly harsh, the land unforgiving. People shared with friends, neighbors, relatives, in good times and bad. Laurel took in the proceedings, thinking that since her father's death, no one at Beauvoir had ever offered anyone anything that didn't have strings attached.

  “That was nice,” she said, sitting sideways on the seat so she could study his response.

  He shrugged off the compliment, slowed the Jeep for the turn onto the main road, pulled his cigarette out from behind his ear, and dangled it from his lip. “We caught more than we need. They got a lotta mouths to feed. Besides,” he said, cutting her a wry look, “I don' want 'em gettin' any ideas about suing me for Huey traumatizing their bébé.”

  “How could they sue if he's not your dog?” Laurel asked sweetly.

  “Tell it to the judge, angel.”

  “I may just do that,” she said, crossing her arms and fighting a smile. “There's still the little matter of my aunt's flower garden. . . .”

  “Only through God may you be set free, brothers and sisters!” Jimmy Lee let the line echo a bit, loving the sound of his own voice over loudspeakers. Never mind that they were cheap, tinny-sounding loudspeakers. Once the money started rolling in for his campaign against sin, he would go out and buy himself new ones. And a new white suit or two. And a fancy French Quarter whore for a weekend. . . . Yes, indeedy, life was sure as hell going to be sweet once the money came rolling in.

  He had no doubt he would be rich and famous. Despite the betrayal of that little faggot Matthews, who had run the “news” version of Saturday's debacle instead of the version Jimmy Lee had envisioned on the ten o'clock report. Jimmy Lee was too good-looking not to make it, too charismatic, too good at pretending sincerity. He had it all over the other televangelists. Jim Bakker was a fool and had gotten his ass thrown in prison to prove it. Swaggart was careless, picking up prostitutes on the street. They had both fallen by the wayside, opening the road to fame and fortune for Jimmy Lee Baldwin. In another five years he'd have himself a church that would make the Crystal Cathedral look like an outhouse.

  The followers of the True Path cheered him, looking up at him as though he were Christ himself. Some wore looks of near-rapture. Some had tears in their eyes. All of them were saps. In another era he would have made a fortune selling snake oil or the empty promise of rain to drought-plagued farmers. He was a born con man. But in this the age of self-awareness and the search for inner peace, religion was the ticket. As L. Ron Hubbard had once said, if a man wanted to get rich, the best way was to form his own religion. Jimmy Lee looked out on the pathetic, avid faces of his followers and smiled.

  “That's right, my friends in Christ,” he said, walking to the other end of the rented flatbed truck that was serving as his stage for the afternoon. “Only through faith. Not through liquor or drugs or sins of the flesh!”

  He loved the way he could build a sentence to a thundering crescendo. So did his faithful. There were women in the crowd who looked positively orgasmic over the magic of his voice.

  “That's why, my beloved brothers and sisters,” he said softly.

  He raised his crumpled handkerchief to his face and blotted away the sweat that was running down his forehead. The day had turned into a damn steambath. His white shirt was soaked through. His cheap linen-look jacket hung on him like damp wallpaper. He wanted desperately to take a cool shower and lie naked on his bed with a lovely young thing reviving his energies with her sweet hot mouth. But for the moment he was stuck on the back of this flatbed truck with the sun beating down on him, boiling the sweat on his skin. The first thing he was going to do when he was rich and famous was move his ministry the hell away from Louisiana.

  “That's why we have to do this battle. That's why we have to vanquish our wicked foe who would lead us all into temptation and deliver us into the hands of evil. That's why we must smite down the dens of iniquity!”

  He swung his arm in the direction of Frenchie's, which was across the parking lot behind him, and his small gathering of devout cheered like the mob at Dr. Frankenstein's door. Such eager little sheep. Jimmy Lee grinned inwardly.

 
; Laurel climbed out of the Jeep, took several swift, angry steps toward the gathered crowd, then stopped in her tracks, the soles of her sneakers crunching on the fine white shell. Her every muscle tensed as her conscience warred with the part of herself that was preaching self-protection. This wasn't her fight. She wasn't up to handling a fight. But it made her so damn mad. . . .

  “You fixin' to whup him onstage this time, 'tite chatte?” Jack asked, curling a hand around her fist and lifting it experimentally.

  She shot him a look of pure pique and jerked away. “I'm going to have the Delahoussayes call the sheriff. If no one else is going to help them, that's the least I can do.”

  Jack shrugged. “Go ahead, darlin'. For all the good it'll do.”

  “It most certainly will do good.”

  He rolled his eyes and trailed after her as she marched onward. “You haven't met Sheriff Kenner, have you, sugar?”

  Laurel considered the question rhetorical. She couldn't see that it would make any difference. Baldwin and his congregation were trespassing. Trespassing was against the law. The sheriff's job was to uphold the law. It was as simple as that.

  They had to pass Baldwin's makeshift stage on the way to the bar. Laurel held her head high and fixed the self-styled preacher with a baleful glare.

  Jimmy Lee had caught sight of her the second she had wheeled into the lot with Jack Boudreaux. Laurel Chandler. God was smiling down on him today, indeed.

  He waited until she was almost even with the truck before calling out to her. “Miss Chandler! Miss Laurel Chandler, please don't pass us by!”

  She shouldn't have slowed down. She should have kept right on marching for the bar. She didn't want to go any deeper into this than she was already. But her feet hesitated automatically at the sound of her name, and something pulled her toward Jimmy Lee Baldwin. Not his charisma, as he would probably have preferred to believe. Not his air of authority. But something that had been with her since childhood. The need to stand up to a bully. The need to try to make people see a charlatan for what he was. The need to fight for justice.