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.

Laurel closed her eyes and let her head fall back, turning her face up to the sky as the sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds. For a moment she let herself picture a life where they could truly start over, where people really did rise above their pasts and lived beyond the shadows, where she and Jack could simply have happiness without all the baggage attached.

"Dreamin' about me, sugar?"

It took a moment for Laurel to realize the voice had not come from inside her mind. Her eyes flew open, and she swung around on the bench to see him standing there leaning against one of Aunt Caroline's armless goddess statues in faded jeans and a chambray shirt hanging open down the front. He was pale beneath his tan, and there were lines of strain etched deep beside his dark eyes that combined with the shadow of his beard to make him look tough and dangerous. He smiled his pirate's grin, but there was too much pain in his eyes for him to quite pull it off.

"What the devil are you doing here?" Laurel exclaimed, shooting up off the bench. "Don't you even try to tell me Dr. Broussard released you!"

He winced a little as the volume of her voice set off hammers in his head. "Mais non," he drawled. "Me, I sorta escaped."

"Why does that not surprise me?"

"It's no big deal, 'tite chatte," he grumbled, rubbing a thumb against the goddess's forehead. "All's I got is a boomer of a headache and a busted rib."

Laurel scowled at him, jamming her hands on her hips. "Your lung collapsed! You've got a concussion and stab wounds and-"

"Bon Dieu!" he gasped in mock surprise, black hair tumbling across his forehead as he looked up at her with wide eyes. "Then mebbe I oughta sit down."

He caught an arm around her waist and pulled her down with him, his actions stiff and slightly awkward, but effective enough to land her on his lap as he took her seat on the bench. She immediately scooted off him, but swung her legs around and remained on the bench beside him.

Jack frowned, shooting her a sideways look. "I must be losin' my touch."

Laurel sniffed. "Losing your mind is more like it. You belong in a hospital. My God, you weren't even conscious the last time I saw you!"

"I'll live."

Dismissing the topic, he looked down at her, taking in the deep shadows beneath her eyes. She couldn't have looked more exquisitely feminine or fragile, like a priceless piece of porcelain. That fragility had frightened him once, before he had discovered the strength that ran through it like threads of steel. But he had a feeling the strength was flagging today.

"How about you, sugar? How you doin'?"

"Savannah's funeral was today," she said quietly.

Jack slipped an arm around her shoulders and eased her against him, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. It was all he needed to do. Laurel splayed her hand against his warm bare chest, above the pristine white bandage that bound his ribs, and simply cherished the way his heartbeat felt beneath her hand.

"I would have been there for you if I could have."

She looked up at him, her face carefully blank as she tried to assess the shift of feelings in him and between them. "You don't do funerals."

"Yeah, well…" He sighed, fixing his gaze on the roses that climbed the brick wall beside them. "That doesn't stop me from losin' friends, does it? It only stops me from being one."

"Is that what we are?" Laurel asked quietly. "Friends?"

"You saved my life."

"And you saved mine," she returned, rising to pace in front of the bench with her arms crossed tight against her. "What does that make us? Even?"

"What do you want it to make us?" Jack asked, hearing the edge in his voice and cursing himself for it. He hadn't come here to fight with her. He had come for-what? And why? Because he couldn't stay away? Because he thought he had to end what had taken root and twined around his heart like the ivy that curled around the foot of the bench? You can't have it both ways, Jack.

"I want more," Laurel admitted. If that made her a fool, then she was a fool. If it made her weak, then she was weak. It was the truth. Too much of her life had been tied up in lies. She stopped her pacing and looked him in the eye, as sober as a judge. "I love you, Jack. I keep telling myself I shouldn't, but I do."

"You're right, angel." Gritting his teeth against the pain, he rose slowly. "You shouldn't," he murmured and moved toward the gate, avoiding looking at her. If he looked at her, he would never be able to walk away.

"Not because you don't deserve it, Jack," Laurel said, catching hold of his arm. "Because it would be easier not to. But I had an easy relationship once, and it might have been safe, but it wasn't fair to either of us.

"I can't take the easy way out, Jack," she murmured, already trembling inside in anticipation of his answer. "Will you?"

"Sure," he said, his voice little more than rough smoke, his eyes trained on some indistinguishable point in the middle distance. "Haven't you figured it out by now, sugar? I'm a coward and a cad-"

"You're neither," Laurel said strongly. "If you were a coward, they would have buried me beside my sister today. If you were a cad, you wouldn't be trying so damn hard to do the noble thing and walk away from this."

Tears rose effortlessly in her eyes, riding on the crest of her emotions. She tightened her grip on the solid muscle of his biceps, her small fingers barely making a dent. "In a lot of ways you're as good a man as I've ever known, Jack Boudreaux," she said hoarsely. "I'd like a chance to make you believe that."

And he wanted to believe it. God in heaven, how he wanted to believe it. The need was an ache within him he had spent a lifetime trying to bury. The need to be worth something, the need to be important to somebody.

He closed his eyes against it now, terrified the need would swallow him whole, terrified this moment was just a dream, a cruel joke, as every small hope of his childhood had been a cruel joke. It didn't make sense that she should love him. It didn't follow the plot line of his life that he should have this chance at happiness. There had to be a catch. The other shoe would drop on his head any minute now.

He just stood there, waiting, staring past her. His chin was quivering as he pressed his lips into a thin line. He blinked to clear his vision.

"Haven't you paid enough, Jack?" Laurel whispered. "Haven't we both?"

"I dunno." He tried to shrug, winced at the pain. "You want a husband? You want babies?"

More than anything, she thought. The idea of giving him a second chance at those dreams, the idea of giving him a child, of the two of them creating a brand-new life that would begin with no mistakes and no regrets was a wish she had scarcely let herself imagine.

"I want a future," she said simply, the wish too precious, too fragile to voice. "I want to go beyond the past. I want you to go with me."

A life beyond the past. A life he had told himself he could have only in his dreams. He stepped back from her, slicking a hand back through his hair to rub the back of his neck.

Laurel watched him, holding her breath while her heart raced.

Jack turned and faced her, seeing all her hope, her fear, her pure, sweet beauty.

"I told myself if I had a drop of honor in me, I'd walk away from you," he said softly. His lips twisted at the corners into a crooked, ironic smile. "Lucky me, I never had much to start with."

Laurel went into his arms, her heart overflowing. She pressed her cheek against his chest. "You've got more than you know," she whispered.

"I've got all I need if I've got you," he said, and he lowered his mouth to hers for a kiss that was both bonding and beginning, promise and fulfillment… and love.