The smile slid from Liza's lips. She backed toward Andrew, her lower lip pouting. "I know what you gonna say, Chantz. I don't want to hear it-"

"You're gonna hear it anyway. What the hell were you thinking dressing like that and coming here? You act like a woman who is trying to get caught-"

"I'm actin' like a woman who wants to look pretty for the man she loves!" she declared with a tip of her head. "Just because my skin ain't as white as yours, Chantz Boudreaux, don't mean I don't want to feel like a woman once in a while."

"We'll see how much a woman you feel like when you're hauled to the market and sold for the price of a good slab of meat."

Her eyes widened and glazed. She sank back against Andrew who wrapped his arms around her.

Chantz swallowed his anger and took a steadying breath. He looked hard into Andrew's brown eyes. "I should never have gotten involved in this. I should have stopped it long ago, for all the reasons we just discussed."

"It's just a dress," Andrew said softly, nuzzling Liza's nape with his lips. "Lord," he whispered, "you smell like honeysuckle, sweetness."

"Just a dress." Chantz shook his head and forced himself to look away. "I'll remind you of that when we're watching Liza sent down the river. I'll remind you of that when she ends up in the hands of a man like Horace Carrington or Boris Wilcox. Because in case neither of you have noticed recently, not every overseer is as tolerant as I am. For God's sake, look at her, Drew. She's a beautiful woman. The man who lays down his three hundred dollars for her won't have cane cutting or cotton picking on his mind."

Chantz left the house, stood on the steps in the dark, did his best to will back his anger, not to mention his mounting frustration. Regardless that Max was Liza's father, he wouldn't give a damn about sending her down river. Hell, truth be known he'd be glad of it. Just one less mistake for him to feel guilty over.

Not that Max Hollinsworth had felt guilty over anything since Jack Broussard had found him buried between Maureen's legs.

"Chantz?" The voice called softly from the dark.

"Ah, hell." Frowning, he descended the porch steps and struck off down the path toward the slave shacks.

Phyllis ran after him. "Please, Chantz. I don't blame you for being angry-"

"I'm not angry, Phyllis. What gave you that idea?"

"You looked angry enough that afternoon at the salon."

"You were mistaken, chere. I was simply annoyed at myself for believing that the woman I'd made love to the night before had wrapped her legs around me out of fondness and not because she had an itch I could scratch better than most."

She grabbed his arm, stopping him in his tracks. "I've tried to explain. I sent you notes by Andrew-"

"I got your notes. I guess if I gave a damn about what you had to say I would have read them."

"I think your mind has been occupied elsewhere," she said as her fingers twisted into his shirtsleeve.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Juliette Broussard. That's what I mean."

He stared down into her pale face and big, dark eyes. The image to come to his mind was not of her

naked with her long brown hair spilling over her breasts but the vision of her standing at Juliette's side on the gallery. The difference between them had been as vast as the sun and the moon and he'd known with the flash of Juliette's challenging eyes that there could never- would never- be another who could compare. Suddenly all the hunger he'd once felt for Phyllis had coelesced into a gnawing ache that even now made him feel like a man losing the grip on sanity.

"All of Baton Rouge has been talking about it," Phyllis declared desperately. "How you and she were found together after the storm. How she was barely dressed and in your arms. I suppose if she's anything like her mother she's got you mesmerized by her charms. And I don't mean her pretty eyes."

"I believe you're jealous, Miss Buley."

"Yes, I am. I'm spitting jealous, Chantz. I can't stand the thought of you with another woman."

She ran her hand up his chest, to the deep opening of his shirt, slid her fingers over his bare flesh to the

nub of his nipple.

He caught her wrist.

She leaned against him and slid her free hand down the ridge in his pants. "I've missed you something

terrible, Chantz. I toss and turn in my bed at night thinking of us together. Thinking of all the things you do to me, and for me. Sometimes when I'm just drifting off to sleep I awake with a jolt, thinking I feel you whispering in my ear. I wake up crying, Chantz. I really do.

"Chantz. You can't deny it, you know. We're very good together."

"Were good together, Phyllis."

"We'll always be good together, Chantz. Twenty years from now we'll still make each other happy."

He drew her hard against him. Her fingers plucked at the buttons on his breeches, eagerly slid under the

taut material.

She pressed her lips to the base of his throat, scattered kisses over his neck and chest, licked his skin, until he buried his hand in her hair and forced back her head.

"Let me understand you perfectly, Miss Buley. Are you telling me that you intend to tell Horace

Carrington to go to hell? Are you telling me that you're ready to shout to the entire world that you're in love with Chantz Boudreaux? Are you telling me that you're willing to sacrifice your luxuries to move into that house yonder and spend the rest of your life living for the moment that I crawl between your legs and make you scream in pleasure?"

Twisting his fingers harder in her hair, he said, "Well? I'm waiting."

"I... I can't do that, Chantz."

"Then what you mean is, you want me to linger in the background of your existence, at your beck and call like a damn step-and-fetch-it, there to satisfy whatever urges Horace Carrington can't or won't satisfy. Is that what you mean, Phyllis?"

"Please," she whispered. "I love you, Chantz. I can't bear the thought of living without you. Do you want me to beg?"

"I want you to get your hand out of my pants. I want you to march back up to that house and don't look back. I want you to remember one thing. Chantz Boudreaux might have to break his back for a living. I might eat sorry cornmeal and maybe I won't ever own a suit or eat at fancy coffee houses on pretty linen table cloths, but I won't ever be anyone's step-and-fetch-it. Because unlike you, Phyllis, I've got my pride."

He shoved her away and buttoned his breeches.

Phyllis drew back her shoulders and lifted her chin. "We'll see how much pride you have when Juliette Broussard gets through with you. That look you gave her this afternoon wasn't so prideful, Mr. Boudreaux. You looked positively sick with wanting her. If she's anything like her mother, I suspect she'll have you and every other man in this parish on his knees by the time she's finished using you up."

"Go to bed, Phyllis." He turned and started down the path again.

"I see you don't even bother trying to deny it," she yelled after him.

"Good night, Miss Buley."

He walked hard through the dark, until he was certain Phyllis hadn't followed him. With the night pressing down on him and the insect noise pulsating in his ears, he dropped onto the steps of a slave shanty and smoked and tried to get his temper under control. He could control what was going on in his pants a lot easier than he could what was going on in his head- had been going on in his head since he'd ridden up the drive that afternoon and come face-to-face with Juliette- barefoot, flushed by the heat, her hair tangled and flowing. The desire he'd felt the instant she'd elbowed her way between Max and Phyllis, her presence a blatant challenge, had set his teeth on edge.

The door creaked open behind him and a sliver of yellow light spilled over his shoulder. Little Clara, her eyes big, peered out at him.

"Boss Chantz, what you be doin' there in da dark? You 'bout sceered me plumb to death. I thought dat old bull gator done come knockin'." She smiled. "You brung me some ho'hound, Chantz?"

He fished into his pocket and withdrew a chunk of candy.

Clara sat down beside him, stuffed the candy in her mouth, and settled back on her elbows. Her knobby knees opened and closed like butterfly wings.

"Dat is mighty good ho'hound, ain't it?"

He nodded and smoked. Christ, what he wouldn't give for a breath of cool air to kiss the heat from his body.

"Granny gonna stir up some prawlins tomorra. Miss Julie gonna help her. Miss Julie say she better learn her way 'round dat kitchen 'cause when she move to Belle Jarod she won't be havin' no slave to cook and clean. Miss Julie don't believe in slaves. Ain't dat somethin', Boss Chantz? She a strange white lady. What got you so ruffled, anyhow?"

She sniffed at Chantz and shook her head. "You's been nippin', ain't you? You know what Granny say 'bout dat. Ain't no good can come of nippin' too much."

Chantz looked at Clara squarely. "You sound more like your granny every day, Little Clara."

"I know." She beamed him a big white smile.

He looked around, into the house that was apparently empty. "Where your folks?"

"Catchin' turtles. Granny say Fred Buley want turtle soup tomorra. Granny say Fred Buley be a pain in d'ass."

"Your granny would be correct." Chantz crushed the cigar stub out on the step. "As a matter of fact, all the Buleys are pains in the asses, Little Clara."

Her cheek bulging with candy, Little Clara gazed up at the night sky thoughtfully, her knees wing-beating back and forth. "Most white folk are, come to think 'bout it," she said, then added as she glanced at him slyly, "'Cept'n you, Boss Chantz, 'cause you brings me ho'hound."

?Nine.

She stood in the dark, tense as some cautious bird, fragile as the golden bloom of the night jasmine nearly obscuring the window in which she peered, eyes wide, lips parted, hands curled into pale fists. The dim light through the part in the window curtain barely brightened Juliette's face as she watched, spellbound, the goings-on inside his house.

"Oh." She gasped. "Oh... my..."

The breath rushed from her and she pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, stepped closer to the window, touched her tongue to the corner of her mouth, as if she were tasting something intoxicating and delicious. A sheen of moisture kissed her cheeks, inviting a tendril of hair to cling to her skin.

There came a whimper, a masculine groan, the bump bump rhythm of the bed beating the wall.

What the hell is she doing here? Chantz thought.

The ache for her started again, down low- not that it ever left him, he acknowledged with a razor edge of anger. His mother was right, damn her. Juliette's smell and taste had oozed into his blood and no amount of working himself to death in the mud and sun was going to sweat her out of his system. She had become as his flesh, and God help his soul.

As if the ghost of her mother walked the very grounds that she had loved with the same passion as she had worshiped a man's hands on her body, Juliette's image shimmered in the night, limned by the yellow light from his window. Something foolish and dangerous roused in Chantz. The hot pain pulsated like white anger in his chest, and in his loins. Sweat rose to the surface of his skin and he was forced to plant his feet hard to control the urges or God help him he would do something that he would regret for the rest of his life.

Chantz eased up behind her. She didn't notice, too spellbound by the tangle of two moving, naked bodies on his bed, white and brown, straining, flesh glistening with oily sweat. Andrew's hands twisted into Liza's hair, holding her head firmly as he kissed her mouth and thrust his hips, hard, making her dark hands claw at his white skin, her nails leaving red trails across his buttocks and back.

If he was smart he would dissolve back into the darkness and spend the remainder of the night pacing like a prowling animal, doing his damnedest to sweat her out of his soul.

Obviously, he wasn't smart.

Obviously, he was headed for the sort of trouble that would ultimately get him in waters deeper than the Mississippi, and far more dangerous.

Closer to the window Juliette moved, until the jasmine bloom brushed her hair. She touched her lips with her fingertips; they were trembling, down they slid, lingering on her breast, down to grasp fistfuls of her skirt.

Her skin, heated by her arousal, smelled sweet as the flower-scented air. And that other scent, the one that had burned into his senses since the night he'd fished her out of the river- warm and earthy, spicy enough to make men mindless fools. He could hear her breathing, feel the heat of her body rising so it seemed the very air around her steamed. It made his own body ache. Badly.

Andrew moved his body down Liza's, and Chantz focused on Juliette, knowing well enough without looking what was going on in his bed. Juliette made a sound in her throat. Her fingers clutched at her skirt and she took a quick step back, as if anticipating a hasty retreat.

Chantz slid one hand over her mouth, the other around her waist, silencing her startled cry as he drew her hard against his body that was, he noted in that instant, painfully aroused. The sudden pressure of her buttocks against his erection felt like the thrust of a dull knife blade.

"Hush," he whispered against her ear.

Her body stiffened. Her shallow breaths felt warm and damp against his palm.

He moved back, away from the house. Still, he didn't loosen his grip. She felt too damn good. Her body molded along his, supple curves and heat that made the air unbearable to breathe.

"Chere." His grip tightened. "Had you been any other woman I might feel shocked over finding you watching lovers in the throes of such pleasure."

Tighter. His voice lower, deeper, rougher; his shaking hands twisted into her dress. "Somehow I'm not surprised. As I recall, your mother was quite shameless and uninhibited about lovemaking. Anywhere and any time she felt like it."

No movement. No response. The back of her head, fragrant jasmine-scented hair, nestled against the curve of his throat. Her moist lips parted against his fingers. Her breath formed steam against his flesh. He felt overwhelmed with the need to end this certain madness before, like her mother, she destroyed every man who loved her.

She relaxed against him, as if she had melted, was melting, little by little like soft warm wax pungent with the smell of arousal and jasmine.

His hand moved up, slowly, and curved around her breast, the other gripping her so fiercely her ribs felt as if they might shatter. The need to lay her down in the night's dew-kissed grass raced through him with a violence that turned his every nerve raw and his mind maddened. Made him want to rip the dress from her body and bury his face between her legs. Made him want to tongue her until she thrashed in delirium.

"In case you haven't noticed," he said through his teeth, a whisper in her ear that disturbed the fine curls at her temple, "this isn't a convent where you can sashay around all hours of the night and not expect to invite trouble. Then again, maybe you were looking for trouble. That it, Miss Julie? Grow bored with listening to Hazel Buley mewl on about her lumbago and Fred's dyspepsia? Or maybe you just wanted to find out yourself what it's like to come face-to-face with a rutting bull with a mean hunger for sweet human flesh."

She wrenched free and backed away. Her eyes flashed as she shoved her hair back from her face. A jasmine blossom, caught within the lush, wild curls, rested near her cheek.

"I was looking for you," she confessed in a dry voice.