People rushed for the stage. Jack strolled across to the prostrate form of the preacher and calmly snatched up the microphone.

"Hey ever-body! Come on inside and douse those fires of hell!" he called, grinning like the devil. "Drinks are on me! Laissez le bon temps rouler! And tell 'em Jack sent you!"

The contingent of Frenchie's patrons who had been standing at the back of the crowd or lounging on the gallery sent up a wild chorus of hoots and cheers and made a mad dash for the bar. Jack hopped down off the truck. Laurel didn't even look up at him, but turned and started back for the Jeep.

"Hey, sugar, where you goin'?"

"Home. Please," Laurel said, emotion tightening around her throat like a vise. There was a pressure in her chest, in her head. She wanted-needed-to escape.

Jack caught her by the arm and shuffle-stepped alongside her. "Hey, hey, you can't run off, spitfire. T-Grace is gonna have the place of honor all set for you."

"What for?" She stopped and wheeled on him, her body vibrating with tension, her face set in lines of anger and something like shame tinting the blue of her eyes. "I failed. I lost."

Jack's brows pulled together in confusion. "What the hell are you talkin' about? Failed? Failed what?"

She'd choked. She'd lost it. If it hadn't been for his coming to the rescue, there was no telling what humiliation she might have suffered. She felt as if Baldwin had reached right into her and pulled out that part of her past to hold it up to his followers like a science experiment gone wrong.

"You stood up to him, Laurel," Jack said softly. "That was more than anyone else was willing to do. So you didn't deliver the knockout punch. So what? Lighten up, sugar. You're not in charge of the whole damn world."

His last line struck a chord, brought back a memory from her stay at the Ashland Heights Clinic, brought back Dr. Pritchard's voice. How egotistical of her to think that she was the center of all, the savior of all, that the outcome of the future of the world rested squarely on her shoulders.

She was overreacting.

She had come here to heal, hadn't she? To take control of her life again. If she ran now, from this, she would be giving in to the past when she had vowed to rise above it.

She looked up at Jack, at the concern in his eyes, and wondered if he even knew it was there.

"Thank you," she murmured. She wanted to reach up and touch his cheek, but it seemed a dangerously intimate thing to do, and so curled her fingers into a loose fist instead.

Jack eyed her suspiciously. "For what?"

"For rescuing me."

"Oh, no." He shook his head and backed away from her a step, raising his hands as if to ward off her gratitude. "Don' make me out to be a hero, sugar. I had a chance to make a fool outa Jimmy Lee, that's all. Me, I'm nobody's hero."

But he had saved her-several times-from her own thoughts, her own fears, from the dark mire of depression that pulled at her. Laurel studied him for a moment, wondering why he preferred the image of bad boy to champion.

"Come on, 'tite ange," he said, jerking his head toward the bar. "I'll buy you a drink. Besides, I've got a lawyer joke I just remembered I wanted to tell you."

"What makes you think I want to hear it?"

Jack slid an arm around her shoulders and steered her toward Frenchie's. "No, no. I know you don't wanna hear it. That's half the fun of tellin' it."

Laurel laughed, the tension going out of her by slow degrees.

"What's the difference between a porcupine and two lawyers in a Porsche?" he asked as they skirted around Baldwin 's truck. "With a porcupine, the pricks are on the outside."

They crossed the parking lot, Jack laughing, Laurel shaking her head, neither one aware that they were being very carefully watched.