Sweet Home Carolina

by Rice, Patricia

  “Whipped cream, yes,” he agreed, his carved jaw set with hungry satisfaction.

  When she showed him the can of pressurized whipped cream, he still nodded. Shrugging, Amy covered the jam scone with the instant cream.

  Just as she was returning the can to the refrigerator, the café door bounced open and Dave, the owner of the hardware store, barged in. “Two Coke floats to go, would you, Ames? Inventory is filthy work.” He stopped short at sight of the stranger in tourist clothes at the counter. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Dave, this is Jacques Saint-Etienne, our competitor for the mill. Mr. Saint-Etienne, Dave Boggs, head of the Chamber of Commerce’s mill committee.”

  Sighing in regret at this interruption to their delightful tête-à-tête, Jacques rose and offered his hand, adding his best disarming smile while studying his competition. Mr. Boggs was an older gentleman of sturdy build, wearing Dockers and an off-the-rack short-sleeved shirt. Not an international financier by a long shot. “Mr. Boggs, it’s good to meet you.”

  “Same, I’m sure.” Dave slapped Jacques’s hand but didn’t try the usual competitive crushing handshake. “Anyone who gets the mill back in production is a friend of mine.”

  Jacques preferred not to get into that. He’d much rather romance the lovely cook and find out if the mill still had the pattern cards he wanted, but he supposed it never hurt to be friendly.

  “A man of business, I like that. I was hoping to find someone to drive me out to the plant and show me around, but Ms…Ames?” She’d introduced herself as Amaranth, but Jacques couldn’t bear to call an attractive woman by such an unwieldy name. He had already noted she still wore her wedding band, although he’d heard, with definite interest, when she’d told him she was a former wife. “Ms. Ames has distracted me with her delicious cuisine.”

  “Isn’t she a great little cook? The food has gone upscale since Amy took over the kitchen.” Dave fished a bill out of his wallet and shoved it across the counter in exchange for two large drink cups. “I’d be happy to take you out later, but I’m in the middle of inventory right now.” He glanced at Amy. “What about Jo? Isn’t she in town?”

  “I’ll call and ask, but I think she had plans. I can give Mr. Saint-Etienne — ”

  “Jacques, please,” he insisted.

  She nodded curtly, transformed from an understanding hostess dispensing delicious delicacies to hard-eyed businesswoman at the mention of the mill, although her soft curls and unmanicured fingers lacked the necessary lacquered finish to successfully carry off the attitude.

  “I can provide directions and a map,” she said. “Doesn’t Hank’s real estate company have the key? Someone over there might show you around.”

  That wasn’t what Jacques wanted. He wanted time to go through files and pattern books. He didn’t intend to steal anything. He simply wanted to know he was getting what he was willing to pay for. “I would prefer the guidance of someone familiar with operations. Did I not understand that Ms…Amy has some familiarity with the mill?”

  “Amy knows the place inside and out,” Dave agreed cheerfully. “You will be in good hands with her. Why not today, Amy? The café closes at three, doesn’t it?” With the problem settled to his satisfaction, Dave rushed for the exit with a “Good to meet you, Jock,” farewell.

  Jacques winced at the mispronunciation.

  He didn’t have to pretend a smile as he returned to his seat to finish his scone. Judging from the sour look on the lady’s face, she could use a little sweetening, though.

  “You will take me, yes?” he asked in the accent he’d earned from his father. He could reproduce his American mother’s West Virginia twang if necessary, but women always smiled so delightfully at a foreign inflection. He would like to make Ms. Amy smile more.

  Gathering from his hostess’s quirked eyebrows that she knew she’d been outmaneuvered, Jacques shrugged and insouciantly devoted himself to consuming the scone while she called her sister.

  “Mama, I gotta go potty!” the child cried from the other room.

  She was an exquisite fairy child, chubbier and more golden than his Danielle at that age. It warmed what was left of his heart to see mother and daughter together. For a long time after the accident, the knifing pain of loss had caused Jacques to turn his head away from the sight of children, but he enjoyed their innocent exuberance too much to ignore them forever.

  He turned the stool in expectation at the sound of small shoes rushing across the old wooden floor. She ran into the room, pale curls bouncing, carrying a ragged doll, and disregarding all in her path as children did. His eyes widened as he took in the precarious juxtaposition of top-heavy goose and plaster egg.

  “Watch the table,” he called. He slid from the stool in order to catch the table and prevent the statues from toppling.

  Her little shoe tripped on a chair leg before he could reach the artwork.

  The chair slammed into the table and the heavy pieces rocked precariously, tilting on their flimsy perch. Trapped behind the counter, Amy screamed.

  With the swift coordination of the athlete he’d once been, Jacques lunged between the child and the toppling statues, twisting his already twisted knee in the process. He heard the telltale snap, but he caught the child under him before the heavy goose slammed into his back and rolled harmlessly off him. Amy’s cry covered the shattering crack of the egg hitting the floor.

  The child shrieked in startlement, but he was fairly certain he hadn’t crushed her. Wincing at the bruise to his spine, Jacques propped up on one arm and reassuringly brushed blond curls from her forehead.

  With his motion, a sharp pain cut through his knee. Biting his tongue against the agony, Jacques wished he could shriek as loudly as the toddler. Instead, he merely grimaced while the lady rescued her weeping daughter, cuddling and cooing over the child, drenching him in the intoxicating scents of vanilla and jasmine, while he lay there, helpless.

  Maybe he’d just pretend he was a carpet.

  Four

  “Thanks for coming, Elise.” Amy rubbed the sinus ache above her nose and tried to shut out the excruciating odor of Lysol in the hospital emergency room. “He’ll probably sue me, the café, and the entire town, and right now, I can’t blame him. We’ve probably lamed the poor man for life.”

  “I’ve talked to one of the interns,” Elise said reassuringly. “Your macho dude is back there now telling the nurses that he just needs a brace and ice.”

  Originally from Knoxville, on the western side of the mountain, her lawyer and friend possessed a city-bred aggressiveness that made Elise successful in everything from negotiating contracts to suing the biggest music publisher in the country. She had taught Amy how to stand on her own and fight her ex with steel instead of mushy sentimentality.

  “Apparently, he had an old knee injury that was already inflamed when he came to visit. If he’s injured it again, it’s his own fault, so quit fretting,” Elise insisted.

  Amy combed the hair out of her eyes. She needed a haircut as much as Saint Stevie did, only the unruliness looked better on him. “I don’t know what we’d do without you, Elise. I think God must have sent you.”

  Caught by surprise, Elise laughed as if Amy had just performed the best stand-up routine since Bill Cosby’s. Every head in the room turned to see what was so funny.

  With jet black hair, startlingly blue eyes beneath long lashes, a tall, slender build more elegant than Jo’s country buxom, and garbed in a striking red suit, Elise held the attention of every male with eyes in his head.

  “If you listen to my ex, my partners, or a few of the people I’ve tangled with in court, I’m the product of the devil,” Elise explained when she caught her breath. “Never confuse me with a nice person.”

  “I want to be you when I grow up,” Amy insisted, anxiously watching the doors where they had taken Jacques. “I want to be able to fix things.”

  Jacques might be the competition, but she couldn’t wish him the agonizing
pain she knew he was suffering. He had saved Louisa from what could have been a tragic accident, and she owed him everything for that. Torn by conflicting emotions, she had wanted to weep at his stoicism while she drove him down the mountain to the hospital.

  Dave had come from the hardware store to help her carry Jacques into her SUV that she’d driven up to the front door. Jacques had been so calm throughout the process. He merely swallowed anti-inflammatories as if they were candy. But his face had twisted in agony with every bump, especially when she’d had to take Jo’s gravel drive to drop off Louisa.

  “I can’t cook, and my daughter thinks I’m the meanest mother on the planet,” Elise said as the glass emergency room entrance slid open. “Be careful what you wish for.”

  “Where is he? Where is my Jacques?” a weeping voice wailed over the chatter of foreign languages bursting into the room. Jacques’s entourage — staff — had arrived.

  He must have found his cell phone and called for reinforcements, Amy decided, watching the elegant creatures spreading out in all directions. The tall, Asian-looking cameraman had his arm around the shoulders of the weeping lioness, while a bobbed, bespectacled woman approached the desk. The lanky boy turned toward the coffee machine. A well-built man wearing a billed cap and gray jacket lingered at the door.

  “I don’t think he needs us anymore,” Amy whispered. “But it seems awful to desert him.” She really wanted to see for herself that he was all right, but she thought that would be dreadfully presumptuous now that he had his staff to look after him.

  Elise assessed the situation with narrowed eyes. “I’ll handle this.”

  Amy watched her friend march up to the bespectacled woman, who was probably the assistant Jacques had mentioned. The two women exchanged a few words, shook hands, and that was that. Not a single member of his cosmopolitan staff acknowledged Amy’s existence.

  “His knee is sprained. He’ll have to walk on crutches for a while. They’re taking him back to the resort. Let’s go.” Elise nearly dragged Amy from the waiting room.

  Throwing one last glance over her shoulder, Amy gave up the fight. She might never have a chance to see Jacques and thank him for saving Louisa.

  But if he left town, the mill bid was left wide open again…. She hated herself for wanting to do a happy dance at someone else’s expense.

  “If you start breaking people the way you do machines when you stress out, we ought to patent you,” Elise said with a laugh as they traversed the parking lot.

  Amy managed a smile at the warped humor. “Jo has you convinced I’m death to machines, too? I thought lawyers were too logical to be superstitious.”

  “I’ve heard of human magnetic fields. I know people who can’t wear watches because they destroy them.” She glanced knowingly at Amy’s bare wrist as they stopped at the SUV. “Do you fry computers, too?”

  “I avoid computers,” Amy admitted. “Guess it’s a good thing I won’t be around Saint Stevie if he buys the mill and installs computerized machinery. If I believed you and Jo, I’d blow his looms sky high.”

  “Saint Stevie?” Elise asked, her ruby lips quirking upward. “I really need to meet this man when he isn’t under the influence of narcotics.”

  “I’m crossing my fingers that he’ll take the next plane home, so you’d better hurry over to the resort if you want to meet him.” Amy opened her door and leaned on it a minute, letting the mountain breeze blow her hair off her face and cool her overheated forehead. “Thanks again, Elise. I appreciate it.”

  Elise waved dismissively. “Between the kids and your mother, you and Jo have spent enough of your time in that emergency room. Give the kids hugs for me.”

  Amy waved, climbed in, and started the engine, letting the AC take out the sun’s heat while she leaned her head against the headrest.

  The goose could have crushed Louisa. Instead of fretting over cottages and furniture, she needed to think about kids and safe workplaces and doctors and deductibles she couldn’t afford. She had to have a job.

  She would have to accept the offer the buyers had made on the house. If nothing else, Saint Stevie had scared her back to reality.

  * * *

  “No, I do not want another pain pill.” Two days after the accident, Jacques was already tired of being treated like a baby. He waved away the bottle Catarina held out.

  She’d been shoving medication at him all weekend — probably because he’d spent the nights in a recliner with his knee elevated instead of in the bed she’d hoped they’d finally share. His parents’ outrageous performances had taught him all he needed to know about manipulation.

  Give him honest Amy’s pragmatic hauling of his injured carcass to an emergency room any day. She’d done what needed to be done and hadn’t hovered.

  Thoughts of Amy automatically raised the image of her beautiful daughter charging headlong into harm’s way. As it always did at the image of an injured child, his stomach lurched, and deeply rooted fear washed over him. In trained response, he breathed slowly and forced his mind back to the moment.

  “Those pills will rot out my stomach faster than they mend my knee,” he complained, shifting his position in the Jacuzzi so the water jets worked on the aching ligaments. “What are all of you doing in here anyway? We have less than two weeks to make this bid.”

  Catarina pouted and tossed her mane of hair. “Buy the damned mill and let us go home to civilization. You cannot be climbing up and down that mountain like thees.”

  “Are you saying I’m old and decrepit?” he asked in a stinging tone that made her glare at him. “Go away and find a younger man.” He was thirty-five to her thirty-four, but there were days he calculated a twenty-year maturity gap between them.

  “I do not know why I put up with you.” She flounced out, her commendable backside swaying with indignation.

  She put up with him because she liked being surrounded with beautiful people and beautiful things, just as he did. Only, he did it because the image of wealth and success fed the gossip columns and promoted his business. Unlike Cat, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe the attention was anything more than glitter.

  That was unfair to Cat. She had a clever head on her shoulders, and she could be useful once he had the designs in hand. Her production crews would know the best places to reproduce them, and she would know the best places to sell them. It would have been less of a headache, however, if she’d waited to come over here until he’d actually found them.

  “Pascal, have you called the bankruptcy judge for permission to visit the mill?” Now that he was rid of Cat, Jacques reached for a towel, scowling when Brigitte handed it to him. “You are supposed to be arranging a tour with Ms. Warren.”

  “She isn’t at the café today. Tuesday is her day off.” His assistant checked her BlackBerry. “The home number for Ms. Warren is unlisted. I have left a message at the hardware store as you asked, but their answering machine says they are closed for inventory.”

  “Find Ms. Warren’s address. Google under her husband’s name and see if that helps. Or call the post office and pretend you’re UPS. Rural houses are hard to find.” Over the years, he’d absorbed his eccentric mother’s knowledge on all things American. It was occasionally helpful.

  Holding the towel around him, taking Luigi’s arm for support, Jacques climbed out of the tub. He shot a pointed look at Pascal, who wisely got the message and steered Brigitte back to the suite.

  “Damned knee,” he muttered, lowering himself to the chair so Luigi could attach the elastic brace.

  “Knee surgery isn’t that big a deal,” Luigi reminded him. “It’s either surgery or have the ligaments rip the bone off.”

  “Why don’t I just find a nice wheelchair and a retirement home?” Jacques asked sarcastically. “The operation isn’t always successful, and when it is, it doesn’t mean I won’t need it again in another few years. I’d rather let it mend on its own.”

  “Then quit hopping off barstools.”

  D
espite his name, Luigi was all American. He’d been Jacques’s coach, personal trainer, masseur, and bodyguard since his teenage years. Luigi had been there for him more than his own father. More than two decades of sage advice gave him privileges the rest of the staff hadn’t earned. That didn’t mean Jacques had to listen to him.

  “Just get me back up the mountain and help Brigitte find me a place to stay while I’m up there. I can’t shift the Porsche like this.” He winced as Luigi yanked the brace tighter.

  “She told you there’s just a Motel 6, and unless you want the ground-floor handicapped room with the noise of other guests pounding overhead, that means hobbling on crutches up and down stairs.”

  “And how is that worse than hobbling across acres of lobby here?” Jacques asked crossly. He knew he tended to be surly when he was in pain, but anti-inflammatories didn’t help. “If you can’t find anything more appealing, book the room closest to the stairs. The rest of you can stay here in luxury. I’ll manage.”

  Luigi snorted. “Yeah, I see how well you manage. I’ll look for wheelchair rentals.”

  Using one crutch to stand, Jacques swung the other at Luigi, who dodged it without effort. “I am not a cripple.”

  “Yeah, you are, but it ain’t in the way you think.” With that parting remark, Luigi trundled off.

  He wasn’t a cripple, physical or emotional, Jacques swore, finishing dressing on his own. He’d had a lot of experience with athletic injuries. They healed. He didn’t have to run marathons anymore. When he wanted to release frustration, he had gyms and stables and swimming pools.

  Just because he’d chosen not to pursue home and family again after the accident that had taken his wife and child didn’t mean he was an emotional cripple. He was healed. He was living. He had the body of a man ten years younger, but in all other ways, he was older and more mature and didn’t need the emotional calisthenics of youth. He preferred intellectual challenges these days.