Sweet Home Carolina

by Rice, Patricia

  Amy could only stare at the confident idiot. If she let herself fully comprehend his request, she would burst into tears. “Do I look that desperate?” she asked before she could bite her tongue.

  “I am that desperate,” he replied. “It would be a kindness, and I will try very hard not to impose upon you in any way.”

  If he’d tried to deny her question or answered with flattery, she wouldn’t have taken him seriously. Instead, his look of discomfort seemed real, and her stomach hurt as if she’d been punched. He was sitting here like a very human man, not an object she could classify as Enemy or Fraud or Foreign or all those other classifications she’d used to keep a distance between them. She had never been able to deny someone in need.

  He glanced at her packing boxes. “I could even help you pack. And haul furniture.”

  She wanted to laugh at the thought of the elegant Brit lugging her antiques up the stairs to Jo’s tiny apartment on his bad knee, but tonight, she was too tired and embarrassed. “How did you get up here?” she asked, feeling her determination to keep him at a distance dissolve.

  He shrugged in an attempt to look nonchalant. “In the Hummer.”

  “Did you drive it?”

  He scraped his cane back and forth on the slate floor. “It’s an automatic.”

  “Does Luigi know?”

  He scowled, and she knew she’d finally scored a point. “You couldn’t stay here without Luigi,” she insisted. “He’d have a stroke. I have two kids who will be up at sunrise.”

  “I like your children. I need a whirlpool. I will deal with Luigi. I wish to stay a mountain away from Cat and friends. Money is no object.” He swung his cane dismissively.

  “You realize your accent gets stronger when you want something?”

  He widened his eyes in surprise, then grinned, destroying the intense seriousness he’d built earlier. “Does it work?”

  “I hate you, and yes, it does. It turns women into putty, and you know it.”

  His smile would have done a Cheshire cat proud. “No other woman has ever admired my accent, but it’s only you I wish to turn to putty.”

  “Putty is messy. And then it gets brittle and cracks,” she reminded him, before swallowing the rest of her tea and sitting back. To her amazement, she was actually weighing the argument. She seriously disliked being steamrollered by a man who didn’t know how to take no for an answer, but she could use the cash. Babysitters for Louisa were expensive. She couldn’t ask Jo to do it all the time. Josh needed more school clothes, they both would need new winter coats, and she couldn’t count on Evan for anything extra.

  Besides, a day of this madhouse, and Jacques would run for the door. Why deny herself a little extra money just because she couldn’t control her responses to him?

  She was being logical, reasonable, practical — and she’d defend to the death her right to believe her own lies. “Until Tuesday?” she asked.

  “For as long as is feasible,” he corrected. “I will pay daily, like the motel.”

  “I’m not offering maid service,” she said decisively. “I have way too much to do as it is. If you want me to feed you, you have to eat when we do and eat what we have. Otherwise, you’re on your own.”

  Instead of laughing in triumph, Jacques nodded seriously. “I can make my own bed. Boarding schools teach a few useful things. In the morning, I will have Luigi help you, and I will pay what I was paying the resort, plus extra for meals. Will that suit?”

  No, it scared her absolutely to death. But then, so did moving and looking for a job. If she were really truthful, the entire world terrified her. She didn’t know the entire world, but she was coming to know Jacques. She liked him, against all better judgment. They even had more in common than mutual lust, although she was reluctant to admit either, because it was dangerous to her emotional well-being. She knew she could trust him — to a point.

  “You will be my first B and B customer,” she stated, adding one more reason to agree to the absurd. “It will be a learning experience.”

  For a moment, Jacques looked as apprehensive as she felt, but then he wiped away the expression with a smile. “Excellent. I have a bag in the car.”

  The dirty rat fink. He’d known he could sway her. She could see it in his laughing dark eyes. But she wasn’t backing down now that she’d made her decision. She’d spent ten damned years learning to be a proper hostess.

  He held out his hand for her to shake.

  Touching him would be a serious mistake. Amy did it anyway. Jacques’s clasp was warm, hard, and reassuring, and his gentle squeeze was meant to convince her she was doing the right thing.

  All she had to do was convince him that she made the rules.

  For once, she intended to be in charge of her life.

  * * *

  Jacques turned on the water faucet in the enormous ivory tub surrounded by sumptuous limestone tile and decided he’d lost his mind. Gardenia candles and jasmine bath salts in delicate rose-crystal containers were grouped artistically next to luxurious rose-colored towels. If that wasn’t feminine enough, Amy had added a bouquet of pink roses and ferns to an antique Waterford vase.

  The bathroom was so very sensual, so very much the hidden side of his sensible Amy that he grew hard just looking at it. Or smelling it. Even her perfume lingered in the air. It wasn’t often that he felt out of place, but he felt like a stallion in the mare’s barn right now.

  A light rap at his door confirmed he’d lost his famed elusiveness. He usually used crowds as a defense against intimacy, and now he’d opened the gates to a woman so vulnerable he couldn’t ignore her.

  Well, he supposed he could ignore her right now. She tapped so lightly he assumed she hoped he wouldn’t hear. He shrugged on his robe over the slacks he hadn’t removed yet.

  He opened the door, catching her in mid-knock. “I was just thinking I should ask you to join me in your lovely tub.”

  She blushed and stared at the V of his robe rather than look up and meet his eyes. She’d brushed out the layered brown curls of her hair, letting it fall loose about her face, and pulled a pretty turquoise tunic over her tank top, effortlessly creating her own understated style. He admired a woman who didn’t feel compelled to spend an hour in front of a mirror to be comfortable with her appearance.

  “I just wanted to warn you to lock your door. The kids are used to running in and out without knocking,” she said hurriedly, as if ready to run once the words were out of her mouth.

  “Will they worry if they cannot find you? I will be happy to take another room if this is an inconvenience.” Jacques refrained from smacking his forehead for his stupidity. Of course the whirlpool was in her room. He’d seen her things in there. But he’d been equating them with a candlelit bath for two and not thinking about the mundane — like children who jumped on their mother’s bed every morning.

  “No, I know how to distract them. Locking the door is simply a precaution. I put clean sheets on the bed this morning. I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

  She backed away, and Jacques grabbed her wrist before she could escape. “Amy, wait, please.”

  He didn’t know what he meant to say. He simply knew that he didn’t want her to leave. She finally lifted her gaze to his face and waited patiently for him to speak.

  “I want to talk to you but don’t know how,” he admitted, surprising even himself. Talk wasn’t what he wanted, was it? “I look in your understanding eyes and want to say things I haven’t said to anyone, but I cannot.” He thought that might actually be true, but he would try not to dwell on it too much. “You back away like a frightened doe every time I try.”

  “That’s because I am a frightened doe, with two fawns to protect,” she said bluntly. “You will find someone understanding among your own crowd. Brigitte seems a very intelligent listener.”

  Brigitte was an astute cynic with a heart of ice. He did not want Brigitte. He was discovering he preferred a backbone of steel well padded by feminine curves
and a loving nature.

  “Perhaps I should go, after all,” he said, surprising himself. “I did not think this through. I would not upset your children. Routine is very important to them.”

  “You say that as if you’ve had experience,” she said with a shade of suspicion.

  He had to work at flashing a grin. “I was once a child.” He arched his eyebrows, challenging her to argue the point.

  Amy tilted her head to study him, and it was all he could do not to avoid her too perceptive gaze.

  “Take a look around, Jacques,” she replied with a gesture at the stacked boxes in the hall. “Their lives are already in complete chaos, and they’re handling it just fine. Stay. You’ve convinced me it will work.” Amy pried his fingers loose from her wrist and escaped.

  This time, Jacques let her go.

  Shutting the door, he locked it, but no lock would shut out his raging libido.

  Or the echoing loneliness of the empty room after Amy’s departure.

  Fourteen

  Jacques heard the children whispering in the hall outside the bedroom door. He tucked in his shirt and zipped his trousers, wondering how to deal with Amy’s children. It was not as if he’d seduced their mother, but he felt a vague sense of guilt anyway.

  Both his parents had refrained from bringing home their lovers while he was there, but then, he was in their homes so seldom that it could hardly have imposed on their love lives much. The women he’d slept with these last years hadn’t had children, or if they did, he didn’t know about them. It was all very civilized.

  He wasn’t Amy’s lover yet, but dealing with her children was far more intimate, and intimacy made him edgy. One couldn’t easily have brief affairs with children around.

  He buckled his belt and left his coat in the closet. The aroma of coffee drifting up from Amy’s fabulous kitchen told him breakfast was nearly ready, and he knew from experience that children and breakfast were not good for suit coats. Amazing how quickly all the old instincts returned.

  He’d always wanted brothers and sisters. He supposed, if he was inclined to examine his actions, he’d married Gabrielle not just because he was insanely in love and wanted his child to bear his name, but because he wanted a family of his own. He no longer lived a life that would be good for young ones, but the old longing apparently hadn’t gone away with time.

  He crouched down, eased open the bedroom door, and put a finger to his lips. Before the giggling children could escape, he scooped them up and carried them down the hall to their bedrooms. They shrieked in joy and tried to cling to him as he heaved them on separate bunk beds. “Where are your clothes, my friends?” he intoned in his best giant voice.

  He heard Amy calling his name anxiously from the bottom of the stairs, and he stuck his head around the doorjamb to call back. “We’re quite fine. Go back to what you are doing, and we’ll be down in a minute.”

  He could almost swear that her uncertainty sent a big question mark floating up the stairs. He smiled and proceeded to direct the process of dressing for church. It had been a very, very long time since he’d done this, but he remembered the basics. Charm and flimflammery worked very well on children.

  After much tussling and giggles, he followed the children down the stairs, all three of them wearing crowns of underwear on their heads. Louisa’s hair stuck out at all angles and Josh seemed to have on mismatched socks, but all in all, he thought he’d done well.

  Amy stared at their little parade with wide-eyed astonishment. He’d expected laughter, but the blaze of wonder and admiration in her gaze worked just as well. So, he was showing off, but if it made her happy, then where was the wrong?

  He knew, but he wasn’t prepared to admit it, not on this bright sunshiny morning with a beautiful woman wielding a spatula like a director’s baton to produce a symphony of mouthwatering aromas and two engaging youngsters chattering at the cheerfully set table.

  “We got dressed,” Louisa chirruped.

  “Yes, I can see that. And very pretty you all look, too.” She sent Jacques an appreciative look that said his informal attire had not gone unappreciated either.

  “We had to leave off our robes of office,” he explained with a grin. “It seems Louisa’s is just a little bit wet, so we came in casual dress today.”

  “Ah, that explains it,” she nodded knowingly, doing her best to bite back a grin of her own. “And will we have oatmeal or eggs this morning, Your Majesties?”

  “Oatmeal!” Louisa cried loudly.

  Amy looked at Jacques apologetically. “I’ll have to toast your bread in a skillet. The toaster oven expired a while back.”

  “Under the influence of your magnetic personality?” he asked, sweeping the crown off his head and reaching for the coffee mug she’d set on the table.

  She shot him a glare that had no sharpness, and he laughed. “Where is the oven and your screwdrivers?”

  “You can’t put a screwdriver into an electrical appliance; you’ll electrocute yourself!”

  “Not if you pull the plug.” He found the oven, carried it to a counter with a barstool, and sat down to examine its innards.

  “You fix appliances?” she asked with a note of awe, handing him the requested tool.

  He flashed her a grin. “I have no idea, but I’m thinking if I stay here for long, I’d better learn.”

  Amy dropped her spatula into the pan and stared at him as if he’d spoken in an unknown tongue, and Jacques realized what he’d said. It had just been a figure of speech, a silly remark. He couldn’t stay. Surely she knew that.

  Clearing her throat, Amy picked up the utensil again. “No danger there. The bid for the mill is this week. You’ll be safely away before you have to resuscitate any appliances.”

  She returned to stirring her cooking pots, leaving Jacques cringing at the accusation hanging in the air.

  * * *

  “Amy Warren, have you lost your mind?” Elise whispered, pulling Amy aside before she could escape with the kids to the church’s nursery later that morning. “Why are you arriving with the competition? You know what he is, don’t you?”

  Besides being Amy’s lawyer, Elise DuBois was Amy’s best friend and everything Amy wanted to be when she grew up. Model tall and gorgeous, she was also extremely intelligent and a sharp lawyer, though her brains weren’t what men noticed first when Elise swayed into a room.

  A moment ago, Jacques had shaken Elise’s hand without reacting to her blatant sexuality. Not offering Elise any of the flirtatious smiles or flattery he bestowed on Amy, he’d let the children drag him off to say hello to Jo and Flint.

  The man confused her.

  “He offered me three hundred dollars to use my whirlpool,” Amy whispered. “He came downstairs this morning wearing Josh’s underwear on his head and carrying Louisa’s teddy bear. He put raisin smiley faces in their oatmeal. Kill me, would you, please?”

  “He’s bribing you,” Elise hissed. “He’s trying to distract you while he robs the town blind. Don’t let those midnight eyes fool you.”

  Amy was afraid it was already too late for that. She could resist surface charm, but Jacques had somehow managed to convince her that he was far deeper than the eye could see. And what the eye could see was too tempting for her to be thinking about.

  “That’s what terrifies me. It’s just so hard to believe anyone so wonderful with children could be so cruel,” Amy answered gloomily, watching Jacques swing Louisa into his arms as naturally as if she belonged there. Hoss yelled “Zack” at him across the parking lot, and Jacques returned the greeting cheerily. “The kids adore him, and he’s hauling boxes in his Hummer, and he’s so damned good-natured! How do I say no?”

  “Watch me.”

  Amy followed behind her friend as Elise marched across the lot to steal Louisa away from Jacques. Always obedient, Louisa wrapped her chubby arms around Elise’s neck and kissed her sloppily on the cheek. Jacques grinned, pretended Josh was his cane, and leaned on his head, much to the
boy’s delight.

  “My daughter is with me this weekend, and I’ve hired a nanny for her,” Elise announced to an amused Jo and Flint. “The three of us can help Amy haul furniture. Mr. Saint-Etienne ought to spend the afternoon with the mayor, learning more about Northfork and the mill. Come along, sir, and I’ll introduce you around.”

  Briskly, Elise handed Louisa back to Amy and appropriated Jacques’s arm. In her heels, Elise was nearly the same height as Jacques. Both with sleek dark hair and designer clothes, they made an elegantly sophisticated couple.

  Jacques resisted the lawyer’s pull long enough to wink. “A Tartar, this one. I will see you later, yes?”

  Amy didn’t have time to reply before Elise signaled several councilmen and dragged him away.

  “Two of a kind,” Jo said, laughter edging her voice as they watched the couple stroll off. Elise gracefully maneuvered the gravel drive in spike heels, swaying her hips in a manner Amy could imitate only if she wished to endanger life and limb. Jacques sedately swung his cane in accompaniment, not appearing to limp at all as he tilted his ear closer to Elise to catch her words.

  “Do sharks devour other sharks?” Amy asked, almost relieved that Elise had come to her rescue. She didn’t relish being shark bait.

  “I thought last I heard, he was a wolf,” Flint commented. “Do we need to move you into the apartment tonight so he can have the house to himself?”

  “That hunk is too slippery to be a wolf,” Jo decided. “But why shouldn’t Amy have a little fun? After stuffy Evan, a man who laughs could be nice to have around for a bit.”

  “Sharks aren’t nice, and wolves aren’t big fuzzy dogs,” Amy retorted. “I do not need a man to have fun, thank you very much. Moving into the apartment sounds like an excellent idea. Then I can open the café in the morning.”

  It also sounded like a miserable, lonely idea after the laughter of this morning, but Jacques would be gone shortly, leaving two brokenhearted children if she wasn’t careful.

  She was a realist. Elise might be a shark in business, but she was also a saint crusading for lost causes. Jacques, on the other hand, would rationally explain the reasons why a cause was lost and move on. She couldn’t fault him for it.