Sweet Home Carolina

by Rice, Patricia

  “We argued. Gabrielle wished us to leave right then. We had a babysitter waiting and a romantic dinner planned. I told her business was more important. That was no doubt the stupidest thing I have ever said.”

  Amy leaned her head against Louisa’s. “No, it isn’t,” she murmured. Louisa had fallen back to sleep. “You were planning for their futures, and that was very important to you.”

  That was the excuse she had given for Evan’s behavior for years. In Zack’s case, it might actually be true. Still, it was another bad sign.

  Zack smiled briefly as he approached to cup Louisa’s head, perhaps looking for an anchor against what he had to say next. “You’re too kind. Gabrielle’s feelings were hurt, and she could be quite stubborn. It was convenient for me to overlook that. Any other time, I would have found some pleasant entertainment to distract her from the disappointment and promised her the moon if she waited. But I was too busy.” He said the last in a tone of self-disgust.

  Amy touched his bare arm, aware of the crackles of electricity between them. His words had to be said before they could proceed further. She waited silently, expectantly.

  He dipped his head in acknowledgment. Pain tightened the muscles of his jaw. “When I returned to work, she took our car and our daughter and headed for the Alps on her own. The weather turned poor. The car was not designed for icy conditions. Perhaps the angels deserted them, I do not know. A moment was all it took. I should have been with them.”

  Tears streamed down Amy’s cheeks. She heard his resignation, knew he thought the angels had deserted him as well. And he’d spent these last years going to hell to prove it. She shook her head, but words could not come. There were no words for such devastation. It was obvious he’d loved them both deeply. The way he stared down at Louisa proved he still had the capacity to care, though he worked hard to hide the fact. His deliberate nonchalance wouldn’t wash with her ever again.

  His revelation had destroyed her shield of wariness as well as his own. “I’m sorry,” was all she knew to say. Arms full of sleeping child, she rubbed her cheek against his bare arm in a gesture meant to comfort.

  Zack stiffened at the contact, but she didn’t step back or offer the pity he feared. “The hurt never really goes away, does it?” she asked. “Or the guilt.”

  His eyes darkened with anguish, and he cupped Louisa’s curls. “No, it never does. I have tried burying it, but you.…” He traced his finger down Amy’s cheek. “I would not hide from you. I suppose, sometimes…a burden shared becomes lighter.”

  Amy couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything except meet his gaze above Louisa’s head. Panicking, she thought she would have been better off not knowing that she might be the first person he’d shared his sorrow with in a long time. The warmth building between them terrified her. This wasn’t just sex.

  Still, she didn’t regret knowing that he was a man who felt deeply. No one could doubt the humanity of a man who had done what was right and opened the mill to operations, risking his business in the process. She’d been drawn to him from their first conversation, with its lack of awkward or strained silences. The connection of sharing felt too right.

  Everything about him seemed right. It was their situation that was impossible.

  Saving her from sailing around the bend and out of sight, Zack smiled impishly again, and kissed Amy’s nose. “I never had that tour of your lovely new home. Shall we see how it looks in morning light?”

  Twenty-three

  “I wager there is golden oak beneath this hideous paint.” Zack smoothed a loving hand over the cottage’s Art Deco stair rail as if he’d not torn open his chest earlier that morning and revealed the gaping emptiness inside.

  Having this house to examine gave his head and heart a more practical direction while he tried to figure out who he was now. And who he wanted to be.

  Amy had asked him for his suggestions on how best to tackle restoring the cottage, as if she’d known he needed something concrete to accomplish. She had an unerring instinct for diverting minds from unhappy paths.

  “But stripping it would take forever or cost a fortune.” Amy proceeded up the worn stairs to the upper story. “These small bedrooms will suffice for now, but I’d love to see some of them turned into bathrooms.”

  Keeping an eye on Louisa working her way up the long flight, Zack lingered behind as Amy swept through the upstairs hallway, opening doors. She’d come closer to him than any woman he’d known since Gabrielle, and they hadn’t even had sex yet. Perhaps because they hadn’t had sex. Instead of indulging in physical satisfaction and moving on, he was dangerously on the verge of old-fashioned courting.

  “The house is more spacious than I assumed.” He admired the high ceilings while surreptitiously admiring feminine curves. This was comfortable ground — lusting after a woman who sent him smoldering looks from beneath delightful long lashes when she thought he wasn’t looking. He was always looking. Today, she wore simple jean shorts, but her copper-colored tank top had little flowers adorning the neckline, drawing his eye to creamy shoulders and lovely arms.

  “The house has been added on to more than once,” Amy agreed, checking a hall closet. “I assume the mill’s CEOs lived here well into the fifties or sixties.”

  “Still, it has much charm.” Having followed Louisa up the stairs, he peered into a bedroom overlooking the big backyard. His career had been made by his ability to look at old houses and see how they should be, but this one struck him very personally. His vision of the renovations had little to do with the historic and a lot to do with the comfort of Amy and her small family. “The sleeping porch could be turned into a lovely glass parlor for the master bedroom.”

  “Josh, keep Louisa away from the windows.” Amy kept one eye on the children. “I’m afraid it isn’t safe.” She came to stand beside him at the French doors. “I don’t think we can move in until that ceiling is pulled down, and all the lead paint has been removed.”

  “How long will that take?” he asked, doing his best to keep his mind on the task and not the woman standing so close he could clasp her hand if he wished. She hadn’t shied away from him when he’d revealed the depth of his shame and grief over losing his family, but she was as nervous as a newlywed now. He found that very interesting.

  “As long as it takes. The kids don’t mind the apartment, and Jo is letting us have it for free.”

  Zack opened the French doors and stepped onto the sagging porch. Amy prevented Josh from following.

  “The mill is just over those trees?” he asked.

  “There used to be a path leading down to it, but it’s overgrown and washed out.”

  For the first time in a long time, genuine excitement surged through him. Zack eagerly swung around and grinned at his practical Amy. He hadn’t used his cane since he’d settled in with his computers, and bouncing in excitement, he didn’t notice his knee now. “Let me stay here and start working on this,” he said, completely catching her — and himself — off guard.

  “Here?” she squeaked. “It’s filthy. I might be able to clean out the tub, but the shower has to be rebuilt. I have a few rugs for the floors, but I can’t afford to start on the kitchen — ”

  “It has a stove and a refrigerator, does it not?” As the idea gripped him, he strode through the bedroom to sling open doors just as Amy had done earlier.

  “The stove is an ancient electric and the refrigerator is tiny.” Amy had spent many nights listing the house’s problems, but she’d still been unable to talk herself out of it. She adored the high ceilings, the built-in cabinetry, the gorgeous sun porch, the huge backyard.…

  “They’re fine for me,” he said with a dismissive wave. “I always work close to my projects. When rehabilitating old castles, I have lived with a hot plate and a cooler. Here, there should be running water at least.”

  Amy stared after him in shock, letting the kids run happily in his path. After his tale of Italy and the Alps, she’d thought for certain he’d wall
owed in wealth all his life. But after he’d exposed his deep-seated grief, she wasn’t in any state to deny Zack something that caused him excitement. She thought she was seeing for the first time the melding of the charming man with the grieving one into the whole he ought to be.

  He’d been wary of personal involvement of any sort when he’d first arrived. Now he was taking on both the mill and her house? She’d have a hard time concealing her hungry need for a man willing to dive headfirst into such hard work.

  “It will be an adventure,” he continued when she didn’t reply. “May I borrow one of your beds or should I buy my own?”

  “I was planning on hiring a van, moving the rest of our things into the dining room, and covering them in plastic until the work is done.” There wasn’t any way she could store all her antiques in the apartment, and Evan had expressed no interest in them, thank heavens.

  “Excellent!” he crowed. “I will hire someone to clean up this suite for my use and borrow your comfortable bed and move in here. In return for the use of your property, I will offer you my expertise in restoration. The ceiling will go first, I think.”

  Without waiting for her agreement, he clattered back down the stairs to inspect the damaged false ceiling in the front room.

  Shaken, overwhelmed, Amy remained in the upper hall, watching Josh and Louisa race from room to room of their new home, while she tried to figure out what had just happened here. And how she felt about it.

  She couldn’t get past the image of cosmopolitan Jacques Saint-Etienne sleeping in her bed, in the lovely high-ceilinged chamber she’d pictured as hers. Did he sleep naked? That thought hadn’t bothered her in the other house. Why should it bother her now?

  Because one house was the past and the other her future?

  As long as she remembered it was the house that was her future, and not Zack, she might survive this new encounter with Zack’s whirlwind energy without being swept away.

  * * *

  On the last Friday of the month, Zack watched as Amy crept quietly back to her desk in the office across from his at the mill. He’d known she’d left to close the deals on both her houses. He’d expected her to return jubilant.

  She just looked exhausted and worried.

  He should have gone with her. He should have sent lawyers with her.

  He should stuff his protective instincts into a drawer and forget about them. Amy was a strong, independent American woman who didn’t require his help. He was counting on that. After he’d exposed his insides so painfully, he didn’t dare get closer to her until he’d had time to glue his shattered walls together again.

  He’d spent this last week drumming up orders for the first fabrics off their looms. He’d learned about a major show in October, taking place just a few hours down the road, where he could display their goods to furniture manufacturers and decorators.

  But watching Amy’s slumping shoulders, he decided they both needed a weekend away from work. It was time to play.

  Giving Amy time to answer her messages, Zack made a few phone calls. He’d hired a truck to hold Amy’s furniture until she could move it into her new cottage this weekend, but the house was by no means ready for human habitation. He could stay at the dilapidated cottage tonight, or at the motel again, but he had a better idea.

  Plans laid to his satisfaction, Zack wandered across the corridor to Amy’s office, propped his shoulder against the doorframe, and crossed his arms until she noticed him.

  She refused to look up from busily entering numbers into an old-fashioned bookkeeping journal. It was a good thing they were still a small operation. The new computer he’d bought for her sat unused.

  “The computer will not blow up if you use it,” he informed her.

  “Promise?” She glanced at him skeptically, then returned to work as if he weren’t there.

  Zack almost laughed out loud. He wasn’t accustomed to being ignored. Leave it to Amy to serve him up steady doses of humility. But he wasn’t about to be denied on this. “As long as the work gets done, I won’t argue with your methods. Come along. The first yardage should be rolling off the machine now.”

  Anticipation lit her eyes when she looked up, but then she saw him standing there — with an obviously amorous gleam in his eye — and she ducked down to her journal again. “I have to finish the payroll entries. Some of us need checks, you know.”

  With a sigh of exasperation, Zack strode into the small office, grasped her elbow, and hauled her from the chair. “You are not an ostrich to hide your head and pretend I do not exist. I will hire an agency to handle payroll. The checks for this week are already cut. You will not go bankrupt just because you are now a proud homeowner with a mortgage that keeps you awake at night. All that will be there when you come back. The first bolt can only be experienced once.”

  He steered her down the hall. A copier beeped and spit blank paper as they passed.

  Grinning at this sign that Amy’s resistance to change caused her nervousness, he gestured for his other office help to join them. He had a nice parade by the time he crossed the parking lot under cloudy skies to Building Three.

  The entire workforce had gathered around the machine producing the complex, textured design he’d chosen for their first sample. As the fabric rolled off the loom, all chattering hushed expectantly.

  The apple green brocade revolved through the spool and passed the computerized optical scanners with flying colors. Everyone held their breath while hands-on experts checked for defects and passed on the yardage to Zack. He gave Amy one corner and he took the other, opening the fabric full width so they could examine the woven design for themselves.

  “It is perfect,” he said with reverence, thrilling as he always did at the intricacy of the work produced by man and machine. Raised feathers, scrolls, and delicate curves formed a cascade of embossed design. He knew precisely what kind of furniture this belonged on.

  “The detail is exquisite,” Amy murmured, running her fingers over front and back. “The fabric feels like silk.” She looked up at all the people who had helped produce this rare material. “I think we’ve done it,” she announced with a hint of wonder.

  Cheers and rebel yells filled the building. Zack waved for catering to set out the prepared buffet and drinks, and as the loom continued processing the cloth, the celebration began.

  “Now we can leave.” Zack caught Amy’s hand again and led her toward the exit.

  “Leave?” She glanced longingly at her friends. She’d made the hors d’oeuvres herself. She wanted to share in the food and excitement. She wanted to inspect every inch of the fabric, watch it come out of the wash and go into the processor. She couldn’t believe they’d done it — she and Zack. They’d returned the mill to production! It was a time for celebrating.

  But she was an executive. Maybe executives didn’t celebrate. It wasn’t as if they’d sold anything yet. Reluctantly, she followed Zack into a drizzling rain.

  “Today is for celebrations,” he said with excitement, swing her hand. “You own a new home! We must find a housewarming gift.”

  Amy’s mental gears shifted slowly. “Housewarming gift? For me? Right now, I just want some of that fabric — a pillow for my rocker, maybe.”

  Zack looked at her with fond amusement. Instead of heading for the office entrance, he steered her toward the Bentley. “You think too small, my Amy. Come on, we’ll start with paint.”

  “Paint?” Still off-balance, she sank into the Bentley’s buttery leather seat.

  “I have spoken with your contractor. He will have the ceiling down this weekend.”

  “My contractor?” She was beginning to sound like the parrot Jo claimed Louisa was.

  The car purred into motion. She could swear Zack purred with it.

  “Yes, the one who wants to work on the mill offices. He wishes to show how good he is. I cannot stay in your charming cottage until he removes the old ceiling.”

  Amy started to panic as the car turned down the road t
oward Asheville and away from town. Zack had blessedly kept his distance all week, but his moods were mercurial. “Josh and Louisa expect me to pick them up at five.”

  “They will be happy to see your sister and mama, no?”

  “Jo? Of course, but….” Finally recognizing the satisfied gleam in his eyes, she crossed her arms and glared. “What have you done now?”

  He shrugged. “Only provided an evening of shopping. That is not so unpleasant, is it? We go to the home improvement store, look at some paint chips, have a nice dinner….”

  His accent had become very French, and Amy’s wolf alert shrilled.

  But she knew how to handle Zack. And she was dying to look at paint chips.

  Sitting back in the comfortable seat, she dreamed of an evening discussing cobalt tile and nickel-plated fixtures with a man who actually knew what she was talking about. She had set aside a few dollars from the sale of her house for the most pressing repairs.

  She would simply have to think of Josh and Louisa when Zack flashed his thousand-kilowatt smile and chuckled in that knowing way of his. And she wouldn’t notice how his tailored coat clung to his muscled shoulders. Or how his long fingers felt cupped around her bare elbow.

  Paint chips, she told herself firmly. This was all about paint chips.

  Twenty-four

  “No, no, with the golden oak, you want the softer colors the blue-greens, the pale yellows, not the jewel tones.” Zack snatched the cobalt chip from Amy’s hand and deposited it in his coat pocket.

  Even disagreeing about color with Zack was exciting. His passion for her home and the creative light burning in his eyes was sexier than the deliberately seductive smiles he’d used before. The more caught up he became in the process, the more his hands brushed hers, and the closer he slid to her in the leather booth of the restaurant, rearranging the chips and samples. When he became exasperated with her, he’d flick her earrings, and the reminder of shared kisses flared between them.

  It was quite possible she was disagreeing with him just to prolong the exchange, to feel his thigh pressing against hers as he reached for a piece she moved out of his way. She was officially out of her mind and loving every minute of it.