by Tami Hoag
And as they walked along, browsing at flamingos and sea lions and tigers, Danielle let herself fantasize that they were a family, she and Remy and the Beauvais brood—just to see what it would be like. It wasn’t that she had any intention of marrying and having five children. Not at all, she assured herself. She was merely a little curious, that was all.
It felt okay.
It felt nice.
The day was not without its little incidents.
Jeremy, leave those snakes alone …So sorry, sir. We adopted him from a circus. One can only imagine the kind of upbringing a child receives from clowns.
Jeremy, where’s Tinks? What do you mean she found a hole in the fence?
Sorry, ma’am, I’m sure she didn’t realize it was an endangered species.
Tinks, where’s your brother?… What wading pond?… The one by the alliga—!
“It’s too bad we missed your sister today,” Danielle said. “I would have liked to meet her. She must have just missed us.”
“Yeah,” Remy said with a notable lack of remorse. “What a shame.”
He cast a glance heavenward and thanked that little angel he so often ignored. He shuddered to think what kind of shape he’d be in now if it had been Giselle at the darkroom door last night rather than Annick. His conscience pricked him at the reminder of the little secret he was still keeping from Danielle, but he ignored it. There was plenty of time to tell her he wasn’t exactly a nanny. Besides, everything was going perfectly as far as he could see. He had more important things on his mind tonight.
“Have you really been to all those places you were tellin’ the kids about tonight?” Remy asked.
They were comfortably ensconced on the porch swing, Remy leaning back into the corner with his left foot planted on the bench and his right on the floor. Danielle lay against him, her head on his chest, her long legs tucked up on the seat. The children had all been fed, bathed, and put to bed with the array of stuffed animals Danielle had bought for them in the zoo’s gift shop. Butler, looking oddly flushed—almost sunburned, Danielle thought—had eaten dinner with them, but had pleaded a headache the instant Danielle had commented on his appearance, and had retired to his quarters.
The Beauvais house was peaceful. The night was full of the sounds of insects, the distant wail of blues from a house down the block. The air was still thick with humidity and the scent of boxwood and roses, sweet olive and dozens of other plants that flourished in the hothouse environment of the Southern summer. Danielle smiled sleepily, comfortable and happy in the oasis of yellow light on the veranda, comfortable leaning against Remy rather than fighting against the attraction she felt for him.
“Sure,” she said, around a lazy yawn. “I’ve been all around the world.”
She said it as if it were the most commonplace thing, as if she thought everybody had been to Malta and Taipei and Antarctica. Remy tried to ignore the stirring of nerves in his belly. Of course it was commonplace to Danielle, he told himself. She had traveled from an early age. It was probably old hat, boring stuff to her by now… he hoped. Even as he hoped he heard the echo of an earlier conversation when she’d said she loved discovering new places and meeting new people.
A chill chased over his skin despite the fact that the night was hot. He brought a hand up to toy with the wildly curling tendrils of Danielle’s hair. So soft, so silvery. A strand coiled naturally around his index finger and he wished it would be so easy to bind her to him. The light glittered off the bracelets that were draped around her delicate wrist like strands of angel’s hair and he wished he could somehow use them to chain together their hearts.
He was in love with her. He wasn’t precisely certain when it had happened. It might have been when she had turned to him in tears. It might have been when he’d watched her watch the baby sleep. It might have been when she had patiently listened while Ambrose had explained why his stuffed dog needed to sleep with a night-light on. All he knew for certain was he had looked at her today as they had walked along the paths of the zoo and realized that he had finally, really fallen in love.
It scared the hell out of him. All his life he’d just assumed he would fall for a Louisiana girl, if not Marie Broussard, then someone else who shared his background and his beliefs. Never in a million years would he have expected to fall for a long-legged blond Yankee with a wanderlust that put the great explorers to shame. But in love was exactly what he was, he had no doubts. It didn’t matter that he’d known Danielle only a matter of days. It didn’t matter that she’d fought the attraction between them. He was a man who trusted his instincts and his instincts told him in no uncertain terms that this was the Big L.
The question was, what was he going to do about it? What would Danielle do about it if he told her? She was so cynical about relationships. How many times had she told him hers never lasted?
“Where you gonna go next?” he asked in a tone flat from a complete lack of enthusiasm for the topic.
Danielle hesitated. As eager as she had been to get away from New Orleans two days ago, she had no answer now. Everything had changed. The situation had changed. Her feelings had changed. She had changed. “Uh—I’m not sure.” She shifted position so he wouldn’t be able to feel her heart pounding and thought, I’d stay here if you asked me.
That was silly, of course, she told herself. Why would he ask her to stay? They were having fun together, but they both knew this was only a very temporary arrangement. She was being uncharacteristically fanciful imagining a future with her handsome young lover.
“Ever been to the bayou country?” Remy asked. Hell, what did he have to lose? He was already in over his heart. Maybe if he took Danielle to the muddy banks along the Bayou Noir, she would find a home at last and forget about the allure of all those exotic places her restless heart had taken her.
She turned and looked up at him and his breath caught at the steady searching gaze of her big pewter-colored eyes. “No,” she whispered. “Would you take me?”
“Oui.”
The word was little more than an exhalation of breath as he leaned forward and captured her parted lips with his. Hope welled inside him, pushing out fear for the moment. Then passion swept all of it aside. He wrapped his arms around Danielle and pulled her even tighter against him as he tried to convey his love to her without words.
It was a slow, deep kiss. Danielle drank it in and savored it, thinking it was more intoxicating than the finest wine, more addictive than any drug. She loved the taste of him. She loved the way he kissed. The brush of his mustache against her upper lip sent shivers dancing over her. The feel of him, strong and solid against her, made her feel safe and feminine and cherished. When she was in his arms nothing else mattered.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than the baby monitor sitting on the floor crackled. Instantly Danielle stiffened and tried to push herself off Remy, her heart hammering triple time as all manner of horrible scenarios flashed through her mind.
“Hush,” he whispered. “Listen.”
She tried to swallow her anxiety as Remy reached down and picked up the black box. She watched, her body still tensed and ready to bolt, as he lifted the monitor close to his ear and listened. Slowly a smile curved his mouth and he tipped the monitor to Danielle’s ear.
“She’s not in trouble,” he said, chuckling softly. “She’s talkin’ in her sleep.”
Danielle sagged against him, all strength draining out of her as she listened to the mumbled stream of baby babble. In that instant she thought she’d never heard anything as dear to her ears.
Remy listened some more then set the box back down. “She must have had quite a time today if she’s still talkin’ about it. What about you, chère? What kind of time did you have?”
“I had a wonderful time,” Danielle said candidly. She sat up and regarded him with a serious, honest look. “Thank you.”
She didn’t have to say for what. It was clear to Remy she was thanking him for helping her take the
first steps back from her self-imposed sentence of isolation. He had watched her slowly blossom today, filling with glowing energy as she photographed the children discovering the wonders of the zoo, as she made a few discoveries of her own. Having the opportunity to watch that happen was all the thanks he needed.
“You’re a beautiful, vital, talented woman, Danielle,” he murmured. “The world shouldn’t be robbed of you.” His mustache quirked up and his dimple dented his cheek. “See, I was the one being selfish, no?”
“No.”
Her disagreement elicited nothing more than a Gallic shrug that blithely dismissed the topic. Danielle let the topic slide. There was no point getting maudlin when both of them knew exactly what had happened and why. No matter what the future brought, she would always have a special place in her heart for this man because he had helped her heal a wound that might have ruined her life. She hadn’t forgotten what had happened in London. She never would. But it would no longer gnaw at her like a cancer, eating away at her soul, a little bit more each day.
“Well,” she said on a sigh, pushing herself off the swing. She stretched like a cat and yawned again. “I guess it’s time to call it a day. We should get some rest so we can be ready for whatever diabolical scheme Jeremy has planned for tomorrow.”
“You’re goin’ to bed?”
“I guess,” she said, fighting a smile of anticipation. She gave him a long look as electricity crackled in the air between them. “What are you going to do?”
“Me?” Remy got up slowly, making a great show of considering his options. He gave her a bland look that was ruined by the banked fires in his dark eyes. He shuffled a little nearer and a little nearer, until a scant inch of humid air separated them. He traced a finger over the vee of her collarbone. “Me, I thought I might take a long shower first.”
A feline smile curved Danielle’s mouth as she tilted her head and looked at him from under her lashes. “You need any help with that, cher?”
eleven
“I’M GONNA GO ALL OVER THE WORLD, JUST like you do, Auntie Danielle,” Jeremy said between slurps of cereal. “I’m gonna go all around finding weird animals and catching them like that guy on Wild Kingdom.”
Danielle beamed. It seemed she’d finally struck a chord with her little relatives by telling them tales of her travels. She felt ridiculously pleased.
Tinks looked up, a milk mustache on her upper lip. “Yeah, and I’m gonna follow him around and take pictures and we’ll go all over to places like Africa and Borneo and get shot at by guys with spears like Indiana Jones.”
“I’m gonna be a garbage man,” Ambrose announced shyly, his cheeks flushed with secret passion.
The other two snorted their derision, Tinks reaching over to push down the brim of Ambrose’s black gaucho hat.
“Leave him alone,” Remy snapped. “There’s nothin’ wrong with bein’ a garbage man.”
Tinks and Jeremy exchanged another glance, deciding by tacit agreement to make their exit before their nanny’s temper boiled over. Danielle watched them slink away, followed by Ambrose. The door swung shut and Danielle looked at Remy. He was scowling down at his bowl with a thunderous expression that had apparently scared the snap, crackle, and pop right out of his cereal.
He raised his eyes to her face. “I was a garbage man during the summers when I was in college. You wanna make somethin’ of it?”
“No.”
“Well, I didn’t traipse all over the ever-lovin’ world doin’ it. I was right here in N’Awlins the whole time.” He scraped his chair back from the table and turned to tend Eudora.
So that was what this turn toward churlishness was all about. Danielle raised her eyebrows. Remy had been in a strange mood for two days—ever since their trip to the zoo. In that time Jeremy and Tinks had not stopped pumping her for stories about the exotic places she’d been. She had indulged them enthusiastically, never thinking that Remy might feel left out as she had felt left out many times before. He had managed to shed his temper in time for his midnight visits to her room, but she had to admit his lovemaking had taken on a certain fierceness. Not violence, just a certain edge, as if he were trying to convince her of something.
He had convinced her that he was incredible in bed. She flushed at the thought. He’d taken her places she hadn’t dreamed existed. They’d done things she’d only read about in books. It was heady stuff, the intensity of his passion. It made her giddy just thinking about it. It was silly. It was wonderful. It was more than she’d thought she could hope for. It was … love.
Oh, no, she thought, pressing a hand to her forehead as if to feel for a fever. It couldn’t be love. She was mistaken. She couldn’t have fallen in love with him.
She glanced across the room with a kind of desperation, her gaze fastening on Remy as he attempted to hose oatmeal off Eudora with the spray nozzle on the kitchen sink. Her heart rolled over like a trained poodle.
Remy turned, the baby tucked under his arm like a baton.
He draped a dish towel over her head and rubbed at her hair. “Mon Dieu, chère,” he said, taking in Danielle’s stricken expression. “You look like you got a whiff of the diaper pail. What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Oh, nothing. I’m just making a fool of myself, that’s all.
“Look, sugar, I’m sorry I snapped at you. I was worried you might think less of me ’cause I was a garbage man.” It was part of the truth, anyway. Remy thought. He was feeling a little too vulnerable to tell her what was really bothering him, namely her attraction to travel. He had tried leaving Louisiana once and had given up his career in order to come back. The thought of leaving again made his heart sink, but the idea of Danielle leaving him behind had much the same effect. Unless he could convince her to stay, it was a no-win situation.
“You were a garbage man in New Orleans in the summer. I think you deserve a medal,” she said. “I might have an obscene amount of money in my bank account, but that doesn’t make me a snob, you know.”
He worked up a wily grin as he took his seat. “How obscene?” He leaned across the corner of the table, staring at her mouth. “Will you whisper it in my ear tonight?”
Danielle rolled her eyes, ignoring the bolt of desire that rammed through her. She watched as Remy perched Eudora on his knee and played peek-a-boo with her with the dish towel. “Are you really supposed to wash babies with the dish sprayer that way?”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s much better than the bathtub.”
“Hmm… I think you really started something with Jeremy. His sudden interest in zoology is great. Before that trip to the zoo all he ever talked about was living in a secret tunnel in the sewer and robbing banks. You may have gotten him off America’s Most Wanted and onto Wild Kingdom.”
“Hard to picture, huh?”
“Yeah. Well, I guess I’ve pictured him on Wild Kingdom, but not in the Jim Fowler role. I can hear Marlin Perkins saying, ‘While I repair the tent flap Jim is downstream struggling to subdue Jeremy, the Wild Boy of the Garden District.’”
Remy chuckled. “You’re startin’ to like that boy.”
“I’m sure I’ll get over it.”
I hope not, sugar, Remy thought, I’m betting my heart on it.
They drove out into the bayou country packed into the minivan like sardines. Going west out of New Orleans they encountered swamps and marshlands as the city faded behind them. The landscape changed to chemical factories with smokestacks thrusting into the sky like rusty exclamation marks. Then came rice paddies and canebrakes and sugarcane processing plants. Miles of elevated highway seemed to float above endless acres of undulating saw grass. Glimpses of bayous spread back into the cypress stands like ink spots. Danielle watched it all roll past with the same kind of wonder she experienced seeing any new place for the first time, her eyes automatically assessing everything she saw for its possible artistic value.
Remy watched her out of the corner of his eye as he drove, taking them off the interstate and into t
he region of Louisiana known as Acadiana. More than once he realized he was holding his breath, waiting for an adverse reaction. It was terrible how badly he wanted her to like his home country. The potential for disappointment was enormous. He was leaving himself wide open for a broken heart, but then he guessed love wasn’t worth much if there wasn’t this heightened sense of awareness and fear. It made him feel acutely alive, acutely aware of every nerve ending just under his skin. He kept the Cajun station on the radio turned down to a whisper and still it seemed loud to him as he held his breath and waited for Danielle’s verdict.
Suddenly she looked over at him and smiled her wide brilliant smile and said softly, “It’s beautiful, Remy.” And he felt the dam of tension burst inside him and relief flood through him to the very tips of his fingers and toes.
Luck, Louisiana, ranked just above “wide spot in the road” on Danielle’s scale of town sizes. Luck had not one but two traffic lights, although one seemed more than sufficient. The main street boasted the usual small-town businesses. There was a grocery store with a sign in the window advertising a special on crawfish and a butcher shop with a sign in the window saying “Ici on parle français,” indicating that French was the language of choice inside.
Luck was shabby and quaint in the way of small towns everywhere, and Danielle fell in love with it on the spot. Her hands itched to pick up her camera and capture it all on film—the restaurant advertising cold Dixie beer and boudin sausage, the thin old men sitting on a bench in front of the hardware store swapping tales of times gone by and watching diligently for strangers, the woman emerging from Yvette’s Salon with a fresh permanent.
