Sweet Home Carolina (18 page)

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.

“Moving into an apartment and opening the café isn’t fun.”
Jo squeezed Amy’s shoulders. “Take a walk on the wild side, Sis.”

“You sound just like Jacques, and here we are talking sin
standing in front of a church. I’m telling Preacher Mark on you.” Doing her
best not to weaken, Amy shooed her children toward the church school. That was
all she needed — her family approving of a fling.

She cast a glance at Elise, who was commandeering Jacques,
the mayor, and two councilmen. For just a moment, she was jealous, but not of
Elise and Jacques, she assured herself. They were handsome together,
admittedly, but what she really wanted was to be self-assured and competent
like her friend.

“I wuv you, Mommy.” Louisa pecked her cheek as Amy set her
down in a roomful of toddlers.

For kisses like that, she would forgo being businesslike.

“And I love you both.” Kneeling, she hugged them. “How about
we spend the night in Aunt Jo’s apartment tonight? We’ll have pizza and
cupcakes.”

They shouted in agreement — not really understanding how
drastically their lives were about to change.

* * *

Jacques refrained from wincing when the mayor called him
“Zack” for the third time. Zack was better than Gene or
Jack
or the
Saint Stevie
he knew the locals had been calling him. Apparently, sometime during the turkey
shoot, he had been promoted to Zack, a graduate summa cum laude of the manly
man school.

They could call him whatever they liked if they’d only let
him get back to Amy. He knew she’d scurried away as soon as his back was
turned, but he wasn’t a man to quit once his interest was aroused. No other
woman had held his fascination as this one did. She was even more intriguing
than the pattern cards. His pulse picked up just watching her.

He couldn’t keep his mind from returning to Amy as she’d
appeared this morning, flushed from the heat of the oven and humming while she
decorated muffins with raisins and sugar crystals. She’d looked as delectable
as the muffins in her ice-cream-white shorts and golf shirt, her hair curling
in the humidity. But the best part had been when she’d looked up to see him
standing there with underwear on his head and children hanging off his arms,
and she’d flushed with as much pleasure as if he’d just made love to her.

Transforming her persistent worried frown to lighthearted
laughter made him feel as though he’d just won the Olympics. He didn’t know how
else to describe the incredible joy her smile aroused. He would have stood on
his head and sung the “La Marseillaise” if she’d asked it of him.

Which meant he was probably losing all perspective, if not
his entire mind, he reflected. Right now, he didn’t care. He was on the prowl,
and his prey lay ahead. Following the mayor into church, Jacques scanned the
sanctuary, locating Amy’s shiny hair as she sat in a pew beside her nephews.

He disengaged the claws of the woman on his arm. Cold women
like Elise were wonderful business partners and very bad bed partners. He
needed a woman who gave in the soft, generous ways that Amy displayed in every
word and action.

Shaking hands with his companions, Jacques escaped and slid
into the pew beside his hostess. Amy glanced up at him in surprise and with
what he hoped was a little blush of pleasure. From the far end of the pew, her
brother-in-law acknowledged him with a nod.

“Where is your sister?” Jacques whispered.

Amy nodded toward the choir. “Listen. You can’t miss her.”

Sure enough, when the congregation settled down, the piano
struck a chord, the choir swung into the first note of a hymn, and a clear
soprano carried the melody soaring to the vaulted ceiling, raising goose bumps
up and down his arms. Jacques located Joella in the front row, garbed in somber
choir robes instead of her usual spangled bright colors. The choir director
very rightly singled her out to drag the rest of the lackluster voices
triumphantly into song.

“She ought to be on CD,” he marveled, whispering into Amy’s
ear.

“She is,” Amy acknowledged proudly. “It came out a few
months ago and did very well on the country music charts for a first album.”

Jacques sat back and pondered that marvel. He had grown up
in Europe and visited his mother’s country only briefly, with quick hops to New
York City or D.C. for business. His mother’s parents had died when he was
young, so he’d never seen the mountains where she’d been born. She’d spoken
disparagingly of ignorance and poverty and prejudice. He had never had any urge
to learn more.

Only a desperate need for distraction from the painful
memories of Europe and his stale life had dragged him into rural America. He
hadn’t wanted anything more than unfamiliar faces and new sights. But here he
was, in the presence of the American equivalent of royalty — an entertainment
star and her family. He saw no evidence of ignorance, poverty, or prejudice. Just
people living their lives as they did everywhere else on the planet.

Jacques had lived all his life in cities with art and
museums. He had never known a country music singer. Or a woman who put icing on
muffins and pigs’ faces on icing because her little girl loved pigs. He’d never
known a woman who short-circuited machinery when she was upset — he didn’t have
any trouble believing it. She short-circuited him every time she came in view.

He grinned hugely. Losing the Porsche had been an expensive
lesson, but he now knew never to upset Amy near delicate equipment.

Her jasmine scent drifted around him, and he could sense all
those lovely curves just an arm’s breadth away. She tried not to touch him, but
every time one of her nephews squirmed, she had to adjust her position. Jacques
deliberately shifted closer when she did, until his arm brushed hers, and she
had to sit up very straight so their hips didn’t touch.

He crossed his leg over his knee and let his shoe tip nudge
her stockinged calf. She had changed into a taupe suit with a short jacket that
was very attractive on her shapely figure.

She shifted her leg out of his reach. He put his foot back
down and slumped so his hip and leg pressed along hers.
Oo-la-la
. He liked that position.

She elbowed him — hard.

Yes
! She was as
aware of him as he was of her. Jacques nearly laughed out loud.

He had not been to church in a very long time, but even he
knew he shouldn’t be thinking about sex in church. Politely focusing his attention
on the preacher, he sat up and placed his hand on Amy’s knee.

She dug her fingernails into a small piece of his skin and
pinched.

He decided right there and then that a woman who did not
give in easily had a lot to give.

* * *

“You are moving your beds in here?” Jacques asked in evident
dismay after limping up the stairs to the loft apartment against Amy’s wishes.
“There are no rooms!” He swept his arm dramatically to indicate the dusty
box-cluttered studio.

“It’s an adventure, like camping out.” Amy stoically dropped
her box of kitchen utensils on the tiny Formica counter. “I need to figure out
how much I can leave boxed up and how much I absolutely have to have to get by
until we find a new place.”

Elise’s teenaged nanny and her boyfriend entered with
cartons of linens and towels, and Flint’s middle-school boys carried up bed
parts, showing off for Elise’s gorgeous nine-year-old daughter. Amy directed
the kids’ beds to be placed in the corner where Jo’s piano had once stood. She
didn’t want the children climbing the ladder into the loft.

Jacques stalked through the apartment growling at the lack
of room and disparagingly wiping dust off fixtures. Good. Maybe once she saw
him as the snobby rich boy he was supposed to be, she wouldn’t tingle all over
every time he looked at her. His kiss yesterday had turned her head so badly
that she couldn’t see the wolf in him any longer.

His behavior in church hadn’t helped any. She hadn’t heard a
word the preacher spoke with Jacques’s muscular legs deliberately rubbing hers.
She’d wanted to laugh and giggle like a teenager. And touch him back.

Keeping him distant from her children was the smart thing to
do. They needed a man in their life too much. And apparently, she wasn’t any
less susceptible.

“I thought I was to be your bed-and-breakfast guest. How
will you feed me if you are here?” he demanded, hitting his cane against the
old wooden floor and glaring out the windows at the lovely mountain view.

Amy winced guiltily. “I promised the kids pizza and cupcakes
tonight. I can’t feed you that. I’ll come up and heat one of the meals I froze
for days like this. Just think, you’ll have the whole house to yourself. You
can wear your own underwear on your head if you like.”

He snorted, but she didn’t think it was with laughter.

“If I wished to eat by myself, I would have stayed at the
motel. And breakfast? Do you leave me a box of cereal?”

He almost sounded hurt. She had hurt him? How was that
possible? The whole world was his oyster, and she was just an irritating grain
of sand.

“You have an entire entourage who will jump if you call. I
have air mattresses that can be used for beds.” She’d left the master bedroom
furniture for Jacques and moved the smaller guest set down here for herself.
“Tell Luigi to stay with you. I’ll feed both of you and not charge extra. And
if you don’t want to eat at the café in the morning, I’ll set the coffeepot on
automatic and prepare breakfast sandwiches and muffins you can heat up. We’ll
work something out.”

“Your house will not be sold for weeks! Surely I did not
drive you from your lovely home with my presence?” He looked disturbed at the
implication.

So much for seeing him as spoiled and demanding. He was not
supposed to care if he’d driven her out of her own home.

If she was honest, she’d have to say he had. She hadn’t
slept a wink the night before, knowing he was under the same roof, so close,
but so far away….

But that sounded too much as if she were running away, when
she was actually running forward. This was her life now. If she quit thinking
about the past, there was a certain amount of excitement in finding her own
place.