Sweet Home Carolina (22 page)

Marie wandered off with her granddaughter, leaving Jacques
to sort it out. Why would she cry?

Men pounded his back again. Jimbo handed him another of Jo’s
plastic cups. He was called “Zack” so many times he forgot he’d ever been
called anything else.

He tried to follow the path Amy had taken, but men with
weathered faces and oil-stained hands approached him, asking questions about
the jobs he’d offered. Women hung in the background, listening eagerly, their
lined faces shining with hope.

He felt like a shit.

He offered so little, and they thanked him too much. He’d
just wanted an excuse to stay and play a while longer. He really wasn’t making
that much of a difference. The business would probably lose so much money the
first year that he’d still end up selling the place.

His competitive instincts despised losing money. He hated
losing, period. The odds were totally against him.

But maybe it was time to start testing odds instead of
taking on sure things?

Tightening his mouth in resolve, Jacques shook off his
shock, pounded the backs of men twice his size until they staggered, and forced
his way through the crowd in the direction he wanted to go.

Toward Amy — Amaranth Jane. Somehow, the outlandishly
defiant name finally fit her.

He approached the Stardust from the side alley. He didn’t
see any light in the upstairs loft she and the children had moved into.
Striding around Myrtle the Pig on the corner, he saw a small light through the
café’s mullioned front window.

He leaned against the door and it opened. People seldom locked
doors in Northfork, but the café was usually locked to indicate when it was
closed.

Amy didn’t look up at his entrance. In the light of a
kerosene lamp, she carefully smoothed creamy icing over an array of cupcakes.
Patiently, she pressed candies into them, then licked crumbs off her fingers
before reaching for a towel.

“You ran away,” he said accusingly.

She didn’t answer, but returned to pressing candies into
icing.

He didn’t know what he was doing here in this preposterously
decorated room on the far side of the world from anywhere. He had probably just
made the biggest mistake of his life.

He’d done it for her. And she had run away. Why?

A brown curl fell over Amy’s nose, and she blew it away
while she carefully placed a candy corn nostril on a pig snout.

In that moment, watching her gentle patience, something hard
and brittle inside Jacques shattered. Emotions he did not dare examine broke
free, and he acted on a flood of longing for something he could not name. He
leaned over the counter, tucked the escaped curl behind her ear, and brushed
his lips against hers, reveling in their surprise and the hungry clinging that
declared her true desires.

Amy gasped and backed away, rubbing her icing-coated hands
on her apron. Through the dim light of the lantern, he saw her eyes widen like
big cat eyes. Bracing his hands on the counter, Jacques vaulted over it rather
than waste time letting her escape around the barrier.

“You are a vixen, Amaranth Jane,” he murmured, crowding her
against the cold stove. “And I demand a reward for performing to your
expectations.”

“I didn’t…. I….”

He hushed her with a kiss. She twisted her fingers in his
shirt as if to shove him away, but she forgot to shove. Her mouth was as hot
and eager as his once he persuaded her to open for him. In triumph, he clasped
his arms around her lovely bare waist and lifted her against him, savoring the
crush of her ripe breasts against the hard wall of his chest while they drank
of each other.

“Don’t, please, we can’t,” she murmured when he moved his
kisses to the corner of her mouth to give them both a chance to breathe. But
her arms crept around his neck even as she protested.

He adored the feel of her sticky fingers in his hair and on
his nape. She smelled of vanilla and fireworks, and if he were the Neanderthal
type, he’d take her right here and now, assert his claim, and bellow in
victory.

Unfortunately, he was too civilized to maul a woman in such
a crude manner. He wanted her to remember their first lovemaking with sensual
pleasure and not with bruises.

“We can,” he murmured, snuggling her belly next to his
crotch so she had no doubt of what she did to him. “Tell me we can. I will take
you anywhere. Would you like to see Paris?”

She gave another of those sexy little gasps and before she
could argue or refuse, he licked sugary icing from the corner of her mouth and
claimed her lips all over again. Her shudder of surrender was everything he’d
hoped it would be. In a heated rush of desire and relief, he rocked her back
and forth, stroking her smooth skin, murmuring practiced phrases between
kisses.

She was putty in his arms, moaning and kissing as if he were
a banquet and she was starving. He loved being her banquet. She could gobble
him up any day.

Except that the more she took, the more he wanted to give,
and he was in serious danger of drowning in this whirlpool of passion.

A door slammed open and sulfur-scented air rushed in. “Ames,
we’re outta…. Oops, sorry, party on,” a feminine voice sang.

Amy hastily released Zack’s — Jacques’s — neck and pushed
against his chest with both hands. “Jo, wait. I have to go.” She said this
while wiggling free of his sinful grip, then gulped for air and tried to steady
her trembling knees by grasping the counter.

“We’ve got the kids. You don’t have to go anywhere,” Jo
called through the semidarkness. “The guys can buy soft drinks instead of my
lemonade.” She started to close the door, then hesitated. “You be good to my
big sister or you’ll have a town after you with butcher knives, y’hear?”

Amy considered melting through the floor in humiliation, but
Jo charged out, slamming the door after her. More fireworks exploded. For all
she knew, they’d never stopped. Her head was one explosion after another from
Zack’s kisses and solid male presence crowding her against her familiar
counter.

Zack
. The name
sounded as if he belonged here. And he didn’t. Fireworks wouldn’t change that.

Her palms still pressed against the thin cloth of his shirt.
She could feel the tension in his hard muscles and the erratic pounding of his
heart matching her own. She wanted to draw away, but she was afraid her knees
would buckle. She didn’t want to let him go for fear he was just a mirage.

“What just happened here?” she whispered, mostly to herself.
She felt as if she were spinning in circles like a giant whirligig, and she
couldn’t believe any of this was happening, not to her. Handsome,
sophisticated, European businessmen didn’t romance lonely divorced mothers of
two.

“We were carried away on the wings of desire?” he suggested
with a grin in his voice. He placed strong hands around her waist again. “Shall
we do it again and analyze it this time?”

She shoved at his chest, but she might as well have tried to
move a refrigerator. Now that her feet were back on the ground, she could
appreciate the strength of the man pinning her to the stove. She had a thing
for strong men, ones who could lift her as if she were a bit of straw and make
her feel safe. Ones who could blow her mind just by holding her. She did her
very best to pretend she hadn’t noticed the size of the erection rubbing
against her belly. It had been so long….

She shook her head free of images of a naked Zack and felt
her messy hair hit her cheek. “When does your flight leave?” she asked, forcing
reality into the equation.

“I’m starting a new business in Northfork, remember?” he
asked with just a hint of irony. “I can’t leave.”

Taking a deep breath, she found the willpower to slip
sideways between him and the stove. Her breast brushed against his arm and sent
an entire new surge of need pounding through her. “I can’t believe you agreed
to that,” she said hastily, trying to bring her head back where it belonged.
“You have no comprehension of how much it means to the town to keep the mill
running.”

“I’m beginning to understand,” he said drily, letting her
escape. “That was quite a performance you orchestrated out there.”

She suspected anger simmered not too far below his surface
pleasantry. He wouldn’t be the type who would appreciate having his hand
forced.

Conflict terrified her. Her normal response was to placate
or run away. She couldn’t do either this time. Too much rode upon his staying
and helping to reestablish the mill.

“Thank you,” she whispered, not for the compliment, but for
staying. She didn’t persuade her tongue to explain the difference.

“Thank you for believing in the impossible,” he said softly,
seeming to understand. He brushed his hand against her cheek, and her knees
threatened to buckle again. “It is a challenge, right?” He lifted her chin so
she had to meet his eyes.

In the lantern light, she could see the fear behind his
unusually flinty gaze, and she nodded agreement. “A challenge, yes,” she
whispered, grasping that there were many layers of meaning left unspoken.

The overhead lights flickered and flashed on.

Outside, a cheer rang into the overcast night, and bottle
rockets exploded, rendering further conversation unfeasible. For now.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Amy muttered, sipping her
coffee and adjusting a pan of muffins in the Stardust’s oven.

“You’re applying for the position of executive manager,” Jo
told her firmly, nudging her away from the oven with her hip while tying on an
apron. “The town’s counting on you. Get out there and fight.”

“Fight?” Amy gave her sister an incredulous look. “Did it
look like I was capable of fighting last night?”

Jo chortled. “Oh, yeah. You had the man flattened. Go
exercise those Sanderson wiles, Sis. Nail him before he knows what hit him.”

“I’m the one likely to get nailed.” Amy tried not to shiver
too obviously at the image rising in her head of Zack naked and on top of her,
nailing her in the only manner her present fantasy could conjure.

“Try it, you’ll like it.” Jo poked her with a sharp elbow.

That was the problem. She might come to like it too well.
And she wasn’t allowing men in anymore. Certainly not suave Europeans who would
love her and leave her for a larger world. She was standing on her own these
days, in the secure world she’d chosen.

She had her kids to think about. A shattered mother was very
bad for their emotional upbringing.

“I think I’d rather move to Asheville and work at Belk’s.”
Amy set down her mug and watched the shadows on Main Street dissipate with the
first rays of dawn. “I don’t need a nabob who will be here today and gone
tomorrow, or an entire town depending on my rusty skills.”

“A ‘nabob’?” Jo hooted and removed the muffins from the oven
as their first customer walked in and took a booth. “Is that like a French film
star? Zack’s hot, babe. Cut your teeth on him, and you can have any man you
like after that.” To the customer, she called, “Be with you in a minute. The
muffins just came out of the oven.”

Their customer waved agreement and shook out his paper.

“Get real.
Zack
will wring me out and leave me dry. I just can’t do that again, Jo. I
can’t
. I’m the settling-down kind, and
he travels Europe. I don’t even know what he sees in me except availability.”

“He has the lioness for availability. Did he go back to her
last night?”

“No, he went back to the house. He called to ask me how to
make the microwave quit blinking.” Amy popped muffins out of the pan and onto a
platter.

Jo chuckled. “He’s all yours then. He’s a type A competitor
who needs a challenge, and you’re it. Enjoy the attention while it lasts.”
Picking up the coffeepot, she wandered to the booth to take an order while more
of their regulars entered

A challenge. Amy stared gloomily out the café’s mullioned
window. She didn’t need any more challenges in her life. She had more than she
could handle already.

But she’d had security, and look how well that had worked
out.

She picked up a second coffeepot to begin filling cups when
the Hummer roared to a halt in front of the café and Jacques climbed out. He
was wearing stiff dark-wash jeans and a Lauren work shirt, probably straight
off the rack at Belk’s. Over the casual attire he wore a tailored brown tweed
jacket that likely cost twenty times the jeans.

Amy let her lips curve upward at the sight. Jacques — Zack —
was doing his darndest to fit in, and he still looked as if he’d stepped fresh
from prep school. It wasn’t just the clothes or his stylishly tousled hair, but
the self-assured way he carried his lean length and glanced around as if the
day was his and the world acknowledged his wishes. She must have imagined the
fear she’d seen in his eyes last night. Men who owned the world knew no fear.

Her heart did somersaults just from watching him. She’d
trusted that he would do the right thing last night. Now she had to figure out
what the right thing was for her. And act on it.

The Hummer drove off, and Zack shoved open the Stardust’s
door. “Ready for work?” he called jovially.

Amy poured boiling water over tea leaves, then pushed a cup
and saucer toward him on the counter. “I left fresh bagels and muffins at the
house. Didn’t you like them?”

“The muffins are not so sweet without you to serve them. And
we need to get down to business immediately.”

Amy couldn’t decide whether to laugh at his perversity or
hit him over the head with the cinnamon Fiestaware cup. The laughter in his
eyes and the dent forming in his square jaw prevented either. He knew darned
well what he was doing to her. He wasn’t a stupid man. He had said this would
be a challenge, and he was proving his point. They might kill each other before
this was over.