Sweet Home Carolina (5 page)

“When in Rome, they must eat as Romans do.” He gestured
dismissively, then eyed the fat, currant-filled scone she placed in front of
him with surprise. “What is this?”

“A scone,” she said, annoyed with herself for giving in to
his charming apology. “I can’t provide clotted cream though. What’s your
preference? Butter, jam, honey? Scones are British, aren’t they?”

His smile brightened like a harvest moon as he sniffed the
still warm biscuit. “My mother used to cover them in strawberries. Jam is fine,
thank you.”

“It’s too late in the season for fresh strawberries, but I
have some of mama’s homemade jam.” Amy was quite certain she had lost her mind
when she offered this stranger the delicacy reserved for her family. Did she
think buttering him up would persuade him to go away? That was quite a head
trip, if so. “I have whipped cream if you want the whole shebang,” she added,
because that’s how she would have fixed it.

“Whipped cream, yes,” he agreed, his carved jaw set with
hungry satisfaction.

When she showed him the can of pressurized whipped cream, he
still nodded. Shrugging, Amy covered the jam scone with the instant cream.

Just as she was returning the can to the refrigerator, the
café door bounced open and Dave, the owner of the hardware store, barged in.
“Two Coke floats to go, would you, Ames? Inventory is filthy work.” He stopped
short at sight of the stranger in tourist clothes at the counter. “Sorry,
didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Dave, this is Jacques Saint-Etienne, our competitor for the
mill. Mr. Saint-Etienne, Dave Boggs, head of the Chamber of Commerce’s mill
committee.”

Sighing in regret at this interruption to their delightful
tête-à-tête, Jacques rose and offered his hand, adding his best disarming smile
while studying his competition. Mr. Boggs was an older gentleman of sturdy
build, wearing Dockers and an off-the-rack short-sleeved shirt. Not an
international financier by a long shot. “Mr. Boggs, it’s good to meet you.”

“Same, I’m sure.” Dave slapped Jacques’s hand but didn’t try
the usual competitive crushing handshake. “Anyone who gets the mill back in
production is a friend of mine.”

Jacques preferred not to get into that. He’d much rather
romance the lovely cook and find out if the mill still had the pattern cards he
wanted, but he supposed it never hurt to be friendly.

“A man of business, I like that. I was hoping to find
someone to drive me out to the plant and show me around, but Ms…Ames?” She’d
introduced herself as
Amaranth
, but
Jacques couldn’t bear to call an attractive woman by such an unwieldy name. He
had already noted she still wore her wedding band, although he’d heard, with
definite interest, when she’d told him she was a
former
wife. “Ms. Ames has distracted me with her delicious
cuisine.”

“Isn’t she a great little cook? The food has gone upscale
since Amy took over the kitchen.” Dave fished a bill out of his wallet and
shoved it across the counter in exchange for two large drink cups. “I’d be
happy to take you out later, but I’m in the middle of inventory right now.” He
glanced at Amy. “What about Jo? Isn’t she in town?”

“I’ll call and ask, but I think she had plans. I can give
Mr. Saint-Etienne — ”

“Jacques, please,” he insisted.

She nodded curtly, transformed from an understanding hostess
dispensing delicious delicacies to hard-eyed businesswoman at the mention of
the mill, although her soft curls and unmanicured fingers lacked the necessary
lacquered finish to successfully carry off the attitude.

“I can provide directions and a map,” she said. “Doesn’t
Hank’s real estate company have the key? Someone over there might show you
around.”

That wasn’t what Jacques wanted. He wanted time to go
through files and pattern books. He didn’t intend to steal anything. He simply
wanted to know he was getting what he was willing to pay for. “I would prefer
the guidance of someone familiar with operations. Did I not understand that
Ms…Amy has some familiarity with the mill?”

“Amy knows the place inside and out,” Dave agreed
cheerfully. “You will be in good hands with her. Why not today, Amy? The café
closes at three, doesn’t it?” With the problem settled to his satisfaction,
Dave rushed for the exit with a “Good to meet you, Jock,” farewell.

Jacques winced at the mispronunciation.

He didn’t have to pretend a smile as he returned to his seat
to finish his scone. Judging from the sour look on the lady’s face, she could
use a little sweetening, though.

“You will take me, yes?” he asked in the accent he’d earned
from his father. He could reproduce his American mother’s West Virginia twang
if necessary, but women always smiled so delightfully at a foreign inflection. He
would like to make Ms. Amy smile more.

Gathering from his hostess’s quirked eyebrows that she knew
she’d been outmaneuvered, Jacques shrugged and insouciantly devoted himself to
consuming the scone while she called her sister.

“Mama, I gotta go potty!” the child cried from the other
room.

She was an exquisite fairy child, chubbier and more golden
than his Danielle at that age. It warmed what was left of his heart to see
mother and daughter together. For a long time after the accident, the knifing
pain of loss had caused Jacques to turn his head away from the sight of
children, but he enjoyed their innocent exuberance too much to ignore them
forever.

He turned the stool in expectation at the sound of small
shoes rushing across the old wooden floor. She ran into the room, pale curls
bouncing, carrying a ragged doll, and disregarding all in her path as children
did. His eyes widened as he took in the precarious juxtaposition of top-heavy
goose and plaster egg.

“Watch the table,” he called. He slid from the stool in
order to catch the table and prevent the statues from toppling.

Her little shoe tripped on a chair leg before he could reach
the artwork.

The chair slammed into the table and the heavy pieces rocked
precariously, tilting on their flimsy perch. Trapped behind the counter, Amy
screamed.

With the swift coordination of the athlete he’d once been,
Jacques lunged between the child and the toppling statues, twisting his already
twisted knee in the process. He heard the telltale snap, but he caught the
child under him before the heavy goose slammed into his back and rolled
harmlessly off him. Amy’s cry covered the shattering crack of the egg hitting
the floor.

The child shrieked in startlement, but he was fairly certain
he hadn’t crushed her. Wincing at the bruise to his spine, Jacques propped up
on one arm and reassuringly brushed blond curls from her forehead.

With his motion, a sharp pain cut through his knee. Biting
his tongue against the agony, Jacques wished he could shriek as loudly as the
toddler. Instead, he merely grimaced while the lady rescued her weeping
daughter, cuddling and cooing over the child, drenching him in the intoxicating
scents of vanilla and jasmine, while he lay there, helpless.

Maybe he’d just pretend he was a carpet.

“Thanks for coming, Elise.” Amy rubbed the sinus ache above
her nose and tried to shut out the excruciating odor of Lysol in the hospital
emergency room. “He’ll probably sue me, the café, and the entire town, and
right now, I can’t blame him. We’ve probably lamed the poor man for life.”

“I’ve talked to one of the interns,” Elise said
reassuringly. “Your macho dude is back there now telling the nurses that he
just needs a brace and ice.”

Originally from Knoxville, on the western side of the
mountain, her lawyer and friend possessed a city-bred aggressiveness that made
Elise successful in everything from negotiating contracts to suing the biggest
music publisher in the country. She had taught Amy how to stand on her own and
fight her ex with steel instead of mushy sentimentality.

“Apparently, he had an old knee injury that was already
inflamed when he came to visit. If he’s injured it again, it’s his own fault,
so quit fretting,” Elise insisted.

Amy combed the hair out of her eyes. She needed a haircut as
much as Saint Stevie did, only the unruliness looked better on him. “I don’t
know what we’d do without you, Elise. I think God must have sent you.”

Caught by surprise, Elise laughed as if Amy had just
performed the best stand-up routine since Bill Cosby’s. Every head in the room
turned to see what was so funny.

With jet black hair, startlingly blue eyes beneath long
lashes, a tall, slender build more elegant than Jo’s country buxom, and garbed
in a striking red suit, Elise held the attention of every male with eyes in his
head.

“If you listen to my ex, my partners, or a few of the people
I’ve tangled with in court, I’m the product of the devil,” Elise explained when
she caught her breath. “Never confuse me with a nice person.”

“I want to be you when I grow up,” Amy insisted, anxiously
watching the doors where they had taken Jacques. “I want to be able to fix
things.”

Jacques might be the competition, but she couldn’t wish him
the agonizing pain she knew he was suffering. He had saved Louisa from what
could have been a tragic accident, and she owed him everything for that. Torn
by conflicting emotions, she had wanted to weep at his stoicism while she drove
him down the mountain to the hospital.

Dave had come from the hardware store to help her carry
Jacques into her SUV that she’d driven up to the front door. Jacques had been
so calm throughout the process. He merely swallowed anti-inflammatories as if
they were candy. But his face had twisted in agony with every bump, especially
when she’d had to take Jo’s gravel drive to drop off Louisa.

“I can’t cook, and my daughter thinks I’m the meanest mother
on the planet,” Elise said as the glass emergency room entrance slid open. “Be
careful what you wish for.”

“Where is he? Where is my Jacques?” a weeping voice wailed
over the chatter of foreign languages bursting into the room. Jacques’s
entourage —
staff
— had arrived.

He must have found his cell phone and called for reinforcements,
Amy decided, watching the elegant creatures spreading out in all directions.
The tall, Asian-looking cameraman had his arm around the shoulders of the
weeping lioness, while a bobbed, bespectacled woman approached the desk. The
lanky boy turned toward the coffee machine. A well-built man wearing a billed
cap and gray jacket lingered at the door.

“I don’t think he needs us anymore,” Amy whispered. “But it
seems awful to desert him.” She really wanted to see for herself that he was
all right, but she thought that would be dreadfully presumptuous now that he
had his staff to look after him.

Elise assessed the situation with narrowed eyes. “I’ll
handle this.”

Amy watched her friend march up to the bespectacled woman,
who was probably the assistant Jacques had mentioned. The two women exchanged a
few words, shook hands, and that was that. Not a single member of his
cosmopolitan staff acknowledged Amy’s existence.

“His knee is sprained. He’ll have to walk on crutches for a
while. They’re taking him back to the resort. Let’s go.” Elise nearly dragged
Amy from the waiting room.

Throwing one last glance over her shoulder, Amy gave up the
fight. She might never have a chance to see Jacques and thank him for saving
Louisa.

But if he left town, the mill bid was left wide open again….
She hated herself for wanting to do a happy dance at someone else’s expense.

“If you start breaking people the way you do machines when
you stress out, we ought to patent you,” Elise said with a laugh as they
traversed the parking lot.

Amy managed a smile at the warped humor. “Jo has you
convinced I’m death to machines, too? I thought lawyers were too logical to be
superstitious.”

“I’ve heard of human magnetic fields. I know people who
can’t wear watches because they destroy them.” She glanced knowingly at Amy’s
bare wrist as they stopped at the SUV. “Do you fry computers, too?”

“I avoid computers,” Amy admitted. “Guess it’s a good thing
I won’t be around Saint Stevie if he buys the mill and installs computerized
machinery. If I believed you and Jo, I’d blow his looms sky high.”

“Saint Stevie?” Elise asked, her ruby lips quirking upward.
“I really need to meet this man when he isn’t under the influence of
narcotics.”

“I’m crossing my fingers that he’ll take the next plane
home, so you’d better hurry over to the resort if you want to meet him.” Amy
opened her door and leaned on it a minute, letting the mountain breeze blow her
hair off her face and cool her overheated forehead. “Thanks again, Elise. I
appreciate it.”

Elise waved dismissively. “Between the kids and your mother,
you and Jo have spent enough of your time in that emergency room. Give the kids
hugs for me.”

Amy waved, climbed in, and started the engine, letting the
AC take out the sun’s heat while she leaned her head against the headrest.

The goose could have crushed Louisa. Instead of fretting
over cottages and furniture, she needed to think about kids and safe workplaces
and doctors and deductibles she couldn’t afford. She had to have a job.

She would have to accept the offer the buyers had made on
the house. If nothing else, Saint Stevie had scared her back to reality.

* * *

“No, I do not want another pain pill.” Two days after the
accident, Jacques was already tired of being treated like a baby. He waved away
the bottle Catarina held out.

She’d been shoving medication at him all weekend — probably
because he’d spent the nights in a recliner with his knee elevated instead of
in the bed she’d hoped they’d finally share. His parents’ outrageous
performances had taught him all he needed to know about manipulation.

Give him honest Amy’s pragmatic hauling of his injured
carcass to an emergency room any day. She’d done what needed to be done and
hadn’t hovered.