Sweet Home Carolina (12 page)

The first three rounds were test rounds. She winced at the
loudness of the barrage, then strained to see the results. The judges didn’t
announce test-round winners, but it looked to her as if all Jacques’s slugs had
missed the center — but they’d hit the target in a pattern, one concentric ring
at a time.

That could have been coincidence — or his deliberate attempt
to find the gun’s spray pattern by shifting precisely with each round fired.
That was not the performance of an amateur.

She watched him joking with the other men, submitting to
their friendly slaps and punches, but beneath Jacques’s gregarious façade, she
thought she noticed something she’d failed to treat seriously before — single-minded
resolve for anything he did.

That ought to really scare the heck out of her.

She glanced behind her to Luigi and Pascal standing with
arms crossed. They looked smug despite the whispers and wagers prevailing
around them.

A shiver of anticipation warned that this contest was a setup,
not by Hoss, but by Jacques.

Now
she was scared
to the point her heart thumped against her ribcage and her palms were sweating.

A goldenrod brushed her leg when she backed toward the trees
at the edge of the clearing. If she was smart, she’d turn and run right now.

Instead of running, she listened to the judge call the first
round. Lump in throat, she followed Jacques’s movements as he raised the
shotgun with a practiced swing, fired without flinching at the powerful recoil,
and lowered his weapon to study his shot.

The slug pattern was dead center.

The audience roared. It was impossible to tell whom they
were cheering, since there were twenty contestants all shooting at once. Amy
watched only Jacques.

The judges walked down the row of targets and eliminated the
lowest scores. The remaining contestants reloaded and joked quietly among
themselves. Hoss and Jacques were at opposite ends of the line.

The second round was called. Amy tore off the goldenrod and
began to shred it between her fingers. The ten remaining contestants positioned
their guns, some with cocky arrogance, some with nervousness. Jacques showed
only professional detachment. He fired both rounds — and wiped out the paper
target’s bull’s-eye.

The audience erupted in good-natured catcalls and rebel
yells at the announcement of the three finalists. It was hard to resist a
newcomer doing so well. The two men Jacques was matched against were big and
burly and accustomed to winning all physical contests. Jacques in his lean
elegance rested his shotgun over his shoulder and whistled without concern as
the judges consulted. Noticing Amy’s gaze, he raked a recalcitrant hank of hair
off his forehead and winked.

While the targets were replaced, Flint stepped back to stand
beside her. “He’s a pro,” he said quietly. “He’s got a steady arm and the eye
of an eagle, and I’d bet my bottom dollar he knows sharpshooting. You
comfortable with Hoss losing? We can announce the turkey as a prize. Just say
the word.”

The town always offered a frozen turkey as an alternative
prize, but Amy knew full well Hoss and Jacques weren’t going head-to-head over
a frozen turkey.

She didn’t have a good answer. “Jacques is a gentleman,” she
said to reassure herself as well as Flint. “But Hoss won’t take losing easy. You
might suggest a runoff with different weapons.”

“I like the way you think,” Flint said with approval, before
returning to the judge’s box while the remaining three shooters returned to the
line.

“Two rounds, four shots, and time is a factor,” the mayor
announced after a whispered consultation with Flint.

By calling for two rounds, they’d not only upped the stakes,
but handicapped Jacques, who obviously wasn’t familiar with reloading his brand-new
weapon. Amy winced, but the judges made the rules. Capability was as important
as accuracy.

Hoss looked confident firing his rounds, reloading, and
firing again in rapid succession.

Slower at loading, Jacques fired his last shot a few seconds
after Hoss. The third contestant came in last, in both time and accuracy.

Amy held her breath while the judges examined the cards.

“Zack Saint Ettyann in accuracy; Hoss Whitcomb in
capability,” the mayor announced in his dreadful accent to a crowd screaming in
excitement.

“Give me some money on that Zack,” one of the voices behind
her whispered to whoever was taking bets. “I think I gotta cover my losses.”

Zack
. Amy smiled
and wished the
betting
proceeds were
going to charity. From the noise and the odds, she’d say wagers were running
high.

The judges consulted with the final two contestants. Hugging
her elbows, stomach tensing, Amy didn’t stand close enough to hear. She was
beginning to feel conspicuous as it became apparent to everyone that turkeys
weren’t the goal of this shoot. A friendly buss on the cheek to a man she’d
known all her life had seemed simple enough when she’d finally given in to
popular demand. But a real contest with her as coveted prize was a way-out
fantasy the practical part of her mind hadn’t anticipated. She was a
thirty-something divorcée with two kids, not a teenage beauty queen.

Jacques emerged from the consultation with a smirk of
triumph. Hoss looked equally cocky. Jacques glanced in Amy’s direction and
tapped the pocket where he carried her ring. Hoss gave her a thumbs-up.

Amy wished for a sudden thunderstorm.

“The contestants have agreed to a shoot-off,” the mayor
announced in a voice that barely carried over the noise of the crowd.

Amy couldn’t hear the specifics he was explaining, but she
could see Hoss unloading his expensive new rifle from the cab of his pickup.
She glanced around, and sure enough, Jo had been right. Luigi came running with
a rifle for Jacques. He’d brought an arsenal. She was willing to bet that he
could be challenged to pistols, swords, and AK-47s and stand ready. Jacques was
evidently not a man to leave things to chance.

She shivered a little and blamed the breeze. She had always
appreciated a man who knew what he wanted and went after it with competence,
but she’d never had to go up against such a man before.

Jacques might be competent, but he wouldn’t help the town.
Or her. She had to keep thinking of him as the enemy, not the kind of man who
could provide security.

Hoss had national sharpshooting awards. But Jacques was
going over his weapon with the same cool professionalism he had displayed using
an unfamiliar shotgun. The crowd grew quiet when the contestants stepped up to
the line.

The contest was no longer a joke. A puffy white cloud dimmed
the bright Carolina sunshine, reducing the glare so Amy couldn’t miss a motion.
Riveted, she dug her fingernails into her palms and watched Flint give the
signal to shoot.

Both men unloaded their ammunition into the targets in a
rapid succession of gunfire. Apparently reloading wasn’t part of the contest,
because they lowered the barrels once they emptied their magazines, waiting for
a judge to collect the cards and examine them.

As the round ended, Amy thought she saw a trace of weariness
in Jacques’s eyes while he waited for the judges’ call. His crooked smile
tugged at her tender heartstrings. She needed to stop that nonsense right now. She
was such a softhearted sucker she let the kids drag home any wounded creature
they found. Jacques was very definitely not a helpless creature in need of
mothering.

“And it’s Zack Saint-Ettyann by three shots,” the mayor
screamed, grabbing Jacques’s wrist and lifting his arm into the air.

Jacques almost staggered as his weight shifted to the wrong
leg, but he caught himself and straightened using the rifle stock for a prop.
Tugging his wrist free, he offered his hand to Hoss, who slapped it with
goodwill and shook hard. Amy winced, but she noticed the bulkier man backed off
from the hand-crushing contest first. And then the crowd was shoving her
forward, and she quit thinking anything at all.

Caught up in the marksmanship, she had succeeded in briefly
forgetting she was the prize.

The same manicured hand that had crushed Hoss’s now caught
her elbow with gentleness, drawing her so close that she could look up and not
only see the whites of Jacques’s eyes, but the blue sparkles in his dark irises
and the hint of mustache bristles beneath the skin of his upper lip. A firm
mouth turned upward in the corners while he studied her the same way he’d
studied his competition. Long, strong fingers tapped the hoop in her ear, the
gold warm and caressing as it brushed against her neck. Her knees almost
buckled.

“Your favor brought me luck,
Aimée
,” he murmured, lowering his mouth to hers.

Aimée
.
Emmy
. Beloved.

She was out of her ever-lovin’ mind and in way over her
head. Jacques’s mouth coming down on hers blew whatever working brain cells she
had left. Amy closed her eyes and sank into his arms and his kiss as if she’d
known them all her life — cradled in comfort, wrapped in strength, and blessed
with passion.

Jacques had wanted this kiss…worked for it as
single-mindedly as he did everything that mattered.

If he had known the jolt of electricity from Amy’s plush
lips would bring him to his knees, he would have used his cane.

Instead, he grabbed Amy’s shoulders for support and deepened
the contact, digging his fingers into her hair and refusing to release her once
she responded to his insistent pressure with a hunger as strong as his own. His
weariness abruptly fled. Only the noise of the crowd reminded him that this was
not the private moment he desperately craved.

Shocked by the extent of his desire for this woman who
thought him little more than an idle playboy, Jacques regretfully stepped back.
Amy’s wide-eyed look assuaged some of his own surprise. At least, he wasn’t the
only one reeling.

“Come, Amy. Let’s give others the chance to win their
turkeys.” Keeping his arm across her shoulders, he tugged her next to him.

He enjoyed the caress of her hair against his jaw as the
wind tossed it back at him. He wanted to catch the shining strands, turn her
head to him, and continue that mind-blowing kiss — somewhere a good deal more
private than this.

“I’m thinking I’m the turkey here,” she muttered under her
breath as he led her toward the picnic blanket. “I should have known better.”

“Turkeys do not have lovely lush lips for kissing. Is there
a barn we can hide behind?”

She laughed at his teasing, but there was wariness in her
eyes. She needed to defend her heart — just as he did — so he supposed he
shouldn’t drive away her suspicion. But he saw no reason they could not enjoy
one of the great pleasures in life for a while.

“Not on a bet, mister.” She halted at the blanket to
introduce him to a tall, older woman with the lines of an education in life’s
hard knocks etched into her face. “Mama, we’ve told you about Jacques, the man
who’s bidding on the mill. Jacques, this is our mother, Marie Sanderson. She
worked at the mill for decades.”

He could see the resemblance to Amy in Marie’s wary eyes as
he bent over her hand in a gesture meant to impress. The tough woman looked
more suspicious than impressed, and he bit back a grin. Like mother, like
daughter.

“My pleasure, Mrs. Sanderson.” This time, Jacques allowed
Amy to direct his chair to be placed next to Marie’s. He had too much work
ahead of him to be crippled by a bad knee.

He didn’t let Amy go but squeezed her hand as he sat down.
“Tell Luigi to carry our things here, please.” He didn’t want to let her go,
but he had only a few days left to submit his bid, and his fine-honed instincts
told him that Marie Sanderson was a resource he could not ignore.

Encouraging Marie with questions, Jacques followed Amy with
his eyes, watching as she admirably dealt with their disparate guests. He
pondered her willingness to leave the champagne with Catarina and her followers
when they refused to join the family circle, and hid a smile when she carefully
divided the food between the two parties so everyone could sample all the
delicacies. He did not often encounter such unselfishness, or such natural
hospitality.

After seeing that plates of fried chicken and side dishes
were distributed from the two coolers, Amy finally — almost reluctantly — took
the chair reserved for her beside Jacques.

“I don’t want to hear about the mill today,” she warned,
cutting his intentions off at the pass while sipping her iced tea. “Tell us how
you learned to shoot so well.”

Jacques shrugged. “When I was a boy, I would visit my
father’s estate every summer. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I rode the
horses in his stable, swam the ponds and river, took fencing lessons from a
neighbor. My father had groundsmen who taught me how to shoot. Not so different
from here.”

Amy rolled her eyes in that droll manner of hers, and
Jacques had the urge to kiss her button nose. Since he was hungrily devouring
her delicious chicken, he resisted.

“I’m sure you shot the possums ransacking the chicken coop,
just like here, too.”

“Sarcasm does not become you, Amy,” he chided. “My father
inherited his land, yes, but we are land rich and cash poor. We must all work
to pay for the expense of upkeep. I have used my skills to shoot vermin.”

“He was on the Olympic pentathlon team,” Pascal asserted,
reaching for another piece of chicken. “Do not let his modesty trick you into
any more wagers.”

“Sore loser.” Jacques laughed. “It is your own fault for
thinking an unfamiliar weapon would deter me.”

“Pentathlon?” Flint looked up with interest from his plate.
“Fencing, riding, shooting….?”

“Swimming, running, yes, but I do not do all these things so
much anymore. The running ruined my knee and put a finish on the fencing. And
then life became too busy.”