Sweet Home Carolina (17 page)

He glanced at her packing boxes. “I could even help you
pack. And haul furniture.”

She wanted to laugh at the thought of the elegant Brit
lugging her antiques up the stairs to Jo’s tiny apartment on his bad knee, but
tonight, she was too tired and embarrassed. “How did you get up here?” she
asked, feeling her determination to keep him at a distance dissolve.

He shrugged in an attempt to look nonchalant. “In the
Hummer.”

“Did you drive it?”

He scraped his cane back and forth on the slate floor. “It’s
an automatic.”

“Does Luigi know?”

He scowled, and she knew she’d finally scored a point. “You
couldn’t stay here without Luigi,” she insisted. “He’d have a stroke. I have
two kids who will be up at sunrise.”

“I like your children. I need a whirlpool. I will deal with
Luigi. I wish to stay a mountain away from Cat and friends. Money is no object.”
He swung his cane dismissively.

“You realize your accent gets stronger when you want
something?”

He widened his eyes in surprise, then grinned, destroying
the intense seriousness he’d built earlier. “Does it work?”

“I hate you, and yes, it does. It turns women into putty,
and you know it.”

His smile would have done a Cheshire cat proud. “No other
woman has ever admired my accent, but it’s only you I wish to turn to putty.”

“Putty is messy. And then it gets brittle and cracks,” she
reminded him, before swallowing the rest of her tea and sitting back. To her
amazement, she was actually weighing the argument. She seriously disliked being
steamrollered by a man who didn’t know how to take no for an answer, but she
could use the cash. Babysitters for Louisa were expensive. She couldn’t ask Jo
to do it all the time. Josh needed more school clothes, they both would need
new winter coats, and she couldn’t count on Evan for anything extra.

Besides, a day of this madhouse, and Jacques would run for
the door. Why deny herself a little extra money just because she couldn’t
control her responses to him?

She was being logical, reasonable, practical — and she’d
defend to the death her right to believe her own lies. “Until Tuesday?” she
asked.

“For as long as is feasible,” he corrected. “I will pay
daily, like the motel.”

“I’m not offering maid service,” she said decisively. “I
have way too much to do as it is. If you want me to feed you, you have to eat
when we do and eat what we have. Otherwise, you’re on your own.”

Instead of laughing in triumph, Jacques nodded seriously. “I
can make my own bed. Boarding schools teach a few useful things. In the
morning, I will have Luigi help you, and I will pay what I was paying the
resort, plus extra for meals. Will that suit?”

No, it scared her absolutely to death. But then, so did
moving and looking for a job. If she were really truthful, the entire world
terrified her. She didn’t know the entire world, but she was coming to know
Jacques. She
liked
him, against all
better judgment. They even had more in common than mutual lust, although she
was reluctant to admit either, because it was dangerous to her emotional
well-being. She knew she could trust him — to a point.

“You will be my first B and B customer,” she stated, adding
one more reason to agree to the absurd. “It will be a learning experience.”

For a moment, Jacques looked as apprehensive as she felt,
but then he wiped away the expression with a smile. “Excellent. I have a bag in
the car.”

The dirty rat fink. He’d
known
he could sway her. She could see it in his laughing dark eyes. But she wasn’t
backing down now that she’d made her decision. She’d spent ten damned years
learning to be a proper hostess.

He held out his hand for her to shake.

Touching him would be a serious mistake. Amy did it anyway.
Jacques’s clasp was warm, hard, and reassuring, and his gentle squeeze was
meant to convince her she was doing the right thing.

All she had to do was convince him that she made the rules.

For once, she intended to be in charge of her life.

* * *

Jacques turned on the water faucet in the enormous ivory tub
surrounded by sumptuous limestone tile and decided he’d lost his mind. Gardenia
candles and jasmine bath salts in delicate rose-crystal containers were grouped
artistically next to luxurious rose-colored towels. If that wasn’t feminine
enough, Amy had added a bouquet of pink roses and ferns to an antique Waterford
vase.

The bathroom was so very sensual, so very much the hidden
side of his sensible Amy that he grew hard just looking at it. Or smelling it.
Even her perfume lingered in the air. It wasn’t often that he felt out of
place, but he felt like a stallion in the mare’s barn right now.

A light rap at his door confirmed he’d lost his famed
elusiveness. He usually used crowds as a defense against intimacy, and now he’d
opened the gates to a woman so vulnerable he couldn’t ignore her.

Well, he supposed he could ignore her right now. She tapped
so lightly he assumed she hoped he wouldn’t hear. He shrugged on his robe over
the slacks he hadn’t removed yet.

He opened the door, catching her in mid-knock. “I was just
thinking I should ask you to join me in your lovely tub.”

She blushed and stared at the V of his robe rather than look
up and meet his eyes. She’d brushed out the layered brown curls of her hair,
letting it fall loose about her face, and pulled a pretty turquoise tunic over
her tank top, effortlessly creating her own understated style. He admired a
woman who didn’t feel compelled to spend an hour in front of a mirror to be
comfortable with her appearance.

“I just wanted to warn you to lock your door. The kids are
used to running in and out without knocking,” she said hurriedly, as if ready
to run once the words were out of her mouth.

“Will they worry if they cannot find you? I will be happy to
take another room if this is an inconvenience.” Jacques refrained from smacking
his forehead for his stupidity. Of course the whirlpool was in her room. He’d
seen her things in there. But he’d been equating them with a candlelit bath for
two and not thinking about the mundane — like children who jumped on their
mother’s bed every morning.

“No, I know how to distract them. Locking the door is simply
a precaution. I put clean sheets on the bed this morning. I hope you’ll be
comfortable.”

She backed away, and Jacques grabbed her wrist before she
could escape. “Amy, wait, please.”

He didn’t know what he meant to say. He simply knew that he
didn’t want her to leave. She finally lifted her gaze to his face and waited
patiently for him to speak.

“I want to talk to you but don’t know how,” he admitted,
surprising even himself. Talk wasn’t what he wanted, was it? “I look in your
understanding eyes and want to say things I haven’t said to anyone, but I
cannot.” He thought that might actually be true, but he would try not to dwell
on it too much. “You back away like a frightened doe every time I try.”

“That’s because I
am
a frightened doe, with two fawns to protect,” she said bluntly. “You will find
someone understanding among your own crowd. Brigitte seems a very intelligent
listener.”

Brigitte was an astute cynic with a heart of ice. He did not
want Brigitte. He was discovering he preferred a backbone of steel well padded
by feminine curves and a loving nature.

“Perhaps I should go, after all,” he said, surprising
himself. “I did not think this through. I would not upset your children. Routine
is very important to them.”

“You say that as if you’ve had experience,” she said with a
shade of suspicion.

He had to work at flashing a grin. “I was once a child.” He
arched his eyebrows, challenging her to argue the point.

Amy tilted her head to study him, and it was all he could do
not to avoid her too perceptive gaze.

“Take a look around, Jacques,” she replied with a gesture at
the stacked boxes in the hall. “Their lives are already in complete chaos, and
they’re handling it just fine. Stay. You’ve convinced me it will work.” Amy
pried his fingers loose from her wrist and escaped.

This time, Jacques let her go.

Shutting the door, he locked it, but no lock would shut out
his raging libido.

Or the echoing loneliness of the empty room after Amy’s
departure.

Jacques heard the children whispering in the hall outside
the bedroom door. He tucked in his shirt and zipped his trousers, wondering how
to deal with Amy’s children. It was not as if he’d seduced their mother, but he
felt a vague sense of guilt anyway.

Both his parents had refrained from bringing home their
lovers while he was there, but then, he was in their homes so seldom that it
could hardly have imposed on their love lives much. The women he’d slept with
these last years hadn’t had children, or if they did, he didn’t know about
them. It was all very civilized.

He wasn’t Amy’s lover yet, but dealing with her children was
far more intimate, and intimacy made him edgy. One couldn’t easily have brief
affairs with children around.

He buckled his belt and left his coat in the closet. The
aroma of coffee drifting up from Amy’s fabulous kitchen told him breakfast was
nearly ready, and he knew from experience that children and breakfast were not
good for suit coats. Amazing how quickly all the old instincts returned.

He’d always wanted brothers and sisters. He supposed, if he
was inclined to examine his actions, he’d married Gabrielle not just because he
was insanely in love and wanted his child to bear his name, but because he
wanted a family of his own. He no longer lived a life that would be good for
young ones, but the old longing apparently hadn’t gone away with time.

He crouched down, eased open the bedroom door, and put a
finger to his lips. Before the giggling children could escape, he scooped them
up and carried them down the hall to their bedrooms. They shrieked in joy and
tried to cling to him as he heaved them on separate bunk beds. “Where are your
clothes, my friends?” he intoned in his best giant voice.

He heard Amy calling his name anxiously from the bottom of
the stairs, and he stuck his head around the doorjamb to call back. “We’re
quite fine. Go back to what you are doing, and we’ll be down in a minute.”

He could almost swear that her uncertainty sent a big
question mark floating up the stairs. He smiled and proceeded to direct the
process of dressing for church. It had been a very, very long time since he’d
done this, but he remembered the basics. Charm and flimflammery worked very
well on children.

After much tussling and giggles, he followed the children
down the stairs, all three of them wearing crowns of underwear on their heads. Louisa’s
hair stuck out at all angles and Josh seemed to have on mismatched socks, but
all in all, he thought he’d done well.

Amy stared at their little parade with wide-eyed
astonishment. He’d expected laughter, but the blaze of wonder and admiration in
her gaze worked just as well. So, he was showing off, but if it made her happy,
then where was the wrong?

He knew, but he wasn’t prepared to admit it, not on this
bright sunshiny morning with a beautiful woman wielding a spatula like a
director’s baton to produce a symphony of mouthwatering aromas and two engaging
youngsters chattering at the cheerfully set table.

“We got dressed,” Louisa chirruped.

“Yes, I can see that. And very pretty you all look, too.” She
sent Jacques an appreciative look that said his informal attire had not gone
unappreciated either.

“We had to leave off our robes of office,” he explained with
a grin. “It seems Louisa’s is just a little bit wet, so we came in casual dress
today.”

“Ah, that explains it,” she nodded knowingly, doing her best
to bite back a grin of her own. “And will we have oatmeal or eggs this morning,
Your Majesties?”

“Oatmeal!” Louisa cried loudly.

Amy looked at Jacques apologetically. “I’ll have to toast
your bread in a skillet. The toaster oven expired a while back.”

“Under the influence of your magnetic personality?” he
asked, sweeping the crown off his head and reaching for the coffee mug she’d
set on the table.

She shot him a glare that had no sharpness, and he laughed. “Where
is the oven and your screwdrivers?”

“You can’t put a screwdriver into an electrical appliance;
you’ll electrocute yourself!”

“Not if you pull the plug.” He found the oven, carried it to
a counter with a barstool, and sat down to examine its innards.

“You fix appliances?” she asked with a note of awe, handing
him the requested tool.

He flashed her a grin. “I have no idea, but I’m thinking if
I stay here for long, I’d better learn.”

Amy dropped her spatula into the pan and stared at him as if
he’d spoken in an unknown tongue, and Jacques realized what he’d said. It had
just been a figure of speech, a silly remark. He couldn’t stay. Surely she knew
that.

Clearing her throat, Amy picked up the utensil again. “No
danger there. The bid for the mill is this week. You’ll be safely away before
you have to resuscitate any appliances.”

She returned to stirring her cooking pots, leaving Jacques
cringing at the accusation hanging in the air.

* * *

“Amy Warren, have you lost your mind?” Elise whispered,
pulling Amy aside before she could escape with the kids to the church’s nursery
later that morning. “Why are you arriving with the competition? You know what
he is, don’t you?”

Besides being Amy’s lawyer, Elise DuBois was Amy’s best
friend and everything Amy wanted to be when she grew up. Model tall and
gorgeous, she was also extremely intelligent and a sharp lawyer, though her brains
weren’t what men noticed first when Elise swayed into a room.

A moment ago, Jacques had shaken Elise’s hand without
reacting to her blatant sexuality. Not offering Elise any of the flirtatious
smiles or flattery he bestowed on Amy, he’d let the children drag him off to
say hello to Jo and Flint.