Sweet Home Carolina (23 page)

The mill would work. She knew it would. Amy straightened her
shoulders, slapped the teapot onto the counter in front of him, and flung off
her apron. She’d think of him as
Zack
,
the mill’s new owner. “Where do we begin?” Behind her, Jo snorted to cover a
laugh.

Zack pointed at the stool beside him. When Jo provided
another cup, he poured tea for Amy and himself. “I’ve called Brigitte to join
us. She’ll take notes. For now, we will eat and be charming to each other.”

Had he been an American aggressive type-A telling her to sit
down, shut up, and wait for his secretary, she would have balked. Instead, Zack
had learned to smile and be charming to get what he wanted. It worked, too.

Falling easily into her old role of waitress, not country
music diva, Jo poured tea, scrambled eggs, and set out plates of carrot muffins
decorated with Louisa’s infamous pig snoses while Amy settled on the stool
indicated and tried to think like mill management.

“Where are the little ones?” he asked, shattering her image
of detached executive.

“Josh is riding to school with Flint and the boys. Louisa is
watching cartoons in the office. Can’t you hear the monitor?”

He tilted his head and listened. “Ah, yes, the Siamese cat,
what is her name? The little one is singing — to her dolls, maybe?”

“How did you know?” Amy sipped her Keemun, doing her best to
pretend this was just a business meeting and that she wasn’t bowled over and
cross-eyed over a man who knew about Sagwa and a three-year-old’s dolls.

He waved his hand. “No matter. How will you care for Louisa while
we work? We cannot set up a day care in the mill until we are up and running. I
am risking enough of my investors’ money as it is.”

“Are you saying I’m hired? Just like that? You have all
those people down in Asheville who probably know more about mills than I ever
will. I don’t want you wasting money just because.…” She’d been about to say
just because you want to nail me
. She’d
dug her hole a little too deep, and she hastily attempted to backtrack.

Zack laughed, and the corners of his eyes turned up mischievously.
“Just because I want in your bed?” he inquired, as if the whole café weren’t straining
to hear his every word. “It is because of what you asked — you are more
concerned with the mill’s existence than with yourself. You’re the kind of
employee I must have. It is people who make a profit, not the machinery or the
management techniques or the fancy accounting.”

“Wow,” Jo whispered. “If I weren’t already taken, I’d be all
over a man who gets it. Ames, grab him.”

Not in the least embarrassed by Jo’s crass comments, Zack
gave Amy a slow, seductive smile. “Yes, please snatch me.”

She would have slid under the counter in embarrassment
except he returned to the topic in a blink of the eye. “My company is small and
very dependent on the expertise of my employees. I have had to learn how to
make the most of the best. There is no room for slackers in small business.” He
pointed his muffin at Amy. “Day care?”

“Salary?” she spurted out before she could get cold feet.
Her entire life balanced on money right now.

Zack smacked his forehead. “I forgot! How could I forget?
You make my head go ’round.” He pulled a packet of papers from the inside
pocket of his tailored sports coat. “Here, these are for you. The judge says
you must sign and provide a deposit, and you have thirty days to complete the
transaction.”

Gingerly, Amy lifted the official-looking documents. Her
gaze instantly located the address on Canary Street, and her stomach clenched. She
scanned the rest of the paper, then started at the beginning and read more slowly,
not believing she’d done it.

She’d bought the cottage. All by herself. With the help of
her friendly mortgage lender, of course.

“It’s mine?” she asked in disbelief. Then as she realized to
whom she was talking, her head jerked up, and she glared at him. “You didn’t do
this? It’s just me, right? He’s accepting
my
offer?”

“Yes, of course.” He gestured airily with his half-eaten
muffin. “I have no use for a run-down cottage, so the judge took the only other
offer — yours. I cannot imagine how you will have time to fix it up, either,
but that’s your problem.”

Amy suspected he’d had something to do with it. The judge
would have gladly sold the entire lot to the highest bidder without any
consideration to her little offer. But she wouldn’t argue with the results. If
she hadn’t had the nerve to make the offer in the first place, the judge
couldn’t have accepted it. Clutching the precious document to her chest, she
asked again, “Salary?”

He sighed. “It cannot be great. The expense of purchasing
the mill has drained our cash. I had hoped to sell the equipment to cover the
costs until the designs are ready. Brigitte will look up government grants. You
will be on my company’s health plan, of course, as soon as we establish one
here. As will everyone else.”

Then he named a figure that would easily cover payments on
the cottage’s small mortgage. Amy closed her eyes and sent a prayer of
gratitude winging heavenward.

“Amy?” Zack asked cautiously. “Will that suffice?”

Her eyes flew open, and she felt as light as a helium
balloon floating heavenward. “Yes, that will suffice nicely, thank you. Some of
my friends are talking of setting up a day care for the people you hire.
They’re experienced and won’t have any difficulty getting a license. See, you’ve
already generated another business!”

He looked astounded. “I did that?”

“You will, if you hire enough workers. It won’t take many to
fill a day care with kids. Once we have enough employees, you can let Manny
bring his hot dog cart to the plant at lunchtime, and he’ll have an income to
supplement his social security again. His wife’s medicine costs so much they’ve
been talking of selling their house.”

Fielding customers as they dropped in, Jo stopped a moment
to add, “If you’re really going to buy that shack, Ames, you can put Harry to
work. He’s not much good at climbing ladders since he broke his knee, but he
still knows his way around a saw.”

“And if we do not make money?” Zack asked worriedly, keeping
his voice low as the stools on either side of them filled with the morning
regulars.

Amy patted his hand. “We’ll be no worse off than we were
before.”

Which was a lie, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him.
She’d be saddled with a mortgage and no job. Without the mill, the housing
market would collapse and poor Manny wouldn’t be able to sell his home to pay
his bills. Her friends would borrow money to start the day care and go broke.
Zack would work all that out by himself should he ever take time to think about
it.

Her duty wasn’t to worry what would happen if they failed.
Her duty was to see that the mill didn’t fail.

And to remember that Zack was now her boss and there was a
conflict of interest in carrying on a useless flirtation.

On Friday, Jacques — who had to start thinking of himself as
Zack
if he meant to stay here for
long — walked around the immense looms he’d fully intended to sell, listening
to the mechanics he’d hired mutter among themselves. Amy had been right. The
looms were new and in excellent condition. He’d bought a bargain.

“We’ll need to order computers.” Thinking aloud, he waited
for Brigitte to make notes in her BlackBerry. “Do we have anyone available
locally with computer skills?” he asked Amy.

She was taking notes in some incomprehensible shorthand in a
steno notebook. He had to bite back a smile every time he watched her
studiously bent over the pad, nibbling on her pencil eraser. His new executive
had tremendous people skills and creativity, but she lacked organization and
business knowledge. He had Brigitte for that, but Amy looked so studious
keeping her lists that he did not point out there was no need for her to do so.

At his question, she looked up with a hint of panic in her
eyes. “Computer skills? You’re installing computers before we’re even up and
running?”

“That’s my business, luv,” he reminded her. He was trying to
woo her slowly, but she surrounded herself with family as defensively as he
surrounded himself with friends. He fully believed anything worth having was
worth working for, but they might as well be Montagues and Capulets for all the
progress he’d been making. “We need computers to translate those design cards.”

“I’ll call my professors,” she agreed after a moment’s
thought. “They probably know people from the closed mills in Kannapolis and
elsewhere.”

He could see she desperately wanted to hire her friends.
Thankfully, she had the good sense to admit when she couldn’t. Such honesty in
a world of greed and deceit appealed to his inner nature, although his business
head told him that her easy capitulation was no way to get ahead.

“Jacques,
mon amour
,”
an operatic soprano called from across the echoing length of the enormous
building. A mixture of Italian and French followed, and Zack sighed. He’d known
this scene was coming. Instead of hiding up here in the mountains where everyone
blanketed him in the excitement of questions about the mill, he should have
gone back to the resort and soothed fraying tempers.

Cat wiggled her miniskirted hips across the planked floor,
trailing a lace shawl down her back. Her spiked heels left dents in the soft
pine planks. She wore her cascade of silver-blond curls down today — a Britney
Spears look she was really too old to carry off. He couldn’t remember why she
was in his life. Rome. He’d picked her up in Rome because of her designer
connections. She liked having an escort to the best parties. That seemed a lifetime
ago.

“
Chérie
,” he
called cheerfully, feeling Amy stiffen and edge away. “Have you come to help me
choose our décor?”

He was exceedingly grateful their audience couldn’t
translate Cat’s histrionic response. While she rattled on, Zack raised
questioning eyebrows at Pascal, who had been blatantly unavailable these past
few days. Unlike Cat, Pascal worked with
him
.
Zack relied on his financial expertise and investment money.

It looked as if he would have to find a new investor. When
Zack didn’t reply with placating apologies, Cat flung her long, lithe curves
into Pascal’s arms to weep torrentially. Pascal didn’t flinch but held her as
one would a lover.

Why had Jacques ever thought life was amusing with a drama
queen like Cat around?

If he carried that thought too far, he would squirm in
discomfort. With just her steady presence, Amy sheered off another layer of his
shallow life to reveal the nothingness beneath.

Instead of looking at him with the disgust he deserved, Amy
sidled back to his side to whisper, “I don’t suppose she just called you a
horse’s ass, did she?”

Zack laughed aloud, startling his already stunned audience.
Amy’s refreshing bluntness righted the kaleidoscope world he occupied. “She
called me a despoiler of dreams, a man who cannot see beyond the nose on his
face, a cad who expects the world to turn around him, among other things. Your
translation is much more succinct.”

She nodded knowingly. “Women don’t like being dumped.”

“Especially for a mill,” he agreed. He’d had no idea how
refreshing it was to have a woman who talked sense instead of having hysterics.
In his foolish youth, it had made him feel strong and masculine to console
weeping women. Now, age and experience just made him impatient.

“But it is her own illusions that are shattered and they’re
none I have created,” he reassured her.

Zack crossed his arms and glared at Pascal. “And you, old
friend? Have I shattered your illusions as well?”

Still clad all in black, Pascal shrugged and continued
patting Cat. “We thought we were here for a short visit. We do not mean to live
here, where we don’t belong. Where
you
don’t belong,” he added meaningfully.

Zack went cold. Pascal was right. He glanced around at the
production designers and entourage Cat had dragged in with her. As if they were
spectators in a zoo, her companions studied their primitive surroundings and
the jeans-clad and T-shirted mechanics. The gap between rich and poor, rural
and city, was enormous enough without throwing in the differences of language
and culture.

What the devil was he thinking? That he could belong here
where just his choice of vehicle raised eyebrows? Where he couldn’t speak
without causing heads to turn?

“Is this where we all sing ‘It’s a small world, after all’?”
Amy murmured with laughter in her voice, apparently unaware of his frozen
shock. She was a little angel sitting on his shoulder, flapping her wings to
swat him in the right direction.

The ice forming around his heart melted in a hot rush of
desire, and Zack grinned, recovering from his momentary paralysis. “Pascal, old
friend, you are a bigot, albeit a brilliant one. Go home. Take Cat.” He glanced
at Brigitte, who had lowered her head and huddled her arms around herself. Bad
body language if he’d ever seen it. “Brigitte, my right hand, would you leave
me, too?”

She cast him a frowning glance and nodded curtly, once.

He winced. She had been at his side for years. It wasn’t as
if he meant to live here forever.…

He looked over everyone’s heads to the entrance, where Luigi
leaned his bulk against a doorframe and studied the situation with a stoic
expression. Luigi was more friend and father figure than employee. He would
hate to lose him. At Zack’s glance, Luigi offered a crooked grimace and shook
his head. Zack sighed in relief. Luigi had known him long before he had entered
Cat’s glittery world. He was loyal to the man, not the money.

“You can run this operation from home,” Pascal insisted.
“You have other interests that need your attention. There is the Galway project
waiting.”