Sweet Home Carolina (6 page)

Thoughts of Amy automatically raised the image of her
beautiful daughter charging headlong into harm’s way. As it always did at the
image of an injured child, his stomach lurched, and deeply rooted fear washed
over him. In trained response, he breathed slowly and forced his mind back to
the moment.

“Those pills will rot out my stomach faster than they mend
my knee,” he complained, shifting his position in the Jacuzzi so the water jets
worked on the aching ligaments. “What are all of you doing in here anyway? We
have less than two weeks to make this bid.”

Catarina pouted and tossed her mane of hair. “Buy the damned
mill and let us go home to civilization. You cannot be climbing up and down
that mountain like thees.”

“Are you saying I’m old and decrepit?” he asked in a
stinging tone that made her glare at him. “Go away and find a younger man.” He
was thirty-five to her thirty-four, but there were days he calculated a
twenty-year maturity gap between them.

“I do not know why I put up with you.” She flounced out, her
commendable backside swaying with indignation.

She put up with him because she liked being surrounded with
beautiful people and beautiful things, just as he did. Only, he did it because
the image of wealth and success fed the gossip columns and promoted his
business. Unlike Cat, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe the attention was
anything more than glitter.

That was unfair to Cat. She had a clever head on her
shoulders, and she could be useful once he had the designs in hand. Her
production crews would know the best places to reproduce them, and she would
know the best places to sell them. It would have been less of a headache,
however, if she’d waited to come over here until he’d actually
found
them.

“Pascal, have you called the bankruptcy judge for permission
to visit the mill?” Now that he was rid of Cat, Jacques reached for a towel,
scowling when Brigitte handed it to him. “You are supposed to be arranging a
tour with Ms. Warren.”

“She isn’t at the café today. Tuesday is her day off.” His
assistant checked her BlackBerry. “The home number for Ms. Warren is unlisted.
I have left a message at the hardware store as you asked, but their answering
machine says they are closed for inventory.”

“Find Ms. Warren’s address. Google under her husband’s name
and see if that helps. Or call the post office and pretend you’re UPS. Rural
houses are hard to find.” Over the years, he’d absorbed his eccentric mother’s
knowledge on all things American. It was occasionally helpful.

Holding the towel around him, taking Luigi’s arm for
support, Jacques climbed out of the tub. He shot a pointed look at Pascal, who
wisely got the message and steered Brigitte back to the suite.

“Damned knee,” he muttered, lowering himself to the chair so
Luigi could attach the elastic brace.

“Knee surgery isn’t that big a deal,” Luigi reminded him.
“It’s either surgery or have the ligaments rip the bone off.”

“Why don’t I just find a nice wheelchair and a retirement
home?” Jacques asked sarcastically. “The operation isn’t always successful, and
when it is, it doesn’t mean I won’t need it again in another few years. I’d
rather let it mend on its own.”

“Then quit hopping off barstools.”

Despite his name, Luigi was all American. He’d been
Jacques’s coach, personal trainer, masseur, and bodyguard since his teenage
years. Luigi had been there for him more than his own father. More than two
decades of sage advice gave him privileges the rest of the staff hadn’t earned.
That didn’t mean Jacques had to listen to him.

“Just get me back up the mountain and help Brigitte find me
a place to stay while I’m up there. I can’t shift the Porsche like this.” He
winced as Luigi yanked the brace tighter.

“She told you there’s just a Motel 6, and unless you want
the ground-floor handicapped room with the noise of other guests pounding
overhead, that means hobbling on crutches up and down stairs.”

“And how is that worse than hobbling across acres of lobby
here?” Jacques asked crossly. He knew he tended to be surly when he was in
pain, but anti-inflammatories didn’t help. “If you can’t find anything more
appealing, book the room closest to the stairs. The rest of you can stay here
in luxury. I’ll manage.”

Luigi snorted. “Yeah, I see how well you manage. I’ll look
for wheelchair rentals.”

Using one crutch to stand, Jacques swung the other at Luigi,
who dodged it without effort. “I am not a cripple.”

“Yeah, you are, but it ain’t in the way you think.” With
that parting remark, Luigi trundled off.

He wasn’t a cripple, physical or emotional, Jacques swore,
finishing dressing on his own. He’d had a lot of experience with athletic
injuries. They healed. He didn’t have to run marathons anymore. When he wanted
to release frustration, he had gyms and stables and swimming pools.

Just because he’d chosen not to pursue home and family again
after the accident that had taken his wife and child didn’t mean he was an
emotional cripple. He was healed. He was living. He had the body of a man ten
years younger, but in all other ways, he was older and more mature and didn’t
need the emotional calisthenics of youth. He preferred intellectual challenges
these days.

Expertly balancing on one crutch, Jacques tugged up his
trousers, and decisively snapped the fly closed. He had despised Amy’s looking
on him with pity on the drive to the hospital. He didn’t know what it was about
her sad eyes and infrequent smiles that crawled under his skin, but now that he
was back on his feet, he could return to business. If business included making
the CEO’s ex-wife smile, it just added a spice to the deal.

That he wanted to banish the sadness and protect her from
any recurrence was a purely primal instinct any male would feel for a pretty,
girl-next-door like Amy. He had lots of instincts. That didn’t mean he had to
follow them.

“To Northfork, my comrades,” he called, swinging his
crutches into the suite. “It is time to get down to business.”

“The quilt is beautiful, Mama.” Amy stood back to admire the
complex design of blues, yellows, and greens of the abstract flower garden her
mother had created.

Marie Sanderson was a tough mountain woman, a hard-living
single mother who’d worked in the mill most of her life — until Evan had laid
her off. Amy and her mother had old issues, but they had spent these last years
since Amy’s marriage and return to the mountains resolving them.

Mature enough now to recognize the difficulties her mother
had faced raising two young daughters on no education after their father had
abandoned them, Amy had forgiven Marie for their neglected childhood. It was a
precarious basis for a relationship, but better than the combative one they’d
had before she’d left for college.

Telling her mother of her decision to accept the offer on
the house, especially when she couldn’t promise to keep the kids in Northfork,
could tilt their relationship back to rocky.

She dreaded giving up the dream of someday remodeling the
cottage and earning an income from a B and B so they could stay here.

Riding on a high of unjustified optimism, she’d asked her
real estate agent to write up an offer on the cottage, separate from the town’s
mill bid. She didn’t know if the Saint-Etienne bid was still a possibility or
if Jacques had left town. She was betting on hope — against all odds.

“That quilt didn’t turn out too bad,” Marie Sanderson
acknowledged, settling carefully into her recliner. “Reckon it will pay for a
turkey come Thanksgiving.”

“You ought to charge twice as much for an original design.
Jo’s music friends can afford it.”

“Nobody would pay that much for a bunch of scraps.” Marie
brushed off the suggestion. “Most were pieces left from those bolts Evan threw
out.”

Amy recognized some of the quilt pieces as from the
tapestries the mill had been experimenting with before it went bankrupt. After
redecorating the Stardust, her mother and friends had begun recycling the
remainders as quilts for extra income. “You deserve a decent hourly wage plus
the value of your creativity,” Amy argued.

Marie lifted a weary hand. “I don’t want to scare off the
customers. I gave them a price, and I’ll stick with it. That’s how I was
raised.”

If her mother’s old four-room mill house had any electronics,
Amy would have short-circuited them with the steam building inside her.
Exasperated and unable to yell at her mother, she began folding up the quilt.
“Next time, ask more,” she said quietly, knowing full well her suggestion fell
on deaf ears.

At the sound of car tires on the gravel road, Amy wandered
to the window. The phone rang, and she heard her mother’s side of the
conversation.

“She’s still here. You want to talk with her?”

Amy sent a questioning look, and her mother mouthed, “Jo.”

The black Hummer cruising past the overgrown azaleas on the
drive said it all without further need of explanation. Amy groaned aloud. There
went all her hopes that Jacques had given up and gone back to Paris.

He hasn’t left.
She
ought to be annoyed. Frustrated. Instead, her pulse suddenly raced like a
schoolgirl’s. Did she never learn? Good-looking men who used people weren’t
good for her.

“You were supposed to show some city slicker the mill?” her
mother asked, hanging up the phone.

The driver stepping out of the Hummer was six feet tall and
bulky. Not Jacques. Amy couldn’t control a little quiver of disappointment. She
blamed it on her admiration for a man who could act so swiftly and competently
to save a child not his own. He’d been a real-life superhero.

“I didn’t think he would be back,” she admitted. “Louisa
nearly crippled him, or Dot’s goose did, depending on how you look at it. I
guess he’s sent his staff.”

“Jo told them how to find you, then forgot to warn us. Some
days, that girl puts her head on backwards.”

“Jo is all heart and can’t say no. I’d better go. I’ll bring
you up some pork roast and fried apples later.” She kissed her mother’s
weathered brow, knowing she wouldn’t receive the same affection in return. Her
mother wasn’t much good at expressing the softer emotions.

Amy stepped out on the porch before the driver could knock.

“Ms. Warren?” the older man asked, touching a hand to his
billed cap.

“I am. Mr. Saint-Etienne sent you?”

“He’s waiting to see the mill, madam.”

“Is he in the car?”

“He is. I’ll be happy to give you a ride.”

The tone of the driver’s voice held more interest than she
expected from hired help. She cast him a quick look but could discern nothing
from his blank expression. He had a bodybuilder’s stockiness and a nose that
had been broken and not reset. She decided he was the same man who had stood
guard at the hospital yesterday.

“I’ll take my car. You can follow,” she told him.

He looked pained, and considering the shine on his expensive
vehicle and the dust of the drive, Amy could understand that. But he didn’t
know how to locate the mill, and she did. And she was damned well keeping her
distance from seductive eyes.

She climbed into her driver’s seat without stopping at the
Hummer. She was torn between wanting to hug Jacques’s neck for saving her
daughter or kick his shins for wanting to steal the mill. She would maintain a
businesslike distance. She couldn’t repay him in a thousand lifetimes for
saving Louisa. So, she’d show her gratitude by being polite, and hope he went
away. Soon.

She tried not to stir up too much dust as she drove down her
mother’s drive and the side streets through town, but the gravel entrance into
the mill complex hadn’t been maintained. She winced at the potholes and hoped a
Hummer had good springs to shield its injured passenger.

Driving over a small metal bridge surrounded by pines and
cedars, she then took the turn up to the main building. The complex of
two-story, fifty-year-old brick buildings towered tall against the scenery of
trees and mountain. Once upon a time, the mill had been the reason for
Northfork’s existence. The spot had originally been chosen for the river as
power for the mill wheel.

Small cabins like the one her mother owned had been built by
the mill company and rented to their workers. A number of them, like the mill
manager’s cottage that she coveted, were still standing on the road up the
mountain behind the complex.

The newer mill buildings, built in the days of electricity,
were built farther from the river, making them less prone to flooding, but they
were no less haunted by the town’s — and her family’s — history. Amy remembered
company picnics and turkeys at Christmas in the good years, union walkouts and
living on grits in the bad years.

She watched the Hummer’s driver hurry to help the occupant
out. A pair of crutches appeared first, and she flinched, feeling responsible.

Using the crutches instead of taking his driver’s hand, Jacques
effortlessly swung out of the car. His assistant and the Asian cameraman
climbed out on the other side.

His injury hadn’t harmed his square jaw and flashing smile. When
he turned provocative dark eyes her way, Amy nearly melted into a puddle of lust.

She watched his powerful muscles bulge beneath his knit
shirt when he used his arms to manipulate the crutches. He was so coordinated
she didn’t think he even noticed that he wasn’t walking with his legs, but with
the strength of his arms. Instead, his dancing gaze pounced on her as if she
were a delicious sex goddess presented for his satisfaction.

The look sizzled any cold corner of her heart she might have
left. The men around here had known her since childhood and treated her as part
of the scenery. Jacques looked at her the way a man looked at a woman. She’d
forgotten the power of it, and it rather alarmed her now. She didn’t want to be
attracted to the enemy, even if for a brief moment he’d been a superhero.