Tempestuous/Restless Heart (30 page)

It was a slow, deep kiss. Danielle drank it in and savored it, thinking it was more intoxicating than the finest wine, more addictive than any drug. She loved the taste of him. She loved the way he kissed. The brush of his mustache against her upper lip sent shivers dancing over her. The feel of him, strong and solid against her, made her feel safe and feminine and cherished. When she was in his arms nothing else mattered.

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than the baby monitor sitting on the floor crackled. Instantly Danielle stiffened and tried to push herself off Remy, her heart hammering triple time as all manner of horrible scenarios flashed through her mind.

“Hush,” he whispered. “Listen.”

She tried to swallow her anxiety as Remy reached down and picked up the black box. She watched, her body still tensed and ready to bolt, as he lifted the monitor close to his ear and listened. Slowly a smile curved his mouth and he tipped the monitor to Danielle’s ear.

“She’s not in trouble,” he said, chuckling softly. “She’s talkin’ in her sleep.”

Danielle sagged against him, all strength draining out of her as she listened to the mumbled stream of baby babble. In that instant she thought she’d never heard anything as dear to her ears.

Remy listened some more then set the box back down. “She must have had quite a time today if she’s still talkin’ about it. What about you,
chère
? What kind of time did you have?”

“I had a wonderful time,” Danielle said candidly. She sat up and regarded him with a serious, honest look. “Thank you.”

She didn’t have to say for what. It was clear to Remy she was thanking him for helping her take the first steps back from her self-imposed sentence of isolation. He had watched her slowly blossom today, filling with glowing energy as she photographed the children discovering the wonders of the zoo, as she made a few discoveries of her own. Having the opportunity to watch that happen was all the thanks he needed.

“You’re a beautiful, vital, talented woman, Danielle,” he murmured. “The world shouldn’t be robbed of you.” His mustache quirked up and his dimple dented his cheek. “See, I was the one being selfish, no?”

“No.”

Her disagreement elicited nothing more than a Gallic shrug that blithely dismissed the topic. Danielle let the topic slide. There was no point getting maudlin when both of them knew exactly what had happened and why. No matter what the future brought, she would always have a special place in her heart for this man because he had helped her heal a wound that might have ruined her life. She hadn’t forgotten what had happened in London. She never would. But it would no longer gnaw at her like a cancer, eating away at her soul, a little bit more each day.

“Well,” she said on a sigh, pushing herself off the swing. She stretched like a cat and yawned again. “I guess it’s time to call it a day. We should get some rest so we can be ready for whatever diabolical scheme Jeremy has planned for tomorrow.”

“You’re goin’ to bed?”

“I guess,” she said, fighting a smile of anticipation. She gave him a long look as electricity crackled in the air between them. “What are you going to do?”

“Me?” Remy got up slowly, making a great show of considering his options. He gave her a bland look that was ruined by the banked fires in his dark eyes. He shuffled a little nearer and a little nearer, until a scant inch of humid air separated them. He traced a finger over the vee of her collarbone. “Me, I thought I might take a
long
shower first.”

A feline smile curved Danielle’s mouth as she tilted her head and looked at him from under her lashes. “You need any help with that,
cher
?”

eleven

“I’M GONNA GO ALL OVER THE WORLD, JUST
like you do, Auntie Danielle,” Jeremy said between slurps of cereal. “I’m gonna go all around finding weird animals and catching them like that guy on
Wild Kingdom.”

Danielle beamed. It seemed she’d finally struck a chord with her little relatives by telling them tales of her travels. She felt ridiculously pleased.

Tinks looked up, a milk mustache on her upper lip. “Yeah, and I’m gonna follow him around and take pictures and we’ll go all over to places like Africa and Borneo and get shot at by guys with spears like Indiana Jones.”

“I’m gonna be a garbage man,” Ambrose announced shyly, his cheeks flushed with secret passion.

The other two snorted their derision, Tinks reaching over to push down the brim of Ambrose’s black gaucho hat.

“Leave him alone,” Remy snapped. “There’s nothin’ wrong with bein’ a garbage man.”

Tinks and Jeremy exchanged another glance, deciding by tacit agreement to make their exit before their nanny’s temper boiled over. Danielle watched them slink away, followed by Ambrose. The door swung shut and Danielle looked at Remy. He was scowling down at his bowl with a thunderous expression that had apparently scared the snap, crackle, and pop right out of his cereal.

He raised his eyes to her face. “I was a garbage man during the summers when I was in college. You wanna make somethin’ of it?”

“No.”

“Well, I didn’t traipse all over the ever-lovin’ world doin’ it. I was right here in N’Awlins the whole time.” He scraped his chair back from the table and turned to tend Eudora.

So that was what this turn toward churlishness was all about. Danielle raised her eyebrows. Remy had been in a strange mood for two days—ever since their trip to the zoo. In that time Jeremy and Tinks had not stopped pumping her for stories about the exotic places she’d been. She had indulged them enthusiastically, never thinking that Remy might feel left out as she had felt left out many times before. He had managed to shed his temper in time for his midnight visits to her room, but she had to admit his lovemaking had taken on a certain fierceness. Not violence, just a certain edge, as if he were trying to convince her of something.

He had convinced her that he was incredible in bed. She flushed at the thought. He’d taken her places she hadn’t dreamed existed. They’d done things she’d only read about in books. It was heady stuff, the intensity of his passion. It made her giddy just thinking about it. It was silly. It was wonderful. It was more than she’d thought she could hope for. It was … love.

Oh, no, she thought, pressing a hand to her forehead as if to feel for a fever. It couldn’t be love. She was mistaken. She couldn’t have fallen in love with him.

She glanced across the room with a kind of desperation, her gaze fastening on Remy as he attempted to hose oatmeal off Eudora with the spray nozzle on the kitchen sink. Her heart rolled over like a trained poodle.

Remy turned, the baby tucked under his arm like a baton.

He draped a dish towel over her head and rubbed at her hair.
“Mon Dieu, chère,”
he said, taking in Danielle’s stricken expression. “You look like you got a whiff of the diaper pail. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?”
Oh, nothing. I’m just making a fool of myself, that’s all.

“Look, sugar, I’m sorry I snapped at you. I was worried you might think less of me ’cause I was a garbage man.” It was part of the truth, anyway. Remy thought. He was feeling a little too vulnerable to tell her what was really bothering him, namely her attraction to travel. He had tried leaving Louisiana once and had given up his career in order to come back. The thought of leaving again made his heart sink, but the idea of Danielle leaving him behind had much the same effect. Unless he could convince her to stay, it was a no-win situation.

“You were a garbage man in New Orleans in the summer. I think you deserve a medal,” she said. “I might have an obscene amount of money in my bank account, but that doesn’t make me a snob, you know.”

He worked up a wily grin as he took his seat. “How obscene?” He leaned across the corner of the table, staring at her mouth. “Will you whisper it in my ear tonight?”

Danielle rolled her eyes, ignoring the bolt of desire that rammed through her. She watched as Remy perched Eudora on his knee and played peek-a-boo with her with the dish towel. “Are you really supposed to wash babies with the dish sprayer that way?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s much better than the bathtub.”

“Hmm… I think you really started something with Jeremy. His sudden interest in zoology is great. Before that trip to the zoo all he ever talked about was living in a secret tunnel in the sewer and robbing banks. You may have gotten him off
America’s Most Wanted
and onto
Wild Kingdom.”

“Hard to picture, huh?”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I’ve pictured him on
Wild Kingdom
, but not in the Jim Fowler role. I can hear Marlin Perkins saying, ‘While I repair the tent flap Jim is downstream struggling to subdue Jeremy, the Wild Boy of the Garden District.’”

Remy chuckled. “You’re startin’ to like that boy.”

“I’m sure I’ll get over it.”

I hope not, sugar, Remy thought, I’m betting my heart on it.

They drove out into the bayou country packed into the minivan like sardines. Going west out of New Orleans they encountered swamps and marshlands as the city faded behind them. The landscape changed to chemical factories with smokestacks thrusting into the sky like rusty exclamation marks. Then came rice paddies and canebrakes and sugarcane processing plants. Miles of elevated highway seemed to float above endless acres of undulating saw grass. Glimpses of bayous spread back into the cypress stands like ink spots. Danielle watched it all roll past with the same kind of wonder she experienced seeing any new place for the first time, her eyes automatically assessing everything she saw for its possible artistic value.

Remy watched her out of the corner of his eye as he drove, taking them off the interstate and into the region of Louisiana known as Acadiana. More than once he realized he was holding his breath, waiting for an adverse reaction. It was terrible how badly he wanted her to like his home country. The potential for disappointment was enormous. He was leaving himself wide open for a broken heart, but then he guessed love wasn’t worth much if there wasn’t this heightened sense of awareness and fear. It made him feel acutely alive, acutely aware of every nerve ending just under his skin. He kept the Cajun station on the radio turned down to a whisper and still it seemed loud to him as he held his breath and waited for Danielle’s verdict.

Suddenly she looked over at him and smiled her wide brilliant smile and said softly, “It’s beautiful, Remy.” And he felt the dam of tension burst inside him and relief flood through him to the very tips of his fingers and toes.

Luck, Louisiana, ranked just above “wide spot in the road” on Danielle’s scale of town sizes. Luck had not one but two traffic lights, although one seemed more than sufficient. The main street boasted the usual small-town businesses. There was a grocery store with a sign in the window advertising a special on crawfish and a butcher shop with a sign in the window saying
“Ici on parle français,”
indicating that French was the language of choice inside.

Luck was shabby and quaint in the way of small towns everywhere, and Danielle fell in love with it on the spot. Her hands itched to pick up her camera and capture it all on film—the restaurant advertising cold Dixie beer and boudin sausage, the thin old men sitting on a bench in front of the hardware store swapping tales of times gone by and watching diligently for strangers, the woman emerging from Yvette’s Salon with a fresh permanent.

They drove into a residential area and skipped over a couple of blocks until they found the street that ran parallel to the Bayou Noir, a wide ribbon of sluggish water that was as black as its name promised. The last house along the row of neat bungalows set well back from the bayou belonged to Remy’s parents. It was a pretty brick ranch-style house with a screened porch running along the entire front. It was shaded by live oak hung with bunting of gray moss and there was a little flower shrine with a white statue of the Virgin Mary in the middle of the front yard.

Noelle Doucet came out a side door wiping her hands on her apron. She greeted them all with smiles and hugs as if they were relatives who had been too long away from her. She was a small plump woman with sparkling dark eyes. The scent of baking bread clung to her like perfume. She welcomed her son home with a kiss and a rapid stream of French.

“Where’s Papa?” he asked.

“Down at Lawrence’s gettin’ a part for his motor. He’ll be back in time for supper. He’s never late for a meal, that man.” She smiled at Danielle in feminine conspiracy. “Late for his own wedding, yes. Late for supper,
ma-is non
!”

Remy engulfed her in a big bear hug that had her giggling like a girl of twenty. Danielle looked on, enjoying the sight but feeling a faint twinge at the same time. He looked so young—a grown-up boy teasing his mother, his eyes shining with a distinctive resemblance to Noelle’s. “What’s for supper,
Maman
?” he asked. “You cookin’ my favorites?”

“My gumbo and maquechou and bread puddin’ for dessert if you behave yourself,
cher
.”

“I guess that means there’ll be plenty for the rest of us,” Danielle said dryly.

Noelle laughed and disentangled herself from her son’s embrace, saying something to him in French that made him blush.

“She’s wondering if I’ve finally brought home a prospective daughter-in-law,” Remy whispered to Danielle as his mother busied herself getting acquainted with Butler and the Beauvais children.

Danielle went utterly still, staring up at Remy without the usual snappy rejoinder. Her cheeks grew hot and she cursed her adolescent reaction.

Remy’s gaze burned a smoldering shade darker as he studied her. “You’re blushin’, angel,” he murmured, feeling a little flushed himself at the implications of her silence.

“That’s not a blush, it’s a hot flash,” she grumbled. “Early sign of menopause.”

Remy chuckled and brushed a kiss to her temple.

“We’re going to be a huge imposition on your parents, Remy.” The house looked a comfortable size, but it didn’t seem big enough to hold them all. Danielle shuddered to think of turning her nieces and nephews loose in someone else’s home. God only knew the havoc they would wreak.

“We aren’t stayin’ here. We’ll be at the Hotel Doucet,” he said, hooking a thumb in the direction of the bayou.

Danielle squinted against the sun as she looked west. “That looks like a barge.”

“You got it in one,
chère
.”

They walked over to explore the accommodations, leaving Noelle in her glory serving cookies and lemonade to the children at the picnic table in the backyard. Butler watched Eudora as he sprawled in a chaise on the patio; he waved them off with a placid smile.

“He’s certainly changed his tune about you,” Danielle said as they crunched down the clamshell path toward the barge.

A secret smile tugged up the corner of Remy’s mustache as he thought of the alliance he and the Scot had formed. Once Remy had made it clear he cared deeply for Danielle the irascible old butler had been the picture of cooperation. “Guess he just had to get to know me. To know me is to love me,” he said, grinning and batting his thick eyelashes at her.

Wasn’t that the truth, Danielle thought, her heart jolting in her chest. She had gotten to know him, had fallen in love with him, and now she was in over her head. It was yet to be determined whether she would sink or swim.

The Hotel Doucet, as Remy called it, was a campboat, a wood-frame house built on the rusting hull of a barge. It had originally belonged to Remy’s grandparents, but now served as guest house for visiting relatives when the main house overflowed. The house itself was two stories high and one room wide, the exterior covered in gray cypress shakes. Big sections of the first-floor walls were hinged, raised and propped up on railroad ties, creating a gallery of sorts and revealing huge screens that would let the evening breeze through but keep the insects out.

Much of the deck of the barge had been covered in vibrant green AstroTurf. Halved whiskey barrels squatted in strategic spots, overflowing with geraniums and petunias. A concrete turtle peeked out from under a huge hairy fern. A cherub balanced a bird-bath on one pudgy shoulder. The overall effect was a little like a miniature golf course, but homey and welcoming.

Danielle was delighted. “The kids will love staying here!”

“Yeah, I don’t know about you and me, though. It’s kinda small.” He gave her a long, somber, meaningful look. “We aren’t gonna have any… privacy.”

“Oh.”

Her look of disappointment warmed him. He slung an arm around her shoulders and walked her to the bow of the barge. “I know you’re sad, sugar, but don’t pout. You can live without me for a couple of nights.”

Danielle ducked away from him, shooting him a look. “Yeah, I’ve lived thirty-nine years, three hundred and sixty some nights without you. I think I can manage a couple more.”