Tempestuous/Restless Heart (26 page)

“No,” he agreed with a predatory smile. “But it sure would inspire a whole lotta action.”

Making a supreme effort to bring the conversation back to a nonsexual level, Danielle put on her best business face and said, “I’m normally on the road. My work isn’t conducive to home and hearth.”

Remy frowned. “It sounds to me like your life isn’t conducive to anything but loneliness.”

The accuracy of his observation stunned her. And it surprised her. She had never considered her life lonely. She had friends and colleagues all over the world. She loved her work. But what she had lived with over this past year was exactly what Remy had said—loneliness, loneliness that had little to do with the solitary life she’d led in Tibet; it went much deeper than that. His statement also unnerved her, but she wasn’t about to let him see that.

“I love my life,” she said. “I get restless stuck in one place too long. I love to travel, see the world, meet people.”

“So I guess you’ll be leavin’ N’Awlins once Mrs. Beauvais gets back.”

She pushed her chair back from the table and stood. “There’s nothing holding me here.”

Before she realized what was happening, Remy was out of his chair and she was wrapped in his arms, up to her ears in Cajun charm. His pirate’s grin slashed across his dark face and his ink-black hair tumbled across his forehead as he bent her back over his hard-muscled arm. “I’m holding you here, darlin’. Wanna dance?”

“You’re a lunatic,” Danielle said breathlessly, amazed at his mercurial change of mood. She thought she was going to melt where her thighs pressed to his. He was as solid as an oak tree and as easily moved. Her struggling only resulted in bringing her into even more intimate contact with him, her pelvis arching into his as she pressed her palms against his chest for leverage. She scowled at him. “If I hadn’t been so desperate. I would have checked your references.”

He quirked a brow. “Desperate for me? I like the sound of that.”

“Oh, yeah? Do you like the sound of bones breaking? I’m going to punch you if you don’t let me go.”

He straightened, flung her out away from him by one arm, twirled her around and pulled her back into his arms so that she landed with a thud against his chest—if anything, even closer than she had been before. He adopted a look much too innocent to be trusted. “You’d punch me out for giving you a dance lesson?”

“Dance lesson, my foot.”

Her heart had gone on a rampage, pounding against not only her breast but Remy’s as well. She could feel the sharp rise and fall of his chest as he, too, struggled for a good deep breath. Knowledge that he was every bit as aroused as she was only served to heighten the excitement she was trying to fight. She had sworn to herself she was going to stay away from him, but she hadn’t been pressed up against his body at the time. If that wasn’t enough to make a woman willing to throw caution to the winds, nothing was.

The music coming from the radio had turned sultry. “Yellow Moon,” a sexy song by the Neville Brothers, a song that inspired swaying hips, a song designed to ignite forbidden fires—as if her fires needed any additional fuel, Danielle thought. Remy’s body picked up the rhythm of the music and he began to move automatically, almost absently, as if dancing were as natural to him as walking.

“Let’s go dancin’ tonight. Beausoleil’s at the Maple Leaf.”

“What about the kids?” Danielle asked breathlessly, caught up in the seductive sway of his body and the feel of his big hands on the small of her back.

“We’ll get a sitter.”

She planted her feet firmly on the linoleum and gave him a look. “
You’re
the sitter.”

Remy made a face and dipped her. “Such a stickler for details, angel. Loosen up. This is N’Awlins, darlin’, the Big Easy.
Laissez les bons temps rouler
—let the good times roll. You gotta go dancin’ while you’re in N’Awlins. I think it’s a city ordinance.”

“I’m in trouble then, aren’t I?” she said, refusing the call of his senuous movements and resolutely keeping her sneakers rooted to the floor.

“Don’t worry. I’ll teach you.”

“Do you value your feet?”

“Only when I need ’em to walk.” His jet eyes gleamed with mischief and his dimple cut deep into his cheek. “If you cripple me too bad, I guess I’ll have to spend all my time in bed.”

“Think how lonely you’ll be,” she said, gritting her teeth as her knees began to sway of their own volition.

With his eyes locked on hers, Remy lowered his head and nipped at her lower lip. His voice was as dark and textured as rumpled black satin sheets. “Not if you’re there with me,
chère
.”

Chemistry is an amazing thing, Danielle reflected dimly as Remy’s mouth settled on hers. All Remy had to do was touch her and steam rose. The hot haze of passion clouded her mind, obscuring all thoughts of age and propriety and safety. She forgot she didn’t have much luck with men, that she had, for all intents and purposes, given them up. The heat Remy generated against her and within her burned everything else out of her mind.

She melted against him, sighing as he deepened the kiss with masterful strokes of his tongue. Her head swam with the taste and scent of him—warm, dark, utterly masculine, coffee-flavored. Shivers showered down her body as his mustache tickled her upper lip. He laid claim to her mouth with a predatory possessiveness, probing, stroking. His right hand slid from the small of her back up and around her rib cage to claim her swelling breast. He cupped her, kneaded her, groaned into her mouth as his thumb flicked across her nipple. Pressing gently against the tightly knotted flesh, he rubbed in circles, sending shock waves through Danielle that reached clear to her toes.

She found her own hands wandering over the broad expanse of his back, exploring the planes and ridges of hard muscle through the fabric of his T-shirt. It was both exciting and frustrating. She wanted to feel his flesh, bare and warm. She wanted nothing separating her from experiencing the flex and strain of his muscles beneath his smooth skin. His shirt was denying her the privilege and that denial only served to sharpen what was already a rampant hunger.

She discovered the hem and reached beneath it as Remy backed her into the kitchen table. Her hips bumped against the edge of it and she automatically raised up on tiptoe to half sit on the polished pine. Remy nudged her knees apart, stepping in between her legs and pressing himself intimately against her. Danielle raked her short fingernails against his back as he rubbed his erection against her in the same rhythm as he thrust his tongue into her mouth.

The message was unmistakable and irresistible. Still he dragged his mouth to her ear and murmured, “Oh, Danielle, I want you. Let me love you,
chère.
Let me please us both.”

Danielle groaned at the raw desire in his voice. It echoed her own. She wanted him more desperately than a five-year-old wants Christmas. Her blood was searing her veins and the heat was pooling into liquid warmth between her thighs. His hips moved against hers insistently. His strong, blunt-tipped fingers massaged her breast. She had no idea how things had gotten so out of control so quickly, but then she was beyond reason.

Remy’s hand slid down from her breast to the waistband of her shorts and he deftly popped the button from its mooring.

“No,” she whispered, her fingers closing over his before he could lower her zipper. For an instant she almost thought she was going to try to stop him, then her mouth said, “Not here.”

Remy turned her hand and brought it against the front of his jeans, cupping her fingers around his sex and groaning as she stroked him through the denim. “We’ll go to my room,” he growled through his teeth. “It’s closer.”

“Good day all!” a falsely cheerful voice boomed from the doorway to the back hall.

“Butler!” The name burst from Danielle’s lips like a curse. She leaped away from the table and folded her hands nervously at her waist. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“Stoppin’ us from gettin’ into it,” Remy muttered under his breath. He snatched up the folded newspaper he had left on the table and held it in front of him, trying to look casual. He sent the Scot a fierce scowl.

“I thought it might do me good to move around a wee bit,” Butler said. He tightened the sash on his tartan robe and moved gingerly into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Remy agreed, a muscle tightening in his square jaw. “Mebbe you oughta take a
long
walk. Call us when you get to Baton Rouge, we’ll come pick you up.”

Butler made no comment, but sent him a cool look brimming with smug triumph.

“The children have gone swimming,” Danielle said, moving to the counter to pour the butler a cup of Remy’s paint-stripping coffee—and to fasten her shorts unobtrusively. “You should have taken advantage of the peace and quiet and rested.”

He accepted the mug and raised a pious eyebrow at Remy. “The young charges off swimming and the nanny didna go with them?”

“The nanny stayed here with the baby,” Remy said stiffly.

“Indeed,” Butler said doubtfully. “With the mistress as well.” His gaze dropped to the younger man’s hands. “Is that today’s paper?”

“Yesterday’s,” Remy said through his teeth. “Not good for anything but wrappin’ fish.”

Danielle blushed at the thought of the whopper that paper was presently protecting. Trophy-size. Suitable for mounting. The heat of embarrassment spread out to the tips of her ears. How could she have let Remy get her into such a compromising position? She knew better. Lord, she’d nearly made a fool of herself right smack on her sister’s kitchen table! She had to be losing her mind. Senility, that’s what it was, the onset of Alzheimer’s. She couldn’t get involved with a man like Remy Doucet, a man with roots and a yearning for a family.

Her eyes fastened on the camera bag she had abandoned earlier and she fell on it like a drowning woman on a life preserver. Hefting the bag up, she settled the strap on her shoulder and started toward the door. The two men snapped out of their scowling match, their heads swiveling in unison toward her.

“Lass?”

“Hey where you goin’, sugar?”

“To work,” she said, steeling herself against the looks of disappointment that were being leveled at her for different reasons. “Where I belong.”

eight

DANIELLE MANAGED TO ESCAPE REMY AND
the kids all day. After leaving the house in the morning she wandered the City That Care Forgot, doing her darnedest to forget her own cares. It was a fruitless effort. Even though she had cursed Suzannah’s grand plan that she be a “family influence,” even though she had hired a nanny with every intention of abandoning said nanny with the children, she felt guilty. It was insane, but she sort of missed the sound of death threats and crying.

She walked the few blocks to Magazine Street where she spent the better part of the day photographing the doorways of antique shops. When images of Remy clouded her view, she quickly reminded herself that she was not far from being eligible to join the pricey old merchandise that filled the display windows.

Many of the brick buildings along the street dated back to the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. Their doorways were works of art. They weren’t simply the entrances to businesses, they were the faces of buildings that had seen Spanish rule and French, pirates and belles, soldiers and carpetbaggers. They were archways to other eras.

It was a working day, and the shops were open, but the intensity of the heat and humidity had kept most sane people indoors. That suited Danielle fine; she wasn’t feeling a bit sane. She blocked the sultry weather from her mind. So it was ninety-five in the shade and she could have cut the air with a machete. Sweat ran in rivulets between her breasts and down her back. It was nothing compared to the steamy scene she’d shared with Remy in the kitchen. She pulled a battered khaki cap from her camera bag and tugged it on. The subtropical sun couldn’t fry her brain any worse than Remy’s kisses had.

She was disgusted to find that the concentration she had always been famous for seemed to be eluding her. More often than not she found herself distracted from a shot by thoughts of Remy; mostly choice memories of their near miss on the kitchen table.

It wasn’t like her to lose her head that way, she mused as she picked at a scrumptious-looking seafood po’boy sandwich late in the afternoon. She sat at a little wrought-iron table in a sidewalk café in the French Quarter. The bottle of cold mineral water she had ordered went down easily, but she nibbled at the edges of the sandwich like a mouse, not really tasting the freshness of either the bread or the tiny shrimp.

The restlessness within her was a terrible thing. It wasn’t the same thing she felt when some faraway place beckoned her muse. This was altogether different. It was almost the same inner turmoil that had driven her from London. She hated this tormenting demon, yet felt almost powerless to resist its command.

Damn Suzannah, she thought, tearing off a bit of bun and tossing it to a pigeon that had come to beg at her feet. If it hadn’t been for her half-sister, she would have been off in a place where no one could bother her… or depend on her, or expect anything more of her than clicking the hours away with a camera in her hands.

The routine Danielle fell into over the next two days was exhausting, but it effectively kept her away from the Beauvais house. Or, more precisely, away from the inhabitants of the Beauvais house. She rose at the crack of dawn, escaping with camera equipment in tow and returned at the children’s bedtime, when Remy was preoccupied. She would bid everyone a good night and then sequester herself in the darkroom past midnight. In the small hours of the morning, she would slip into Eudora’s room and watch the baby sleep. She would get precious little sleep herself, dozing off and on, until it was time to start the whole routine over.

The grueling routine kept her away from Butler’s too-watchful eye. It kept her away from the children. It kept her away from the temptation of Remy. It was also making her miserable and exhausted. Her nerves were shot. She felt guilty. She felt as if something in her chest were tearing in two. The only way she kept going was by reminding herself it would all be over in two weeks and promising herself she would then crawl off somewhere and sleep for a solid month.

“Or maybe two,” she muttered to herself as she hauled her gear up the curving grand staircase and headed down toward the darkroom on the third night of her ordeal.

“Auntie Dan-L!” Ambrose called, scrambling out of his bedroom as she passed. He ran up to her wearing his Smurf pajamas and a Mardi Gras mask made out of blue feathers. His stuffed dog was tucked under his arm. A real dog—a brown and white terrier—scampered along at his feet. The pair skidded to a halt before her. “Where have you been all day?”

“Working. Ambrose, that isn’t your dog. What happened to the big shaggy one?”

Ambrose ignored her question in the way only children can. “You work all the time. You missed the fun. Mr. Butler went out to sit in the garden and Tinks bombed him with a water balloon. Splat!” His face lit up with glee as he used his hands to demonstrate the explosion. “Mr. Remy laughed, but I’m the only one that saw him; it’s my secret. And then Jeremy put a sock down the toilet and it flooded all over. Dahlia gagged.”

Danielle was too weary to fight her smile. She knelt down and ruffled the boy’s bright hair. “Sounds like you had quite a day.”

“Yup. I missed you, though. I wish you’d stay more.”

A lump the size of a Bermuda onion lodged in Danielle’s throat at her nephew’s candid admission. Ambrose missed her. Sentiment gushed over the dam of her resolve and swamped her. “I missed you too,” she whispered.

“Then why do you have to work? Why can’t you be with us?”

“It’s kind of complicated, Ambrose,” she said. It had to do with wanting things she couldn’t have and doing something for the greater good of all concerned. She only wished it didn’t have to hurt so much.

There was suddenly a thunder of footsteps on the stairs. Danielle turned to see Tinks and Jeremy barreling toward her, looking as if they had just escaped some unnamed terror by the skin of their teeth.

“Hi,” Jeremy said between gasps for breath. His eyes fastened on the door behind Danielle, then turned to her. “Can me and Tinks come in the darkroom with you?”

Danielle shook her head, though she was secretly pleased they wanted to spend time with her. Maybe she wasn’t as big a flop with kids as she thought. Ambrose missed her. Jeremy and Tinks wanted to be with her. “Nope. Sorry. You know the rules about the darkroom—absolutely no kids allowed. There’s too much stuff in there that could hurt you.”

Jeremy gave her his best pleading look as Tinks stole a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Aw, come on, Auntie Danielle. Please. It’d be so cool.”

Danielle felt herself relenting, but she didn’t give in. As much as she wanted the kids to like her, she had to think of safety first. A darkroom full of chemicals was no place for an insatiably inquisitive nine-year-old and his anything-on-a-dare little sister. “Nope. I can’t let you, guys.”

They were about to really start begging when heavier footsteps sounded on the stairs. Tinks and Jeremy both went a little pale beneath their freckles. The terrier whined. Ambrose giggled.

Remy appeared on the landing like an avenging Cajun god—big, dark, and brooding. His gaze flicked over Danielle but homed in quickly on Tinks and Jeremy. As he stalked down the hall, his expression ominous, he raised a hand and pointed at the pair.

“You two, back to the kitchen. Don’t you be makin’ me any more ticked off than I already am or I’ll hand you over to my brother Lucky and let him use you for gator bait.”

Without a word, Jeremy and Tinks scooted past him and disappeared down the stairs. Danielle swallowed the disappointment she felt at discovering the children had only wanted to use her and the darkroom for a hideout.

“What have they done now?” she asked, pushing herself to her feet.

Remy planted his hands on his hips and gave her a wry look. “You know that oil portrait of the Beauvais who fought beside Andrew Jackson in the Battle of N’Awlins?”

“The one that hangs in Courtland’s study?”

“Oui
, the very one. The Dynamic Duo decided he’d look better with a mustache and a goatee.”

Danielle’s face dropped. “They didn’t.”

“They did. In indelible laundry marker. They are now supposed to be pondering the error of their ways as they scrub the kitchen floor with toothbrushes.”

“Mr. Butler got
really-eally
mad,” Ambrose added, his eyes bugging out behind his mask.

Remy grimaced at the reminder of Butler, the bane of his existence. Checking his watch, he said, “It’s past your bedtime,
’tit chaoui.”

“That means little raccoon,” Ambrose explained to Danielle with no small amount of pride. He tugged on her hand so she would bend down for a good-night kiss, then trotted back to his room with the day’s mystery dog right behind him.

The instant the boy disappeared Danielle became painfully aware of the fact that she was alone with Remy for the first time since their infamous shake-and-bake kitchen scene. She pulled her camera bag into her arms and hugged it to her.

“Well,” she said, her mouth cotton-dry, gaze aimed just to the left of Remy’s head. “Guess I’d better get to work. I’m glad to know you’re handling everything here while I’m out.”

“Oh, I’m real good at handlin’ things,” he said, his dark voice dripping insinuation. He smiled a little to himself as he watched the color bloom across her gorgeous cheekbones. “Can
I
come in the darkroom with you, Danielle? I’m a big boy.”

Was he ever, she thought, not quite able to keep her gaze from flicking hungrily over his muscular frame. Heat swept through her, making a mockery of the mansion’s central air-conditioning. “I don’t think so,” she stammered. “I don’t like distractions when I’m working.”

Attempting to dismiss him, she turned and took the key down from its hiding place and unlocked the door. He wasn’t leaving; she could feel him standing right behind her. “Good night,” she mumbled, slipping into the darkroom. She tried to pull the door shut behind her, but one big sneakered foot prevented her.

“This once,” Remy said with a boyish grin. “I wanna see what you been doin’ all day besides avoiding me.”

He muscled his way into the narrow room that had at one time been a gentlemen’s dressing room. Danielle scowled at him. “Have you ever considered a career in selling door-to-door?”

Ignoring her sardonic question, he set about exploring the darkroom, keeping one eye on Danielle. She didn’t like him trespassing on her private territory and stood in the far corner bristling like a cat. Well, that was just too bad, he thought as he poked around, examining the tanks, print trays, the various bottles of mysterious solutions, the enlarger, the print dryer—the tools of the trade she claimed to prize above all else. He had his doubts about that, but he was going to keep them to himself for the moment.

He’d found several books of her work prominently displayed in the Beauvais library and had studied them intently over the past few days. Even his untrained eye could recognize Danielle’s brilliance. She had a wonderful talent for capturing the essence of each person she photographed. The life and thoughts of her subjects were there for all to see—joy, sorrow, innocence, pride, even the most complex mix of emotions came through with striking clarity. Her photographs were so vivid, so true-to-life, they seemed almost three-dimensional.

Her
book Americans
had more than once nearly moved him to tears. A World War II veteran holding hands with the son who had lost his legs in Vietnam as a Memorial Day parade passed before them. A Midwestern farmer and his wife dancing joyously in their yard, arms raised to the heavens as rain poured down to end a summer drought. A homeless woman on the streets of San Francisco holding her child on her lap, her pride shattering as she begged a stranger for spare change.

These were not the photographs of a woman who valued art above all else. These had come from the genius of a woman who was perhaps a bit too sensitive, too insightful. She had laid her own soul bare in her work, and Remy had found himself falling a little more in love with her. He even found himself able to forgive her for abandoning him to the wiles of a dour Scot and a gang of kids destined for reform school.