Tempestuous/Restless Heart (27 page)

“If you’re through snooping,” Danielle said sharply. “I have work to do.”

“Mmmmm…” he hummed, working his way back to her corner.

If the lady thought he was going to allow her to avoid him indefinitely after their incomplete chemistry experiment in the kitchen, then she would have to think again. He’d never experienced that kind of spontaneous combustion in his life, and he was willing to bet Danielle hadn’t either. That was part of the reason she’d run off, he was sure. It had frightened her to lose control that way. It had excited the hell out of him, but then he wasn’t terrified about getting involved. He had decided to let her dodge him for a couple of days, hoping she would come around to his way of thinking. But it looked as if she’d go on running forever if he didn’t put a stop to it.

“Are these the pictures you’ve been taking?” he asked, pulling a stack of black and white photographs off a shelf.

“Feel free to look them over,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

There had to be a hundred, eight-by-tens and five-by-sevens, light, dark, taken from every conceivable angle. Every one of them of a doorway and nothing more. Photo after photo of closed doors. Remy sorted through them, frowning, his brows drawing together and etching a little worry line into his forehead as he pondered their meaning.

“There’s no people in these,” he said slowly.

“Darn—knew I forgot something,” she said. She slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “How absentminded of me.” Scooting around him, careful not to touch, she set about preparing everything for developing yet another five rolls of uninspired doorway photos.

Remy set the stack of pictures back where he’d found them and studied Danielle intently as she poured developer into the tank and checked the thermometer to make sure the temperature was within range. “Why no people?”

“Because I didn’t feel like taking pictures of people.”

“But you always take pictures of people—people in Tibet, Bora Bora, Des Moines….”

She passed the comment off with a shrug, trying not to take any delight in the fact that he’d been studying up on her.

“You ought to have had people in them.”

“Everybody’s a critic,” she mumbled, too aware that in one corner of her mind she knew he was right. More than once a part of her had prodded her to snap the doorway when a happy patron was leaving a shop with a treasure, or when a bored salesgirl had come out for a breath of air, or when the owner’s wife had set out a bowl of milk for some sleek stray cat. But she hadn’t taken those pictures. She had waited until the door had closed.

She nervously glanced around. The equipment and chemicals were ready, but she couldn’t proceed without turning off the ordinary light and flipping on the dim red safelight, which didn’t seem like a good idea at all with Remy in the room.

“I’m takin’ the kids to the zoo tomorrow,” he said. “Seems to me you got enough pictures of empty doorways to last a while. Come along with us.”

She gave him a look. “Spend a day at the zoo with the Beauvais kids? What fun. Couldn’t I just stay home and hit my thumb with a hammer?”

“What are you afraid of, sugar? That you might actually enjoy it?” he asked, the light of challenge in his eyes.

That was
exactly
what she was afraid of, but there was no way she would admit it to Remy. She would only be in deeper if she confided in him. There was too much room for error, for rejection, for pain. Taking her cue from him, she simply didn’t answer, but went to dig her cameras out of her bag. “How was Butler today? Is his back getting any better?”

Remy rolled his eyes and snorted. “That man is a royal pain in the posterior.”

“He happens to be very good at what he does.”

“Layin’ around and complainin’?
Mais
yeah, I don’t guess I’ve ever seen anybody better at it. He’s a master, he is.”

“Oh, you’re just sore because he interrupted us—” She cursed herself for resurrecting the subject and the memory. Heat flashed through her in a quick burst.

“Sore is a good word,” Remy said lazily. He trapped her against the counter with an arm on either side of her and very deliberately snuggled his pelvis up against her bottom, drawing an involuntary gasp from Danielle. “I’ve still got that ache,
chère,”
he said on a low groan. “And now that we’re alone mebbe you’ll help me do somethin’ about it.”

“I don’t think so.” Her voice came out much thinner than she had intended, much less resolute.

“Why not?” Remy asked, deftly turning her in his arms so she could no longer hide her face from him. “I’m attracted. You’re attracted. We’re both mature adults.”

“Some of us more mature than others,” she muttered.

Annoyed, Remy snagged a hand in her ponytail and tilted her head back so she had to look him in the eye. “Don’t give me that age crap, Danielle. If it doesn’t matter to me, then it shouldn’t matter to you.”

“Well, it does matter to me. I don’t think we should get involved.”

“That’s the trouble with you, angel,” he said on a growl. “You think too damn much.”

His kiss was hot and hungry. He slanted his mouth across Danielle’s with a sense of purpose that sent shock waves to her most feminine parts. To her shame, she did nothing to stop him. Her traitorous needs pushed aside the fears and the doubts and the sense of self-preservation, as she greedily took what Remy offered. As if a switch had been flipped, she stopped thinking and let herself feel.

It was a powerful and frightening force, this desire that sprang up inside her. It was like nothing she’d ever known, and that scared her. If she had never felt this way before in nearly forty years, she thought, chances were she would never feel this way again. This one man might be the only man, and he was all wrong for the kind of life she had chosen.

But none of that mattered now when Remy’s mouth was on hers, when his tongue urgently sought out hers. Sinking into bliss, Danielle let herself revel in the experience of kissing him. She soaked up every sensation as if it had been years since he’d last touched her. She enjoyed the brush and tickle of his mustache, the coffee-flavored taste of him, the power in his brawny arms as he held her. She curved her body into his to better feel the hard masculine contours of him, to arch against the evidence of the passion she inspired in him.

Without breaking the kiss, she reached an arm behind her and fumbled blindly with the panel of light switches. Soft white gave way to the hazy red of the safelight, and Danielle thought dimly that she would never feel quite the same way about working under that light again. That soft glow of red would ever after bring to mind hot Louisiana nights and the taste of black coffee and the feel of strong arms.

“Ah, chère, j’aime te faire l’amour avec toi,”
Remy murmured, trailing kisses down the column of her throat as his hands swept up her sides to claim her breasts through the soft peach-colored T-shirt she wore.

She didn’t have to understand the words to understand their meaning. He wanted her. She wanted him. With common sense suddenly nowhere in sight, Danielle wasn’t sure she could come up with a reason to stop from giving in this time.

As it turned out, she didn’t have to. Someone on the other side of the darkroom door did it for her. At the sound of the knock Remy turned and kicked the baseboard, swearing a blue streak in French, in English, then in a combination of the two. He glared at the door with fire in his eyes.

“This had better be one hell of an emergency!”

Scraping her composure back together, Danielle took a deep breath and pushed the door open, her eyes rounding as she looked at the person standing behind Dahlia Beauvais. Dahlia was looking a little stunned herself as she said, “Mr. Remy, your voodoo priestess is here.”

“Voodoo priestess?” Danielle said, her disbelieving gaze darting from the strange woman to Remy.

“Mam’selle Annick,” the young woman said, giving Danielle a dramatic bow, holding her slender arms out to the sides and shaking the array of primitive rattles she held in her hands. She wore a multicolored caftan, belted at her tiny waist with about twenty strands of beads. Around her neck were enough necklaces to put Mr. T to shame. She had a ring on every finger and long red false nails. Her makeup looked like something from
Cats
—outrageously outlined dark eyes, overdone brows, long false lashes. Her black hair had been teased into a lion’s mane that stood out all around her head.

Remy didn’t seem surprised in the least. He scowled at his visitor and said, “Your timin’ stinks.”

Mademoiselle Annick’s eyes twinkled. The corners of her purple-painted mouth twitched a bit. Danielle had the very disconcerting feeling that the woman knew exactly what she had interrupted. She forced the thought away and turned to Remy with her hands on her hips.

“What’s this all about? I’ll tell you right now, I’m not letting her put a curse on Jeremy—”

Remy shook a finger at her. “You’re startin’ to like those kids.”

Danielle’s nose lifted a fraction. “Don’t try to distract me with insults. I know he probably deserves worse than anything Vampira here can dish out, but—”

“Don’t worry,
chère,”
Remy said, leading her out of the darkroom by the elbow. His temper evaporated entirely as he speculated on what was about to happen. “The mam’selle is here to cure your Mr. Butler.”

Danielle frowned. “He isn’t going to like this.”

“That’s what I’m countin’ on,” Remy muttered under his breath. He’d had enough of that old fraud skulking around spying on him and clicking his tongue in reproach at the way Remy dealt with the duties of his station. But mostly he wanted revenge for the interruption in the kitchen. If it hadn’t been for the Scot’s meddling, Remy was certain Danielle wouldn’t have spent the last three days hiding behind her Nikon and he wouldn’t have spent the last three nights under the spray of a cold shower.

They made their way back to Butler’s quarters, an odd parade with Danielle and Remy leading the way, followed by the bizarre Mam’selle Annick, and trailed by the Beauvais children all bursting with curiosity. Remy flung the door back without knocking. Butler jumped then bent over the putter he’d been practicing with and hobbled across the room to his bed, using the golf club like a cane.

“Time for your medicine, old friend,” Remy said with a smirk.

“Butler!” Danielle exclaimed, stomping across the room. “What are you doing out of bed? Your back is never going to heal properly unless you rest it.”

Butler flushed guiltily and dodged her gaze. “Just changing the telly,” he mumbled, settling back against the pillows.

“There’s a remote control for that.”

He snorted and waved a hand. “I canna work the blasted thing. Too many wee buttons.”

Danielle gave him a doubtful look. Her father’s house had more electronic gadgets in it than a James Bond movie. Unless the old man was getting senile? Her heart sank horribly at the thought of her old Butler going dotty.

Remy rolled his eyes and pulled his priestess into the room, closing the door in the face of their would-be audience. “No need for those useless pills anymore, Mr. Butler,” he said with a jovial grin as he ushered Annick toward the bed. “I’ve got just the thing here for you. Mam’selle Annick, practitioner of the ancient ways, doctor of roots and fruits. She’ll fix you right up
bon.”

Annick shot her brother a glance and spoke softly through her teeth so only he could hear. “Giselle will skin us alive if she finds out about this.”

He gave her a look brimming with menace. “Then she’d better not find out,
’tite soeur.”

Butler took one look at the startling mam’selle and blanched. Annick rushed up to the side of the bed, gave him a wild-eyed stare, and shook her rattles at him. The old butler snatched up his putter and warded her off as if with the sword of righteousness. “Ye’ll not lay one heathen hand on me, witch!”

Danielle watched with growing suspicion as Annick danced around in a circle chanting the words to “Iko, Iko,” the old Dixie Cups song, shaking her rattles. Then she tossed some brown powder at him that smelled suspiciously like instant hot cocoa. At the foot of the bed Remy stood with his arms crossed over his chest, fighting a furious battle with laughter, his mustache twitching.

His face red with an oncoming attack of apoplexy, Butler took a poke at the priestess with the golf club. “Be off with ye, heathen wench! I’ll have none of your dark ways practiced in this house!” He stole a glance at Danielle and suddenly fell back against his pillows with a pained expression. “Ooooh! I’ve taxed it again! Tis all his fault!” he wailed, pointing an accusatory putter at Remy.

Remy started to protest but was cut off by a dark look from Danielle.

“Okay, folks, the floor show’s over,” she said dryly, catching hold of the dancing priestess by one of her bead belts, nearly toppling her. She escorted the woman to the door and shooed her out, scattering wide-eyed Beauvaises in every direction. “Send your bill in care of Mr. Doucet,” Danielle said with a smile. “And if he doesn’t pay promptly, feel free to create a likeness of him and stick it full of pins.”

Closing the door in the priestess’s face, Danielle turned and regarded Remy with a dire look. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, perpetrating such a hoax.”

“Me?” Remy itched to denounce his adversary. He scowled at Butler, who was looking altogether too smug, and ground his teeth. He couldn’t expose the Scot or the Scot would expose him. He couldn’t tell Danielle her precious old butler was playing her for a sucker without having her find out that he himself had duped her as well.

“I think you have some apologizing to do, Mr. Doucet,” Danielle said primly. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Remy seethed as Danielle let herself out of the room. He whirled around to shake a finger at Butler. “You’re a fraud, old man.”

“So are you,” Butler volleyed, a truculent gleam in his eye and his putter at the ready.

“Your back isn’t any worse than mine.”

“And you’re no more a nanny than my big toe.”

“Seems to me what we’ve got us here is a good old-fashioned Mexican standoff, Scottie,” Remy said, deftly plucking away Butler’s putter. He nudged a couple of golf balls out from under the bed skirt with his toe, took a practiced stance, and methodically tapped each across the rug. The first missed its mark by a fraction of an inch. The second rolled precisely into the overturned water glass tucked beneath the armoire. Holding his position, he glanced over at Butler and raised a brow. “What are we gonna do about this,
mon ami
?”