Night Jasmine (4 page)

For one long moment, she said nothing. He could see the pulse that beat wildly at the base of her throat, felt the shudder that rippled over her. Whether these were reactions to fear or awareness he wasn't sure.

“Nothing,” she said finally, softly. “I want nothing from you except for you to leave me—us—alone.”

The words stung and he fought to hold on to the control, the unflappable logic, that had served him so well for so long. “You're letting your emotions talk. Think, Aimee. Oliver might want to go to Harvard some day. Or Juilliard. Or Cal Tech. Who knows? This would give him the opportunity to make his dreams come true.” He lowered his voice. “You had dreams, Aimee. Remember?”

She jerked her arm from his grasp, furious. She clenched her fingers into fists. “I'll find a way. On my own. Besides, he might choose to stay and live like the Cajun people have for generations.”

“You didn't.”

“I was wrong to want to leave. It was a mistake.” She glared at him. “And we aren't talking about me.”

“Aren't we?” He moved toward her again, until she had nowhere to look but at him. “I don't think you were wrong. You were better than merely good. Your photographs were special. You were a real talent.”

Giving in to the urge, he reached out and touched her flushed cheek. Her skin was warm and impossibly soft against his fingers. He remembered a time when he'd had the freedom to touch her like this whenever he chose, then he cursed the memory. But still he didn't draw away his hand. “What happened to your dreams, Aimee? What about your photography?”

“I'm just a bayou bumpkin,” she whispered. “Remember? Isn't that what the critics called me?”

“They were wrong.” He moved his hand, threading his fingers through her hair. “You're a gifted artist.”

She looked away, catching her bottom lip between her teeth.

Her self-doubt tore at him; Hunter reminded himself that it was neither his place to comfort or reassure. He'd come back for one reason only—Oliver. He dropped his hand. “I want to do this,” he murmured. “Think of Oliver. Give him this chance.”

“Think of Oliver?” she repeated, meeting his gaze once more. Her dark eyes flashed with fury. “What do you think I do all day, all night?” She pushed away from him, her breathing ragged with her anger. “How dare you waltz in here and tell me how to care for my son! How dare you presume to tell me what my son might need or want.”

Hunter swore. “Aimee, I didn't mean to imply you weren't a good mother or that you weren't looking after his needs.”

“No? Then what are you doing? He means nothing to you, Hunter. Nothing.” She pressed her hands to her chest. “But he means everything to me. I love him so much I…”

She shook her head, choking back the thoughts. “I don't want him hurt. And if I take your money, someday he will find out about you. Someday he'll know you didn't want him.”

The words, the truth in them, clawed at Hunter in a way he didn't understand but still felt on an elemental level. He wasn't accustomed to confusion; emotion was an anathema to him. Now, he was stewing in both. He swore again. “I can't leave it this way. I won't.”

“Why?” she asked, her voice high and tight. “For God's sake, yesterday you didn't even know Oliver existed and you were fine. He was fine. What's so different now? Just go back to California. Just forget about today, forget about us.”

“I can't,” he said simply. “Knowing changes everything.”

For long moments she said nothing, just stared at the window and the fading light of the day. Finally, she turned back to him, tears sparkling in her eyes. “I don't understand,” she whispered, catching his hands, pleading with him. “Why, Hunter? Why can't you just let this go?”

He curled his fingers around hers, holding on to her in a way that surprised him. In a way that was too intimate for the strangers they had become. But even knowing that, he didn't let go.

He looked down at their joined hands, then back up at her, an unfamiliar tightness in his chest. “I don't completely understand myself. But I can't. He's my son. I can't love him—but I won't abandon him, either.”

Aimee made a sound of pain and frustration. She released his hands and wheeled away from him. “How can you abandon something, someone, you never had?”

“That wasn't my choice, Aimee. It was yours.”

“I'm not going to change my mind,” she said stiffly, facing him again.

“Then the ball's in my court, isn't it?” Hunter let out a sharp breath, totally frustrated. “You're not leaving me many options.”

“No, I'm not.”

For
long moments, Hunter gazed at her. Then, muttering an oath, he crossed to the door and swung it open.

“Goodbye, Hunter,” she said softly.

He looked back at her, furious. That she'd thwarted him. That he felt so damn guilty. So torn. He fought to keep his voice cool and unaffected. “What makes you think this is goodbye?”

Hunter let himself out, shutting the screen gently behind him. As he swung away from the door, he saw that Aimee's father waited for him. The old man sat next to the rental car, blocking the driver's side door. He sat quietly in the fading sun, his big hands resting on the chair's arms. Hunter was relieved to see he'd left his shotgun behind.

Hunter descended the stairs. Three and a half years ago Aimee had described her father as vital and fit, an outdoorsman who hunted, fished and shrimped for a living. She'd also called him crusty and opinionated, a man very much wedded to the old ways. A man who resisted change.

Yet the man before him now was much changed from the one Aimee had described. At least physically. By the slight drooping of his right eye, Hunter suspected Roubin Boudreaux was the victim of an aneurysm. He wondered when it had happened.

Roubin turned and looked directly at Hunter as he approached. Once again Hunter thought of pride. “You and me,” Roubin said, “we have some unfinished business.”

“It seems that way,” Hunter murmured, stopping before Roubin, leaving enough distance between them so the older man wouldn't have to bend his neck back to meet his eyes.

“My Aimee, she is a stubborn girl.”

“She takes after you, I suspect.”

Roubin chuckled, the sound rich with age. “But we Cajuns, we would not have made it so far if we were not so.” Roubin shook his head and lifted a gnarled finger. “But you,
mon ami,
you are not innocent in this matter.
Non.
”

“No,” Hunter agreed, the truth of that twisting in his gut.

“You are prepared to make this matter right?”

“As best I can.” Hunter made a sound of frustration. “It's complicated.”

Roubin raised his eyebrows, mocking him. “Not so complicated, eh? You have a son.”

“I love you, daddy.”

Hunter drew in a sharp breath. “It appears that way.”

“I hear Aimee, what she says to you in there.” Roubin shook his head again. “Sometimes, my Aimee, she is too emotional as well as too stubborn.” The older man lifted his face to the sky as a bobwhite called out above them, then turned back to Hunter, his gaze thoughtful. “And I think, too, you hurt her very much.”

Hunter thought again of the woman Aimee had been and the one she had become. And of his own part in that transformation. Remorse curled through him. And guilt. “It wasn't intentional.”

“But only a monster sets out to hurt another.”

“Look…” Hunter made a sound of frustration. “…I'm not giving up. I intend to make amends for this situation. Aimee refused my help, so I'm going to have to come up with something. I'm just not sure what.”

Roubin paused, then as if coming to a decision slapped his hand on the chair arm. “There is a room at the back of the store. I sometimes rent her to hunters. She is clean, the bed is firm. I will rent her to you until this matter is resolved. Fifty dollars a week, meals included.”

Hunter heard the screen door open and looked up. Aimee stood there, her cheeks bright with anger. Without a doubt she had heard her father's offer, just as certainly she wanted him to refuse it.

Hunter looked back at Roubin. He would have to make arrangements with his partners, would have to have the other doctors cover his patient load. There would be appointments to be canceled and rescheduled, a handful of events and meetings that could not be rescheduled. It would be damn difficult.

Hunter nodded. “Thank you. Yes, I would very much appreciate the room. I'll get my things in New Orleans and be back tonight.”

“Bon.”
Roubin nodded and rolled his chair away from the car so Hunter could open the door.

Aimee watched as Hunter climbed into the car, started it and drove off. When it had disappeared from sight, she turned to her father. She curled her fingers into fists. “How could you?” she asked. “You know how I feel.”

He met her gaze solemnly. “But how could I know,
chère?
”

Aimee lowered her eyes. “I didn't lie to you, Papa. Not really.”

“Not really?” He laughed without humor. “There is truth and there is untruth. Black or white. So,
chère,
which did you tell me when you came back home?”

She and her father had seldom seen eye-to-eye. Why had she expected anything different now? “It's not always that way, Papa. Not this time.”

“Oh?” He maneuvered his chair around to face her fully. “So, tell me. How can you call this not black, not white?”

She took a deep, painful breath. She didn't know which hurt more, recounting the past or facing her father this way. She stalled the inevitable one more moment. “Shall I wheel you up?”

He nodded, and she descended the ramp, then pushed him slowly up to the gallery. “Oliver is still with his cousins?” she asked.

“Oui.”

“Good.” Aimee leaned against one of the gallery's unadorned cypress columns and stared out at the gathering dusk. After a moment, she murmured, “Hunter
was
married. He had a child. A boy. His son and his wife died.”

“A great tragedy.”

“Yes.” Aimee turned away from her father, not wanting him to see the tears in her eyes. She rested her head against the column. “I told you he was a married man because he was in his heart, Papa. He still loved her. He was never able to let her go. Or his son.”

She shook her head, her eyes brimming, feeling like an idiot. And like a daughter who had disgraced her father. “He didn't want me for his own, he didn't love me. He was very up front and honest about that. He never tried to lead me on, never tried to trick me.”

She did look at her father then. “But I refused to believe what he told me. I fooled myself into believing he would fall in love with me. Eventually. Then I learned I was pregnant.”

She laughed, the sound shaky and sad even to her own ears. “I was certain everything was going to be fine. I still thought I could make him…love me. I thought that once he knew about the baby he would change. After all, he had adored his first son.”

Her father drew his heavy eyebrows together. “But you didn't tell him?”

She curved her fingers around the column. “No.”

“Bon Dieu!
Why?”

Aimee brushed at the tears that spilled over. How could she explain that time in her life to her father? He'd forbidden her to leave La Fin, had insisted she belonged with her people. In fact, before she'd left he'd told her that until she returned, ready to do her duty to him and her people, she would be dead to him. She'd defied him, not believing he meant what he said. Convinced that he would come around, that she could make him come around.

Just as she hadn't believed Hunter when he'd told her he would never love her; just as she'd been sure Hunter would come around.

She'd been so ridiculously naive.

Aimee drew in a deep breath, looking once more at her father. “I didn't tell him because I finally saw what he'd been telling me all along. He was never going to love me. He wouldn't want the baby. All my telling him would have done was make him feel guilty and trapped. I didn't want either. I still don't.”

“You were wrong,
chère.
” Her father shook his head. “A man should know the consequences of his actions. A man should be given the opportunity to be a man. To take care of what's his. To take care of his family.”

“That's why you invited him here?” she asked incredulously. “Because you think he should take care of me and Oliver?” She couldn't believe he would want that. Her father had always been as proud as he was independent.

“There is only one way to take care of your family.”

He thought Hunter would marry her, Aimee realized, stunned. He thought it Hunter's obligation. His duty. Her father believed that if Hunter was a man, a real man, he would see that and do the correct thing. He'd offered Hunter the room as a nudge in the proper direction.

“Oh, Papa…you don't understand. Today, things like this happen all the time. Today, many women raise children alone. Besides, even if Hunter offered, I don't love him any more. And I'd never want a man out of obligation or a sense of duty.”

Roubin scowled at her. “I'm so old-fashioned, eh? So out of date with my old ways? Maybe you should throw me in the swamp and let the gators fight over me.”

Aimee bent down in front of his chair and gathered his hands in hers. “His wife and son died. Horribly. He'll never marry. He'll never have another child. He won't, Papa.”

“You're wrong,
chère.
” Roubin smiled and squeezed her hands. “He has another child. A fine, strong boy.”

His simplistic view of life infuriated her. It always had. “And what about Oliver?” she demanded. “This could hurt him. This
will
hurt him.”

“He's already hurt. He needs a father.”