Sweet Home Carolina (14 page)

At least she had chosen an intriguing argument, if not one
that would sway him. “But this is not my future,” he said regretfully. “We have
different purposes.”

“Then why not leave us the mill and simply purchase the
cards from us?” she asked, her tone so carefully steady he knew she fought
desperation.

Following emotion was not a rational approach to business. A
pleasant interlude with a charming woman, yes, but more than that could only
end badly. Very badly.

He didn’t want any part of knowing Amy to end badly.

He might possibly be in trouble here.

He unclenched his jaw and forced it to relax. “I can buy the
mill and the patterns for the cost of the machinery, then sell the machinery
and walk away with the patterns for nothing,” he said, brutally bringing out in
the open what had gone unsaid.

“Then I will simply have to win the bid,” she retaliated
with such firmness that he had to glance at her to be certain she hadn’t
transformed into a woman he did not know.

He admired the stubborn tilt of her round chin, and he
chucked it lightly to get her to smile again. “May the best man win,” he
agreed. Competition, he understood.

The clang became a whining alarm, and she clenched the wheel
tighter, slowing to a crawl to make the turn onto the gravel mill drive. A
narrow metal bridge traversed the rocky river ahead. “I won’t let you win,” she
yelled over the noise of the alarm.

As she turned the steering wheel, smoke seeped from the
electronic panel, a wheel locked, and before Jacques could form any reply or
take any action, the Porsche slid into a spin on the gravel, hit a soft spot on
the side of the road, and flipped down the embankment.

* * *

“Amy, Amy! Are you all right?”

Black panic wiped out everything except for the sight of the
fragile, lovely woman slumped over the steering wheel. For years, Jacques had
had full-blown nightmares of another woman, a child, and a car smashed against
trees down a mountain hillside. His wife. His child. His world…all taken from
him in the space of a breath. That time, the image had been only in his head,
since he’d arrived much too late to see the actual scene.

The reality was far worse than a nightmare.

Mind screaming with sheer terror, he fought the air bag,
beating it back so he could reach the woman not answering his cries.

Thanks to Amy’s cautious driving, the car had flipped only
once, landing on its no-doubt flattened tires, but every battered bone in
Jacques’s body ached from the crushing seat belt. He could see only Amy’s
cinnamon brown hair falling over her face as her bag deflated. He could not
tell if she breathed. Panic crushed the breath from his own lungs.

Frantically, he wrestled the air bag aside and unfastened
her seat belt without a glance out the windshield at the destruction of the
gorgeous machine. He simply prayed he had not failed to save another woman from
harm. “Amy!” he repeated.

Her hand raised shakily to push the hair back from her face,
and he almost choked on relief that she lived and moved. Still leaning against
the air bag as if it were a pillow, she opened her green eyes and glared at
him. “I
told
you so” were the first
words out of her mouth.

After a sharp intake of air, relief simply exploded from his
chest, and Jacques laughed. He couldn’t help it. He grabbed his sore ribs and
roared until tears streaked down his cheeks.

“It’s not funny!” She sat up straight, or as straight as she
could since the car was at a forty-five degree angle with the rocky riverbed.
The knuckles of her fingers gripping the wheel were white.

“No, I think I am hysterical,” he blurted out between
chuckles. “My heart stopped when you did not speak, and then your first words
are not of relief or fear but recrimination.” His ribs really did hurt when he
laughed, but he couldn’t hold it in. He hadn’t laughed so hard in years. Eons
of pain and fear ripped loose and exploded — he’d faced his worst nightmare and
survived.

“It’s not funny.” She propped her arms straight against the
wheel as if that would hold the car in place. She didn’t sound anxious or in
pain, just dazed. “I’ve killed a monster machine. Jo always told me I could.”

In his relief, that seemed even funnier. Jacques tried to
muffle his mirth, but chuckles kept bubbling up. “One cannot kill machines, and
you haven’t killed us, so all is well,” he tried to say reassuringly, but
another snigger escaped, earning him a glare.

“We’re dangling over a riverbed in a hunk of broken metal.
We could have been
killed
.”

“We’re
alive
,” he
crowed. “We’re alive, and I very much want to kiss you. So let me help you
climb out of here, and we will forget to call for assistance for a while.”

He eased open his door until it lodged against a tree trunk.
Using his cane, he wiggled free and studied their situation. He breathed deeply
of the mountain air and admired the scenery, letting the adrenaline rush settle
down. The river was no more than a babbling brook over a bed of boulders. They
were in no danger of drowning.

The angle of the hillside and the uneven terrain made his
ability to clamber about doubtful, but
perseverance
was his middle name. Deciding the front of the Porsche was firmly wedged
between a massive boulder and a pine tree, he limped uphill around a shiny
fender lying on the ground to help Amy from the driver’s side.

She was shaking so badly when she stepped out, that his
laughter dissipated.

“I am so sorry,” he murmured, wrapping her soft curves in
his arms. “I should not have laughed, but it is better than crying, is it not?”

She bunched his shirt front in her fists and wept into his
shoulder. This was not how he had wanted to persuade this woman into his arms.

But he had spent the past week watching from the distance
she held him at, and he could not ignore her plump breasts now that they were
crushed against his chest. Her jasmine scent filled his head, the tears wetting
his shirt unmanned him, and the brush of her hair against his jaw electrified
every nerve ending in his body. She spun him faster than the Porsche, so that
he didn’t know whether to lust or cherish.

A part of him that he’d long buried pressed reassuring
kisses into her hair, letting her weep, blessing the stars that she trusted him
enough to cry on his shoulder. It had been a long, long time since he had held
a woman just to comfort her. He knew the sexual urges aroused by her closeness
were inappropriate, but he could not command his body to disregard her
welcoming softness. So he stroked her back, trailed his kisses from her hair to
her ear, doing his utmost to remind her how thrilling it was that they were
alive.

She was hiccupping by the time his mouth found her lips.
Jacques thought she meant to protest, but he firmly shut out her words with his
kiss. The shock of attraction was instantaneous, and after the first gasp of
surprise, she accepted his invitation with the delightful passion he’d
experienced earlier. With her mouth melded to his, she shuddered and pressed
into him with a desire for life and living that equaled the one welling in him.

“Amy,” he murmured when they came up for air. To stop
kissing her would be akin to tossing away a delicious ice cream. He couldn’t do
it. He tasted the corners of her mouth, swept his tongue along her bottom lip,
and claimed her mouth when she parted hers in welcome.

He’d meant to go slow, not frighten her, but he couldn’t
seem to stop. He’d enjoyed many women, but none had opened this rapidly filling
well of desire for life and love that he had denied himself these past years.

The powerful surge of need frightened him far more than the
crashing car. He could not need again.

Gasping, Jacques caught her upper arms and set her back from
him just enough to save his senses, but not enough to let her go. Amy looked
wonderfully tousled, aroused, and fascinated as she studied him the same way he
studied her. Here was the sex kitten he’d sensed. Her lips were moist and
swollen from his kisses, and he’d scraped her fair cheek with his beard. But
her eyes — her eyes would be the end of him. They held such trust and wonder — and
fear.

“I did not mean to take advantage,” he said, totally
uncertain for the first time. He wanted her, yes. But need? He was not prepared
for that. “But there is this current, this electricity….” He gestured
helplessly. “You’re a magnet.”

The sun returned to her eyes, and she giggled infectiously.
At his puzzled look, she laughed louder.

“Jo says my magnetic personality destroys electronics,” she
explained between giggles. “You must be a robot.”

He had to smile at that, if only because her smile was so
catching. “Hmmm…robotic. It’s true, I have been accused of that. And now you
have messed with my wiring, and I am at a loss for what to do next.”

“Climb out of here and call for help would be my
suggestion.” Eminently sensible now that he’d indicated a need for help, she
lost her vulnerable look and studied the path of destruction created by the
crashing sports car. “I recommend sliding up on your rear. You’ll destroy your
knee trying to climb.”

He adored the way she metamorphosed from vulnerable sex
kitten to sensible lioness when called upon. She had learned strength for her
children, and she used it for everyone, even a grasshopper like him. And the
entire town, he realized with regret.

“I am not sliding about like a cripple,” he protested,
releasing her to reach for the cell phone in his inside jacket pocket. “You
must have bumped your head hard to think I would do such a thing.” Hitting
Luigi’s programmed number with his thumb, he brushed her hair from her forehead
with his free hand, checking for bruises.

By all rights, she ought to be forcing a wan smile and
sitting down to wait for rescue. Instead, she shook off his caress, grabbed a
tree trunk, and began hauling herself up the hillside, no doubt running from
the vibrations still electrifying them.

Jacques’s knee ached just watching her. It was obvious she
was no stranger to mountain climbing. She found foot grips with grace and
agility, braced herself on rocks and trees so as not to slide backward, and had
reached the roadbed by the time he had finished talking to Luigi.

He liked watching the sway of her rounded buttocks and the
way her firm calves curved enticingly with her climb. He wanted to slide his
hand up the legs of her loose shorts and discover what dainty feminine garment
she wore beneath the practical outerwear.

He was distracting himself with lust rather than think about
the woman he was learning to know. He couldn’t do that much longer. Amy was not
a shallow beauty looking for fame and fortune, but a real woman with a life of
her own that he must take into consideration.

She sat down on a rock at the side of the road and gazed
down on him like a princess at a toad. “I dare you to slide up before Luigi
arrives.”

“I will make you pay for that when I get up there.” After
watching the effort it had taken for her to climb out of the small ravine,
Jacques knew he’d be risking surgery to try it upright. But he’d never turned
down a dare, and she knew it.

He didn’t have time for surgery. Cursing the ignominy of
crawling while the woman he wanted watched, he clenched his teeth and lowered
himself to the ground torn up by the crashing car. He’d have to ease up
backward, using his cane as brace to reduce the strain on his bad knee.

“You realize I can never look you in the eyes again,” he
declared, inching upward, feeling his way with his hands. “I am an Olympic
champion, and you have reduced me to a crawl.”

“I won’t look,” she promised cheerfully. “Although I must
say, I don’t think many men have the biceps to do what you’re doing now.”

He couldn’t help grinning. “You warm my heart. I am again
master of all I survey.”

“If that means you’re again an arrogant cockroach,” she said
blithely, “I daresay that’s innate and nothing I can take away. Watch the
blackberry cane on your right.”

“You are not supposed to be looking!” he chided, finding the
thorny branch and working around it.

“I’m not. I’ve gone cross-eyed with pain, and I’ll probably
black out at any moment. You will have to hurry to rescue me before I fall.”

She was poking fun at his need to take care of her, but he had
to laugh at her accuracy. “You are wicked and much too perceptive. I like this
side of you. You must say what you think more often.”

“No one listens when I do. You’re a captive audience.
Besides, you have enough dignity for both of us. It doesn’t hurt to dust it off
occasionally.”

“Dignity? Is that another way of saying arrogance?” Without
warning, he reached behind him and grabbed her ankle. His hand easily wrapped
around her slender bones so he could pull himself up the remainder of the way
and pull her down to him at the same time.

She slid off her rock and into his arms as if she belonged
there. And she did. This amazingly strong woman belonged in his arms, in his
bed, and in his dreams. Another crashing car could have shattered him. Instead,
this accident had opened another dimension of possibilities.

Covering Amy with his greater size, pressing her into the soft
grass along the roadside, Jacques straddled her hips and claimed the prize of
her mouth again. He could feel her curves along the length of him, arching
against his chest and groin as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Desire,
thick and warm, flooded through him. She drew on his tongue to show she felt
the same, and he almost lost his senses enough to take her there, with the
mosquitoes and poison ivy. All the blood rushed from his brain downward, and he
ground desperately against her until she groaned with equal desire.

Perhaps he could not have all he wanted, but he wouldn’t let
this opportunity pass unrewarded. He slid his hands beneath her shirt, popping
her buttons as he did so. He filled his palms to overflowing with the bounteous
breasts she hid behind her tailored clothes. He unhooked her brassiere and
teased her aroused nipples until she moaned for him and the zipper of his
trousers cut into his swelling need to take her.