“A herd of snakes, huh? I guess I could lasso a few before nightfall.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Just a little.”
“Well, I’m going to the bathroom. After that miracle landing of yours, it’s a wonder I didn’t pee my pants. My bladder is about to explode.”
He grinned sheepishly but didn’t acknowledge what she already knew: he had deliberately pulled that kamikaze move in the airplane. “I’ll start bringing in the supplies,” he offered.
She was about to enter the bathroom when he added, “Let the water run for a while before you drink it. We have a cistern here that collects rainwater, but it’s been sitting for a long time. It’ll probably be brackish at first.”
She nodded, not even looking back at him.
“And Rachel.. .”
She did turn then.
“I’ll do everything I can the next few days to make you safe.”
“I never doubted that.”
“And I won’t bother you, I promise.”
That was exactly what she wanted to hear.
So why did she feel like crying?
A temporary truce
Nightfall already seeped into their bayou hideaway by the time Remy had completed his snake hunt. No more snakes, surprise, surprise.
Meanwhile Rachel had dusted and swept the small cabin, laid out the handwoven carpet of brilliant blue and white on the floor, which had been rolled up in tobacco leaves to protect against mildew and moths. And she’d put fresh linens and mosquito netting on the beds and clean towels in the bathroom.
Now, the two of them were preparing dinner, together. Rachel cooked the way she made love: with concentration, relish and good humor. Remy decided that his goose was about to be cooked if he continued thinking along those lines.
They reheated some jambalaya which Tante Lulu had sent frozen in a Tupperware container, but Remy made “dirty rice” and a fresh salad of mustard greens and scallions, both of which he’d picked outside near where there had once been a small garden years ago. He topped the salad with a hot bacon dressing which he’d learned from his aunt as a youngster. Rachel had transformed Tante Lulu’s homemade French bread into a warm stuffed garlic loaf oozing with olives, tomatoes and provolone cheese. For a beverage, they had homemade dandelion wine which Remy had discovered in one of the cupboards.
So far, they hadn’t argued once.
But the night was still young.
Replete from all the good food and seeming peace, he tipped his chair back against the wall, sipped at his remaining wine, and asked, “Tell me about yourself.”
“Is that a hokey line or what?” Rachel laughed merrily, and his heart lurched. Probably a little heartburn, or something.
He shrugged. “You know everything about me, and I know almost nothing about you, except you were engaged until recently and that you are a Feng Shui decorator.
Where did you grow up? Were you a feisty little girl in red pigtails? A tomboy or a girly-girl? Did you go to college or decorating school? That kind of stuff.” In other words, safe conversation territory. No sex. No sterility.
Her face went suddenly serious. “Feisty? Hardly. I was always a good girl, always on my best behavior. My mother abandoned me when I was four years old. I lived in a dozen foster homes over the next decade, the hope always being that someone would adopt me. I was always tall for my age. Even when I was four, I looked older. And people want to adopt little kids—babies preferably, but if not babies, then toddlers or pretty little children. I was never that. It wasn’t my fault, but believe me, at the time, it felt like failure. I tried constantly to be a good girl, an excellent student, pretty, thin, all the things I thought would make me adopt-able.”
“Rachel!” Remy was shocked at the misery of her childhood, and horrified that he’d brought up such a painful subject.
“Now see,” she said, “I don’t like pity any more than you do. So, cut it out.”
She spoke so fiercely that Remy had to smile and hold up his hands in surrender.
“Lest you think I was misguided at the time, let me tell you about the parties and picnics that child services used to hold. They never called them adoption screenings, but that’s what they were. Cattle calls for little and big kids to be paraded before interested couples. I got lots of advice when I struck out so many times. Maybe I could slim down a bit. Can you imagine telling an eight-year-old girl she was fat? And I wasn’t. . . I know that now. Then, I was dressed as a much younger child. And once, a counselor suggested
I might have my hair dyed because red was not a popular adoption color.”
Remy didn’t care what Rachel said about not wanting pity, he reached across the table, took both her hands in his, and squeezed. She didn’t pull away—not right away, anyhow.
“Anyhow, I was adopted when I was fourteen by a lovely older childless couple, college anthropology professors. They probably considered me an experiment of sorts. But they were nice and loving to me—too late, of course, my dreams being gone by then, and too old and big to be cuddled anymore. True to my bad luck pattern, they died in an earthquake in Brazil when I was twenty, leaving me with no family once again.”
“You had it tough, babe—in its own way, as bad as Luc and René and I had it with my Dad after our mother died. We were pretty young, too. But we had each other, Thank God!”
Rachel looked wistful for a moment. “Oh, you have no idea how I wished I had brothers and sisters, even one. In fact, I used to fantasize that I had one of each—siblings that my mother had given away, just like me, and one day they would show up at my doorstep and welcome me into their loving families.”
Remy’s heart sank. Rachel might not realize it, but having a family of her own was extremely important to her. If he didn’t know it before, he knew now: they had absolutely no future together. “So, how did you connect with your grandmother, after all these years?”
“Don’t ask me why it took me so long, but last year I finally went onto one of those Internet websites where they locate birth parents. Within weeks, I had my mother’s name, address and phone number. She was living in Biloxi.”
“And?” he urged when it appeared she would say no more.
“And she was a total disappointment. If I had been expecting a joyful reunion, boy, was I in for a rude awakening. In her defense, my mother was dying of cancer by then, and all she cared about was her needs and her dashed dreams and all that stuff. Not one word of regret. I don’t think she would have been any different if I’d met her pre-cancer. Anyhow, it’s all over. She died without telling me that I had any living family, by the way. To her, they were long dead, I suppose. Or maybe she was just selfish to the end. In any case, her obituary was put in both the Biloxi and Houma and New Orleans newspapers—my idea, since she wasn’t around to say me nay—and I was listed as her only survivor. That’s when my grandmother contacted me.”
“Well, the bad times are over, and you’re happy now, right?” That was stupid, asking her if she’s happy now. We’re both miserable, that’s obvious. “I mean, you have a good life in D.C., don’t you?”
“I put impossible dreams behind me long ago, but my present reality is pretty darn nice, in my opinion. A grandmother and a cousin I never knew I had and am growing to care for day by day. That’s not bad.”
It was a sketchy story Rachel had told him. Missing were all the details and emotions that must have filled those years from four to thirty-something.
“You’re thinking that you and I have a lot in common, aren’t you?” she asked with a hint of amusement in her voice and twinkling eyes.
“Yeah, I am,” he confessed, giving her hands a final squeeze and releasing them. “But it’s made us both stronger, hasn’t it?”
She considered his words for a moment, then nodded. “I’m glad we can still be friends, Remy,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
“Oh, yeah.” But friends and lovers would be even better. Talk about impossible dreams.
Chapter 16
When you’re hot, you’re hot
Rachel awakened late the next morning to the sound of whistling. She became aware of the extremely high humidity and the smell of roses.
She stretched out the kinks from her marvelous sleep— at least ten hours—and walked over to the small window in the bedroom loft. Outside she saw Remy trimming back the pink and white climbing roses, which had overgrown two sides of the cottage and the roof, and placing the branches in a burn barrel in the side yard. He whistled while he worked. Whistling?
If she hadn’t been wide awake already, she would be now at the sight she beheld. Remy. Mercy! What a picture this hot Cajun rogue was, wearing short, low-riding, black nylon shorts, athletic shoes sans socks, a Tulane baseball cap, and work gloves. And nothing else. Sweat rolled in glistening rivulets over his bare skin. And, Lordy, Lordy, there was a lot of skin exposed. Smooth skin, sexy skin, mangled skin, tanned skin, muscled skin, sexy skin, masculine skin, sexy skin. Every couple minutes, he swiped a forearm over his forehead to stem the tide, a useless exer- cise in this heat, made even worse by the fire he was feeding.
Truth to tell, the wretch fed a fire in her, as well. She was hot, hot, hot for the man. The question was how to bank the embers before she imploded, or did something rash, like offer to wipe him down.
Well, Rachel had always been a list maker. Once she finished with her shower and breakfast, she decided to find a pen and tablet and begin making some lists. A checklist of jobs to be completed for Remy’s houseboat and Charmaine’s spa. Things she wanted to do with her grandmother before returning to Washington next month. Pros and cons of her career: Should she stay with Daphne’s firm in D.C., or go off on her own? A shopping list of gifts to buy for Granny, Beau and her friends back home. Finally, and most important in the short term, a new and revised list of conditions for living with Remy during their enforced stay. In particular, no more revealing, or non-existent clothing, which could lead to her seduction.
In all honesty, the problem lay with her, not Remy. She had to regain her self-control, not put the onus on him to stem his effect on her. Still, he could at least cover himself more; she added that to her Remy List.
There was only one snag with this whole list-making enterprise when it came to Remy. What trade-off would he ask of her in return?
Oh, well, one day down. Only four more to go.
We’re havin’ a heat wave
Remy executed a shallow dive into the four-foot-deep stream and swam three circular laps underwater for a good minute and a half.
It was hotter than hell today. No day to be doing hard physical yard work, but necessary for him in order to douse the fire within—a fire that had absolutely nothing to do with air temperature or humidity.
He came up out of the water with a splashy whoosh, tossing his hair back off his face. Standing waist-deep in the cool stream near the bank, he glanced toward the cabin. Then he glanced again.
There she sat, the bane of his existence, on an ancient rocking chair. Her bare feet were propped on the porch rail—bare feet which led up about a mile of bare leg to a pair of Charmaine’s old cheerleading shorts. Her legs were bent at the knees, with her thighs serving as a desk for the tablet on which she wrote rapidly. On top, she wore a stretch T-shirt with the logo, GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN, bracketed by two smiley faces in two whoo-boy strategic places. That brought a smile to his lips. This outrageous bit of cotton was what he and his brothers had always called sex-bait shirts as teenagers.
She had no right to tempt him so. Surely, she could have found something less suggestive in the bag Tante Lulu had packed for her, like one of his aunt’s muu-muu’s.
Still deep in concentration, Rachel put the end of her pencil in her mouth and sucked on it. That innocent action on her part shot the lead slam-dunk into his own pencil. Just call me LeDeux #2.
With a muttered expletive, Remy dove back into the water. And swam, and swam, and swam.
Oh, well, one day down. Only four more to go.
Remy wondered if he would survive.
Nope, the voice in his head said.
This time when he completed his laps and started walking toward shore, finger-combing his wet hair off his face, he noticed that Rachel no longer scribbled. In fact, she stared at him, lips parted with astonishment, or something.
Well, hell! He glanced down to his sopping shorts to make sure he was decent. A-okay there. No “pencils” sticking out, as far as he could tell, although the package was clearly outlined. Nothing she hadn’t seen before. Tilting his head to the side, he looked back at Rachel. Yep, she stared at him as if he was a cold popsicle on a summer day and she’d like to lick him up one side and down the other.
He smiled.
Quickly, she masked over the hungry expression on her face, replacing it with one of bland disinterest. But she couldn’t fool him. He’d already seen. Hot damn, he had seen.
Rachel wanted him.
Bad.
The question was: What do I do with that information?
Dumber than dirt, good ol’ Jude proclaimed.
Didn’t we almost have it all?
Rachel snapped her jaw shut, but couldn’t help staring at Remy as he walked toward the porch.
He wore only a pair of wet shorts which clung to his hips and belly and genitals. He may as well have been naked. His stride was slow and confident, but Rachel saw beneath the surface. He didn’t relish anyone, especially her, staring at his disfigured body. Oh, if he only knew how she saw him! True, the skin on one side was pinkish in places, scarred in others, even downright mangled, but his appearance surpassed everything in her imagination that she had ever considered manly, or handsome, or sexy. In essence, he was beautiful to her. All he had to do was look at her, and she went breathless. And it wasn’t just sexual chemistry, either, though there was plenty of that. He touched her soul in a way no other man had.
But it was over. He’d made that clear. Heck, she’d made that clear. And it was over. He’d betrayed her with his deliberate omission about his sterility. He hadn’t been all that honest about his work either. In neither case did he lie, precisely. Bottom line, she could never trust a man with all those secrets. Who knew how many more there were!
Still, she kept coming back to the same old thing. Wasn’t there some way they could work things out? They’d almost had it all—the perfect love, or so it had seemed. But he couldn’t be trusted, and she was too vulnerable after her experience with David. If he promised to be totally honest with her in the future, would she be able to trust him? Not at this point. His male pride, his job loyalty, his family, his honor—any number of things would stand in the way. She knew at heart that they would. Even now, he refused to discuss the sterility issue, a taboo subject, a secret of sorts with him.
On the plus side, he was a supremely good man. He would be a faithful lover or husband. Family would always matter to him. He would protect her with his life. He would love her deeply.
But she would always be waiting for the other shoe to drop.
With a sigh of resignation, she reflected, Didn’t we almost have it all.
Unfortunately, that was not enough.
Do ya think I’m sexy?
“Keep looking at me like that, cupcake, and our pact is ashes.”
“Pact?” she stammered out, flustered because he’d caught her in the act of ogling him. She knew what pact he referred to, all right. She damn well knew.
“Yeah. No sex, no questions. Remember?” God, it’s fun making her face turn red. Immediately, he amended that with, Man, am I pathetic, getting my jollies by embarrassing a woman!
“Well, how about you stop sabotaging our pact, buster.”
“Sabotaging? Me? How?” He had trouble following her thinking, but then he wasn’t thinking so clearly himself.
“By prancing around half-naked, in those skimpy, sexy shorts that practically shout, ’Here I am. Take me, baby.’”
“These are fifteen-year-old, ratt
y shorts from my boot-camp days, which are in no way skimpy. And I never pranced a day in my life,” he declared indignantly, hands on hips. Then he thought a second about what she’d said, and a big ol’ grin crept over his mouth—the slow, lazy kind that he sensed she loved/hated. “You think I’m sexy?”
“Get a life.” Her face turned even redder.
“You think I’m sexy,” he accused, coming up onto the porch to stand in front of her. In fact, he put a hand on each of the arms of the rocking chair and leaned over her. Water droplets still stood out all over his skin, and dripped down on her, but he threw off heat like a furnace—a carnal furnace.
She put her tablet aside, ducked under his arms, and stood before him. Real close. “Don’t get any ideas.”
Oh, I have ideas, all right, sweetheart. Hard not to with that sex-bait “fun” T-shirt flashing in front of my face like a neon sign, saying “Catch me if you can.” Not that I would tell her that. Wouldn’t want her to hide all that fun.
“You’re laughing at me.”
I can’t help myself. You think I’m sexy. “Am not.”
“Stop being so immature.”
You wanna talk about immature? Imagine the situation from my perspective. Trying to carry on a sensible conversation with a grown woman standing knee-knocking close to me in a teenage sex-bait shirt. “Honey, we have a pact,” he said with exaggerated patience. “What makes you think I’d do anything to jeopardize that pact?” See, I can be all sweetness and innocence, too.
“You already are.”
“By wearing shorts?” Man, what would she think if I shucked these pants and showed her real jeopardy?
“And nothing else.”
This is incredible. We had an agreement. No sex in return for her not asking about my sterility. And she thinks I’m jeopardizing the whole thing. Does she think I’m deliberately trying to tempt her? That’s just what she thinks. Does that mean she’s temptable? Hmmm.“You think I’m sexy.”