Tempestuous/Restless Heart

by Tami Hoag

  He said it as if he expected her to put up a fight. Alex blinked at him, stunned.

  “I want us to get married, buy a place of our own, and have a dozen children.”

  He stared at her again, waiting for a rebuttal like a disputatious debate-team captain.

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all planned out,” Alex said, watching him closely, awestruck by the determination that rolled off him like steam. People said clothes made the man, but even in tattered jeans Christian’s powerful personality radiated around him like an aura.

  He ran a hand back through his hair and set his jaw at a stubborn angle. “I know you don’t want me trying to run your life, but you’re wrong, Alex. I do have a right to say whether or not you should take risks. Loving you gives me that right, because it’s no longer only your life you’re risking, it’s mine as well. Our lives are intertwined, now and forever, if I have anything to say about it. You may not like it, but there you have it.”

  Alex sat for a long minute staring down at the road as cars drove past. She had come to Virginia thinking she would have no one to rely on but herself. The idea of a relationship had seemed remote, nonexistent really. Now this magnificent man was towering over her telling her he wanted her to be his wife. This untamable rake who had collected hearts all over the Western world was asking her to marry him.

  “I—I don’t know what to say,” she murmured, her brows knitting in confusion as emotions swirled inside her like a tempest.

  “Say you love me,” Christian whispered, his heart in his throat. He dropped to his knees in front of her, gritting his teeth as gravel bit into his scraped skin.

  Alex caught her breath at the sudden vulnerability in his expression. How could he doubt she loved him? Her heart ached from loving him. “I do love you.”

  “Then say you’ll marry me.” He hung on her silence, dying a little bit with every second that passed.

  “I—I’m scared, Christian,” Alex said at last, the words tumbling out as the realization struck her.

  Too many good things had gone bad on her. Too many dreams had ended in disappointment. Christian knelt before her, golden and tempting, too good to be true. She trembled from the desire to embrace him and from the fear that he would somehow vanish from her grasp as so many other things dear to her had.

  “I’m scared.”

  Christian took her hands in his. “Don’t be afraid to reach out for happiness, Alex. You deserve it. You deserve to be loved and cherished. Don’t deny yourself any longer because of the past. We have a future ahead of us.”

  He was right. She’d let her past wield too much power over her. She’d paid penance for it and suffered and cried. It was time to let go, to put it all behind her and look to the future, a future with a man she loved, a man who believed in her.

  Christian watched as a slow smile curved Alex’s lush mouth, and her eyes lit up with gold. He could actually feel his heart warm and expand in response. Leaning forward, he captured her smile with a tender kiss.

  “Let’s go see Dr. Pearl,” he said, rising and drawing Alex up with him.

  He draped an arm around her and held her close as they started toward the old farmhouse, toward their new life.

  And in his heart of hearts he said, Good-bye, Uncle Dicky, wherever you are.

  The Restless

  Heart

  one

  “AUNTIE DANIELLE, JEREMY SPIT ON MY dessert!”

  Danielle Hamilton quickly wiped a grimace of distaste from her face, lest Jeremy see it and catalog it away for future reference in his diabolical nine-year-old brain. Almost too exhausted to think, she leaned heavily against the white framed archway that led into the family room.

  “Well, spit on his, Dahlia,” she suggested. What did she know about kids? Nothing. She’d had an easier time of it dealing with the Bushmen of Kenya. The Tibetan nomads had been less of a mystery to her. Even as a child, she had known nothing about kids; she’d been raised in a world of adults.

  “I did spit on his,” declared eleven-year-old Dahlia Beauvais. “He ate it anyway.”

  “Gross,” Danielle muttered as the doorbell rang. With a tremendous effort she pushed herself away from the door frame, sidestepping the carnage a plastic fighter jet had wreaked on a field of miniature soldiers.

  “Hey, look out!” Tinks Beauvais shouted indignantly. The seven-year-old tomboy crouched behind a wing chair, poised to send a spaceship into the fray. “You’re in a war zone!”

  “Tell me about it,” Danielle grumbled dryly.

  North and South revisited. And this time the South was winning. One world-renowned photographer from New Hampshire didn’t stand a chance against this quintet of seasoned veterans in the kids-versus-adults power-struggle game. She was seriously outnumbered. They also had an age advantage she didn’t care to dwell on. Their energy reserves were amazing. Hers were depleted. She was running on empty and the one person she had counted on to help her through this babysitting fiasco had been knocked out of commission on the first day of their mission.

  She envied Butler. He was now lolling the hours away in the quiet seclusion of his quarters, happily numbed to the situation by a substantial dose of Darvon.

  Lord, how the Beauvais children had rendered Butler immobile, she thought with a shudder. The indomitable Alistair Urquhart-Butler, who had run her father’s household for four decades. The man who had stood the test of time, who had outlasted Laird Hamilton’s five wives, and helped raise six Hamilton children, had finally been brought down by a roller skate. It was unthinkable. It was especially unthinkable because he had helped coerce her into coming to New Orleans in the first place.

  “Aye, lass, I’ll go with you,” he’d said. “I’ll lend you a hand. You can count on me.”

  All the counting she’d done on him so far was to count him out when he’d hit the polished pine floor with a bone-jarring thud.

  As the doorbell sounded a second time, she glanced up, ignoring the intricate plaster moldings on the ceiling of the beautifully preserved Garden District home. Her interest was focused on an even higher plane. “Lord,” she muttered, “this had better be the nanny or we’re going to be looking at serious infractions of some of the major commandments.”

  I could always plead temporary insanity, Danielle thought. In fact, it had to have been some kind of temporary insanity that had allowed her to agree to stay with Suzannah’s children in the first place. She usually made it a point to stay clear of children. She had to have been disoriented and confused or she never would have agreed to this. Suzannah had taken advantage of her jet lag. Her sister had pounced on her practically the minute she’d stepped off the plane that had returned her to the States after her yearlong project in Tibet.

  “Oh, Danielle, won’t you please come stay with the children while Courtland and I go on vacation? They need a ‘family influence.’” Danielle mocked her sister’s plea as she continued down the hall toward the front door and her salvation. She gave a rude snort. “What they need is a drill sergeant.”

  In the hall lay an exhausted heap of brown fur that had begun the day as a large enthusiastic dog of indeterminate background. Head on his paws, he was obviously reconsidering the wisdom of moving into the Beauvais house. Danielle was reasonably certain he didn’t belong there. The children had assured her he did, yet each called the poor animal by a different name. Suzannah hadn’t mentioned a dog.

  Suzannah hadn’t mentioned a lot of things. In her haste to leave on her Caribbean vacation with her husband, Danielle’s half sister had failed to mention that her children were monsters. She had conveniently forgotten to tell Danielle that mere mention of the Beauvais house was enough to strike terror into the heart of nearly every nanny in New Orleans. After two days with her five nieces and nephews, Danielle doubted Mary Poppins would have been willing to take them on. The Beauvais children called for sterner stuff—the Marines, for instance.

  She stepped over the dog and paused to take a deep breath and regroup he
r dwindling resources. It had taken nineteen phone calls to locate an agency willing to send a nanny to the Beauvais house. After being turned down by every place in town, she had resorted to going through the list again, disguising her voice and omitting the family name of the children. She didn’t want to do anything to scare this woman off. If she didn’t get reinforcements soon, she was going to have to buy a gun—for self-protection.

  The ornate gilt-framed mirror that hung above the hall table told no pretty lies. Danielle groaned at her reflection. She hadn’t looked this bad after two months in the Amazonian jungle. She looked like thirty-nine had come and gone several times instead of just once. Her ash-blond hair that hung just past her shoulders looked like a rag mop. Two sleepless nights of sitting up with the baby had painted purple smudges beneath her gray eyes. She had inherited her mother’s classic bone structure—the world-famous Ingamar cheekbones, the slim straight nose, the sculpted chin. But what was currently arranged over it would have sent her mother, the renowned model Ingrid, into shock. Bags, shadows, and worry lines, a model’s nightmare.

  Remnants of the lunchtime food fight between Tinks and Jeremy clung to her lavender silk T-shirt. There were two large paw prints on her khaki safari shorts. The Hermès sandals on her feet had been painted fluorescent orange by four-year-old Ambrose while she’d attempted to feed the baby strained beets.

  “This woman is going to take one look at you and run,” Danielle muttered. Scrunching a handful of hair in her fist, she discovered a dried glob of beets. “No one with an ounce of sense would come near this place.”

  Heaving a sigh, she pulled open the heavy oak door and her breathing stopped altogether at the sight of the person standing on the other side of the wrought-iron security door.

  He was no Mary Poppins.

  two

  WHAT A FACE! DANIELLE’S FIRST INSTINCT was to grab her camera and capture it on film—even though she had given up taking portraits a year ago.

  Twinkling black eyes stared at her from a face that was wide, strong, and utterly masculine. Faint laugh lines fanned out from his eyes as a smile tilted up one side of his black mustache. He had a solid square jaw and bold, aquiline nose. Danielle’s toes tingled. She’d always been a sucker for a man with a great jaw. A deep dimple in his left cheek revealed itself as his smile broadened. His even, white teeth flashed against his deeply tanned skin. The effect was enough to make a woman offer her services as a love slave.

  His body wasn’t going to change her mind on the subject either. He had the build of a heavyweight boxer—broad shoulders and a thick chest. He wore a necktie, but the top button of his shirt was undone, as if he hadn’t been able to get the collar closed around his neck. Danielle would have bet her favorite Nikon that under his conservative white shirt and charcoal slacks this man was a veritable sculpture of muscle.

  Her gaze drifted back to his face. “Let’s run away together.”

  His dark eyes widened in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Never mind,” Danielle said dejectedly as a crashing sounded somewhere in the house behind her and reality returned with a vengeful rush. There were five little reasons she couldn’t fulfill her fantasy and one big reason. He had to be nearly ten years younger than she was and a hundred years younger than she felt. She couldn’t have run off with him: he would have had to push her in a wheelchair.

  “I can’t leave the house,” she said flatly. “I’m waiting for a nanny—or the hardening of my arteries. Whichever comes first.”

  “You’re Mrs. Hamilton?”

  “Miss Hamilton,” she hastened to correct him. No sense in feeling more matronly than she already did in the face of all that youthful virility. “Danielle Hamilton.”

  “Oh, I’m pleased to meet you. Miss Danielle Hamilton,” he drawled, his words tumbling out of his mouth lazily, all soft vowels and Cajun French inflection. He said her name as if he already knew her—intimately. His voice was like raw silk, at once rough and smooth. His eyes glittered like polished onyx.

  Danielle’s toes curled against her fluorescent orange sandals. She wondered vaguely if anyone had ever formulated a theory on the voice as a sex organ. She could feel his every syllable stroking her senses. It was incredible and more than a little disturbing. She was a mature, experienced woman. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had turned her bones to marsh-mallow with nothing more than the sound of his voice.

  Holding eye contact, he reached a wide hand through the bars of the security door. Danielle’s elegant hand inched forward to meet it tentatively, as if she wasn’t sure she could withstand the shock of touching him. Considering what his voice was doing to her internal temperature, she was liable to combust spontaneously if they touched.

  “Remy Doucet,” he said, curling his fingers around hers. The left corner of his mouth tugged upward and his dimple deepened. “I’m your nanny, chère.”

  Danielle stared at him in stunned disbelief. “I must be delirious,” she said at last with a twitter of hysterical laughter. “I thought you said you were my nanny.”

  A delicious sexy grin spread across his face. “I am.”

  “You are?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” he said, his voice low and smoky.

  Danielle shook her head, as if trying to come out of a trance. This devastating hunk of masculinity was a nanny? Her nanny? All she’d done was punch a phone number and someone had sent this piece of prime beef to her doorstep? Dial-A-Stud. What a concept!

  She leaned heavily against the door frame as all sorts of illicit ideas sapped the strength from her knees. If he accepted the job, he would be in the house day and night—at Suzannah’s expense, Danielle thought, a malicious smile curving her wide mouth. She would be able to look at him whenever she wanted to. The trouble was, looking wasn’t the only thing her suddenly crazed hormones had in mind.

  She thunked herself on the forehead with the heel of her hand. Lord, she was getting the hots for the family nanny! She was fantasizing about having a handsome young man at her beck and call. What kind of depraved, nearly middle-aged person was she turning into? This was completely unacceptable behavior. She was Danielle Ingamar Hamilton, for heaven’s sake! She had dated princes. She had survived jungles and deserts and life in New York City. She was known the world over for her calm, cool demeanor in every circumstance.

  “You did call for a nanny, didn’t you, chère?” Remy asked, his dark brows lifting.

  “Sure I called for a nanny,” Danielle said, pulling herself together. She gave him a skeptical look. “But you’re not exactly what I had in mind, Mr…. ?”

  “Doucet,” he finished for her, his eyes flashing with a quick burst of Gallic temper. And this job wasn’t exactly what he had in mind either, lady. He was a geologist. But there wasn’t a lot of work for geologists in South Louisiana these days. Things had tightened up a few years back when the oil economy had gone belly-up. He’d still had a job then. But when Eagle Oil had been absorbed by the foreign corporate octopus Knox Amalgamated, just a year ago, corporate restructuring had left him with two alternatives—relocate to the Outer Hebrides or relocate to a new profession. He had tried the first. Now he was trying the second.

  “What’sa matter, chère?” he said defensively. “You think a man can’t be a good nanny?”

  “Well, no, I—”

  He planted his hands at his waist and leaned forward aggressively. “You think a man would be a lousy nanny just ’cause he’s not a woman?”

  “Um—I haven’t given the subject a great deal of thought, actually.”

  He shook a thick finger at her through the bars of the security door. “You think I can’t be a nanny just ’cause I don’t have breasts?”

  Danielle cast an appreciative look at the expanse of solid male pectorals straining the confines of the white dress shirt. “Believe me, Mr. Doucet, I’m glad you don’t have breasts. I can probably speak for all of womankind on that question.”

  “There’s no rules against
men being nannies, you know. A man can do this job just as well as a woman.” His words to his sister Annick had been more along the lines of “anyone could do it,” but he prudently decided to modify the statement slightly for his future employer.

  “I’m sure you’re right.” At least Danielle wasn’t about to argue the point with him. By the look of him, she figured he could probably do anything he darn well wanted to. It was kind of sweet, really, that this incredibly macho-looking guy wanted to take care of children for a living. The idea touched her in a very private, very vulnerable part of her heart.

  “So, you gonna let me in, or what, darlin’?” Remy asked with a sudden irrepressible grin. His flare of temper had passed as quickly as a summer cloudburst. He leaned a beefy shoulder beside the door, crossed his ankles and fanned himself with his hand. “It’s gettin’ hot out here.”

  Not any hotter out there than it was inside her skin, Danielle thought, but she kept that little observation to herself. Remy Doucet struck her as a man who didn’t need a great deal of encouragement to be outrageously flirtatious.

  She unlatched the security door and, with a sweep of her hand, stood back and motioned for him to come in. As he stepped past her, her mind searched frantically for a room they could go to that didn’t look like the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. There wasn’t one. Since their parents’ departure the Beauvais offspring had reduced the showplace home to a shambles. They could have gone into the darkroom for the interview, but considering the man’s magnetism, that didn’t strike her as the brightest idea—appealing, yes, smart, no.

  Remy glanced around the elegant entrance hall. Ivory silk moiré wallpaper, a chandelier of crystal prisms, a curving staircase that was like something out of Gone With the Wind. Nice. And despite the fact that the lady standing before him was obviously dead on her feet, there was an air of elegance about her from the top of her tousled blond head to the tips of her—fluorescent orange sandals? He frowned a bit at the footwear.