by Tami Hoag
“Then why do you have to work? Why can’t you be with us?”
“It’s kind of complicated, Ambrose,” she said. It had to do with wanting things she couldn’t have and doing something for the greater good of all concerned. She only wished it didn’t have to hurt so much.
There was suddenly a thunder of footsteps on the stairs. Danielle turned to see Tinks and Jeremy barreling toward her, looking as if they had just escaped some unnamed terror by the skin of their teeth.
“Hi,” Jeremy said between gasps for breath. His eyes fastened on the door behind Danielle, then turned to her. “Can me and Tinks come in the darkroom with you?”
Danielle shook her head, though she was secretly pleased they wanted to spend time with her. Maybe she wasn’t as big a flop with kids as she thought. Ambrose missed her. Jeremy and Tinks wanted to be with her. “Nope. Sorry. You know the rules about the darkroom—absolutely no kids allowed. There’s too much stuff in there that could hurt you.”
Jeremy gave her his best pleading look as Tinks stole a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Aw, come on, Auntie Danielle. Please. It’d be so cool.”
Danielle felt herself relenting, but she didn’t give in. As much as she wanted the kids to like her, she had to think of safety first. A darkroom full of chemicals was no place for an insatiably inquisitive nine-year-old and his anything-on-a-dare little sister. “Nope. I can’t let you, guys.”
They were about to really start begging when heavier footsteps sounded on the stairs. Tinks and Jeremy both went a little pale beneath their freckles. The terrier whined. Ambrose giggled.
Remy appeared on the landing like an avenging Cajun god—big, dark, and brooding. His gaze flicked over Danielle but homed in quickly on Tinks and Jeremy. As he stalked down the hall, his expression ominous, he raised a hand and pointed at the pair.
“You two, back to the kitchen. Don’t you be makin’ me any more ticked off than I already am or I’ll hand you over to my brother Lucky and let him use you for gator bait.”
Without a word, Jeremy and Tinks scooted past him and disappeared down the stairs. Danielle swallowed the disappointment she felt at discovering the children had only wanted to use her and the darkroom for a hideout.
“What have they done now?” she asked, pushing herself to her feet.
Remy planted his hands on his hips and gave her a wry look. “You know that oil portrait of the Beauvais who fought beside Andrew Jackson in the Battle of N’Awlins?”
“The one that hangs in Courtland’s study?”
“Oui, the very one. The Dynamic Duo decided he’d look better with a mustache and a goatee.”
Danielle’s face dropped. “They didn’t.”
“They did. In indelible laundry marker. They are now supposed to be pondering the error of their ways as they scrub the kitchen floor with toothbrushes.”
“Mr. Butler got really-eally mad,” Ambrose added, his eyes bugging out behind his mask.
Remy grimaced at the reminder of Butler, the bane of his existence. Checking his watch, he said, “It’s past your bedtime, ’tit chaoui.”
“That means little raccoon,” Ambrose explained to Danielle with no small amount of pride. He tugged on her hand so she would bend down for a good-night kiss, then trotted back to his room with the day’s mystery dog right behind him.
The instant the boy disappeared Danielle became painfully aware of the fact that she was alone with Remy for the first time since their infamous shake-and-bake kitchen scene. She pulled her camera bag into her arms and hugged it to her.
“Well,” she said, her mouth cotton-dry, gaze aimed just to the left of Remy’s head. “Guess I’d better get to work. I’m glad to know you’re handling everything here while I’m out.”
“Oh, I’m real good at handlin’ things,” he said, his dark voice dripping insinuation. He smiled a little to himself as he watched the color bloom across her gorgeous cheekbones. “Can I come in the darkroom with you, Danielle? I’m a big boy.”
Was he ever, she thought, not quite able to keep her gaze from flicking hungrily over his muscular frame. Heat swept through her, making a mockery of the mansion’s central air-conditioning. “I don’t think so,” she stammered. “I don’t like distractions when I’m working.”
Attempting to dismiss him, she turned and took the key down from its hiding place and unlocked the door. He wasn’t leaving; she could feel him standing right behind her. “Good night,” she mumbled, slipping into the darkroom. She tried to pull the door shut behind her, but one big sneakered foot prevented her.
“This once,” Remy said with a boyish grin. “I wanna see what you been doin’ all day besides avoiding me.”
He muscled his way into the narrow room that had at one time been a gentlemen’s dressing room. Danielle scowled at him. “Have you ever considered a career in selling door-to-door?”
Ignoring her sardonic question, he set about exploring the darkroom, keeping one eye on Danielle. She didn’t like him trespassing on her private territory and stood in the far corner bristling like a cat. Well, that was just too bad, he thought as he poked around, examining the tanks, print trays, the various bottles of mysterious solutions, the enlarger, the print dryer—the tools of the trade she claimed to prize above all else. He had his doubts about that, but he was going to keep them to himself for the moment.
He’d found several books of her work prominently displayed in the Beauvais library and had studied them intently over the past few days. Even his untrained eye could recognize Danielle’s brilliance. She had a wonderful talent for capturing the essence of each person she photographed. The life and thoughts of her subjects were there for all to see—joy, sorrow, innocence, pride, even the most complex mix of emotions came through with striking clarity. Her photographs were so vivid, so true-to-life, they seemed almost three-dimensional.
Her book Americans had more than once nearly moved him to tears. A World War II veteran holding hands with the son who had lost his legs in Vietnam as a Memorial Day parade passed before them. A Midwestern farmer and his wife dancing joyously in their yard, arms raised to the heavens as rain poured down to end a summer drought. A homeless woman on the streets of San Francisco holding her child on her lap, her pride shattering as she begged a stranger for spare change.
These were not the photographs of a woman who valued art above all else. These had come from the genius of a woman who was perhaps a bit too sensitive, too insightful. She had laid her own soul bare in her work, and Remy had found himself falling a little more in love with her. He even found himself able to forgive her for abandoning him to the wiles of a dour Scot and a gang of kids destined for reform school.
“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.
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“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. “T
he 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.”