by Tami Hoag
They had found him in the dense forest behind Renard’s, unconscious, a gash in his forehead and a snake bite on the back of his small hand. He and Tinks had snuck away from the dance, bent on bringing their find to Danielle if they couldn’t get Danielle to their find—an abandoned quail’s nest with eggs still in it. According to Tinks, they had swiped a flashlight out of the minivan and stolen off to the woods to get the nest. Unfortunately, a copperhead had chosen the same time to make his dinner of the abandoned eggs. Jeremy had been bitten just as he’d reached for the nest. Terrified, the two children had turned and run back in the direction of Renard’s, but Jeremy, possibly already feeling the effects of the snake’s venom, had stumbled and fallen, striking his head.
Every time she closed her eyes Danielle could see the terrible image of her nephew, the mischief maker, the human tornado, lying so unnaturally still on the ground. And it was all her fault. Her stomach turned as she wondered how she would ever again be able to face Suzannah.
As if her thoughts had conjured up her sister, the waiting room doors slid open and Suzannah burst in with Courtland right behind her. Danielle stopped her pacing, stunned into motionlessness, and stared, thinking somewhere in the back of her mind that the pair didn’t look as if they’d just come from the Caribbean. There were no signs of recent fun in the sun. They were dressed casually, as if they had just been called from a quiet evening at home. Courtland’s pale hair was sticking up in back as if he might have fallen asleep on the couch while reading the newspaper. Suzannah’s patrician features were scrubbed clean of cosmetics.
Suzannah rushed toward her, her flame-red hair flying behind her, her big gray eyes shadowed with worry. “Danielle! How is he? Have you heard anything?”
Danielle stared at her sister, dumbfounded. “Suzannah? Courtland? How did you get here?”
There was a flash of guilt in Suzannah’s eyes as she exchanged a look with Butler, but the explanation was put on hold. The doors to the emergency room swung open and the doctor came out asking for Jeremy’s parents. The trio disappeared into the nether regions of the hospital, leaving the rest of the group wondering if the news was good or bad.
Danielle wheeled on Butler, feeling she had somehow been played for a fool. “What exactly is going on here, Butler? There’s no way in hell Suzannah and Courtland could have gotten here from Paradise Island in the ten minutes since you called them.”
The old retainer shifted uncomfortably on his chair, his cheeks flushing to a color that nearly matched his hair. “Och, well now, lass, they werna exactly that far away.”
“How far away were they exactly?”
Butler stared down at his shoes. “Ar—um—the Grande Belle Inn. Here in Luck since yesterday. At the Pontchartrain Hotel before that.”
“There was never any trip to the islands, was there?” Danielle asked quietly.
He looked up at her and sighed, his eyes so full of pity Danielle almost couldn’t bear it. “No lass. Your sister was worried. Aye, we all were worried about you. You hie yourself off to godforsaken Tibet. We see not hide nor hair of you for a year. We had to do something to get you back amongst the living. Suzannah came up with the notion of having you stay with the bairns to prove to yourself you could do it.”
“To prove that I could do it,” Danielle whispered, appalled and humiliated. “You made a royal fool of me. Thank you very much. And look what happened.” She swung an arm in the direction of the doors to the ER. “I said from the first I was the last person Suzannah should have called on to stay with her children and I was right.”
“This wasn’t your fault, Danielle,” Remy said, pushing himself to his feet.
“Wasn’t it?” she asked, turning tortured eyes toward him.
“He’d been told not to go into the woods alone.”
“He wouldn’t have been alone if I had listened to him, if I had been paying attention to him instead of worrying about myself. Hell, he only wanted to impress me and I couldn’t bother to pay enough attention to him to realize that.”
“He wouldn’t have gone out there at all if I hadn’t taken him there first, chère,” Remy’s father said, his dark eyes solemn, the line of his mouth grim above his square jaw.
“You don’t understand,” she mumbled, tears rising up in her throat to choke her.
Remy started to put an arm around her, but she shrugged him off again. She was responsible, she should have to bear the pain alone. She’d been right to leave after the tragedy in London. She wasn’t fit for the role of parent, surrogate or otherwise. In London it had been her art that had distracted her from her duty. Here it had been her love life. Either way the proof was there: she was simply too self-absorbed to be reliable in a parental situation. She belonged alone. Like many a Hamilton before her, it seemed she was destined to be alone.
She had known that for some time now, had accepted it. Then Suzannah had lured her to New Orleans and she had been given a glimpse of the life she would never have. It seemed fate had an exceedingly cruel sense of humor, she thought as she leaned a shoulder against the plate-glass window and stared out at the parking lot. During this time with the children and Remy she had been forced to dig up every emotion she had. She’d banished demons she had never wanted to face and fallen in love with a dark-haired Cajun devil who was wrong for her from the word go.
Now she would have to cram all those feelings back into their compartment like springy trick snakes in a can. For the first time ever her restless heart had longed for a home, but she was going to have to tear up the fragile roots that had already begun to grow and move on. She was going to end up playing it noble after all, she thought, her mouth twisting at the irony. She would leave the children to their parents, leave Butler to meddle in someone else’s life. And she would leave Remy to that young, sweet-faced, wonderful-with-children Marie. And she would go back to the one thing she did very well or cared enough about. It was just too bad for her that her muse suddenly seemed lacking as a companion.
“Danielle, don’t do this to yourself, sugar,” Remy whispered.
His reflection loomed up directly behind hers in the glass, broad and strong, young and handsome. And her heart squeezed unmercifully at the thought of losing him. Oh, why couldn’t they just have left her to her nomadic, solitary life? It was so much easier to live without something when you didn’t know what you were missing. Now she would know and the sense of loss would be with her always.
A nurse came through the double doors to tell them that Jeremy would have to remain in the hospital for a day or two, but that he would be all right. Murmurs and sighs of relief cut through the tension in the waiting room like a sudden cooling breeze on an unbearably sultry day. Remy lifted his hands to Danielle’s shoulders and rubbed at the knotted muscles.
“See?” he whispered. “He’s gonna be fine.”
“No thanks to me,” Danielle murmured. She ducked out from under his touch and walked out of the hospital into the warm Louisiana night.
Remy started after her, but Butler called him back.
“Let her go, laddie. Give her a wee moment to herself.”
Remy stopped himself at the door, not altogether convinced of Butler’s wisdom, but not wanting to push Danielle too hard either.
And in that wee moment Danielle slipped around to the front of the building, got into the only taxi in town, handed the driver two hundred-dollar bills, and settled in for the ride to New Orleans, leaving Luck and Remy and her heart behind.
thirteen
DANIELLE THREW OPEN THE WOODEN SHUTTERS and stepped out onto her balcony. The scents of goats and car exhaust fumes, human sweat and cooking meat, all combined into one hot blast of air that made her think of a monkey cage at a zoo on a steamy rainy day. She staggered back into the suite and collapsed on the rattan sofa, feeling as green as new grass.
Maybe Madagascar had been a bad choice.
She had first gone to New York, but Manhattan had been too loud, the sounds too discordant. The smell of
garbage smoldering on the curbs had been an affront after sweet olive and roses. Off she had flown to Paris, but the sound of Parisian French had somehow pained her heart. It lacked the warmth of its Cajun relative. And every time she turned and caught a glimpse of a man with wicked dark eyes and a black mustache her heart went into a dangerous irregular kind of rhythm. So much for France. After wandering aimlessly around Switzerland, Italy, and Greece, she had found her way to Bangkok. But the tinny sound of gongs and high-pitched oriental melodies had clashed with her idea of what a sultry night should sound like—New Orleans jazz and the basso blast of a barge horn on the river—and Bangkok had been left behind.
She had settled on Madagascar—Antananarivo, a place she couldn’t even pronounce the name of—largely because she hadn’t thought she could stomach a longer flight. And before she could change her mind, she had called her agent and told him she was going to do a photographic essay on lemurs. She’d been there a week and had yet to open her camera case, let alone make the necessary arrangements to go into the forest. Merrick would be peeved that no photos of lemurs were forthcoming, but Danielle couldn’t work up the energy to care.
It had been two months since she’d picked up her trusty Nikon. Not since that day in the cypress swamp with Remy had she had the urge to take any photographs. All she’d really had the energy for lately was crying and throwing up. For the first time in her life her art held no appeal, offered no comfort or distraction. Her muse had been completely overwhelmed by her misery. She felt abandoned.
Never in her life had she been homesick. She had never consciously called anyplace home. But she missed Louisiana with an ache that went soul-deep. She longed for the sights, the smells, the sounds, the people. Most of all she, the perpetual loner, the independent woman of the world, missed the people she had left behind.
She had called Suzannah after her hasty departure to check on Jeremy and to apologize. Suzannah had done some apologizing of her own for duping Danielle in the first place. Danielle didn’t harbor a grudge. Suzannah’s heart had been in the right place. She had entrusted her children to Danielle’s care to involve her with life again and to show her nothing bad would happen. Danielle was only sorry her sister’s trust had been so misplaced.
Suzannah had asked her to come back, but Danielle had declined. It was better for everybody that she stay away.
News of Remy had been painfully sparse. When he had realized she’d left without so much as a good-bye, he had pulled a vanishing act of his own. Butler, having undergone a miraculous recovery from his back injury, had stayed on to help Suzannah with the children.
The children. Heaven help her, she even missed the little monsters.
Feeling the need to get really depressed, Danielle reached for the box of photographs she had been dragging around the world with her. On her flight from Luck she had stopped at the camp-boat just long enough to grab her camera bag, which had been loaded with memories condensed into little canisters of film. Ambrose in his Mardi Gras mask and a blue cape, sweetly innocent and strangely noble, a mysterious dog in the background. Jeremy and Tinks, eyes glowing as they contemplated a way to get into a pen full of monkeys at the zoo. Dahlia stealing a glance at her own reflection in a window, looking a little uncertain about leaving childhood behind. Little Eudora, duck fuzz hair sticking up, grinning after taking a bite out of Remy’s Sno-Kone, her lips outlined in blue like a clown’s makeup; Remy laughing at her, his dark face bright with the joy in his eyes. Remy pointing out a heron to Jeremy as they sat on the deck of the campboat. Remy in a rocking chair, holding the baby in his brawny arms, her head pillowed on his broad shoulder, both of them sound asleep. Remy squinting off across the bayou. Remy…
The tears squeezed themselves out, clinging to her lashes then rolling down her cheeks to drip onto the oversized gray T-shirt she wore. She’d never missed anybody the way she missed him. She was too old for him, too wrong in all the ways that mattered most. But her heart hadn’t heeded those logical reasons. It seemed her heart was set on him being the one great love of her life and she had had to leave him behind.
“Dammit,” she swore, smacking the end table with the flat of her hand in an eruption of frustration. Her soul wrung out a few more tears. She hated being noble and unselfish, giving up the only man who had ever stilled the restlessness in her. Why couldn’t she have run true to form and hung on to him for her own selfish reasons?
Maybe this was the Hamilton curse resurrecting itself, making her behave out of character just to fulfill itself. Or maybe it was love. She loved Remy Doucet till she hurt right down to her toenails. Could she really have saddled him with an aging, domestically inept, career-obsessed artist when she loved him so much? No. So here she sat in the middle of Madagascar, alone.
Of course, she wasn’t completely alone, technically speaking. A tiny person had taken up residence inside her. She wasn’t much for conversation, but she certainly made her presence known, Danielle thought as another wave of nausea rose in her throat. A doctor had pronounced her pregnant, just shrugging when Danielle had argued the impossibility of it, as if to say “so much for the reliability of birth control.”
She was carrying Remy’s baby. The miracle of it awed her. The reality of it scared her spitless. Fresh tears flooded her eyes as a fresh batch of self-doubt swelled inside her like rising bread dough. She was the absolute last woman on earth who deserved to be a mother. She had proved that fact tragically.
But if she couldn’t have Remy, maybe she could have this small part of him, this little person she had created with him during a night of sweet loving. She pictured the baby having his dark hair and eyes, a dimple in her plump cheek as she grinned, and Danielle thought her heart would burst with longing. Her little part of Remy, her reminder of a love that had healed her soul and brightened her life.
But who would that be fair to? She wasn’t fit to raise a child on her own, and Remy, who had many times expressed his desire to be a father, would be denied the experience of knowing his own child. Her spirits plummeted again. She picked up another saltine and munched it morosely, staring unseeing at the splash of antique-gold light the morning sun spilled on the rough plaster wall across the room.
Her hand strayed to her belly and she had a sudden vision of herself rounded and heavy with child. She would have to tell Remy, of course, but she would burn to a crisp in perdition before she would give her baby to the doe-eyed Marie Broussard or any other young, incredibly pretty woman Remy chose for a wife.
Her lifestyle didn’t leave room for a baby? She would change her lifestyle, she declared resolutely. Heaven knew she had lost her taste for exotic places, anyway. She would settle. Her career distracted her from other duties? She would try to cut back on the amount of work she did. She would do her best to domesticate her muse and she would hire a full-time nurse. She would be a single mother, but there was no reason she had to handle the job alone, especially when she was so afraid she would botch it. She knew her own limitations. That gave her an advantage, didn’t it? She would do what every good rich girl did in the face of adversity—hire help.
Her burst of enthusiasm fizzled at the thought that there would probably be no dark-eyed Cajun rascals coming to interview for the job. Her emotions rode the roller coaster back to the bottom.
For a time after she’d fled Louisiana she had fantasized about Remy coming after her, but he hadn’t. He had no doubt come to his senses, going weak with relief over his narrow escape from her. She recalled his endearing confession in the swamp after they had made love, that he was a geologist. Perhaps he’d found a job at last with an oil company.
Danielle struggled up from the low sofa, grabbed her purse off the coffee table, and headed for the door. There was no point in sitting here brooding. She could brood while she was sightseeing. Maybe Remy was gone from her life, but the rest of the world was still out there. Her stomach had settled and there was an open-air market just down the street. She’d go for a walk, find something to eat, an
d when she came back she would call the airlines and book a seat on the next flight headed in the general direction of the United States. She had a life to get on with, broken heart or no broken heart.
Remy barely spared a glance for the ancient sights of Antananarivo. He was dimly aware of the putty-colored houses piled up and down the steep hillsides, looking like an elaborate sandcastle city. He was acutely aware of the congestion of the traffic and he cursed under his breath as the cab slowed again. He’d been two steps behind Danielle everywhere she’d gone. He couldn’t escape the urgent feeling that if he didn’t get to her in the next second, he would be too late again.
He kicked himself mentally for not going after her that night at the hospital. He would have been saved a great deal of emotional turmoil and pain had he caught her there and demanded she marry him. Instead, he had let her go and then spent the next month feeling sorry for himself because she had taken off. He had wasted all kinds of time telling himself it was probably for the best because Danielle loved to travel and he couldn’t bear to leave home. But home had seemed an empty, lonely place without her, and he had finally admitted he didn’t want to live without her, even if it meant living in Antarctica.
The cab had stopped altogether and the cabbie was casually rolling a cigarette. This had all the earmarks of third world gridlock. Remy swore again and stuck his head out his window, trying to get a gander at the source of the problem, when a flash of silver-blond caught his eye and his heart began to race. Up ahead, half a block away, an unruly ponytail was bobbing down the street. He caught a glimpse of long legs and a camera bag and he leapt from the cab, throwing a wad of money through the window at the startled driver.