Cooking Up Trouble Page 21

  Not only did she scorn such underhanded tactics in pursuit of husbands, but she’d have to know a good deal more about Philippe St. Pierre than she did now before she’d marry him. And, she acknowledged with the usual sinking in her chest that always accompanied the thought, he’d have to know a good deal more about her, too.

  Besides, while she couldn’t very well ignore the fact that Philippe had succumbed to lust momentarily, she had no idea that he’d ever even consider marrying her. In fact, she rather doubted it, which made the sinking feeling in her chest drop even faster.

  “Heather.” He said her name softly in his deep, rich, velvety voice, and Heather had never liked her name more.

  She sighed. Her name sounded so wonderful coming from his lips. His wonderful lips. She wished they were still attached to her body somewhere.

  “Please call me Philippe, Heather.”

  Her heart fluttered. In a voice that, wonder of wonders, didn’t quake or quiver, she said, “Philippe.” What a lovely name he had. She said it again. “Philippe.” Because her heart was full and her senses still ariot, she said, “It’s a beautiful name.”

  He uttered a short, “Hmph,” which didn’t do much for Heather’s self-confidence. Then he leaned back against the bolster again and, with his eyes shut, breathed deeply for several moments. Heather wasn’t sure what to do.

  But she wasn’t a woman who had ever allowed circumstances to master her. Rather, she was accustomed to taking circumstances by the scruff of the neck and bending them to suit her. Therefore, she wouldn’t allow herself to sulk, fall into a daydream, or let matters remain in confusion. She drew herself up straight once more and buttoned the top button on her shirtwaist. She was a little disappointed he hadn’t unbuttoned more of them. She’d be interested in his opinion of her body, actually.

  “Um, Philippe, I’m not sure what that was all about.”

  He didn’t stir anything except his head, which he twisted until it faced her. He had a sardonic smile on his face. “No?”

  Offhand, she couldn’t remember when he’d sounded more French, which was slightly daunting. “No.”

  “I should think it must be obvious.”

  Nettled, she said sharply, “It isn’t to me.”

  It seemed to take an effort for him to draw himself away from the bolster, pick up the reins—God alone knew what he’d done with them when he’d grabbed her—and picked up his hat, which had fallen to the floor of the wagon. “It means I’m a man, you’re a woman, and I desire you.”

  Oh. For some reason, while technically his explanation accounted for what had happened, Heather remained unsatisfied. “And do you always kiss women to whom you’re attracted if you manage to get them alone with you somewhere?”

  “No.” He flicked the reins, and the horses started off, making the wagon jerk, and propelling Heather to brace herself.

  She was getting a little more than merely nettled by his curt words. “Now just a little minute here, Philippe St. Pierre, I want to know what you meant by grabbing me and kissing me that way. It’s because of that woman, isn’t it? What is she to you?”

  “Nothing!” He turned an enraged face her way. “Dammit, leave me alone about that woman. She’s nothing to me. In case that little exhibition back there didn’t teach you anything, let me spell it out for you, Heather. I want you. I desire you. I crave your body. I want to make love to you, to carry you to my bed and ravish you. I want to take your innocence and teach you the pleasures of the flesh. I want to lick you from one end of your luscious body to the other, and teach you the art of love.”

  He sucked in another gigantic breath. Then he smiled a smile that made Heather swallow and wish she could dunk her head under the pump. “Do you need further explanation, Heather, or do you think you understand now?”

  She had to lick her lips. “Um, no, I don’t think I need further explanation.”

  “Good.” The one word was hard and clipped.

  Heather turned on the wagon seat and stared straight ahead of her until Philippe guided the horses into the yard and pulled them to a stop. Then she climbed down out of the wagon, walked to the kitchen door, and went in. She didn’t turn to see what Philippe was doing.

  As soon as she got inside, she sagged against the door and whispered, “Oh, my God.”

  Her legs gave out, and she slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  Blast! Heather looked up from where she was sprawled and saw D.A. Bologh sneering at her from his chair. His chair. Merciful heavens, when had it become his chair? She said, “Nothing.” Her legs had turned to water, and she couldn’t get up yet.

  “I don’t believe you, Heather, my sweet. You’re flushed and behaving very oddly.” A wicked grin spread over D.A.’s face, and he waggled a finger at her. “If I didn’t know what an upright, righteous girl you are—except when you need help in the kitchen—I’d actually think you’d been doing something naughty. Probably with your esteemed employer.”

  Heather scowled at him. A host of grievances against him flooded into her mind. She chose to ignore his implication—which was the truth, curse it—and said in a hard voice, “Did you shoot my father the other night?”

  His eyes went big, his eyebrows lifted into two incredulous arches, he splayed a hand against a place on his chest under which a heart would reside in a normal human being, and said, “Moi?” He sneered some more. “You’ll notice I used the French form of the pronoun, since you seem to be under the influence of something extremely French at the moment.”

  His snicker made Heather’s skin crawl. It was a struggle, but she got her legs to bend and shoved herself to her feet. She had to brace herself against the kitchen door for a minute before she trusted herself to walk.

  “Yes,” she said. “You. Did you shoot my father and cause a lot of other accidents after Mr. St. Pierre’s dinner party?” She knew it was impossible for him to have done so, but she had to ask. She had to; her mother’s description of their attacker had fitted D.A. Bologh to a T.

  “Good heavens, Heather, when would I have had time to shoot anybody the night of the party? In case you don’t recall, I was slaving away in the kitchen all night. Doing your work.”

  Heather stared at him hard. There was something distinctly uncanny about D.A. Bologh, and she didn’t like it. Even if he had saved her job. “Do you have a twin brother?” She’d heard about entire families who had turned to crime. Look at the James brothers, for heaven’s sake. She’d always chalked such behavior up to a quirk in heredity, and why shouldn’t the Bologh family be prey to a similar hereditary quirk?

  “I have many brothers, my sweet, but none of us are twins—or triplets or anything else along those lines—and none of my kin are currently abroad in the territory.”

  That was an odd way of expressing it. Heather continued to squint at him for a minute. “How many?”

  “How many what?” He sounded bored.

  “Brothers. How many brothers do you have?”

  “Hundreds.”

  Heather pursed her lips and forced herself not to say anything unladylike. “Right.” She guessed she wasn’t going to get a straight answer from him about brothers. Why should she? He had yet to give her a straight answer about anything. She persisted anyway. “And how do you know none of them are in the territory?”

  “We all have our assignments, sweetie. None of us would risk making the big man angry by shirking them, believe me. He’s tough.”

  “I see.”

  She saw nothing. Yet there was obviously no way she was going to get any useful information from the man. She gave up. “We didn’t get the shopping done. I don’t know what we can have for supper tonight.”

  “You never do,” he said nastily. “But don’t worry your pretty little head about it, my sweet. Good old D.A. will provide, as he always does.”

  She squinted at him. “Don’t make it anything too fancy, o
r Mr. St. Pierre will think something funny’s going on.”

  “Something funny is going on, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said through gritted teeth. “But I’d appreciate your not fixing anything fancy, anyway.”

  He waved a hand in a careless gesture. “Don’t worry, sweetie pie. D.A. will come through. He always does.”

  It went against the grain, but Heather managed to choke out, “Thank you.”

  “You’re entirely welcome.”

  She didn’t like his smirk today even more than she usually didn’t like it.

  * * *

  Philippe slammed his driving gloves onto the table in the foyer. He ripped his hat off and flung it at the hat rack in the hall. He took the stairs three at a time, stormed to his room, threw the door open with such fury that it crashed against the wall and dislodged plaster, went into his room, and slammed the door so hard a picture fell down and broke. He kicked the frame and glass fragments across the room. Then he went to his bed, sat down, tugged off his boots, and threw them, one at a time, against the wall. They each made a satisfying thwack as they struck.

  He still felt like killing something.

  Damnation, how could he have kissed Heather Mahaffey that way? He’d just grabbed her and kissed her, roughly and unmercifully, and he ought to be horsewhipped. If he had another set of arms and hands, he’d horsewhip himself.

  But, good God almighty, that had been his mother on the stage. His mother!

  How in the name of holy hell had she found him? And what did she want?

  Philippe knew good and well she wanted something. And she wanted it from him. Yvonne St. Pierre wasn’t a woman to bestir herself, or endure rough accommodations, for the hell of it. She’d sure as the devil not have come all the way out here except to find him, although he had no idea how she’d done it. He’d believed he’d covered his traces. He’d thought no one could ever find him, unless he wanted to be found. He’d cherished the notion that he’d left his past behind, and that it would never catch up with him again.

  But it had. In the form of his mother, for God’s sake!

  Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

  Should he go back to town and confront her? Should he tell her to stay the hell out of his life? Maybe she needed money. Hell, he’d pay her to stay away. He had lots of money; he could afford it. It would go against the grain to support the woman who’d ruined his life, but he’d do it if it would keep her away for the rest of it.

  Great God in heaven, what if Heather met her?

  Philippe buried his head in his hands and groaned for a moment before he sat up and spat, “Dammit, what you told Heather was the truth. That woman is nothing to you. And she’s not going to defile your life again.”

  He felt better after he’d made his goal clear to himself, although he wasn’t sure how to arrange it, especially if she’d come to the territory with the intention of butting into his affairs for some fell—or even a non-fell—purpose. There must be something he could do to prevent such a catastrophe from happening.

  What he’d do was ignore her. That would suit the situation admirably. He simply wouldn’t allow her to affect him one way or the other.

  Of course, his mother, no martyr if Philippe recalled correctly—and he did, God save him—would probably not stand idly by and allow her son to deny her. She’d probably raise a stink. Call him a bad son. That sort of thing.

  But there was such a thing as fighting fire with fire, and if she tried anything of that nature, he’d repudiate her right back. It might not be the gentlemanly thing to do, but he’d never claimed to be a gentleman. And if his neighbors shunned him, so much the better. He didn’t care. He hadn’t ever planned to get chummy with his neighbors in the first place.

  Heather would care. She was enthusiastic about family and family connections and friends and her fellow citizens of Fort Summers. She’d think he was a skunk if he refused to acknowledge his own mother. She’d probably think so even if he told her what his mother’s line of work was and how she’d treated the child Philippe used to be.

  She’d probably sermonize at him. She’d probably say that forgiveness is a virtue. She’d probably say that Philippe should honor his mother, no matter what she’d done when he was a child. She’d probably say that his mother must have changed or she wouldn’t be here now. She’d probably say that this was his chance to reestablish the family he’d missed for so many years.

  Not, of course, that he’d missed a family in that way. He couldn’t, since he’d never had one. A man couldn’t be expected to miss what he’d never had.

  Aw, hell, he was haggling with himself. This was a new low in his experience.

  Philippe muttered a savage, “Damn.” There was no easy solution to this mess. As he contemplated the latest hazard to the comfortable life he’d tried to create for himself, he hated his mother with a fury he’d not felt since he was sixteen years old.

  * * *

  Yvonne St. Pierre felt old, weary, and completely demoralized as she glanced around the plain, bleak, and very ugly hotel room to which she’d been shown. She managed a smile for the boy—probably the son of the proprietor—who’d carried her bag upstairs. He blinked at her and swallowed, from which she deduced that her looks hadn’t deteriorated on the long trip from New Orleans to the territory.

  For all the good her looks would do her. Yet she managed a kind thank-you for the boy and handed him a coin. She was almost amused when he stammered his own thanks, tipped his hat, and fled from her presence as if she were a queen or goddess or something. If he only knew.

  Philippe still hated her. She removed her hat, tossed it onto the rickety dresser, the scarred surface of which was partially hidden by a natty doily, and sank onto the creaky bed. She wished—for about the millionth time—that she were dead.

  “Oh, my,” she whispered, recalling the moment when she’d spotted Philippe standing in that filthy, milling throng outside that horrible, shabby building. Her throat ached and her heart hurt.

  “He’s grown up so well.” She smiled, feeling such a tug of longing in her heart that she was surprised her heart didn’t break. But, of course, hearts didn’t really break. She knew that well enough by this time.

  But, oh, her little boy had become such a handsome man. Since she hadn’t seen his father since before Philippe was born, Yvonne had always thought of Philippe as hers alone.

  Which, por bien, had been a silly thing to think. He didn’t belong to her or anyone else; he was his own man, and he’d proved it beyond question all those years ago.

  She ought to have given him away at birth, she realized now. It would have been a kindness, both to Philippe and to that nice lady who’d talked to her in New Orleans. That lady had yearned for a child of her own, and had been distraught when Yvonne had refused to give up her son.

  If she’d had the courage to give Philippe to that woman, though, he’d probably have been better off. It was true that he might never have known his mother, but he’d have had a good life.

  But Yvonne hadn’t been able to bear the thought of giving away her baby when she was sixteen years old. After the man she loved left her, she’d entered that house on Bourbon Street in desperation; she’d been so frightened. But she’d believed, in her innocence, that at least she’d always have her baby to love. And to love her back.

  She hadn’t understood the nature and perversity of human beings back then. At first she’d believed the father of her child would marry her. Silly Yvonne. When she’d finally realized he was gone for good, she’d felt grateful that she’d at least have her baby. She’d truly believed that she and Philippe could survive in that house as a unit and both grow up strong and loyal to each other.

  “Bah!” What a fool she’d been.

  And then she’d met D.A. Bologh, and her life began and ended in the same evil moment—the moment she’d bargained away her soul for enduring youth and beauty. She hadn’t understood what they would cost her back then. How could she? She’d b
een a child.

  Yvonne sighed deeply, wondering when D.A. would find her. She knew he would. She was, in fact, surprised that she’d come this far without being discovered.

  “That lovely child, the one Philippe dragged away from me, must be his sweetheart.” Idly fingering an earring, Yvonne contemplated another sort of meeting with her son and his sweetheart. If her life had been different—if she’d been the product of a normal family—Philippe might be bringing that girl proudly to meet his mother, with love in his heart for both of them.

  “He has no love, poor boy,” she whispered into the empty room. “No love at all.” Yvonne herself had seen to that, albeit unwittingly. “I never meant to make him hate.”

  Who was it who’d written that the saddest words ever spoken were, “It might have been”? Whoever it was had been, unfortunately, correct. Yvonne knew it for a fact. A bitter fact.

  She got to her feet, feeling completely drained of energy, and went to the window. From there, she could see the entire town of Fort Summers—what there was of it—spread out at her feet. She shuddered, wondering why any son of hers could have found this miserable, desolate place better than life in the vicinity of his mother, even a mother such as she.

  Ever since she left New Orleans, she’d been praying she’d discover the exact words to say to Philippe; that she’d hit upon the one small phrase that would soften his heart and allow her back into his life, however briefly. She’d been praying for other things as well: Philippe’s safety and that of his young woman. What was her name? Heather? It was a pretty name. Soft and lovely. It suited her.

  So far, her prayers had remained unanswered. She still didn’t know how to approach Philippe in a manner that would make him forgive her.

  Yvonne whispered, “So be it.” He might well never forgive her for what she’d done all those years ago. He might well hate her for the rest of his life. She still had to warn him. She had to protect him from her youthful folly. If it killed her, she’d do it.

  And, she knew, it probably would kill her. She didn’t care a jot about her life any longer. It hadn’t been worth living for years. If she knew she’d done this one thing to protect her son, she wouldn’t care if she died a thousand times over.