THIRTEEN
Sitting in his momma’s parlor, Harper looked a little overwhelmed. Remy liked that look on her. Liked it a lot.
Of course it wasn’t hard to be overwhelmed at a gathering of DuPres. They sure knew how to shock and awe. Take his nieces—five of them between the ages of four and eight—who were crowded around her in a horseshoe of admiration.
“Do you use rollers in your hair?”
“What color is your nail polish?”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Are you as rich as Uncle Remy?”
To which Harper had answered: Sometimes; it’s called Rip Your Heart Out Red; several; and no one is. In that order.
He was already thinking of how to use his chatterbox nieces to pump Harper for intel later, but for now he recognized that it might be a lot for their guest to take in at once. He handed her a glass of wine, to which she muttered something that sounded like, “Thank Christ.”
“Mignon,” he said to his seven-year-old niece, touching her freckled nose. “Would you rather hold a snake or kiss a jellyfish?”
All his nieces ewwed at that. It was a fun game he played with them on the road, checking in on the important issues of the day through FaceTime.
“A snake!” So pronounced Diane, who had just turned six last week and was getting mighty opinionated in her advanced age.
“All right, this question is for everyone. Would you rather be invisible or be able to fly?”
A chorus of competing answers made that one a draw. His sister Elise put her head around the door. “Would you rather set the table before dinner or clean up after?”
“Neither!” Mignon replied, the cheeky little monkey.
“You have to choose,” Remy said. “Remember what I told you?”
“God hates a coward,” they all sang.
“Sure does,” he said. “No fence sitting allowed. How’s about y’all set the table and your aunt Josette will do the dishes?” He loved nominating Josie for chores.
Happy with this arrangement, they left the room, though Diane pulled Mignon’s braid on the way out, making her younger cousin squeal. He’d mention it to Elise later. Best to nip that in the bud.
“Sorry, they like to latch on to the new and shiny,” Remy said to Harper.
“That’s fine. I’ve got plenty of experience dealing with little divas, running a hockey team. And I see that ‘Would you rather?’ isn’t limited to your contract negotiations. All part of your charm offensive?”
He studied her for a few extralong beats and cheered the watercolor bloom that crept over her cheeks. “Do you find me charming, Harper?”
“You’re growing on me. Like fungus.”
Evidently embarrassed by her admission, she walked over to the built-in shelves near the fireplace, weighed down with all manner of trophies. His momma kept everything he’d won from the age of nine, even his medal for placing first in debate in the tenth grade. Never try to beat a Cajun in an argument.
“Did you buy a house for your parents?”
“Come ’gain?”
She hand-waved around his family’s home, a stately Greek Revival in the heart of the Garden District. “A lot of players do that. Buy a dream house for their parents or little old grandmother.”
With fourteen-foot-high ceilings, floor-length windows, marble mantels, and a beautiful staircase, the house sure made an impression on any visitor. “Sorry to burst your bubble, Harper, but this house has been in the family for generations. I’m a redneck who was born into money. Then I worked my ass off to make sure I never went without the latest iPhone again.”
“My deepest apologies. I didn’t mean to imply you were a disadvantaged kid who fashioned your skates from old tires and trudged ten miles to hockey practice.”
“It was only five miles, but uphill both ways.” He grinned, and she returned his smile with interest. Something lurched in his chest. “This house was passed down through my momma’s family, though they’d probably be turning in their graves if they could see her in it now. They didn’t approve of her marriage to my poppa. Love across class lines, you see.”
“You jest.”
He leaned in. Damn, her scent, her smile, her everything made his body haywire. “Haven’t got a funny bone in my body, Harper.” But another bone in his body had some serious intentions toward this woman.
With an exhaled breath, she turned to the trophy display. Slender fingers, those same fingers that had milked him to release a few hours ago, reached for one of the awards.
“Is this a fucking Grammy?” She covered her mouth and looked around furtively. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that so loud, but . . . is it?”
“Sure is. My poppa’s kind of a big deal in the bluegrass-Zydeco world. Actually, he’s won six, but he stows the rest in his studio.”
“Wow, I’ve never met a Grammy winner before. Does he still make music?”
“He’s been out of it for a while. When he’s not touring or recording, he makes classical guitars. Real beauties. With Momma a musicology professor, Poppa always composing and playing, and my sisters being their extraspecial selves, this house has never known quiet.”
He’d had the best childhood, despite the Four Horsemen, aka his sisters. Pains in his ass, every last one, especially as they’d insisted on dressing him as a girl until the age of five.
That overworked spot between Harper’s eyebrows crimped. “I like the sound of that. Noisy and rambunctious, filled with music and laughter and love.”
He knew enough about her situation to recognize yearning. He knew enough about his own not to allow her to reel him in with those beautiful eyes. Thankfully, his sister Martine’s shout of “Dinner!” meant he didn’t have to think on that too much.
Harper was usually a whiz when it came to names, but she was having a hard time remembering all of Remy’s nieces. Monique. Mignon. Diana—no, Diane. Three of his four sisters were present; the absent one lived in Zurich with her Swiss lawyer husband. The man had not been kidding when he said he was raised by she-wolves.
But Remy DuPre pumped more than enough testosterone to compensate, and despite his promise—threat?—to sit across from her and not beside her, so she wouldn’t be tempted to cop a feel, she was completely and utterly aware of him.
God, how she wanted to cop a feel.
Especially as right this minute he was involved in what had to be the hottest transaction she’d ever witnessed: speaking to his deaf fourteen-year-old niece, Sophie, using sign language. At this rate, she’d need a ciggy and a pregnancy test instead of dessert.
With great reluctance, she dragged her gaze away from Remy’s fast-moving hands, the ones she imagined pulling even faster moves on her body, and applied her focus to the food. The chicken gumbo had been excellent, the bouillabaisse even better. As for the corn bread? She could live on that for the rest of her days.
Remy called out to his father. “What’s this month’s haul looking like, Poppa?”
Alexandre DuPre was an incredibly handsome man, though Harper suspected he was recovering from a recent illness. His features bore a hollowed gauntness she recognized from that last year nursing her mother through her ovarian cancer.
He rubbed his chin just like Remy did. “Twelve-month supply of Egg McMuffins, a case of Snapple—”
“What flavor?”
“Diet raspberry tea.”
Remy made a face while his father went on. “And tickets to a Rage hockey game.”
“Hell, I could get you those.” Remy grinned at Harper. “Poppa likes to enter radio contests. Tenth caller wins a vacuum cleaner and lifetime supply of ShamWows, that kind of thing. He’s been keeping the family in useless crap for years.”
“Sounds entrepreneurial,” Harper said.
Martine said, “Sounds like a cheapskate Acadian. I want in on the Egg McMuffins, by the way. You can keep the Snapple.” According to Remy, she was a recently divorced lawyer and mother of Sophie, Mignon, and Milly. Or was it Molly?
“So, Harper,” Mr. DuPre said, his expression suddenly grave. “What are we going to do about the Rebels?”
“Poppa, not the time,” Remy said.
“Seems this is the perfect time. We’ve got the main stakeholders here, and as a family, I’m sure we can sort this out.”
Harper might have been a touch annoyed at his presumption if Remy’s mother, Marie, hadn’t caught her eye and shared a conspiratorial smile. Now her DuPre-blue eyes sparkled with the same mischievous twinkle her son had down pat.
“Harper, this is standard at our table. We can’t help but be in each other’s business, and as we only get to see Remy once a month—”
“Twice last month,” Josette said with a long-suffering sigh. “He visits more often than the Acadian relatives.”
“We have to ensure his problems are resolved the best we can,” Marie finished.
“Not sure Harper needs anyone to tell her how to run her team,” Martine said.
Remy’s father would not be so easily diverted. “Must be tough being the owner and the general manager, Harper.”
“I’ve been your owner and general manager for forty years,” Marie cut in, to which everyone shouted their agreement. “Tough ain’t the word for it.”
“So how did you two meet?” Harper asked, eager to throw the pack off the scent. Remy’s comment about them being from different social classes had stuck with her.
“I could tell you,” Marie said, “but the rest of the family tell it so much better.”
“A romance for the ages,” Josette offered in her tour-guide voice. “Momma was doing her PhD on Cajun music and she went to stay in Broussard while she researched her dissertation. She wanted to interview Poppa because he was a fifth-generation Acadian musician but—”
“Any time she tried to talk to him,” Elise picked up, “he wouldn’t say anything to her. Not a word.” Elise was a stay-at-home mom, married to an oil driller who was currently stationed on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Marie slid a smile of such love to her husband that Harper went a bit gooey herself. He muttered something—it sounded like French—and his hand curled around his wife’s.
“Why wouldn’t he talk?” Harper asked. How rude, Harper, the man is right there. “Why wouldn’t you talk to her, Mr. DuPre?”
“Well, Ms. Chase”—a little dig because he had already asked her to call him Alexandre twice—“she was too beautiful. Every time she stood before me with her notepad and pen, my vocal cords melted.”
Remy chuckled. “But his fingers worked just fine. Whenever she asked a question, he would answer with a few chords on the guitar. That’s how the interviews went. Momma asking questions, Poppa answering with music.”
Marie laughed, the sound youthful and filled with remembrance. “It added an extra year to my PhD. Finally, he told me all his secrets. And now I’m a grandmother, seven times over.”
Everyone groaned. Harper looked around in confusion. “What?”
Martine laughed. “This is the part of the evening when Momma talks about how she loves being a grand-mère but her life is a failure if Remy doesn’t settle down soon.”
So Baby DuPre was upsetting Momma’s life plans.
“Well, Remy,” Harper said in mock sternness. “Why are you disappointing your mother by not being married?”
“Gotta give my femme one hundred percent.”
Harper raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
“It means that life as a pro hockey player is not that conducive to a good home life. Am I supposed to leave my woman with a passel of rug rats at home while I get my head pounded every other night, half the time in another city? When I marry, I want to commit to it properly.”
Surely that wasn’t true. Plenty of players married and supported families, and none of them worried that being a road warrior made them any less of a husband or father. Remy’s statement indicated a single-mindedness she would never have suspected below that easygoing facade. Neither could she help noticing he’d said when, not if.
Josette grinned. “Remy’s the only guy I know who’s looking forward to being pussy-whipped.”
“Language, young lady,” Alexandre said.
“Sorry, being a house husband and stay-at-home dad.”
“Got a good role model.” He shared a smile with his father. “Momma went and earned the bread playing professor while Poppa did all the real work at home.”
“This is true,” Alexandre said wisely. “Best years of my life whipping you kids into shape. Had to make sure you turned out sensible like me instead of flighty like your maman.”
Harper laughed. “So that’s it, Remy. You want to mold your kids in your own image.”
Remy winked at her, and while normally she despised winkers, Remy DuPre could make her change her mind on that score. On a lot of scores.
“It’s a pretty good image, don’t ya think, minou?”
Josette had a brief coughing fit. “You’re calling your boss minou?”
Harper perked up from her wink-induced lust fog. “What does that mean?”
“Kitten,” Mrs. DuPre said with a curious look at her son.
“Kitten? Yeah, sometimes,” Josette said. “More often it’s—”
“Language, young lady.” This time, the admonishment came from Remy himself. What had Josette been about to say?
Sophie nudged Remy, seeking a translation of the dinner table talk. Remy launched into a recap, using sign language again.
Harper was mighty confused, and not because she didn’t understand sign language. Remy DuPre had a lot more going on than she’d previously suspected, and it was making her dangerously attracted to him.
As if she needed another reason.