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He assumed she was being loose with her terminology. He remembered his brothers trying to emulate their mother. Best efforts resembled the spiral trail left by the Tasmanian devil.
“You mean as in scribbling?”
“No,” she said firmly, “I mean as in drawing.”
He laughed softly, pulling out a chair for her. “Spoken like a true doting mother.”
Janice took mild offense. Not for herself, but for Kelli. Her daughter deserved better than that. “I’ll show you.”
“You carry around her portfolio?” he asked incredulously. When he saw her reaching into the battered briefcase that contained the contracts she’d brought with her for him to sign, Philippe realized that only one of them thought that what he’d just said was a joke. She snapped open the locks and lifted the lid. “You’re kidding.”
Janice didn’t bother answering him. A picture, as they said, is worth a thousand words. She could protest that Kelli was as talented as they come, but he needed to see for himself. So, lifting up several manila folders and her trusty laptop, she took Kelli’s latest drawing out of the case. It was of a white stallion from Kelli’s favorite cartoon show.
Very carefully, she placed the drawing on top of her briefcase and then turned it toward him.
Philippe’s eyes widened. “You’re not kidding,” he murmured.
As he admired the drawing, he shook his head. There was no way the bouncy little thing he’d met two nights ago had done this. He sincerely doubted that she could sit still long enough to finish it.
He made contact with J.D. “You did that.”
She laughed softly. “I wish. My ability doesn’t go beyond drawing rectangles and squares. I can do blueprints,” she concluded. “I can’t do horses.”
Zabelle took the drawing from her. She curled her fingers into her hand to keep from grabbing it back. She was very protective of Kelli and that protectiveness extended to her daughter’s things and her talent. It was a trait she would have to rein in if Kelli was ever going to grow up to be an independent adult.
Philippe gave her one last chance to withdraw her statement. “She really drew this.”
“She really drew that,” Janice told him proudly.
For the first half of his life, when his mother wasn’t immersed in the creation of her own work or either nurturing along a new relationship or burying an old one, she had tried her very best to get him to follow in her footsteps. While he shared her talent to a degree, he had rebelled and steadfastly refused.
His reasons were simple. Art was her domain, he wasn’t going to venture into it. Nor was he ready to stand in her shadow, struggling to be his own person. He needed a medium, a venue that belonged to him alone. A path apart from hers.
But that didn’t keep him from admiring someone else’s gift. “Can I hang onto this for a little while?” he asked abruptly.
The request caught Janice by surprise. “Why?”
The man just didn’t strike her as the post-it-on-the-refrigerator type, which was where this had been until, on a whim, she’d packed it in with her contracts. She’d told herself that it would act as a good luck talisman.
“I’d like to show this to my mother the next time she flies in here.”
“Your mother’s out of state?” she asked, a little confused.
“No.” He pulled out a chair and straddled it, resting his arms on the back. “She’s right here in Bedford, California. My mother’s a little larger than life and she gives the impression of flying whenever she enters a room.”
“Oh, I see.” She found herself wanting to meet this dynamo. Her own mother had left a long time ago, before she ever really established a relationship with her. She just remembered a tall, thin woman with light blond hair and an air of impatience about her. Eventually that impatience had led her out the door, a note on the kitchen table left in her wake. “Well, then I guess it’s all right. If she asks me about it, I’ll just tell Kelli that the lady who painted the landscape in your living room is going to look at her drawing.”
“Why not just tell her that I have it? Why give her this longer version?”
She could see he hadn’t dealt much with children. “Would you like a short person laying siege to your house?” she deadpanned. “The minute I tell her that you have it, that you thought it was good, there will be no peace,” she amended, her eyes on his. “Kelli will want to know what your mother thought of it, if she liked it. She’ll want to know what your mother thought was good about it. And that’s only after she quizzes me about your reaction to her work. Trust me, my way is better.”
She sounded as if she was speaking about an adult, a thoughtful adult. The woman was giving her daughter way too much credit. And yet…
Philippe looked down at the drawing again. He had to admit he was in awe. “I don’t know all that much about kids, but your daughter seems like one very unusual little girl.”
Janice laughed. Now there was an understatement. “That she is.”
Reaching for her briefcase again, this time to take the contracts out, she accidentally knocked the case off the table. Half the papers flew out. They both bent down at the same time to retrieve what had fallen; they both reached for the case and folders at the exact same moment. Which was how their fingers managed to brush against each other’s.
It was, at best, a scene from a grade-B romantic movie, circa 1950. There was absolutely no reason to feel a jolt, electrifying or otherwise. And yet, there it was. Jolting. Electrifying. Fleeting, granted, but still very much there. Completely unexpected and zipping its way along the skin of her arms and simultaneously swirling up along the back of her neck.
Janice caught her breath, trying to make her pulse slow down. The last time she’d been with a man was three years ago. That even had been a terrible mistake, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
But this, this was deeply seated in deprivation, not anything else. Deprivation, because she’d been leading the kind of life that would have made a crusty nun proud. But this small, accidental encounter had definitely rattled her cage.
She did her best to appear unaffected, as if, for a moment, her insides hadn’t just turned to jelly.
“Thanks.” Straightening, she picked up the contracts—one for each room—and placed them on the table. “Let’s go over these, shall we?” she asked, her throat feeling uncomfortably tight. “I want to make sure I’ve got everything right. I don’t want you finding that you’re in for any surprises.”
Too late, he thought. Because his reaction to her had already more than surprised him. But he put a lid on his thoughts and smiled at her. “Don’t you like surprises?”
“I do, but my clients don’t—not when it comes to cost, at any rate.”
He rose, crossing to the refrigerator. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked.
The room—the house from what she could see—looked exactly the same as it did the other day. The man really was rather neat. Or had he found that housekeeper he’d mistaken her for?
“Diet soda—if you have any.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” He’d gone to the store earlier today and picked up a six pack. He had no idea what possessed him to do that because neither he nor his brothers nor any of his friends drank diet soda.
Maybe he’d just anticipated J.D., he decided, returning to the table with a can of diet soda. He placed a glass next to it.
Janice popped open the can and, ignoring the glass, took a long sip before speaking. “The hunt for a housekeeper, did you find one?” She set the can back down, wrapping her hands around it.
Philippe shrugged, straddling the chair again and pulling it closer to the table. “I decided to pull the ad.”
“Oh?” she tried to sound casual. “Why?”
“Well, if the house is going to look like the site of the next demolition derby, that kind of negates the need for a housekeeper right now.” A beer, he needed a beer. If he was going to go on staring into eyes the color of sky, he was going to need something to fortify him. Philippe made his way back to the refrigerator. “I’ll hire one once things are back to normal.”
Whatever that is, he added silently.
Chapter Five
He hadn’t called.
Janice sighed, staring at the calendar on the kitchen wall depicting various breeds of puppies. Philippe Zabelle hadn’t called—not on her land line, not on her cell. There were no messages waiting for her. She’d checked. Frequently.
Damn.
It’d been a little more than a week since the man had signed the contracts to have work done on his house. At the time, she’d noted he took the quotes in stride, not quibbling over any of the charges for demolition, cleanup and construction.
Maybe the reason Zabelle hadn’t bothered quibbling was because he’d had no intentions of seeing the project move any further beyond his signing the contracts for each of his bathrooms and kitchen.
Eight days.
She’d finished the room extension she’d been doing for the Gilhooleys in Tustin. Faced with spare time, she’d gone to St. Cecelia’s and done some handiwork there, replacing a window at the school, refitting a door at the priest’s residence and fixing the hole in the roof where four tiles had blown away in the last storm. She’d finished that two days ago.
Right now, she was between jobs and at very loose ends. Janice had never done leisure well, never learned how to sit still for long, especially not when there were bills to pay.
And Gordon wasn’t helping any, she thought, glancing over toward him accusingly. Her big brother was part of the problem, definitely not part of the solution. At the moment, he was lying on her sofa, dozing in front of the TV set. There was a baseball game droning on in the background. The Dodgers were losing.
Welcome to the club.
She sighed. The only one being productive around here at the moment was Kelli, who had spread out her paint set on the dining room table and was painting a woodland scene.
She needed to get that girl an easel, Janice thought. As soon as there was money for things like that.
Frustrated, she walked over to the sofa and shook Gordon’s shoulder. It had no effect. Her brother went right on sleeping. Subtlety was obviously not working, so she doubled up her fist and punched him in the arm.
Gordon jolted awake.
“Hey!” he cried in protest, grabbing his arm where she’d made contact.
Gordon had never been one to endure pain stoically. “I hardly tapped you.”
“You have a punch like a welterweight champion,” he complained, looking at his arm as if he expected it to fall off. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Everything. Look, Gordon.” She sank down on the arm on the far end of the sofa. “I know you’re going through a rough patch right now,” she acknowledged charitably, “but you’re going to have to help out here a little.”
“I do,” he protested indignantly. When she looked at him, mystified, he nodded over toward Kelli. “I watch the pip-squeak.”
Janice pressed her lips together, struggling not to point out that their financial difficulties were largely because of him. “I meant help out with the expenses.”
His eyebrows drew together over the bridge of his nose. “How?”
Wow, was it really that hard for him to connect the dots? “Get a job, Gordon. Get a job.”
He sighed, as if that was a goal he aspired to, but wasn’t quite able to reach just yet. “I’m still trying to find myself, J.D.”
“Good news,” she declared. “I found you. You’re on the sofa. Now get off it and get yourself a damn job, Gordon.”
“And do what?” he challenged.
She threw up her hands. “Sell ties at a major department store, wait on tables at Indigo’s, become a bank teller. Anything.” When Gordon made no response, she added through gritted teeth, “The way I did when you torpedoed Wyatt Construction right out from under me.”
The look he gave her said she’d severely wounded him by bringing the past up. “I don’t want to take just anything, J.D.”
Easy for him to say. He had never hustled for a job. On those occasions when she landed a remodeling assignment that required more than just one person, she hired him on to help and, for the most part, things worked out. But the rest of the time, he seemed content to be “looking for himself” and doing absolutely nothing. Well, it couldn’t continue.
Getting up, she crossed to him and lowered her face so that it was level to his. “You like to eat, don’t you? Have a roof over your head? Shower daily? News flash, big brother. The best things in life aren’t free.”
He ignored the fact that she was now in his face. “When did you get so mercenary?”
“When you abdicated the position of adult and became my other child,” she retorted. If anything, she thought of him as being younger than Kelli.
“Ouch.” Gordon cringed dramatically, as if ducking a blow. “Just because you’re not working, don’t take it out on me.”
“I’m not taking it out on you,” she countered, her patience dangerously low. “I just want you to pull your load. I just—” Exasperated, she waved her hand at him. “Oh, never mind.”
“Okay then—” he settled back against the pillow, stretching his legs out before him “—maybe if I try hard, I can get back to the dream you so rudely terminated for me.”
The temptation to smother him with his pillow was tremendous. She struggled to calm herself down. Janice knew her brother didn’t mean anything by this and he really was having a rough time of it. Gordon seemed to fail at everything he tried, but she was bound and determined to keep him from sliding into some sort of black hole and dwelling there for the remainder of his life. He needed to stand up on his own two feet—the very minute he took them out of a certain part of his posterior.
And she supposed he was right in his own strange way. She was taking out her frustration over her forced inactivity on him. She had a perfectly good job lined up with some very nice additions, but she was stuck in first gear until Zabelle called her.
Or she found out what the holdup was.
The best way to do that was to beard the lion in his den. And she knew where the lion lived.
Janice abruptly made her way over to her daughter. “Sweetie,” she called out. After taking another stroke the little girl stopped and glanced up at her. “I’ve got to go out for a while. Keep an eye on your Uncle Gordon for me, okay?”
Her request was met with a sunny smile. “You can count on me, Mama.”
“I know.” She kissed the top of Kelli’s head. “More than on him,” Janice added under her breath as she left the room.
She briefly thought about changing, but then decided that there was no point. This was the way she looked when she was working and, besides, she wasn’t trying to impress Zabelle with her looks, just with her talent and her ability to get the job done in record time. Which she couldn’t do if she didn’t get started, she thought angrily.
This was why contractors took on more than one job at a time, she decided, getting behind the wheel of her 4x4. So that they wouldn’t have to waste precious days with any downtime, some contractors would sign on for two, three jobs concurrently. But that had never been the way she operated. She believed in giving each job her complete, undivided attention from start to finish, finishing it and then moving on, not playing musical houses and going from one job to another as if they were all part of some kind of life-size round-robin.
She’d developed all the skills needed for this kind of work—all except for the tough hide. Ignoring the needs and requirements of others to satisfy her own just wasn’t her style.
Janice knew, for instance, that she should be harder on Gordon, that maybe what he needed was a swift kick in the seat to get him moving and to make him repentant for losing the company, but she couldn’t get herself to do it. Besides, she didn’t see how making him feel guilty about losing the company would help since it would all be after the fact and it wouldn’t accomplish anything. It certainly wouldn’t get the company back.
It had taken her a while to come to grips with the loss. But, as always, she’d rallied and told herself that the company was not something that the bank held a deed to, the company was her—and Gordon when she could light a fire under him and get him to help.
At the time of her father’s death, the company had included eight other men, men who had since gone on to work for other contractors, or left the area or even the business. But they were just the craftsmen. She was the heart of it, she was the blood that pumped through its veins.
And she wasn’t going anywhere.
“You’re not kidding,” she murmured to herself as the irony of the phrase hit her. She turned her truck down Zabelle’s street. She’d never get anywhere if jobs kept drying up on her.
Well, she wasn’t about to let this one dry up, at least not without knowing the reason why. He owed her that much.
The house where Philippe Zabelle resided was located on a through street. It was part of a community of townhomes made to resemble well-spaced single dwellings that had lawns like lush green carpets. Bedford was considered to be one of the more upscale cities within Southern California. None of the neighborhoods were allowed to run down. Everything looked new or at least lovingly cared for. There was an abundance of pride within the city that kept its homes neat and looking their best.
Parking her car by the curb, Janice marched up the dozen or so white cement stairs that led up to the front door and knocked. First once, then twice and then a third time.
Nothing.
Maybe she should have called first, she thought. But if she had called and Zabelle had told her not to come, she would have lost the advantage of talking to him face to face. She always did better in person than over the phone.
Janice raised her hand to knock one more time.
“Looking for Philippe?”
Startled, her hand still raised, she swung around and found a tall, good-looking, dark-haired man with an easy smile and kind eyes standing to her left. She hadn’t even heard him approach. Belatedly, she dropped her hand, realizing that, had he been standing any closer to her, she would have wound up punching him.
“Yes,” she said when she regained possession of her voice. “I guess he’s not home.”
“Oh, he’s in there,” the man assured her. “He just tends to slip into another world when he’s working. Doesn’t see or hear anything else but what’s on the screen in front of him.”
“Dedicated,” she commented.
The man smiled, amused. “One way of looking at it.” Taking out a key, he unlocked the front door, pushed it open, then stood back. “Go ahead,” he urged, gesturing toward the inside of the house.
She hung back. “I don’t know if I should just walk in.”
“I do it all the time.” A grin flashed as he pocketed the key and he extended his hand to her. “Hi, I’m Georges. Philippe’s brother,” he added.
“Oh.” Realizing that she was standing there like a bump on a log, Janice slipped her hand into his and shook it.
Georges’s dark blue eyes were bright with curiosity as they swept over her. There was something unobtrusive about the way he did it. She took no offense. “And you are?”
“J. D. Wyatt,” she told him, then added, “I’m supposed to do some work on your brother’s house.”
Recognition entered his eyes. “Oh, right, you’re the one Vincent mentioned.” And then, as his own words registered, he seemed to do a mental double take. “You’re J.D.?”
She smiled, removing her hand from his. This was the reaction she was accustomed to. “Not exactly what you expected, right?”
Rather than look embarrassed, he grinned. The man was charming, she thought. His brother could probably stand to pick up a few pointers—not that that mattered in the scheme of things, she reminded herself.
“Only in my better dreams,” he told her. “Philippe didn’t mention that he actually hired anyone, only that he was thinking about it.”
That didn’t bode well, Janice thought. Had Zabelle changed his mind after all? He’d signed contracts, but there was always a way around that if a person was clever and she didn’t have the money for a lawyer to fight him on this anyway. Served her right from not insisting on getting a check right up front, right after Zabelle had signed on the dotted lines.
“But then,” Georges added quickly, “Philippe doesn’t say that much of anything, especially when he’s in the middle of a project.”
She had a feeling that Zabelle’s brother was just trying to make her feel better. She examined him more closely. As brothers, they were more different than alike, she decided. “What does he do, your brother?”
“A little bit of everything.” There was no missing the pride in the man’s voice. “But officially, Philippe’s a computer programmer. Right now, he’s designing software packages for online advertisers.”
She glanced toward the opened door. They still had not gone inside. “And he works at home?”
Georges nodded. “Turns into a regular hermit when he’s in the middle of designing something.” He walked in, then turned when she didn’t follow him. “C’mon, let’s track him down.”
When she’d gotten behind the wheel, she had been completely fired up. But on the way over, some of that fire had dissipated. It was one thing to confront the man at his door and read him an abbreviated version of the riot act about wasting her time, it was another to go from room to room, looking for him and running the risk of possibly catching him in a way he wouldn’t want to be caught. God knew she wouldn’t have appreciated having someone skulking around her house, looking for her.
She forced a smile to her lips. “Why don’t you find him for me?” she suggested. Because he was looking at her expectantly, she ventured a few steps into the house, then indicated the living room. “I’ll be right here, waiting for you.”
The smile on his lips washed over her, leaving no part untouched. She really, really had to start dating again. Either that or begin working out rigorously—which she’d be doing if she were working, she silently insisted, bringing the argument full circle.
“Have it your way,” Georges said. Turning, he faced the rear of the house and called out, “Hey, Philippe, where’re you hiding?”
Still standing, Janice knotted her fingers together, feeling incredibly awkward. She closed her eyes for a second, trying to frame her first words to Zabelle under the present circumstances.
Georges had no sooner left the area than Philippe walked in from the kitchen. He stopped abruptly when he saw that there was a woman standing in the living room. The math equations that he’d been mentally grappling with receded as recognition set in.
J.D.
That still didn’t answer what she was doing here. Or how she’d gotten in. He was damn certain he’d locked the front door. “Did I miss seeing cat burglar on your résumé?”
Her eyes flew open. Surprise and embarrassment took equal possession of her features. The resulting color was rather intriguing.
“I knocked,” Janice protested.
He was pretty sure he hadn’t heard anyone knocking, but he gave her the benefit of the doubt. Because of where his office was located, he probably wouldn’t have heard the approach of the Four Horsemen, either.
“And then broke in?” he guessed.
“No,” she protested quickly. The color in her cheeks rose up another notch. “Your brother let me in.”
Both of his brothers were a bit too free about coming and going from his place, but then, he supposed he should count himself lucky. It could have been his mother and there would have been no end to her questions. To J.D.
“Which one?” he asked mildly.
“He said his name was Georges.” Curiosity got the better of her. “You have more than one?”
The shrug was careless. He wasn’t about to be sidetracked. “I like having a spare. What are you doing here?”