- -
- 100%
- +
She heard the slight tone of irritation in his voice. Any apology she was about to tender vanished. He was on the offensive? He didn’t have the right to take the offensive. If anything, he was supposed to be on the defensive, explaining why he’d kept her dangling the way he had.
Janice forgot about being uncomfortable and invading the man’s space, and thought about being made to play hide and seek with her ever-growing stack of bills.
“I’m here to find out why you’re welching,” she said without preamble.
He stared at her, dumbfounded. “Welching?”
Okay, maybe that was a tad too harsh. She rephrased. “We had a deal, remember?”
“Yes, of course I remember. Frankly, I was wondering why you hadn’t gotten started.” He’d been too bogged down with a glitch in the program to notice during the day, but at night it would hit him that she hadn’t called or shown up. By the time it registered, it was always too late for him to call and investigate.
She stared at him incredulously. He was serious. Either that or playing her for a fool. For the moment, she ignored the latter and began to talk to him as if he were mentally challenged. “I can’t get started until you tell me what you picked out.”
His response told her that she’d guessed correctly. The man had no clue. “Picked out?”
“The tile,” she prompted. “Picked out the tile.” She didn’t see a light dawning in his eyes. How could he be that obtuse?
Again, Philippe shrugged. The mundane had little hold on him. “I don’t know. I thought you were supposed to handle all that. I was okay with the drawings,” he reminded her.
That was for the redesign of the kitchen and the bathrooms. That didn’t take any of the materials into account.
“Yes, you were,” she enunciated each word slowly, “but I don’t know what color you want. What kind of cabinets you’d like to put in or even what kind of tile you want me to use.”
He looked at her for a long moment, as if the words were slipping into his brain one at a time and he was processing them. “Tile comes in kinds?”
Having dealt with this world all of her life, it was impossible for Janice to imagine that anyone was ignorant of this sort of thing. Especially anyone who appeared to be intelligent. “Have you even been to a tile store?”
“No.”
“Okay, baby steps,” she murmured, more to herself. She made a spur of the moment decision. “All right, I’ll take you.” She just needed to call home and make sure that Gordon wasn’t about to run off somewhere and forget that he had a niece to watch over.
Zabelle still didn’t seem to be following her. “Take me where?”
“To a tile store.”
Or two or three, she added silently, keeping that to herself. She guessed that if the man were told that this was a process that took most people several afternoons, he would balk and make excuses why he couldn’t go.
His eyes narrowed. It didn’t look encouraging. “When?”
“Now.” It was half a query, half a direct order.
He shook his head. “I can’t go now. I’m in the middle of something.”
“How long before you’re not in the middle of something?” she asked.
Philippe thought for a second. The deadline had been moved just yesterday. He’d never been comfortable about rushing through a project. That was his name on the cover and his reputation meant a great deal to him. “End of November.”
Janice looked at him, stunned. November was three months away. She couldn’t stretch things out until then. “Look, if you’re trying to break the contracts—”
“Go with the lady,” Georges said, picking that moment to walk in. “A few hours away from the drawing board might recharge your batteries.”
Philippe began to protest that Georges didn’t know what he was talking about. Georges was a doctor, not a designer. He had no idea what was involved in the process. But then he shrugged. The sooner he agreed and got this over with, the sooner the woman would be busy working and out of his hair.
He looked at J.D. “How fast can you get me there?” he wanted to know.
He’d done a one-eighty so fast, she felt as if she’d just sustained a severe case of whiplash. “Fast,” she volunteered. Then, because she sensed he’d appreciate it, added, “But I’ll try not to break any speed limits.” As she spoke, she reached for her car keys and headed toward the front door. Turning, she nodded at Georges, silently thanking him.
He winked at her in reply.
Definitely less family resemblance than more, she decided.
Chapter Six
Janice drove him to an area in Anaheim known among contractors as tile row. As far as the eye could see was store after endless store offering every kind of tile.
She had just assumed the lead since this encompassed her territory. But the short journey across the freeway, for once not hopelessly congested, had her rethinking her decision. Zabelle sat beside her now, wrapped in silence since she’d announced, “I’ll drive,” and gestured him into the passenger seat of her truck.
It wasn’t the kind of comfortable silence of two old friends who momentarily had run out of things to say. This was the kind of silence bound up by tension. At least, for her it was.
As she got off the freeway and turned down the first of the streets leading to their destination, Janice felt she couldn’t take the oppressive silence any longer.
“Anything wrong?” she asked. When Zabelle didn’t answer, she repeated the question, her voice more forceful. This time, she managed to penetrate the haze.
“Hmm? Oh, no.” And then Philippe looked at her for a moment before changing his reply. “Well, yes.”
The light was red. “All right, what is it?”
Since she’d asked, he gave her an honest answer. “I’m not used to sitting in the passenger seat.”
Janice wasn’t sure she followed him. “Excuse me?”
“I’m usually the one driving.”
Funny, if asked, she wouldn’t have said he had an ego thing going. Apparently she was getting to be a worse judge of character than she thought. “But you don’t know where we’re going,” she pointed out.
“I understand that,” Philippe answered. “It’s just that I guess I’m not comfortable having anyone else behind the wheel.”
Well, that was pretty honest, she thought. Most men would have said something about being natural pathfinders and being the better driver right out of the box. “I’m a safe driver,” she told him.
He shook his head. “It’s not that.”
Making a left turn, she kept her eyes on the road. “You like being in control,” she guessed.
That sounded obsessive, Philippe thought and he’d never pictured himself that way. His mother had elements of obsessive-compulsive in her makeup, not him.
“No.” The denial didn’t taste quite right on his lips. And if he were being completely honest, if only with himself, maybe there was this one small streak that leaned toward control. “Well, maybe,” he allowed, adding, “to some degree.”
Janice had a feeling it was more than just that, but she wasn’t about to push. Besides, they’d arrived at the first shop. She’d never come here herself, but some of the other contractors told her that the store had some very decent inventory.
“Lucky for you, we’re here.” With a smooth turn of her wrist, she pulled into what she believed would be the first of many parking lots that afternoon.
Instead of bolting out of the truck the way she’d expected him to, Zabelle sat on his side, eyeing the front of the store. The sign advertising the place was made completely out of black onyx. There were no windows in front. “This is the place?”
She got out, closing the door with finality, hoping that he’d take the hint. “This is one of them.”
“One of them,” he repeated. Slowly, without taking his eyes off the store, he got out of the truck. “How many are you planning on going to?”
She could almost hear him saying dragging me to in place of the words he’d used. “As many as it takes for you to find something you like.” She gestured toward the other stores that lined both sides of the street. “I’ve never actually counted, but there are probably at least thirty or so stores along here.”
“Thirty,” he repeated incredulously.
“Or so,” she added as a reminder.
Philippe slowly let out a long breath, as if bracing himself for an ordeal. He then squared his shoulders like a man going into battle and opened the front door. Stepping to the side, he held it for her, then glanced at her with a silent query.
For once, she could read him. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to bite your head off for holding the door for me. I actually like that kind of thing.”
Philippe responded to the warm smile on her lips. Given the line of work she was in, he wasn’t sure if holding a door for her would somehow offend her sense of independence. Life in his mother’s world had taught him to take nothing for granted about women’s reactions to things.
“Good to know,” he murmured.
The store looked deceptively small on the outside. Inside it was divided into fifteen or so sections, each showcasing a different kind of tile intended for every single foot of the house. Tile for the fireplace, for the pool area, for bathrooms, the kitchen and so on. There was so much to see that it was overwhelming.
Standing to the side, Janice could see that this was definitely a great deal more than Philippe had expected. Time for her to step in and be the tour guide, she thought.
Once she got started, she had a tendency to talk fast. This time Janice deliberately curbed her impulse. “I know that this can be a little mind-boggling at first. There are different grades of marble and granite, ceramic and glass—”
He seemed not to be listening. And then, just as she got warmed up to her subject, he pointed to a royal blue piece. “That one.”
Janice blinked, and then looked at it. “That one what?”
“I pick that one. For the tile,” he added since she was still staring at him as if he’d lapsed into an unknown dialect of pig Latin. “You can use that one for the tile.” He glanced toward the door like a prisoner looking longingly at the gates leading to the freedom that was denied to him. “Can we go now?”
Janice remained speechless for exactly ten seconds before she regained possession of her tongue. “No, we can’t go now,” she answered in a tone she might have used on Kelli if she’d had a willful child instead of the one she’d been blessed with. “This is only the first place we’ve been to, Philippe, and just the first display you’ve seen. You have no idea what’s out there,” she insisted. “You might see something you like better.”
It occurred to him, after the fact, that this was the first time she’d addressed him by his first name. It made the whole process seem more intimate somehow, like going out with a friend instead of an employee.
The thought had come shooting out of nowhere. He sent it back to the same place. He was here to get this tile thing over with, not challenge himself with mental puzzles.
“I don’t think so,” he countered. He believed that it was entirely possible to find something he liked immediately instead of having to wade through a sea of candidates. “I don’t have to see every single piece of tile to know what I like.”
She’d bet anything that Zabelle was doing this because he didn’t want to waste time going from store to store. Another contractor would have gone along with this, happy to have the ordeal over with. But she didn’t operate that way. She liked leaving her clients satisfied with their renovations. That was what it was all about to her, matching the person to the changes, not just slapping any old thing together in order to collect her fee.
“I don’t—” Janice got no further.
“If I were my mother,” Philippe continued patiently, “you might have to wait six months for a decision. But I’m not like that.”
Something else was going on here, she thought. But as of yet, she didn’t have a clue so she could only tilt with the windmill she saw. “You can’t go with the first tile you see.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s so much out there that you haven’t seen, that you don’t know about, that you might really fall in love with,” she added with feeling.
He looked at her for a long moment. So long that she felt something inside her tighten in anticipation, although she hadn’t a clue what it was.
And then, whatever it was that was going on, lessened and he said, “That sounds like my mother’s philosophy about men.”
She felt a little like someone who had just stepped in through the looking glass. “Excuse me?”
Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have said that. Of the three of them, he was the most closed-mouth of Lily’s sons. But somehow, around this little dynamo, words just seemed to slip out. “She moves from relationship to relationship, never staying long even if she falls in love.” Especially when she falls in love, he added silently.
For the moment, Janice forgot about the tile. This was more interesting. “Why?”
It seemed ironic that his mother’s reasoning seemed to align itself so readily with what J.D. had said about tile. “Because she feels that maybe she’s settling, that maybe there’s something even more spectacular out there and she’s missing out.” He raised his eyes to hers. “This one,” he repeated. “I’ll take this one.”
So in some odd way, he was rebelling from behavior he’d witnessed as a child, she thought. Rebelling or not, she didn’t want his bathrooms to suffer.
“You’re sure you’re not settling?” she prodded. An odd look came into his eyes, but she pushed forward. “Look, I realize that you’re not marrying the tile, I just want you to like the finished product.”
“I already told you, I like it. You can order however much you need. Can we go home now?” He repeated the question as if this time around it was rhetorical.
Philippe was surprised when she gave him an answer that was different from the one he’d assumed he would be receiving.
“No.”
“No?” he echoed incredulously. How could the answer be no? “But I just did what you wanted,” Philippe pointed out. “I picked a tile.”
This was definitely not going to be her easiest assignment, despite the fact that the man claimed to be easy to please. She didn’t want this to be something to get over with, she wanted it to leave a lasting impression on him, to catch his eye and dazzle him every time he walked into one of the bathrooms—or the kitchen for that matter.
“For the bathroom,” she told him. “I won’t go with the obvious, that there are three bathrooms to be remodeled—”
He cut in with a wave of his hand. “Same tile for all of them.”
Janice pushed forward, pretending she hadn’t heard that. “You still have to choose a slab for the kitchen counter, a backsplash, tile for all the floors, cabinets for the kitchen and bathrooms, fixtures, a tub for one, showers for the other two—”
“Wait,” he cried, raising his hands as if he were physically trying to stuff a profusion of things back into a box that had exploded before him, a box that was not allowing him to repack it. “Wait.”
Temporarily out of steam, she paused to take a breath. “Yes?”
“What the hell is a backsplash?”
She grinned. “It’s the area of the wall that runs along the back of the—”
His hand was up again, dismissing the explanation before it was completed. There was a bigger issue here. “I have to pick all those things out?”
“Well, yes.” She’d shown him the blueprints. Hadn’t any of this registered? Exactly how did he think this was all going to happen? “Oh, plus appliances for the kitchen.”
Philippe stared at her, trying to process what she was saying and what it would cost him, not in the monetary sense but in man-hours. The latter was in short supply and he couldn’t really spare what he did have available to him. At the outset, when he’d agreed to come with her, he’d expected the whole ordeal to last maybe an hour. Less if he could hurry her along. But what she was proposing would take days, days he didn’t have.
This wasn’t going to work out.
His first impulse was to tell her he’d changed his mind about having the rooms remodeled and pay her whatever penalty went with terminating the contract between them. An alternate plan was to postpone the work indefinitely, or at least until his own work was finished. Debating between them, he did neither.
For the same reason.
Instinct told him that J. D. Wyatt needed the money this job would bring in. So he chose another course, one that made complete sense to him. “You do it.”
He couldn’t mean what she thought me meant. “Excuse me?”
“You do it,” he repeated.
A couple had come in with two children, the older of whom seemed to be around three and in excellent voice. He was exercising the latter and could be heard emitting a high-pitched scream from the far end of the store.
Unable to hear what Philippe was saying, Janice moved closer to her client. “Do what?”
“Pick for me,” he told her simply.
“You want me to pick out your appliances.” It wasn’t a question so much as a stunned repetition.
“Yes. And all those other things you mentioned, too,” he added.
“You have no idea what my taste is like.”
He shrugged, fingering the tile he’d just selected and nodding at it as if it was privy to his thoughts. “Match it to my taste.”
It took everything for her not to throw up her hands. Was he being difficult on purpose? “I don’t know what your taste is like,” she protested with feeling. “Other than bland.”
He grinned, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “There you go.”
Again, something stirred inside her, responding to the man and the moment. Stop that, she upbraided herself silently. “The idea is to get away from bland,” she reminded him.
“I’ve got a contract deadline that I’m not going to make if I’m standing here in a tile store. Now it’s either my way or we postpone this until I have some free time.”
And that wouldn’t be until November, based on what he’d said earlier. The easiest thing was to do as he said. But doing what he suggested went against her grain. Stuck, she thought for a second.
“How about this. I bring you samples and pictures of the things I picked out.” She’d make sure he had a selection to choose from. She didn’t mind being the go-between. It took longer, but that was part of her job and came under a heading related to hand-holding.
The thought of holding his hand created a warm wave inside her and increased her pulse rate.
Janice pushed it down and moved on. “That way you at least know you don’t hate my choices.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He would have agreed to anything that would get him out of the store and on his way home again.
“May I help you?”
A salesman materialized behind them. Happy to see someone he assumed would bring this all to an end, Philippe pointed to the royal blue ceramic tile he’d initially selected. “We want that tile.”
The man beamed as he nodded. “Excellent choice, sir.” Philippe had a feeling the man would have declared his selection “excellent” even if he had chosen something out of chewing gum. “And how much tile will you be requiring?”
Philippe shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “J.D., you’re on.” He gave every indication of retreating.
“That’s what I like to see,” the salesman declared. “A husband who lets his wife make the decisions. I’m sure you’ve done your homework, little lady.”
Philippe stopped retreating. He didn’t have to be his mother’s son to know that J.D. had to find that tone offensive. He slanted a glance toward her, waiting to see her reaction.
“I have,” she replied gamely, giving no indication that she would have enjoyed giving the man a swift kick for his patronizing manner. “And I’m not his wife, I’m his contractor.”
The clerk seemed taken aback for a moment, but then, to his credit, he rallied. “Even better.”
She was tempted to ask him why just to hear his answer. But that would be argumentative and she just wanted to move on, for Zabelle’s sake. So instead, she put out her hand.
“Let me have your card,” she requested easily. “We’re not quite ready to order yet. I need to take some measurements first and then I’ll get back to you.”
It was obvious that the man felt once they were out the door, he stood a good chance of losing the sale. “We could have one of our men come by, double-check the numbers—”
“Won’t be necessary,” Janice assured him with a wide smile. Taking Philippe’s arm, she hustled him out of the store and into the parking lot.
Bemused, Philippe looked at her as the door closed behind them. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought you already had the measurements.”
So he did pay attention, she thought. She inclined her head. “I do.”
“Then why all that double-talk back there?” Although he had a feeling he already had the answer.
She led the way to her truck, intent on a quick getaway in case the salesman decided to follow them out to the parking lot out to make one last pitch. “I didn’t like his attitude.”
He struggled to keep his mouth from curving. “Is attitude that important?”
“It is in my line of work.” She unlocked the truck from her side. The double click indicated that his side was open, too. “Don’t worry, I saw who the manufacturer was. We can order that tile from any one of the stores I deal with on a regular basis,” she promised. About to get in, she saw that he was still standing outside the passenger side. She took a guess. “You want to drive?”
That wasn’t why he waited. He was watching the way a sunbeam was glinting in her hair, turning it a light shade of gold.
“No.”
She thought he was just embarrassed because he was behaving so predictably. Rounding the hood, she came to his side.
“Go ahead,” she urged, holding out the keys to him. “We’re not going that far.” The next store was only a few yards away.
After a moment’s hesitation, he took the keys from her and crossed to the driver’s side. Getting in, he asked, “Where’s your favorite place to order tile?”
There were a couple of places she liked to frequent. Both were more than fair in price and reliability. Because there was so much competition, she liked to send business their way whenever possible.
She chose the one closest to where they were. “Orlando’s. It’s about a mile up the road.”
“Good.” Putting the key in the ignition, he started up the truck. “We’ll go there.”
She smiled to herself, shaking her head as she buckled up. “You just want to get this over with.”
“Not that I don’t find the company pleasing,” he qualified, “but yes, I do.”
Well, the man certainly didn’t believe in beating around the bush. And she could sympathize with deadlines and the need to get a project done by a specified time; when she’d worked for her father’s company and dealt with major businesses, there’d been penalties for going over the allotted time.
She wondered if that applied to his work as well. “Make a left out of the lot,” she instructed, pointing to the open road.
“Yes, ma’am.”
In the end, they went with the tile he’d first selected. But not before she managed to get him to look at a few other pieces. She convinced him to get something slightly different for each of the three bathrooms. And just before they left the store, he’d wound up picking out the material for the kitchen counter: an impressive slab of granite known as blue pearl. It was almost black with veins of glimmering blue throughout.
“Damn,” he murmured, a little stunned as he automatically got in behind the wheel more than an hour later. “I had no idea that there were that many different kinds of tile.” She laughed and he caught himself thinking that it was a very peaceful yet arousing sound. “What?”
Her laughter had entered her eyes. “You didn’t even begin to scratch the surface,” she told him.