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Construction had never looked so good.
Something inside him stirred as he continued to watch her work.
One final swing and she broke apart the last of the cabinets. Now the mess just needed to be hauled away. The kitchen was gutted, barren, like the aftermath of a hurricane. He assumed the rebuilding would begin tomorrow. He’d never gotten around to picking out his new appliances. He’d left that entirely up to J.D. A small part of him couldn’t help wondering if perhaps that had been a mistake.
She had muscles, he realized as he stared at the way they moved and flexed.
Damn, he was turned on. What was that all about? Yes, she was an attractive woman, but this went beyond just acknowledgement of that fact.
He was working too hard, he told himself. And his brain was tired.
Janice sensed his presence a moment before she retired the sledgehammer. Every single muscle in her body ached from exhaustion. One more swing and she would have dropped the hammer. Her hands couldn’t hold on to the handle for another second.
She glanced up in his direction just as she wiped more perspiration from her brow with the back of her wrist. He was looking at the rubble.
“Pretty awful, isn’t it?” she commented, guessing at what had to be going through his brain. Right about now, Zabelle probably couldn’t envision that this chaos would, in the end, give way to something really nice.
Philippe nodded. “Yeah, that’s why I’m here.”
She didn’t follow him and wondered if eccentricity ran in the family. His mother had all but commandeered her last week when they’d first met, absorbing much of her afternoon. The woman seemed absolutely taken with her daughter and since both Kelli and Lily shared a love of art, she had seen that as a good thing.
But there was no denying that Lily Moreau was not your ordinary woman by any stretch of the imagination. She took getting used to. And indulging.
She wouldn’t have said that about Philippe, but then, she really didn’t know him that well. One prolonged shopping trip did not exactly make her privy to his soul.
“All right,” Janice replied, drawing out the words and hoping that Philippe would fill in the blanks.
He picked up a kitchen towel that was tossed on the table. Rather than offer it to her, he wiped away the line of perspiration that had plastered her hair to her forehead.
His hand moved in short, sure strokes along her forehead.
Their eyes met. He took a breath, realizing that his brain had vacated the premises. “I think I made a mistake.”
“On your work?” she guessed. Having him this close was scrambling her insides. Either that or there was a sudden lack of air in the room.
He moved his head slowly from side to side, still gazing into her eyes. They were almost a hypnotic blue, he thought. “On yours.”
“You might find you need to write in code, but talking in it is wasted on me. You’re going to have to explain what you just said.”
He seemed surprised. Belatedly, he dropped his hand and the towel to his side. “You know about binary code?”
She didn’t see what the big deal was. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d just solved the space/time continuum problem.
“I’ve got three-quarters of a B.A.,” she reminded him, although she really didn’t expect him to remember. Her educational background had been on her résumé and references.
To her surprise, Philippe did remember. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how does someone get just three-quarters of a degree?”
That was a sore point for her, but one she needed to face. “You do it by dropping out in your senior year before taking any tests.”
So near and yet so far, he thought, shaking his head. “If you were that close, why didn’t you stay?” It made no sense to him. He went to lean against a counter and stopped himself just in time. Another second and he would have been sitting on the floor—beside the rubble she had created.
“Because I was going to be that big.” Fingers almost touching, she held them out as far as she could before her very thin, very flat stomach. “I was pregnant at the time with Kelli.”
“Why didn’t you go back once she was born?”
She managed to hold at bay the sadness that always came whenever she thought of that period of her life. “Because by then, I was a widow and Kelli needed to live somewhere other than inside a cardboard box.” She took a breath. This didn’t have anything to do with the reason she was hired. She had no idea why she was playing true confessions with this man.
“Still, I think you should go back and get your degree.”
“I intend to one day, when life gets a little more comfortable.”
He wondered at her definition of comfortable. Philippe reminded himself of the reason he’d come in search of her and scanned the gutted room. From where he stood, it looked close to hopeless. “How much longer?”
She took off her gloves and flexed her hands. Her palms still ached from gripping the sledgehammer. “Until what?”
Philippe turned back to look at her. “Until you’re done.”
“With the kitchen?” She refrained from reminding him that everything had already been spelled out in the contract, including dates. She watched him shifting his weight from foot to foot. He seemed restless.
That made two of them.
“No, done done,” he emphasized. “With everything,” he added when she didn’t answer.
Because she loved her job, Janice worked fast but there was only so much she could do alone. Besides, the job was dependent on other people as well, people who had to get back to her with the necessary items she ordered, like the rock quarry that was going to be delivering the granite slab Philippe had ordered. She couldn’t move ahead and install the sink until the counter arrived. As for the maple cabinets she’d ordered for him, they were due at the beginning of next week. She crossed her fingers mentally, hoping he would approve of them.
“Well, barring any mishaps, if all conditions are a go, I’d say you could have your house back in as little as six to eight weeks.”
Philippe shook his head. “That’s not going to work.”
Uh-oh, here comes trouble. Well, nothing in her life had ever been easy, why start now? She drew herself up and challenged, “Why?”
“Because I can’t work with all this noise. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
A lot of times, people moved into a hotel when she worked on their house. But he looked unreceptive when she made the suggestion. “You could try ear plugs,” she told him. “Or you could try working when I knock off for the day.”
So far, she’d arrived each morning at seven and left by three-thirty. He wasn’t about to set his alarm for three in the morning to work before she arrived and then start again after she left.
He shook his head. “I do my best in the morning.” Janice smiled. So they had that in common. “So do I.”
Philippe thought for a moment. “Can’t you work any faster?”
“I could. If I were twins.” She paused, thinking. There was a way, but it involved a complication. “I could get my brother to work with me.”
As he recalled, she used her brother as a babysitter. “Does he do this kind of thing?”
“Yes.” It was probably his imagination, but she seemed to answer the question a little too quickly, as if she didn’t want to give herself any time to think about it.
“Then get him.” He saw a hesitant look pass over her face. “What? If it’s a matter of more money, I’m sure we can arrive at a figure that’s mutually satisfying.”
“No, it’s not that.” She’d quoted a price and she was going to stand by it. With Gordon helping, the job would get done faster so that balanced things out. “Gordon’s my babysitter. If he’s working here with me, I’m going to have to bring Kelli along as well, at least until I can find someone else.”
It was a little unusual, but then, nothing about J. D. Wyatt was usual. “So?”
She looked at him for a long moment, trying to discern if he was pulling her leg. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“No. She seemed like a nice enough, quiet little girl.” He thought of Kelli’s love for painting. “We could set something up for her in the family room—the part that hasn’t been invaded with groceries, dishes and small appliances,” he qualified.
“All right, then—” Janice began to pivot on her heel.
“But I’m just curious about one thing.”
She stopped in her tracks, waiting for the shoe to drop. “Go ahead.”
“Why isn’t she in preschool, or nursery school, or whatever it is that they call it these days?”
Janice had her own philosophy about that. She believed that the first few years of life should be spent around the people who love you. She’d been farmed out when she was Kelli’s age. Her father couldn’t deal with raising children so she and Gordon had been sent off to day care and left with people before and after school. She’d always promised herself that her own child would be raised differently, that her daughter would never waste a single moment of her life wondering if her parents loved her.
“Kelli’s going into kindergarten this fall. I just wanted to keep her around for as long as possible. She has friends on the block and there’s nothing she could learn in preschool that I can’t cover.”
He nodded, getting the feeling that he’d intruded. “Fair enough.” He regrouped. “All right then, why don’t you knock it off for today and then come back tomorrow with reinforcements?”
“You’re the boss.” The tone she used had him sincerely doubting she believed that. “You going to go back in there and work now?” she guessed.
It was getting close to noon. “After I go out to get something to eat since you’ve taken away my stove.” He looked at the barren area where his stove had once stood. She hadn’t asked him for help, the way he’d assumed she would. “How did you manage that, anyway?”
“I used a dolly and a ramp and I walked it across the floor.”
“How?”
She grinned. “You move each side one at a time. First right, then left, then right and so on until you’re across the room.”
He and his brothers had always subscribed to the brute force method. “How did you get it on the truck?” he asked.
That had been the simplest part. “I borrowed a friend’s truck. He’s got a hydraulic lift.”
It made sense, he supposed. It still bothered him a little that she was so much more adept at this kind of thing than he was. “Answer for everything, eh?”
The wide smile on her lips took him aback for a minute, as did the churning sensation in his stomach that came in response. “Including your lunch.”
“Come again?”
“I made you something.” Thinking he’d remain in his office the way he had the other three days, she’d planned on surprising him and having the meal ready on the dining room table by noon. The best laid plans of mice and men…
He stared at her incredulously. “You cook for your clients?”
This was a first, but then, Kelli had taken such a shine to him and she did feel as if she were invading his space just a little.
But in response to his question, Janice shrugged. “I made lasagna last night. I always make too much so I thought I’d bring some over.” She tossed him a smile over her shoulder as she walked out to her truck.
“But I don’t have a stove,” he reminded her.
“There’s a microwave buried on the sofa somewhere. Besides, it’s good cold,” she promised, leaving the room.
He was still staring at the jumbled mess on his sofa, trying to make out the shape of the microwave, when J.D. returned a few minutes later, carrying what appeared to be a large, rectangular blue and white chest made of hard plastic. It look unwieldy and he moved to take it from her.
When he did, he discovered that it was more than unwieldy, it was heavy. “You’re a lot stronger than you look,” he told her, bringing the chest over to the dining room table.
“I have to be,” she quipped.
Setting the box down on the table, he saw her raise one eyebrow in a silent question. “I’ve decided to have it cold.”
“Translation.” She laughed. “You can’t locate the microwave.”
“Beside the point,” he declared nonchalantly. He had, however, located two plates and he had one at each place setting now. “Join me?”
She was surprised he asked. “I thought I was being dismissed.”
He supposed he had sounded rather abrupt. But he hated being stumped and the program was driving him crazy. “Is that how it sounded?”
Taking her seat at his right, she noticed that Philippe hadn’t actually apologized. “You have a very authoritative voice.”
He laughed, taking a seat himself. “Comes from telling my brothers what to do.”
“You were a fledgling bully?” she asked. Because the lasagna was hers, she did the honors, cutting portions.
“I was the father figure. Or, I should say,” he amended, “the stable father figure since there were an abundance of other father figures milling around most of the time.” He stopped abruptly as his words echoed back to him. This wasn’t like him. “Why am I always spilling my guts to you?”
Her smile was encouraging, understanding. “I have the kind of face people talk to. I’m more or less invisible,” she explained. “They don’t feel that they’ll see me again once the job is over, but for the duration, they have invited me into their home and since I’m there, they come to regard me as someone they can talk to.” She grinned, sinking her fork into the piece she’d taken. “I’m like the family pet without the emotional investment.”
That definitely was not the way he saw her. “We never had a pet.”
“Not even goldfish?”
He shook his head. “For a while, Mother traveled around too much for us to have pets. And then when she finally bought the house and we stayed behind while she went on her tours, she made it clear she didn’t want anything with fur, feathers or fins finding its way to our mailing address.” Because he felt that he’d said too much again, he changed the subject. He nodded at his plate. “This is good.”
“Thank you.” His compliment pleased her more than she thought it might. Careful, J.D., you’ve slid down this path before and all you got for your trouble is skinned knees. “I wouldn’t have brought it if it was bad.”
The reply tickled him. “So, what other talents do you have?”
She didn’t have to stop to think. “That pretty much covers it.”
In his estimation, that was more than enough. She cooked like a house afire and could build a replacement if the need arose. “You ever think about starting your own restaurant?”
Not even for a moment. “Ninety-five percent of all restaurants fail in their first year. I need a sure thing and working with these—” she held up her hands “—is a sure thing.”
He could understand her reasoning, not that the world of contractors was all that stable. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”
“It was necessity.” She paused to take a bite herself. “After my mother left, it was either learn to cook or eat ready-made things out of a box.”
He curbed the desire to ask her about her mother. If she wanted him to know more, she’d tell him. As for preparing things out of a box, she’d just described the way he lived. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“Have you read what they put inside that stuff?”
He shrugged, then swallowed what was in his mouth before answering, “Food.”
“Food whose ingredients are guaranteed to give you high blood pressure and shut down your kidneys by the time you reach middle age.” Turning, she reached into the blue and white box and took out a small round bowl. “I brought you fruit for dessert.” She took off the cover. “Blueberries. They’re rich in antioxidants.”
He laughed, shaking his head as he looked at the offering. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re pushy?”
“Maybe once or twice,” she allowed.
He was willing to bet it was more than that.
Philippe glanced down at his plate. Somehow, he’d managed to eat the entire portion without realizing it. The blueberries, however, held no interest for him. He moved back from the table.
“Thanks, that was really good. But you don’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know.” She gathered up the dirty dishes, putting them back into the chest.
Philippe started to offer to do them for her and then realized that he couldn’t. She’d ripped out his sink that morning. With the chest between her hands, she began to make her way to the front door. He noticed that she was leaving her tools behind.
“Don’t you need to take anything else with you?”
She glanced back at the toolbox. “Why? You’re my only client.”
He took the chest from her, indicating that he was going to follow her out with it. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Why?”
“Well, it means that business is bad, right?”
She shook her head. “No, it means that I only do one client at a time.” She unlocked the door and took the chest from him, placing it behind the front seat of her truck. “I was serious about that. This way, it’ll get done faster.”
“And with your brother working with you, it’ll be even that much faster.”
She was going to have to keep after Gordon, she thought. He did good work—when he was working. But given half a chance, he’d take off for a few hours or catch a nap.
“Absolutely,” she promised.
Ten minutes later, J.D. had left and he was back at his desk. His appetite appeased, his brain cleared, Philippe was in a much better frame of mind to take another crack at the program.
Bathed in absolute quiet, after a few minutes, Philippe realized that he found the silence almost deafening.
With a resigned sigh, he shook his head and turned on the radio to fill up the empty spaces.
Chapter Nine
Somewhere between the time his alarm sounded and he toweled himself dry from his shower, it hit Philippe like a bullet right between the eyes.
He was looking forward to seeing J.D. Looking forward to seeing her even with the accompanying wall of noise. The realization caught him off guard. He tried not to dwell on it, tried not to attach any sort of deep meaning to it. He didn’t, by definition, dislike people and she was a person. The woman had turned out to be a decent sort, that was all. No big deal.
If it was no big deal, why did he feel compelled to convince himself of that? It should have just been a given.
Making a disgusted noise that drew into service a mangled French phrase, one of the few things he had learned from his father, he focused his mind on what was important. His work.
Philippe had forced himself up early, showering and shaving a good ninety minutes before he usually left the confines of his bed. With a stale piece of toast and marginal coffee, he sat before his computer, pondering the merit of a particular equation on his screen when he heard the doorbell.
Or thought he did.
It turned out to be a false alarm. Just his ears playing tricks on him.
There was no one at the door.
Glancing around, seeing only a jogger in the distance, Philippe experienced a smattering of disappointment. He retreated. Somehow, this was all wrong, although he couldn’t begin to untangle the reasons why. He had work to do.
Maybe he was working too hard. Rather than take his time or kick back, as was his cousin Beau’s habit, Philippe was always doggedly at his desk, working every available moment he had. Because he believed that all work and no play not only made Jack a dull boy but also helped contribute to the death of his brain cells, he had gone out of his way to institute his weekly poker game, making sure never to miss one.
But maybe that wasn’t enough. Maybe, like his mother had said to him time and again, he needed to get out of his shell. Needed to go out. With someone of the opposite gender.
Philippe frowned.
The fact that he was even thinking like this was proof that he needed to let up a little. To let go.
Right after this baby’s packed up, he promised himself.
Famous last words, he mocked. He’d thought somewhere along the same lines when he’d worked on the last program—and all he’d done was jump right into this one.
Just before he reached his office threshold, Philippe stopped abruptly. Cocking his head to the right, he listened intently.
No, this time the doorbell wasn’t his imagination. Retracing his steps back to the front door, he swung it open.
And smiled.
Kelli was clearly the one who had rung his doorbell. She was standing on her toes, stretching as far as she could, about to press her small finger to the white button again. When the door opened, she offered him a smile that he imagined angels looked to as a standard by which to measure their own smiles.
“I’m here,” she announced brightly.
He exchanged looks with J.D. who was standing beside her. A man in jeans and a T-shirt was behind them. His wheat-colored hair and fair complexion fairly shouted that he was related to both.
“So I see,” Philippe said, turning his attention back to Kelli. He hadn’t really intended to take the girl’s hand, but Kelli had other ideas. She slipped her small hand into his and then tugged him back into his house.
“I brought stuff to do,” she informed him. “So I won’t get in your way.”
How could someone so young sound so adult? He nodded in response. “Very thoughtful of you.”
She beamed. Then suddenly, as if she’d forgotten her manners, she turned around to look at the man behind her. “This is my Uncle Gordon. Mama says you want your house done faster.” A little pint-sized feminine pride slipped into her narrative. “Uncle Gordon is fast, but not as fast as Mama.”
Philippe caught himself wondering just how fast Mama was. Reining in his thoughts, he slanted a glance toward J.D.
Damn, but worn T-shirts never looked so good to him before. “I’ll bet,” he acknowledged.
Something in his tone had Janice struggling to tamp down a wave of warmth. She raised her chin a little, not certain if she should be defensive or not.
But she could be polite. She nodded at her daughter, her eyes on Philippe’s. “Thanks for letting me do this.”
“No problem.” He glanced at the man standing behind the little stick of dynamite who still had his hand. “I’m Philippe Zabelle.” He extended his other hand to Kelli’s uncle. “Nice to meet you.”
Gordon was nothing if not friendly. Grinning broadly, he shook the hand that was offered to him. “Yeah, likewise.” Walking toward the kitchen, he looked around as he passed. “Nice place you have here.”
Philippe’s laugh was dismissive. “For a bomb shelter.”
Gordon turned around. “No, I mean it. You’ve got a really great exterior.” He jerked his thumb toward the front of the house. “It gives the place a ritzy look.”
Philippe supposed so, but that had never been the draw for him. The fact that he and his brothers could all lead separate lives but still be in close proximity to one another was what had sold him on the house.
That, and that the fact that the outside was painted Wedgwood blue with white trim. Most of the other houses in the immediate vicinity were painted either in shades of rust or in some drab, strange color never to be found in nature. Blue had always been his favorite color.
The clock was ticking, Janice thought. Both for her and, probably more importantly, for Philippe. She broke up the impromptu meeting.
“C’mon, Kel, let’s get you settled in,” she said, taking the little girl’s free hand. In her other hand, Janice was carrying a large portfolio filled with several drawings and a painting that Kelli was currently working on. Pausing, she eyed Philippe hesitantly. “It is all right that we use your dining room table, isn’t it?” she asked, quickly adding, “I brought this tablecloth so that it doesn’t accidentally get dirty.”
“Actually,” Philippe cut in, “I’ve got a much better idea.”
Kelli watched him eagerly, a kernel of corn about to pop. Janice, hearing the same sentence, felt very protective of Kelli’s feelings. She didn’t want anything to diminish the girl’s zest. “Such as?”