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 nunproud. 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’tjust turned to jelly. “Thanks.”Straightening, she picked up the contracts—one for each room— andplaced them on the table.“Let’s go over these, shall we?”she asked, her throatfeeling uncomfortably tight.“I want to make sure I’ve got everything right. Idon’t want you finding that you’re in for any surprises.”
Too late, he thought. Because his reaction to her had already more thansurprised him. But he put a lid on his thoughts and smiled at her.“Don’t youlike 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?”heasked. The room—the house from what she could see—looked exactly the same as it did theother day. The man really was rather neat. Or had he found that housekeeper he’dmistaken 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 upa six pack. He had no idea what possessed him to do that because neither he norhis brothers nor any of his friends drank diet soda.
Maybe he’d just anticipated J.D., he decided, returning to the table with a canof diet soda. He placed a glass next to it. Janice popped open the can and, ignoring the glass, took a long sip beforespeaking.“The hunt for a housekeeper, did you find one?”She set the can backdown, wrapping her hands around it.
Philippe shrugged, straddling the chair again and pulling it closer to thetable.“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 abeer. If he was going to go on staring into eyes the color of sky, he was goingto need something to fortify him. Philippe made his way back to therefrigerator.“I’ll hire one once things are back to normal.”
Whatever that is, he added silently.
Chapter 5 He hadn’t called. Janice sighed, staring at the calendar on the kitchen wall depicting variousbreeds of puppies. Philippe Zabelle hadn’t called—not on her land line, not onher 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 tohave work done on his house. At the time, she’d noted he took the quotes instride, not quibbling over any of the charges for demolition, cleanup andconstruction.
Maybe the reason Zabelle hadn’t bothered quibbling was because he’d had nointentions of seeing the project move any further beyond his signing thecontracts for each of his bathrooms and kitchen.
Eight days.
She’d finished the room extension she’d been doing for the Gilhooleys inTustin. Faced with spare time, she’d gone to St. Cecelia’s and done some handiworkthere, replacing a window at the school, refitting a door at the priest’sresidence and fixing the hole in the roof where four tiles had blown away in thelast storm. She’d finished that two days ago.
Right now, she was between jobs and at very loose ends. Janice had never doneleisure well, never learned how to sit still for long, especially not when therewere 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. Atthe moment, he was lying on her sofa, dozing in front of the TV set. There was abaseball 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 awoodland scene.
She needed to get that girl an easel, Janice thought. As soon as there was moneyfor things like that. Frustrated, she walked over to the sofa and shook Gordon’s shoulder. It had noeffect. 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 hisarm 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 acknowledgedcharitably,“but you’re going to have to help out here a little.”
“I do,”he protested indignantly. When she looked at him, mystified, he noddedover toward Kelli.“I watch the pip-squeak.”
Janice pressed her lips together, struggling not to point out that theirfinancial difficulties were largely because of him.“I meant help out with theexpenses.”
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 reachjust 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 andget yourself a damn job, Gordon.”
“And do what?”he challenged. She threw up her hands.“Sell ties at a major department store, wait on tablesat Indigo’s, become a bank teller. Anything.”When Gordon made no response, sheadded through gritted teeth,“The way I did when you torpedoed WyattConstruction right out from under me.”
The look he gave her said she’d severely wounded him by bringing the past up.“Idon’t want to take just anything, J.D.” Easy for him to say. He had never hustled for a job. On those occasions when shelanded a remodeling assignment that required more than just one person, shehired him on to help and, for the most part, things worked out. But the rest ofthe time, he seemed content to be“looking for himself”and doing absolutelynothing. 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? Newsflash, 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 somercenary?”
“When you abdicated the position of adult and became my other child,”sheretorted. If anything, she thought of him as being younger than Kelli.
“Ouch.”Gordon cringed dramatically, as if ducking a blow.“Just because you’renot working, don’t take it out on me.” “I’m not taking it out on you,”she countered, her patience dangerously low.“Ijust want you to pull your load. I just—”Exasperated, she waved her hand athim.“Oh, never mind.”
“Okay then—”he settled back against the pillow, stretching his legs out beforehim“—maybe if I try hard, I can get back to the dream you so rudely terminatedfor me.”
The temptation to smother him with his pillow was tremendous. She struggled tocalm herself down. Janice knew her brother didn’t mean anything by this and hereally was having a rough time of it. Gordon seemed to fail at everything hetried, but she was bound and determined to keep him from sliding into some sortof black hole and dwelling there for the remainder of his life. He needed tostand up on his own two feet—the very minute he took them out of a certain partof his posterior.
And she supposed he was right in his own strange way. She was taking out herfrustration over her forced inactivity on him. She had a perfectly good joblined up with some very nice additions, but she was stuck in first gear untilZabelle 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 thelion 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’vegot 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 addedunder 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 tryingto impress Zabelle with her looks, just with her talent and her ability to getthe 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 wasteprecious days with any downtime, some contractors would sign on for two, threejobs concurrently. But that had never been the way she operated. She believed ingiving each job her complete, undivided attention from start to finish,finishing it and then moving on, not playing musical houses and going from onejob 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 thetough hide. Ignoring the needs and requirements of others to satisfy her ownjust wasn’t her style.
Janice knew, for instance, that she should be harder on Gordon, that maybe whathe needed was a swift kick in the seat to get him moving and to make himrepentant 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 companywould help since it would all be after the fact and it wouldn’t accomplishanything. 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’drallied and told herself that the company was not something that the bank held adeed to, the company was her—and Gordon when she could light a fire under himand get him to help.
At the time of her father’s death, the company had included eight other men, menwho had since gone on to work for other contractors, or left the area or eventhe business. But they were just the craftsmen. She was the heart of it, she wasthe 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 hither. She turned her truck down Zabelle’s street. She’d never get anywhere ifjobs kept drying up on her.
Well, she wasn’t about to let this one dry up, at least not without knowing thereason why. He owed her that much. The house where Philippe Zabelle resided was located on a through street. It waspart of a community of townhomes made to resemble well-spaced single dwellingsthat had lawns like lush green carpets.Bedford was considered to be one of themore upscale cities withinSouthern California . None of the neighborhoods wereallowed to run down. Everything looked new or at least lovingly cared for. Therewas an abundance of pride within the city that kept its homes neat and lookingtheir best.
Parking her car by the curb, Janice marched up the dozen or so white cementstairs that led up to the front door and knocked. First once, then twice andthen a third time.
Nothing. Maybe she should have called first, she thought. But if she had called andZabelle had told her not to come, she would have lost the advantage of talkingto 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 herleft. 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 uppunching him.
“Yes,”she said when she regained possession of her voice.“I guess he’s nothome.” “Oh, he’s in there,”the man assured her.“He just tends to slip into anotherworld when he’s working. Doesn’t see or hear anything else but what’s on thescreen in front of him.”
“Dedicated,”she commented. The man smiled, amused.“One way of looking at it.”Taking out a key, heunlocked 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 extendedhis 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 slippedher 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 yourbrother’s house.” Recognition entered his eyes.“Oh, right, you’re the one Vincent mentioned.”Andthen, as his own words registered, he seemed to do a mental double take.“You’reJ.D.?”
She smiled, removing her hand from his. This was the reaction she was accustomedto.“Not exactly what you expected, right?” Rather than look embarrassed, he grinned. The man was charming, she thought. Hisbrother could probably stand to pick up a few pointers—not that that mattered inthe scheme of things, she reminded herself.
“Only in my better dreams,”he told her.“Philippe didn’t mention that heactually 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 wasclever 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, rightafter 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 feelbetter. She examined him more closely. As brothers, they were more differentthan 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 designingsoftware packages for online advertisers.”
She glanced toward the opened door. They still had not gone inside.“And heworks at home?”
Georges nodded.“Turns into a regular hermit when he’s in the middle ofdesigning 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 theway over, some of that fire had dissipated. It was one thing to confront the manat his door and read him an abbreviated version of the riot act about wastingher time, it was another to go from room to room, looking for him and runningthe risk of possibly catching him in a way he wouldn’t want to be caught. Godknew 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 thehouse, 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 outrigorously—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 andcalled 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 Zabelleunder the present circumstances. Georges had no sooner left the area than Philippe walked in from the kitchen. Hestopped 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 recognitionset in.
J.D. That still didn’t answer what she was doing here. Or how she’d gotten in. He wasdamn certain he’d locked the front door.“Did I miss seeing cat burglar on yourrésumé?”
Her eyes flew open. Surprise and embarrassment took equal possession of herfeatures. 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 benefitof the doubt. Because of where his office was located, he probably wouldn’t haveheard 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 hismother 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 morethan one?”
The shrug was careless. He wasn’t about to be sidetracked.“I like having aspare. What are you doing here?” She heard the slight tone of irritation in his voice. Any apology she was aboutto tender vanished. He was on the offensive? He didn’t have the right to takethe offensive. If anything, he was supposed to be on the defensive, explainingwhy he’d kept her dangling the way he had.
[The Sons of Lily Moreau 01] - Remodeling the Bachelor Page 5