[The Sons of Lily Moreau 02] - Taming the Playboy

by Marie Ferrarella

  “I can have a cot brought in,” Georges offered, looking atVienna , “so you can stretch out a little.” Viennaplaced the plastic bag with her grandfather’s things into the closet and shut the single door. Her slender shoulders rose and fell in a shrug to Georges’ offer. “Stretching out is highly overrated.” She nodded at the padded beige chair by the window. “I’ll be fine in this chair.”

  It seemed pointless for her to spend the night in the chair, even though he knew that the heart was not subject to logic. “He’s probably not going to wake up between now and morning.”

  She knew that. Knew that it was better for her grandfather to sleep through what was left of the night. “I don’t need him to wake up, Doctor. I just need him to be.”

  Georges sighed, shaking his head. “Are all Austrians this stubborn?”

  Her mouth curved. For the first time, he saw a smile enter her eyes, as well. It took him a second to extricate himself.

  “I’m Austrian and one quarter Italian,” she informed him. “But yes, to answer your question, they are. And so are Italians.”

  Georges took the information in stride, nodding. “Then I guess that I haven’t got a prayer of talking you out of this.”

  “’Fraidnot.” Viennamoved closer to the bed. Standing over her grandfather for a moment, she brushed back a few gray strands that would have been in his eyes had they been open. Her grandfather had a full head of gray hair, still thick and rich. It was one of the things he was proud of. That and the fact that, at seventy-four, he was still pretty much as strong as an ox, albeit a more mature ox, she’d often teased him.

  Be that ox now, Grandfather. Come back to me.

  And then she turned to look at Georges. “I will, however, let you get that extra blanket for me if you like.” Georges watched her for a long moment. He’d thought about getting the blanket when she’d been in the surgical lounge, but—“I never said that out loud,” he told her slowly. “Are you going to tell me that you read minds, too?”

  Her smile was like quicksilver. “I’m not going to say anything of the kind.” Was that because she didn’t want to spook him, or because she didn’t think she could? It struck him that this whole night was a little on the surreal side. “Then how…”

  Viennacasually lifted her shoulders and let them fall again. “Elementary, my dear Watson. You look like the type who likes to take care of people. Covering a sleeping person with a blanket just seems to make sense,” she explained. It was plausible, of course, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just stumbled into something that was different. Something he couldn’t explain away all that easily.

  In addition, he thought as he walked out of the room, in search of said blanket, the way thatVienna seemed to intuit things about him made him feel a little uneasy. Uncertain. He took care of people because he was a doctor, but she made it sound as if what she sensed about him went deeper than that. As if it had roots in something more.

  She seemed to know him better than he knew himself.

  The next moment, he dismissed the thought, bunching it under the simple truth that he was tired and nothing more.

  It seemed like a reasonable enough explanation.

  Chapter Six

  Ultimately,Vienna dozed for perhaps thirty minutes. Perhaps less. Restlessness roused her and she wound up shrugging off the blanket and just sitting in the chair, watching her grandfather sleep. And talking to the man who insisted on keeping her company.

  Just before dawn, Georges was finally able to convince her to go home. Not to get some well-deserved rest, which would have made sense, but to make sureVienna ’s Finest opened on time. It was the only thing that finally got her to consider leaving her grandfather’s side.

  Her grandfather, Georges pointed out, wouldn’t want the customers who came in for their early morning pick-me-up to be disappointed and go away empty-handed. He managed to appeal to her sense of loyalty and to what he surmised was her equally, very deep-seated sense of responsibility.

  The idea came to Georges as he heard her make a call on the phone beside Amos’s bed at around 3:00 a.m. The call was to someone named Raul who apparently was the baker and made the different confections. From what Georges could piece together, Raul had moved here fromNew York after they had relocated because he was unwilling to work for anyone else besides Amos.

  Raul seemed highly excitable. His voice became very audible on the other end of the line whenVienna told him that she and her grandfather had been in a car accident.

  “He’s all right, Raul,”Vienna assured him quickly, repeating the words several times and striving to sound soothing despite her weariness. “There was a doctor on the scene and he brought us to the hospital.”

  “On the scene?” Georges heard the man’s heavily accented voice fairly shout over the line. “What do you mean, on the scene? Was this doctor the one who caused the accident?”

  Viennaglanced over toward Georges and smiled. “No, he was the one who saved my grandfather’s life. I just need you to open up the bakery this morning. Can you do that, Raul?”

  There was a long pause before Raul answered. When he did, he sounded highly skeptical. “I don’t know. Customers…” His voice trailed off for a moment. “I bake, I don’t sell.”

  There was no way to avoid hearing. Georges tapped her on the shoulder. When she looked at him, he suggested, “Why don’t you go in and open up the bakery, get things started?”

  She thought for a moment. It had been a long time since she’d been behind the counter, not since she’d graduated college. But she supposed it was like swimming. You never quite forgot what to do with your hands. She finally nodded. “I can keep it going until Zelda comes in.”

  “Zelda?” he asked. “A part-timer. She comes in around nine to help behind the counter.”Vienna turned her attention back to the receiver. Raul could be heard calling to her, asking if she was still there. “Yes, I’m still here, Raul. Business as usual. Just go in and do what you’d do on any other day. I’ll be there by six-thirty to handle the rest.”

  Which was how Georges got her to finally leave the hospital.

  It was just as her newfound knight in shining Armani was turning into the driveway of her house that it suddenly hit her.

  Covering her mouth with both hands she uttered a stifled, “Oh God.” Georges nearly swerved, thinking he’d hit something or was about to, most likely some meandering neighborhood pet too low to the ground to see easily. But the driveway stretched out before him debris-free, with not so much as an overzealous grasshopper to squash.

  “What?” he demanded a little more sharply than he’d meant to.

  She sank back against the back cushion, figuratively andliteraly flattened by the weight of her sudden epiphany. “My purse was in the car.” Which was now toast, Georges thought. By the time the fire department had arrived on the scene, on the heels of the ambulance from Blair Memorial, the flames around the car were retreating, leaving a burnt shell in its wake. He’d been so intent on getting her and her grandfather out, he hadn’t even thought of anything so trivial as a purse.

  Maybe he should have, he thought now. “What was in it?” She looked devastated, he noted, as she gave him an answer that was universal to women everywhere except for the darkest recesses of the African and South American jungles.

  “Everything.” With a gut-wrenching sigh,Vienna closed her eyes, momentarily feeling overwhelmed by this latest development. “My wallet, my driver’s license, my cell phone, my car keys.” Opening her eyes again, she looked at the house and then turned to him. “My house keys.”

  Parking, Georges pulled up the hand brake and turned the engine off. “You don’t keep a spare near the front door?” The very idea was completely foreign to her. “I’m fromNew York . We double lock everything. We don’t keep keys hidden under a planter so that someone can break in.” Still sitting in the car, she looked at the door again. “Oh God, what am I going to do?”

  He was thoughtful for a moment. �
��I think you already covered it.”

  When she glanced back at him again, she could have sworn that she saw the curve of a smile on his lips. “What?”

  “Break in,” he replied simply.

  She thought of her neighbors. This was a very quiet neighborhood. “You mean like break a window?” At the first sound of breaking glass, especially at this time of the morning, she had no doubt someone would be on the phone, calling 911.

  Georges was already out of the car on his side, his attention riveted to the front door. “Something a little less messy than that.”

  She wasn’t following him. At least, not mentally. She hurried up the walk behind him as he approached the front of her house. “Like what?” He didn’t answer her immediately. Instead, he took out his own keys. On the chain he also had two very thin pieces of metal no thicker than the lead used in a mechanical pencil. As she watched, he inserted both into the lock, keeping them at an angle to one another. He wiggled them around and she half expected him to say something like “Hocus-pocus” because, in less time than it took to observe what he was doing, Georges had opened her front door.

  He gestured toward the interior of her house. “This,” he replied, answering her question. Rather than walk in,Vienna stared at him, a little confused about the kind of man she was with. “Is that your fallback career if this doctor thing doesn’t work out for you?” she asked. “You’re training to be a burglar?”

  He grinned. “I hadn’t thought about that, actually.”

  “Seriously,” she pressed, “how did you manage to do that?” She’d seen it done in movies and on police dramas, but she thought that was just writers taking liberties with the truth. Apparently not. He waited for her to walk in first. “I used to hang out with the wrong crowd for a while—until Philippe yanked me out.”

  “Philippe?” They’d talked in the hospital, but mostly about her grandfather. “My brother. My older brother,” Georges added. And then, because he felt that he might as well give her the whole picture, he amended the label, even though there was nothinghalf about Philippe. “My older half brother.”

  The way he said it made her think there were more. “You have others?” “Just one. Alain.” Although he knew that his younger brother would take umbrage about the wordjust used to describe him. In his own way, Alain was every bit as flamboyant as their mother was. As blond as she was dark, Alain was the newly minted lawyer in the family, as well as playboy par excellence. There were times when the youngest of Lily Moreau’s boys made him feel as if he were a saintly altar boy.

  “Is he a half or a whole?”

  He grinned. “A half.” Finally crossing the threshold,Vienna looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed. But it had. And it could have for the worst. What a difference a few hours made.

  Trying to get her bearings, she turned around to face Georges. “Any sisters? Half or whole,” she added for good measure. “Not that I know of.” Of course, what with two stepfathers and his own father in the mix, he could never be certain. None of the men had been monastic in nature. But no small voices, crying out in the wilderness had been heard from—so far. “At least, none that my mother had.”

  Viennasmiled. It had been so long, she hardly remembered what it felt like to have a mother. “Sounds like an interesting woman.”

  He could only laugh in response. “You don’t know the half of it.” When she raised an eyebrow, he said, “Maybe you’ve heard of her. Lily Moreau.” Vienna’s mouth dropped open. “Of course I’ve heard of Lily Moreau.” There’d been an article on her in a national magazine just last month. She’d read it in the dentist’s office. “She’s that wildly beautiful Bohemian artist. The one who says she always paints best when she’s in love.” She couldn’t help staring at him, looking for similarities. “Lily Moreau is yourmother? ” she finally asked in disbelief.

  He was used to getting that kind of a reaction. “When she can find the time to be,” he replied with an air of someone who long ago had accepted the fact that his was not like all the other mothers. His burst in, larger than life, then disappeared in a flash, off to another showing, another gallery somewhere halfway around the world. Another man who promised to love her in exchange for basking in her aura. When he was younger, he’d resented both her lifestyle and her men, but eventually it no longer bothered him. She was just being Lily.

  Viennadidn’t know whether to envy him because of his famous mother or pity him for the same reason. It couldn’t have been easy, having a personality as flamboyant as the celebrated artist as a mother, she thought. Aside from the recent article, Lily was in the news every so often, her paintings and her men earning almost equal lines of print.

  “You seemed to have turned out all right.” The words were uttered before she thought to hold them back. God, was that as judgmental-sounding as she thought? She hadn’t meant it to be.

  He grinned and inclined his head. “Except for the wild teen period,” he allowed. That had been his crossroads and it could have gone either way for him—had Philippe not physically wrestled him for possession of his confused soul the night he’d bailed him out of the local jail for shoplifting. Lily had found the lawyer who had gotten him off, but after that, Philippe was the one who had policed him like a newly paroled prisoner, making sure that he had no further contact with the boys who thought that robbing was a rite of passage and that eluding the police was the supreme challenge.

  All his priorities and basic values had gotten reorganized that summer. It was also the last time the sound of approaching sirens had made him nervous. Standing now withinVienna ’s small residence, Georges scanned the room. They were in the living room and he could see the kitchen just beyond. It was a nice, homey house, he thought. Something Lily would have instantly begun redecorating.

  Love lived here. He could all but feel it permeating from the walls.

  Turning around, he looked at the woman who had inadvertently caused him to take a mental stroll down memory lane and revisit the less-than-stellar portion of his past.

  He had to be going. Even so, he was reluctant to leave her alone like this.

  “You’ll be all right now?” he asked her, his eyes holding hers.

  His concern made her smile. Kindness was never unappreciated. “Believe it or not, I really can take care of myself.”

  “Didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t.” Even though she did stir protective feelings within him. He nodded toward the door. “I’ll be going now.” She surprised him by placing her hand on his arm and detaining him. “I’ll see you again, won’t I?” He saw her catch her lower lip between her teeth, as if she felt she’d just made a blunder. “I mean, at the hospital. My grandfather—”

  Vienna’s voice trailed off. She had no idea how to finish the sentence gracefully without making it seem as if she were trying to corner him. The last thing she wanted in her life was any kind of male-female entanglement. Just that there was something about him that made her feel everything was going to be all right. And she needed to feel that.

  Technically, the man wasn’t his patient, he was Schulman’s. But he was Schulman’s surgical resident, so that made him part of the team. “I’ll be looking in on him,” Georges promised.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “I’d appreciate that.”Vienna walked the three steps with him back to the front threshold. “Thanks again.” She put out her hand and then, impulsively, as if deciding that wasn’t personal enough, she suddenly dropped her hands, framed his face with them instead and kissed him.

  It felt as if something magical had touched him.

  Just like the first time. Georges caught himself wanting to extend the moment, the sensation. Wanting to sample a kiss in earnest, existing for its own sake rather than as an extension of her gratitude.

  But that would be taking too much for granted. So he savored the brief, sweet contact and allowed her to back away.

  “My pleasure,” he murmured. And then he left. As he made his way back to his car, he ran his tong
ue lightly along the outline of his lips. Sealing in her taste.

  “Burning the firecracker at both ends again, Georges?” The question came from his left. About to get back into his car after a quick shower and change of clothes, Georges had hurried by without realizing anyone was out yet.

  He looked now toward the man standing several yards away from him, a newly fetched newspaper in his hand. Philippe raised the newspaper in a kind of salute. Close as children, closer as adults, Georges and his two half brothers now lived in three separate houses built by a clever architect to look like one large, sprawling estate. One imposing door in the front, two on the opposite sides, all leading to different residences.

  Philippe had the one in the middle, while he and Alain lived in the houses that flanked the central one. “Separate but equal” was what Philippe had said when he’d initially found the property. It was evident that Philippe still thought of himself as the patriarch and wanted to be close by in case he was needed.

  It hadn’t been a hard sell. Both he and Alain had liked the look of the houses and there was something subconsciously comforting about having your brothers close by, just not so close that they got into your business if you didn’t want them to.

  After graduating from medical school and four years into his residency atBlairMemorialHospital , he would have thought that Philippe would have realized his little brother didn’t need someone watching over him. Still, he supposed, old habits died hard. The parade of nannies notwithstanding, during their formative years Philippe had looked after both him and Alain when their mother was away, which was more than half the time.

  Philippe was eyeing him now, waiting for some sort of a response. Georges spread his hands innocently. Ordinarily, Philippe would be right. He did have a habit of going out after a grueling, endless shift. Some people recharged sleeping; he did it in the company of beautiful women. But not this time. At least, not exactly.