“Maybe I should drive by Blair Memorial when we get back home, take you to the emergency room,” Philippe suggested. He’d never been an obsessive worrier, but there was nothing wrong with being thorough.
Lost in his own thoughts, trying to extricate himself from a quagmire of emotions that threatened to pull him under, Alain frowned. Philippe’s suggestion seemed to come out of the blue. “Why?”
“To get you checked out,” he answered simply. “You don’t sound like yourself.” He thought of the uncustomary silence. “Hell, you don’t ‘sound’ at all. I’ve never known you to be quiet. You even talk in your sleep—at least you did when you were a kid.” The road straightened and he pressed down on the accelerator, speeding up in order to pass a truck.
“I’m all right,” Alain told him, his voice flat. “I don’t need to go to any hospital.” Philippe debated turning on the radio to ward off the quiet, but decided that it would only be a distraction. They had at least an hour before they would reach Orange County and more before they got home. They might as well have this out now.
“Convince me.” It was a softly spoken order. Alain bristled, surprised at how short his temper was. He didn’t usually have one. “What do you mean, convince you? Why do I need to convince you?”
The answer to that was simple. “Because if you don’t, I am taking you to the hospital.” It didn’t matter that his passenger was a full-grown adult and slightly taller than he was. Philippe had always been the patriarch and he didn’t intend to relinquish the role anytime soon.
Alain dismissed his brother’s words. “What I need is to get to work—” he looked down at what he was wearing “—and a change of clothes. I’ve been living in these since Friday….” He saw Philippe glance at him. And sniff to check if the air around him was ripe. “After Kayla washed them,” he added.
Little pieces were being nudged into place in Philippe’s head. “What did you wear while that was happening?” He asked, his tone innocent.
“A blanket.” Alain saw a hint of a smile curve the corner of his Philippe’s mouth and knew exactly what he was thinking. That he and Kayla had gotten it on. After all, that was the reputation he had. He felt defensive, not for himself but for her.
What the hell was that all about? “Don’t give me that look. She was just being practical. I was soaking wet and unconscious. She was afraid I’d get pneumonia. She’s the one who bandaged me up and stitched my head.”
He couldn’t read Philippe’s expression. Surprise? Skepticism? A bit of both? “She’s a doctor?” he asked.
Alain turned his head, presumably to look out the window, before he answered. His voice was so low that Philippe couldn’t hear what he said above the rumble of traffic. They’d just gotten on the freeway. “What?”
Alain didn’t turn his head, and made no attempt to speak up as he repeated his answer.
If Philippe was frustrated, he didn’t show it. He just inclined his head toward Alain and said, “One more time.”
“A vet, a vet, a vet,” he fairly shouted, this time turning toward his brother. Trying to rein in his temper, he glared at him. “All right?” Philippe acted as if his answer had been tendered in a voice several decibels lower. “Being a vet is fine. What’s not fine is your attitude.” And then a small spark of annoyance was evident. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”
Alain crossed his arms, thinking that he was acting like a jackass, but unable to stop himself. “Nothing.” He knew that he had to give Philippe some kind of an excuse for his lapse in temper, so he thought of work. “I just don’t like losing time, that’s all. I was supposed to be at Dunstan’s brunch on Sunday to talk over strategy, and I needed to be in touch with Bobbie Jo Halliday over this week end, as well.” He still hadn’t told the woman about the valet’s favorable testimony. That, along with everything else, clearly had them winning their case.
Why didn’t that make him happy? Winning always made him happy.
Philippe had heard about the case his little brother had landed. “Ah, right,” he said evenly, “the trophy wife trying to stick it to her late husband’s kids.” Alain knew how Philippe felt about the matter. It was Philippe who had tried to instill a sense of fair play in him and in Georges. But this was different. This was the real world and his career they were talking about. “The will is in her favor.” Philippe nodded, signaling to change lanes and get away from a tanker truck. He’d never liked driving alongside a possible death trap. “Doesn’t make it right,” he countered.
Funny, he could almost hear Kayla saying the same thing, Alain thought. The woman probably had more in common with his brother than she had with him…. Why was he even thinking about something like that? What did it matter what they did or didn’t have in common? She was just someone he was probably never going to see again. Except, maybe, if the fund-raiser came into being.
Where the hell had this wave of sadness come from? Maybe Philippe was right, maybe he did need a checkup.
“The law’s the law,” Alain replied belatedly, suddenly realizing that his brother was waiting for a response. “Maybe,” Philippe allowed. “But ‘justice’ is a whole different concept.” He spared Alain a quick look. It was suddenly very important to him that Alain understood what he was saying—and agree with him. “What if Mother were to marry that juvenile who’s wrapping her around his finger?” He was referring to Kyle Autumn, her latest protégé. Kyle had hung around longer than any of the others—except for her three husbands—and that was beginning to really concern Philippe. “And he got her to leave all her money to him. I have got a feeling you wouldn’t be talking about ‘the law being the law’ then.”
Alain shook his head, dismissing the comparison. “Mother wouldn’t do that.” “But if she did?” Philippe pressed, not wanting to drop the matter. “If Kyle turned her head and made her feel that if she didn’t change her will, he’d think she didn’t love him. So she changes it and conveniently dies, what then?”
Alain didn’t like thinking about things like that, didn’t like being pressed or pushed to the wall. His thoughts were jumbled enough as it was. “Look, I don’t want to talk about the case right now.”
“All right,” Philippe said indulgently, “what do you want to talk about?” He wasn’t a big believer in sharing his own thoughts, but that didn’t apply to the rest of them.
“Nothing.” It was meant as a final response, a letting down of the curtain to announce that the show was over.
Except that it wasn’t. “That is definitely not like you,” Philippe stated. He was silent for a couple of minutes. But just when Alain thought he’d gotten a reprieve, Philippe spoke again. And it wasn’t about something innocuous, like the weather or sports. “It’s that vet, isn’t it?”
Alain could feel his back going up. Why couldn’t his brother just drop it? How many times had they been in the car when Philippe didn’t speak?
“What are you talking about?”
Philippe didn’t answer his question. “What happened up there during the power failure?”
Alain reined in his thoughts, refusing to think about any of it right now. But he knew Philippe wouldn’t back off until he gave him something. “We lived like pioneers.”
Philippe waited. “And?”
Alain waved his hand impatiently. “And then the power came back on.” Philippe slanted a knowing look at him. “Yours or the electric company’s?”
“What are you getting at?” “Only that I’ve known you your entire life, watched you Romeo your way through an ocean of women, flashing that sunny smile of yours, and staying pretty much unaffected.”
Alain had no idea why his guard was up, but it was. “Your point?” “My point,” Philippe stated patiently, determined to get to the bottom of all this, “is that you don’t seem like the carefree bachelor you always were. Did something happen between you and that lady vet while you were waiting for the power to come on?”
Alain’s answer was immediate and firm. “No.”
Philippe had lost count of the women who’d floated through Alain’s life. But his brother had never been like this. Philippe drew the only conclusion he could. “And she got to you, didn’t she?”
“No,” Alain insisted, annoyed that he wouldn’t just didn’t let the subject drop. “She didn’t ‘get’ to me.” Philippe gave him a knowing look, causing him to protest, “We only made love last night. A person can’t ‘get’ to you over the space of a few hours.” Philippe knew better. Janice had gotten to him the first moment he laid eyes on her. It just took him awhile to stop fighting it. “If you say so.”
Alain loved and respected his brother and could sincerely say he was grateful Philippe had been in his life to steer him straight those times when he’d almost run aground. But this time, he was dead wrong. Alain refused to believe anything else. “I say so.”
Philippe merely smiled. Rather than take a few days off to recuperate and deal with his aches and pains, Alain threw himself back into his work. But to his dismay, the zest he’d always had for his cases just didn’t seem to be there anymore. It was as if he was seeing everything in a different light.
It wasn’t about winning anymore, it was about doing the right thing, just as Philippe had said.
As Kayla would have said had she known what he was about. Memories of Kayla, of those few simple days he’d spent housebound with her, would sneak up on him unannounced, ambushing him when he least expected it. Interfering with his thought processes. Alain did what he could to banish the images, to place her and everything about her in a neat little box and shove it aside, the way he’d always done with the women he slept with.
He tried to forget about it, about Kayla, going on dates with a few women. No matter how good they looked, how much they tried to please, they all failed to measure up.
Failed to have the same effect on him, on his pulse, that Kayla had had. That fact alone left him in a progressively worsening mood. He didn’t want her to have that kind of effect on him, because if she did, that gave her a power over him. He’d seen what caring deeply about someone could do to a person, and he refused to let that happen to him.
That both Philippe and Georges were in love and firmly on a path that would lead them to marriage didn’t convince Alain that happy endings were actually possible.
But he missed Kayla. How could you miss someone you’d known for less than four days? he silently demanded as he stared, unseeing, at the Halliday case file. What was wrong with him? He was acting like some lovesick middle-school adolescent. Even when he’d been that age, he hadn’t behaved like one.
Alain sighed and turned his chair away from his desk to stare out the window at a sky pregnant with dark, ominous clouds. Rain was coming, a storm by the looks of it. Just like…
This had to stop. He was building her up in his mind. Making her into something larger than life, into something she wasn’t. What he needed, he told himself, was to see her again—and see that he’d gotten carried away. That he had turned her into some sort of goddess in his mind.
What he needed, he decided, was to have her here, on his home turf. That would be his wake-up call. The promise he’d made to Kayla just before he’d left came back to him. He’d told her that he would hold a fund-raiser for her organization. He grinned to himself. A fund-raiser. She couldn’t turn that down. She’d have to come down for it. He felt something quicken in his stomach and did his best to ignore it as he turned his chair back around and reached for the phone.
“A fund-raiser?” Lily repeated. She’d been in her studio, agonizing over her latest effort, when her youngest son knocked and asked for permission to come in. Because inspiration was eluding her, she’d set down her brush and beckoned him in. She studied him now, surprised by the request. None of her sons ever asked her for anything.
“And it has nothing to do with art?” she asked.
Maybe he’d made his case too quickly. Lily always needed time to digest things, to mull them over as if she were staring at pieces of a puzzle. “Not this time. It would be for an animal rescue organization. Volunteers find abused and abandoned German shepherds, take care of them and then place them with people.”
Lily nodded. She’d always liked dogs, although she preferred little ones she could carry around and cuddle when the mood hit her.
“Well, that sounds straightforward enough,” she commented. She looked at him curiously. “Why would they need a fund-raiser?”
It had been a long time since Lily had needed money. Both her paintings and her last two husbands, especially Georges’s father, had made her a very wealthy woman. His mother had forgotten what it meant to do without, Alain thought. “To pay for food and medical expenses. Some of these dogs are boarded out until someone comes to adopt them. And some require a great deal of medical attention.” She cocked her head, curious. “Don’t they have vets who volunteer their time? I thought I read something about that once.”
He was certain that Kayla gave a hundred-and-ten percent of herself, probably using money she made as a practicing vet to help care for the animals she took in. But there were still limits.
“Their time, yes, but the supplies they use cost money.” He knew his mother worked best with examples, so he decided to tell her about Winchester. As he thought of the dog, he couldn’t help but wonder if Kayla had placed him yet, or if she still had him. It’d been close to three weeks since Alain had seen the dog—and her.
Rousing himself, he said, “There’s one dog who was shot—”
That got his mother’s attention. “Shot?” Her violet eyes opened wide. “Why on earth would someone shoot a poor dog?”
Alain gave her the answer that Kayla had given him. “Target practice.” Lily covered her mouth with her hands, genuinely appalled. “How awful. That poor creature.” Her eyes flashed. She had always been on the side of the downtrodden. “Whoever did that should be drawn and quartered.”
“No argument,” he agreed, and quickly brought the conversation back on track. “But about the fund-raiser…Do you think you could use your considerable influence to get some of your friends to attend and donate toward the cause?”
She smiled at his choice of words. They both knew he was flattering her, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. “Darling, you pour enough liquor and I can get them to donate to anything.” Standing on her toes, she took his face between her hands, affection shining in her eyes as she looked at him. “I could never say no to you,” Lily told him.
Alain didn’t quite remember it that way, but now wasn’t the time to remind her of all the junkets she’d taken, leaving the three of them behind with paid strangers. All the times he’d called to her to stay. That was in the past and he was none the worse for it now.
So he smiled, covering her hands with his own. “I was counting on that.”
She studied him for a moment. “This means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”
Alain thought it best not to admit to that, not even to himself. He didn’t answer directly. “I gave my word to someone.” He was too much like her for her to believe it was only that. Lily smiled. “You’re being a lawyer, Alain. Be my son.” And then her expression turned serious. “I know that perhaps I don’t have the right to ask that of you, considering I was never much of a mother.”
He’d stopped blaming her a long time ago. As Philippe had pointed out, she was just being Lily. And they all loved her.
“Oh, I wouldn’t—”
Lily pressed a forefinger to his lips. “Don’t interrupt, dear,” she chided. “I don’t apologize very often. I do want you to know that I was the best mother I could be.” Alain kissed the top of her head. “You were fine, Mother. And we always had Philippe. Let’s see…a software enginee
r, a doctor and a lawyer.” They’d all chosen a productive career rather than growing up to be spoiled, rich blots on society. “I’d say the three of us turned out pretty well.”
“Yes,” she agreed with affection, “you did.” She looked back at her canvas and felt a rush. It was time to paint. But first, she needed to put this to rest. “All right, when do you want this fund-raiser?”
He knew his mother was mercurial, and her attention span had a tendency to shift without warning. “As soon as possible.”
“Then it’ll be as soon as possible,” she agreed with a laugh. “A week from Saturday suit you?”
He hadn’t expected it to be that fast. Alain grinned at his mother. “Perfect.”
She raised her head and patted her hair, a wicked smile curving her lips. “So they tell me.” “C’mon, Winchester, you have to eat,” Kayla begged. The forlorn dog lay listlessly on the floor at one end of the sofa. He’d pulled down the small cushion earlier, and now had it between his paws, resting his muzzle on it. The choice had mystified her, since the dog was nothing if not well behaved. And then she remembered that Alain had laid his head on the cushion, using it as a pillow. Winchester was just looking for his scent.
Makes two of us, she thought. The next moment, she roused herself. She must have been under some kind of spell. There was no other way to explain her actions. She had never, ever gone to bed with a man she’d known only a matter of days. That was tantamount to a one-night stand.
Well, wasn’t that what you had? A one-night stand? They’d only had that one night. Why was she making such a big deal out of it? He obviously hadn’t. It had been more than three weeks and he hadn’t called her, hadn’t tried to get in touch with her in any way. He hadn’t even phoned about his precious car—which was taking Mick longer than he’d anticipated to fix. He was waiting for a part to be flown in, meanwhile working on the vehicle on good faith.
[The Sons of Lily Moreau 03] - Capturing the Millionaire Page 10
