He put his hands on her shoulders, as if that could somehow push all the wildideas she had back into her head.“Mother,”his tone was firm,“Don’t worryabout it. Now, I do have work to do, so…”
She took her dismissal graciously enough and picked up the purse she’d droppedonto the sofa upon entry.“I’ll let myself out, I know the way.”She hesitatedfor a second.“You won’t forget about the show?”
“I won’t forget.”
She nodded, taking him at his word.“And see if you can bring someone,”shecoaxed, then added with emphasis,“Someone female.”
“I’ll see what I can find on Amazon.com,”he deadpanned.
Lily sighed.“Some things never change.”Raising herself up on her toes, shekissed his cheek again.“But I love you anyway.”
He smiled as she left the room.“Nice to know, Mother.”
Sitting down, within moments Philippe was lost again in the details of theknotty programming problem he’d run up against.
And then he was roused out of its midst again.
“Philippe?” He closed his eyes, summoning strength. He didn’t often get impatient with hismother, there was no point. But he could get impatient at the loss of anafternoon’s work, especially since he’d sacrificed an afternoon just the otherday.
Taking a deep breath, he released it again before saying,“Yes, Mother?”
“You are a sneaky devil.” The single sentence, hanging in the air without preamble, begged for questions,for an explanation. He pushed away from his desk and rose to his feet, resignedto getting both.
“Why, Mother?”
There was no answer. He was about to follow the sound of his mother’s voice whenthe need was abruptly vanquished. Lily made a reentrance.
She wasn’t alone.
His mother’s ring-encrusted fingers were delicately wrapped around the smallhand of J.D.’s daughter. J.D. was right behind them, bringing up the rear.
Philippe felt like the beach atNormandy on D-day. “Where have you been hiding these two?”his mother asked with the air of someonewho felt she had the right to know everything that transpired in the world ofher sons.
“We’re not hiding,”Kelli informed her before he could find his own tongue.
“We’re right here.”
J.D. seemed a little overwhelmed by his mother. Welcome to the club, he thought.
“Did we have a date I forgot about?”he asked. The second the word was out ofhis mouth, he realized his mistake. His colossal mistake.
“Date?”Lily echoed, vibrating with both curiosity and joy.
“I came for the check,”J.D. explained. She was sure she’d mentioned it to him. Lily’s eyes widened.“He’s paying you? Oh, Philippe—” Janice had no idea what was going on but she just pushed ahead, hoping thatsomehow everything would straighten itself out if she just hung on to her partof the truth.“I didn’t think you’d mind if I brought Kelli with me again.”Shetried to take Kelli’s hand, but the woman in turquoise was in her way.“Shereally wanted to see you.”
“He is charming, my son,”Lily agreed and turned to the woman she assumed wasthe child’s mother.“I’m Lily Moreau. It’s very nice to meet you.” The next thing Janice knew, she found herself enfolded in an enthusiasticonearmed hug. Although she hugged Kelli at every opportunity, she came from afamily that was light-years removed from anything demonstrative. She wasn’t surehow to respond to this strange woman’s embrace.
“Likewise,”she murmured from within the embrace.
Letting go, Lily turned to her son again.“Philippe, out with it. Who is thislovely creature?”
“She’s my contractor, Mother.” Lily laughed dryly.“You have your father’s sense of humor. I would find himalone with all sorts of beautiful women. He always referred to them as hisclients. Even in the dead of night when I came back from a tour and discoveredhim indisposed, so to speak.”There was no malice, no hurt in her voice. She wassimply recounting something from the past that had occurred in her life.
Still, Philippe couldn’t believe she was saying this in front of a stranger.
“Mother,”he said sharply, glancing at J.D. “I really am his contractor,”Janice told her.“I need a check from you to makea down payment on the materials we decided on,”she told him. Kelli tugged on the woman’s hand.“I’m Kelli,”she informed her. And thenproceeded to blow her away by asking,“Are you the lady who painted the prettypicture over there?”
Lily seemed stunned and then immensely pleased.“Why, yes, I am.”She bent downto Kelli’s level.“Do you like it?”
Kelli’s hair bounced about her face as she nodded.“Very much.”And then sheadded in a very grown-up voice,“I paint, too.”
Lily smiled warmly.“Do you, now?”There was genuine interest in her voice, notjust the sound of forced tolerance.
“Yes, she does. Very well.” The confirmation with its comment came not from Kelli or even J.D., but fromPhilippe. His mother looked at him with an interested expression thatimmediately told him he should have kept that comment to himself.
But since he hadn’t, he might as well back up what he’d said. He looked at J.D.
“Why don’t you show my mother the drawing you carry around with you?” Janice paused. It was one thing to show the drawing to a person she was talkingto, it was another to show it to a woman who had had her paintings on display ingalleries inParis .
But Kelli gazed up at her so eagerly, there was nothing else she could do. Taking out her wallet, Janice carefully unfolded the drawing she kept tuckedaway there, then handed it to Lily.
Lily studied the drawing with great interest.“You did this?”There wasn’t ahint of a patronization in her voice.
Kelli nodded.“Uh-huh.”
Lily’s smile crinkled into her eyes.“Really?”
“Really,”Kelli echoed, then crossed her heart with childish fingers.
Lily looked up in Janice’s direction.“This is very, very good.”
Janice already knew that, but it was nice to hear a professional agree.“Thankyou.”
Lily studied the drawing again. It looked better to her with each pass.“Haveyou thought of getting your daughter some professional training?”
It was one of her cherished hopes, but it was something to address in thefuture, not now.“She’s a little young for that.”
“How old is she?”Lily asked.
Kelli responded instantly.“I’m four and three-quarters.”
“Oh, four and three-quarters,”Lily parroted, suppressing a smile. She glancedup at Janice.“Mozart was four when he wrote his first concerto.”
“Well, he ultimately didn’t wind up very well, did he?”Janice countered. Shedidn’t want anyone treating Kelli like some oddity.
“Well-read, too.”Lily nodded, looking back at her son. Her comment, clearlyabout J.D., was for Philippe’s benefit.“You’ve given me hope, Philippe.”
“Remodeling, Mother, she’s remodeling a couple of rooms for me.”
“Four,”Janice corrected.“I’m remodeling four rooms for you.” “Very promising,”Lily commented. Philippe could almost see his mother’sthoughts racing off to the finish line. Any protest he might offer would onlymake the woman believe the very opposite. This was a case of discretion beingthe better part of valor.
So for the time being, he kept his silence and hoped for the best. He’d survivedHurricane Lily before.
Chapter 8 Like most people, Philippe had a temper. However, unless one of his own wasbeing threatened, it took a great deal to nudge that particular part of hispersonality awake. He usually took things in stride. Being stuck inbumper-to-bumper traffic didn’t faze him. But deadlines that came and went, hisdeadlines, made him uneasy. Because he felt responsible for the failure to meetthis particular deadline, he’d become progressively more irritated.
And God knew, the noise wasn’t helping. Philippe looked accusingly at the closed door. He’d been in his office for thelast three hours and it was just getting worse.
This was
definitely not what he had bargained for.
Afraid of losing his work, he saved it, assigning the program’s temporary name
yet another number to differentiate it from previous versions. He laced hisfingers together behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
When he’d agreed to have work done on his house, he’d forgotten to consider oneimportant thing.
The noise factor.
Right now, the house abounded with it. How could one woman create this muchnoise? It seeped into every crevice of the house, taking his office prisoner. It didn’t matter if his door was open or closed. He was still very much aware ofit. Sometimes the noise was loud, sometimes almost deceptively soft, making himthink that perhaps he’d weathered the worst. But then it would start again. Andcontinue.
At its best, the noise could be likened to an erratic heartbeat. At its worst,it was like the circus setting up winter quarters outside his door—with a herdof less-thantame elephants in charge of doing all of the hammering.
It had been like this for three days.
Philippe dragged his fingers through his hair and counted to ten. And then tenagain. It didn’t help. His long dormant temper had gone short-fuse on him.
Abandoning his computer and its multitude of crashes, Philippe went out into thehallway and made his way to the kitchen, the source of all this ungodly noise.
He was ready to do whatever it took to get some peace. Wearing safety goggles and wielding a sledgehammer, J.D. didn’t seem to see himat first. For a second, despite the irritation that was close to the boilingpoint within his chest, he hung back, just watching her.
She swung that sledgehammer like a pro. Tirelessly. Splintering cabinets she’dalready crowbarred from the wall. He found the rhythmic movement oddly hypnotic. J.D. wore faded jeans that seemedto lovingly adhere to her every curve and a gray T-shirt that was damp inseveral places, obviously with her sweat.
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 justneeded to be hauled away. The kitchen was gutted, barren, like the aftermath ofa hurricane. He assumed the rebuilding would begin tomorrow. He’d never gottenaround to picking out his new appliances. He’d left that entirely up to J.D. Asmall 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 attractivewoman, 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. Everysingle muscle in her body ached from exhaustion. One more swing and she wouldhave dropped the hammer. Her hands couldn’t hold on to the handle for
anothersecond.
She glanced up in his direction just as she wiped more perspiration from herbrow 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 goingthrough his brain. Right about now, Zabelle probably couldn’t envision that thischaos 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 motherhad all but commandeered her last week when they’d first met, absorbing much ofher afternoon. The woman seemed absolutely taken with her daughter and sinceboth 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 anystretch 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 himthat well. One prolonged shopping trip did not exactly make her privy to hissoul.
“All right,”Janice replied, drawing out the words and hoping that Philippewould fill in the blanks. He picked up a kitchen towel that was tossed on the table. Rather than offer itto her, he wiped away the line of perspiration that had plastered her hair toher forehead.
His hand moved in short, sure strokes along her forehead.
Their eyes met. He took a breath, realizing that his brain had vacated thepremises.“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. Theywere 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 justsolved the space/time continuum problem. “I’ve got three-quarters of a B.A.,”she reminded him, although she reallydidn’t expect him to remember. Her educational background had been on her résuméand references.
To her surprise, Philippe did remember.“I’ve been meaning to ask you, how doessomeone get just three-quarters of a degree?”
That was a sore point for her, but one she needed to face.“You do it bydropping 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 counterand stopped himself just in time. Another second and he would have been sittingon the floor—beside the rubble she had created.
“Because I was going to be that big.”Fingers almost touching, she held them outas far as she could before her very thin, very flat stomach.“I was pregnant atthe 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 ofthat period of her life.“Because by then, I was a widow and Kelli needed tolive somewhere other than inside a cardboard box.”She took a breath. Thisdidn’t have anything to do with the reason she was hired. She had no idea whyshe 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 thereason he’d come in search of her and scanned the gutted room. From where hestood, it looked close to hopeless.“How much longer?”
She took off her gloves and flexed her hands. Her palms still ached fromgripping 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 alreadybeen spelled out in the contract, including dates. She watched him shifting hisweight from foot to foot. He seemed restless.
That made two of them.
“No, done done,”he emphasized.“With everything,”he added when she didn’tanswer. Because she loved her job, Janice worked fast but there was only so much shecould do alone. Besides, the job was dependent on other people as well, peoplewho had to get back to her with the necessary items she ordered, like the rockquarry 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 forthe maple cabinets she’d ordered for him, they were due at the beginning of nextweek. 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 haveyour 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, whystart 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 helooked unreceptive when she made the suggestion.“You could try ear plugs,”shetold 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’tabout to set his alarm for three in the morning to work before she arrived andthen 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 itinvolved 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 ofthing?”
“Yes.”It was probably his imagination, but she seemed to answer the question alittle too quickly, as if she didn’t want to give herself any time to thinkabout it.
“Then get him.”He saw a hesitant look pass over her face.“What? If it’s amatter of more money, I’m sure we can arrive at a figure that’s mutuallysatisfying.”
“No, it’s not that.”She’d quoted a price and she was going to stand by it. WithGordon 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 tobring 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 herleg.“You wouldn’t mind?” “No. She seemed like a nice enough, quiet little girl.”He thought of Kelli’slove for painting.“We could set something up for her in the family room—thepart that hasn’t been invaded with groceries, dishes and small appliances,”hequalified.
“All right, then—”Janice began to pivot on her heel.
[The Sons of Lily Moreau 01] - Remodeling the Bachelor Page 8
