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“I’ll have to go look at it the next time I’m there,” she told her daughter, then paused before asking, “You are talking about Mr. Zabelle’s house, right?”
Kelli sighed again. “Right.” And then she got back to what she’d said initially. “Maybe he’ll want you to do more when he sees how good you are.”
Bless her, Janice thought. “That would be nice.” To that end, she’d left the man with a battery of catalogues, some of which dealt with rooms other than the kitchen and the bath. A girl could always hope.
“If you do more, will we have enough for a pony?” Kelli asked.
Ah, the pony issue again. Another passion, but one that had far less chance of being realized. At least for the present. But she played along because it was easier that way than squelching Kelli’s hopes. “Not yet, honey. Ponies need a special place to stay and special food to eat, remember?”
The golden head bobbed up and down. “When will we have enough for a pony?”
“I’ll let you know,” Janice promised.
Making another turn, she looked down at her left hand. She still missed the rings that had been there. The ones she’d been forced to pawn in January to pay bills. January was always a slow month as far as business was concerned. The month that people focused on trying to pay off the debts they’d run up during the Christmas season. Room additions and renovation moved to the back of the line.
If there was any money leftover after the Zabelle job, she was going to put it toward getting her rings out of hock. The stone on the engagement ring wasn’t very large, but Gary had picked it out for her and she loved it.
A bittersweet feeling wafted over her. She and Gary had gotten engaged one week, then married two weeks later because he’d discovered that his unit was being sent clear across to the other side of the world to fight. He never returned under his own power.
She fought back against the feeling that threatened to overwhelm her. Five years and it was still there, waiting for an unguarded moment. Waiting to conquer her. Again.
But you did what you had to do in order to keep going. Pawning her rings had been her only option at the time. Bills needed to be paid. The rings didn’t mean very much if there wasn’t a roof over Kelli’s head. After Gordon had lost the business, she was very mindful of not putting her daughter and herself in jeopardy of losing the things that were most important to them. That meant not waiting until the last minute before taking measures to safeguard home and hearth.
“Can we go out to eat, Mama?”
Trust Kelli to ground her, she thought. She felt guilty about letting herself get sidetracked. “You bet, kid. You get to pick the place.”
That required absolutely no thought on Kelli’s part. “I wanna go to the pizza place.”
Pizza was by far her daughter’s favorite food. Janice laughed. “You are going to turn into a pizza someday, Kel.”
Her comment was met with a giggle. The sound warmed Janice’s heart.
“Where’s your cheering section?” Philippe asked two evenings later when he found only J.D. on his doorstep. He leaned over the threshold and looked around in case the little girl was hiding.
“Home,” she informed him. He stepped back to let her in. “My babysitter doesn’t have a date tonight.” When Gordon’s newest flame found out about his cashflow problems—basically that it wasn’t even trickling, much less flowing—she quickly became history. When she’d left to come here, Kelli and Gordon were watching the Disney Channel together. “Kelli wanted to come along.” But this was going to involve long discussions of fees and she preferred not subjecting her daughter to that. “I think she likes you.”
Walking into the living room, Janice abruptly stopped before the framed twenty-four by thirty-six painting hanging on the wall.
My God, it was so large, how had she missed that the first time?
Because she was focusing on landing this job, she thought. She tended to have tunnel vision when it came to work, letting nothing else distract her. Although she had to admit that she had noticed Philippe Zabelle would never be cast as the frog in the Grimm Brothers’ “The Frog Prince.”
Janice redirected her attention to the painting. It was breath-taking. Kelli had an eye, all right. “I know she likes your painting.”
“My mother’s painting,” he corrected, in case she thought that he had painted it. “I’ll let my mother know she has a new fan. I know she’ll be delighted to hear that she’s finally cracked the under-ten set. Most kids don’t even notice painting unless they’re forcibly dragged to an art museum.”
Forcibly dragged. Zabelle sounded as if he was speaking from experience. Had his mother forced art on him, attempted to make him appreciate it before he was ready? She’d taken Kelli to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles when the little girl had still been in a stroller. Kelli had been enthralled.
“Most kids didn’t start drawing when they are barely three,” she countered.
He led the way to the kitchen table. She had paperwork for him, he surmised. He eyed her quizzically. “Drawing?”
Pride wiggled through her like a deep-seated flirtation. “Drawing.”
He assumed she was being loose with her terminology. He remembered his brothers trying to emulate their mother. Best efforts resembled the spiral trail left by the Tasmanian devil.
“You mean as in scribbling?”
“No,” she said firmly, “I mean as in drawing.”
He laughed softly, pulling out a chair for her. “Spoken like a true doting mother.”
Janice took mild offense. Not for herself, but for Kelli. Her daughter deserved better than that. “I’ll show you.”
“You carry around her portfolio?” he asked incredulously. When he saw her reaching into the battered briefcase that contained the contracts she’d brought with her for him to sign, Philippe realized that only one of them thought that what he’d just said was a joke. She snapped open the locks and lifted the lid. “You’re kidding.”
Janice didn’t bother answering him. A picture, as they said, is worth a thousand words. She could protest that Kelli was as talented as they come, but he needed to see for himself. So, lifting up several manila folders and her trusty laptop, she took Kelli’s latest drawing out of the case. It was of a white stallion from Kelli’s favorite cartoon show.
Very carefully, she placed the drawing on top of her briefcase and then turned it toward him.
Philippe’s eyes widened. “You’re not kidding,” he murmured.
As he admired the drawing, he shook his head. There was no way the bouncy little thing he’d met two nights ago had done this. He sincerely doubted that she could sit still long enough to finish it.
He made contact with J.D. “You did that.”
She laughed softly. “I wish. My ability doesn’t go beyond drawing rectangles and squares. I can do blueprints,” she concluded. “I can’t do horses.”
Zabelle took the drawing from her. She curled her fingers into her hand to keep from grabbing it back. She was very protective of Kelli and that protectiveness extended to her daughter’s things and her talent. It was a trait she would have to rein in if Kelli was ever going to grow up to be an independent adult.
Philippe gave her one last chance to withdraw her statement. “She really drew this.”
“She really drew that,” Janice told him proudly.
For the first half of his life, when his mother wasn’t immersed in the creation of her own work or either nurturing along a new relationship or burying an old one, she had tried her very best to get him to follow in her footsteps. While he shared her talent to a degree, he had rebelled and steadfastly refused.
His reasons were simple. Art was her domain, he wasn’t going to venture into it. Nor was he ready to stand in her shadow, struggling to be his own person. He needed a medium, a venue that belonged to him alone. A path apart from hers.
But that didn’t keep him from admiring someone else’s gift. “Can I hang onto this for a little while?” he asked abruptly.
The request caught Janice by surprise. “Why?”
The man just didn’t strike her as the post-it-on-the-refrigerator type, which was where this had been until, on a whim, she’d packed it in with her contracts. She’d told herself that it would act as a good luck talisman.
“I’d like to show this to my mother the next time she flies in here.”
“Your mother’s out of state?” she asked, a little confused.
“No.” He pulled out a chair and straddled it, resting his arms on the back. “She’s right here in Bedford, California. My mother’s a little larger than life and she gives the impression of flying whenever she enters a room.”
“Oh, I see.” She found herself wanting to meet this dynamo. Her own mother had left a long time ago, before she ever really established a relationship with her. She just remembered a tall, thin woman with light blond hair and an air of impatience about her. Eventually that impatience had led her out the door, a note on the kitchen table left in her wake. “Well, then I guess it’s all right. If she asks me about it, I’ll just tell Kelli that the lady who painted the landscape in your living room is going to look at her drawing.”
“Why not just tell her that I have it? Why give her this longer version?”
She could see he hadn’t dealt much with children. “Would you like a short person laying siege to your house?” she deadpanned. “The minute I tell her that you have it, that you thought it was good, there will be no peace,” she amended, her eyes on his. “Kelli will want to know what your mother thought of it, if she liked it. She’ll want to know what your mother thought was good about it. And that’s only after she quizzes me about your reaction to her work. Trust me, my way is better.”
She sounded as if she was speaking about an adult, a thoughtful adult. The woman was giving her daughter way too much credit. And yet…
Philippe looked down at the drawing again. He had to admit he was in awe. “I don’t know all that much about kids, but your daughter seems like one very unusual little girl.”
Janice laughed. Now there was an understatement. “That she is.”
Reaching for her briefcase again, this time to take the contracts out, she accidentally knocked the case off the table. Half the papers flew out. They both bent down at the same time to retrieve what had fallen; they both reached for the case and folders at the exact same moment. Which was how their fingers managed to brush against each other’s.
It was, at best, a scene from a grade-B romantic movie, circa 1950. There was absolutely no reason to feel a jolt, electrifying or otherwise. And yet, there it was. Jolting. Electrifying. Fleeting, granted, but still very much there. Completely unexpected and zipping its way along the skin of her arms and simultaneously swirling up along the back of her neck.
Janice caught her breath, trying to make her pulse slow down. The last time she’d been with a man was three years ago. That even had been a terrible mistake, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
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 nun proud. 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’t just turned to jelly.
“Thanks.” Straightening, she picked up the contracts—one for each room—and placed them on the table. “Let’s go over these, shall we?” she asked, her throat feeling uncomfortably tight. “I want to make sure I’ve got everything right. I don’t want you finding that you’re in for any surprises.”
Too late, he thought. Because his reaction to her had already more than surprised him. But he put a lid on his thoughts and smiled at her. “Don’t you like 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?” he asked.
The room—the house from what she could see—looked exactly the same as it did the other day. The man really was rather neat. Or had he found that housekeeper he’d mistaken 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 up a six pack. He had no idea what possessed him to do that because neither he nor his brothers nor any of his friends drank diet soda.
Maybe he’d just anticipated J.D., he decided, returning to the table with a can of diet soda. He placed a glass next to it.
Janice popped open the can and, ignoring the glass, took a long sip before speaking. “The hunt for a housekeeper, did you find one?” She set the can back down, wrapping her hands around it.
Philippe shrugged, straddling the chair again and pulling it closer to the table. “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 a beer. If he was going to go on staring into eyes the color of sky, he was going to need something to fortify him. Philippe made his way back to the refrigerator. “I’ll hire one once things are back to normal.”
Whatever that is, he added silently.
Chapter Five (#ulink_1671f988-83d1-5d35-bdbd-8889c5069eed)
He hadn’t called.
Janice sighed, staring at the calendar on the kitchen wall depicting various breeds of puppies. Philippe Zabelle hadn’t called—not on her land line, not on her 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 to have work done on his house. At the time, she’d noted he took the quotes in stride, not quibbling over any of the charges for demolition, cleanup and construction.
Maybe the reason Zabelle hadn’t bothered quibbling was because he’d had no intentions of seeing the project move any further beyond his signing the contracts for each of his bathrooms and kitchen.
Eight days.
She’d finished the room extension she’d been doing for the Gilhooleys in Tustin. Faced with spare time, she’d gone to St. Cecelia’s and done some handiwork there, replacing a window at the school, refitting a door at the priest’s residence and fixing the hole in the roof where four tiles had blown away in the last storm. She’d finished that two days ago.
Right now, she was between jobs and at very loose ends. Janice had never done leisure well, never learned how to sit still for long, especially not when there were 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. At the moment, he was lying on her sofa, dozing in front of the TV set. There was a baseball 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 a woodland scene.
She needed to get that girl an easel, Janice thought. As soon as there was money for things like that.
Frustrated, she walked over to the sofa and shook Gordon’s shoulder. It had no effect. 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 his arm 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 acknowledged charitably, “but you’re going to have to help out here a little.”
“I do,” he protested indignantly. When she looked at him, mystified, he nodded over toward Kelli. “I watch the pip-squeak.”
Janice pressed her lips together, struggling not to point out that their financial difficulties were largely because of him. “I meant help out with the expenses.”
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 reach just 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 and get yourself a damn job, Gordon.”
