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“Let me have your card,” she requested easily. “We’re not quite ready to order yet. I need to take some measurements first and then I’ll get back to you.”
It was obvious that the man felt once they were out the door, he stood a good chance of losing the sale. “We could have one of our men come by, double-check the numbers—”
“Won’t be necessary,” Janice assured him with a wide smile. Taking Philippe’s arm, she hustled him out of the store and into the parking lot.
Bemused, Philippe looked at her as the door closed behind them. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought you already had the measurements.”
So he did pay attention, she thought. She inclined her head. “I do.”
“Then why all that double-talk back there?” Although he had a feeling he already had the answer.
She led the way to her truck, intent on a quick getaway in case the salesman decided to follow them out to the parking lot out to make one last pitch. “I didn’t like his attitude.”
He struggled to keep his mouth from curving. “Is attitude that important?”
“It is in my line of work.” She unlocked the truck from her side. The double click indicated that his side was open, too. “Don’t worry, I saw who the manufacturer was. We can order that tile from any one of the stores I deal with on a regular basis,” she promised. About to get in, she saw that he was still standing outside the passenger side. She took a guess. “You want to drive?”
That wasn’t why he waited. He was watching the way a sunbeam was glinting in her hair, turning it a light shade of gold.
“No.”
She thought he was just embarrassed because he was behaving so predictably. Rounding the hood, she came to his side.
“Go ahead,” she urged, holding out the keys to him. “We’re not going that far.” The next store was only a few yards away.
After a moment’s hesitation, he took the keys from her and crossed to the driver’s side. Getting in, he asked, “Where’s your favorite place to order tile?”
There were a couple of places she liked to frequent. Both were more than fair in price and reliability. Because there was so much competition, she liked to send business their way whenever possible.
She chose the one closest to where they were. “Orlando’s. It’s about a mile up the road.”
“Good.” Putting the key in the ignition, he started up the truck. “We’ll go there.”
She smiled to herself, shaking her head as she buckled up. “You just want to get this over with.”
“Not that I don’t find the company pleasing,” he qualified, “but yes, I do.”
Well, the man certainly didn’t believe in beating around the bush. And she could sympathize with deadlines and the need to get a project done by a specified time; when she’d worked for her father’s company and dealt with major businesses, there’d been penalties for going over the allotted time.
She wondered if that applied to his work as well. “Make a left out of the lot,” she instructed, pointing to the open road.
“Yes, ma’am.”
In the end, they went with the tile he’d first selected. But not before she managed to get him to look at a few other pieces. She convinced him to get something slightly different for each of the three bathrooms. And just before they left the store, he’d wound up picking out the material for the kitchen counter: an impressive slab of granite known as blue pearl. It was almost black with veins of glimmering blue throughout.
“Damn,” he murmured, a little stunned as he automatically got in behind the wheel more than an hour later. “I had no idea that there were that many different kinds of tile.” She laughed and he caught himself thinking that it was a very peaceful yet arousing sound. “What?”
Her laughter had entered her eyes. “You didn’t even begin to scratch the surface,” she told him.
Philippe looked at her, a little stunned, wondering if that applied to her as well.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_5865f862-9be1-51e6-bee1-3258616da0fe)
The noise didn’t register until after the fact.
Somewhere, a door had closed. Someone was in the house. The next moment, he didn’t have to speculate if it was one of his brothers.
One other person had the key to his house and it was that voice he heard now. Low and full-bodied like brandy being poured over ice, it filled the air, preceding her and coming at him without so much as a greeting or a preamble.
“And what is this I hear about you having the house remodeled?”
He glanced up from his computer to see her standing in his doorway. Lily Moreau was given to dramatic entrances, even with her own family. By all accounts, she was a dramatic woman. From the top of her deep black hair, shot through with captivating streaks of gray, to the tips of her toes, polished, manicured and encased in the Italian designer shoes she favored, Lily Moreau, renowned artist, woman of passion and world traveler was the very personification of drama.
His smile was automatic. She was probably the most trying, infuriating woman in the world—she was at least in the top five—but he loved her dearly. “Hello, Mother, how are you?”
She took possession of the room and moved around like a force of nature, searching for a place to touch down, however briefly. Swirls of turquoise, at her wrists, ears and neck and along her torso, marked her path. Turquoise was one of her two favorite colors.
“Confused,” she responded, pivoting to face him on the three-inch heels that rendered her five-foot-five. “My firstborn, the most stable child of the litter, has ventured into my territory without so much as a single request for input.” She flounced down on the sofa, clouds of turquoise floating about her still trim hips and softly coming to rest in a circle around her. “I’d say I was more than confused. I’d say I was hurt.”
Accustomed to these performances whenever his mother was in town, Philippe hardly looked away from his monitor and the equation that troubled him. “No reason to be hurt, Mother. And as for your ‘territory,’ since when have you been moonlighting as a handyman?”
“Handyman?” Frowning, Lily moved forward on the sofa. “I thought you were having the house redone.” Although she strongly maintained that of the three of them, Philippe had inherited her artistic bent, he had always been determined to bury it. By now his flair was so far from the surface, it would have taken a crane to be resurrected. She liked being consulted on matters, liked being in the thick of things. Color schemes, textures, room dynamics, these all came under her purview.
“Not quite.” He had a strong hunch he knew where his mother had gotten her information. Georges had been the one to let J.D. in the other day when she had dragged him off to those damn stores. “Tell Georges to get his facts straight.”
“It wasn’t Georges,” she informed him, on her feet again and moving about. She stopped to finger a plant she had given him the last time she’d visited. It was two steps removed from death. On an errand of mercy, she walked into the hall, her destination the kitchen. “It was Alain.”
“Tell Alain to get his facts straight next time,” he called after her.
Philippe didn’t bother asking how his other brother had gotten into this. He imagined it was like the old fashioned game of telephone, where Georges had taken his own interpretation of the events and told them to Alain who then put his own spin on it before telling their mother. He was actually surprised they didn’t have him buying a villa in the south of France or some equally improbable scenario.
She was back with a cup full of water. Lily poured it slowly into the pot, then tried to arrange the drooping, drying leaves. “And the facts are?”
Philippe glanced at his mother. He should have known that she would want in on this. She was the one he should have sent with J.D., not gotten roped into traipsing around after the woman from store to store, selecting things that held little to no interest for him. All he’d wanted was to have a cracked sink replaced.
But to say anything on that subject would get him sucked into a conversation he didn’t want. “That you don’t come by enough for me to see you with a scowl on your face.”
“Scowl?” The plant was completely forgotten. Lily reached for her purse and the compact mirror inside. “I’m scowling? I can’t scowl, I’ll get wrinkles before my big show.” Mirror opened, she reviewed her appearance from several different angles, then decided that she was fine. Not twenty-two-year-old fine, but fine nonetheless.
Philippe caught the magic word. “Another big show?”
“Always another big show,” she declared with gusto. It was what she thrived on, that and the men in her life. “If I can’t paint, I’ll just lie down and they can throw dirt over me.” She tossed her head, dark ends flirting with the tops of her shoulders. “I’ll be as good as dead.”
She certainly had a way of phrasing things, he thought. “They throw enough dirt over you, you will be.” One of the first things he’d ever learned about his mother was that, barring some crisis, there was nothing she liked to talk about more than her paintings, so he gave her a gentle nudge in that direction. “So, where and when is this big show?”
“Three weeks from Saturday at the Sunset Galleries on Lido Isle.” She recited the information as if it had been prerecorded. And then she gave him a deep, penetrating look. “You’ll be there?”
Turning in his chair so that he faced her instead of the computer, he grinned. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
She took hold of his hands as if that was all she needed to discern whether or not he was telling her the truth. Fingers wound tightly around his palms.
“No, really, you’ll be there?” She nodded absently toward the screen. “You know how you get when you get involved in your work.”
“I’ll be there,” he promised, wiping any trace of a smile from either his voice or his face.
Lily sighed, as if getting him to agree had been an ordeal. “Good. I want you to meet him.”
“Him?” Philippe eyed his mother warily. “There’s another him?” He should have known there would be. It had been, what, five months since the last one had been sent packing? That was a long dry spell for his mother.
“Yes,” Lily replied joyously. She’d moved on to the rear of the room to gaze out at the backyard it faced. All three houses shared it as if it was one large yard instead of the culmination of three. “You need a gazebo, Philippe,” she decided and then, glancing back at him, she waved her hand. “Get that look off your face, I know what you’re thinking.”
He made it a point to be as laid-back as she was dramatic. “I sincerely doubt that.”
She was not his mother for nothing. “You’re thinking, here we go again.”
He laughed, impressed. “Very good. I guess I’m getting too predictable.”
She didn’t waste words on defending her past choices. She was a woman who had always believed in moving forward. “This time, it’s different.”
And where had he heard that before? Philippe mused. He went back to focusing on his work, uttering a tolerant, “Of course it is.”
“It is,” she insisted, crossing to his desk and presenting herself behind his monitor so that he was forced to look at her. She clasped her hands together and resembled a schoolgirl in the throes of her first major crush. “Kyle is everything I’ve been looking for in a man. Funny, smart, youthful and vigorous—”
Philippe shot his hand up in the air to halt the flow of words. “If that word doesn’t apply to the way he polishes your silverware, Mother, I really don’t want to hear about it.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Oh Philippe, you know what your trouble is?”
Yes, he had a mother who had never grown up. “I’m sure you’ll tell me,” he replied patiently.
She took his chin in her hand, lowering her face to his. “You’re not at all like your father.”
Moving his chair back, he eyed his mother. “I thought that was a good thing. You left my father because he gambled away the floor from under your feet,” he reminded her.
She refused to dwell on the bad. It was one of her attributes. “But first he swept me off those feet, Philippe. He had this zest for life—”
“Otherwise known as Texas hold ’em.”
“Oh Philippe,” she sighed mightily, “you were born old.”
He didn’t see it as a failing. If anything, it kept him from making his mother’s mistakes and leading with his heart instead of his head. “One of us had to be and someone had to be there for the boys.”
The hurricane stopped moving. Lily’s expression turned serious. “Was having me as a mother so terrible?”
He wouldn’t allow his mind to stray to the hundred and one shortcomings his mother possessed. The bottom line was that she meant well in her own way and she did love them. Of that he was certain. So he smiled at her and said, “You had your moments.”
“I had my hours, Philippe, my days,” she corrected majestically. “And I always loved all you boys to distraction.” Long, slender fingers touched his cheek the way she did when he was small and needed her comforting. “I still do.”
“I know that.”
She dropped her hand to her side. The movement was accompanied by the sound of gold bracelets greeting one another. “I’m a passionate woman, Philippe. I need passion for my art. I use passion,” she insisted.
This was a conversation they’d had before. Several times. “I know that, too, Mother.”
She kissed his cheek, then rubbed away the streak of vivid red from his skin. Any minor disagreement that might have arisen was terminated before it had a chance to form. “Is there a reason for this handiwork you’re having done?”
“Yes,” he replied simply, “the bathroom sink is cracked.”
“Oh.” She looked exceptionally disappointed. “I was hoping that it was being done because you were finally settling down.”
Philippe addressed the phrase in its strictest sense. “I’m the most settled out of the three of us,” he reminded her.
The drama returned as Lily sighed and resumed her restless patrol of the small converted bedroom. “With a woman, Philippe, settling down with a woman.” She retraced her steps and presented herself before him again. “Have you been seeing anyone?”
“Only you when I’m lucky.”
Lily closed her eyes and sighed. “Use that charm on someone else, Philippe. Someone who matters.”
Momentarily surrendering, he rose to his feet. He just wasn’t going to get any work done with his mother here, bombarding him with questions. He might as well enjoy this visit.
“You always matter, Mother. Want some coffee?” he suggested.
She looked as if she was going to say yes, then surprised him by shaking her head.
“I don’t want to take you away from what you’re doing.” She took exactly one step toward the threshold before she continued talking. “Just wanted to invite you to the show and to see if you had any women stashed here.” The expression on her face told him that she hoped he’d do better on her next unexpected visit. “Your father always had women stashed here and there.”
There wasn’t very much he remembered about his parents’ union when it had been official, although his mother had taken his father back for a short time between her second and third husbands. But they hadn’t been married then. “Before you got engaged?”
Lily moved a stray hair from her cheek. “No, after we were married. After gambling and family, women were your father’s primary addiction.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if it had no impact on her whatsoever. Lily might have been a cauldron of emotion, but she was never judgmental.
Philippe blew out a breath. “Not much of a prize,” he commented.
But his mother’s eyes were shining like two bright jewels. “Vigorous, Philippe. He, too, was very vigorous.”
It was going to take him days to get the image she’d planted out of his head, Philippe thought. If he were still at a young and impressionable age, that just might have scarred him for life.
But then, if his mother’s actual lifestyle hadn’t done it while he was growing up, he sincerely doubted that anything at this stage possibly could. Flamboyant, eccentric and completely unorthodox were all terms that were synonymous with the name Lily Moreau and he’d survived his childhood to become a relatively well-adjusted, successful man. If his house was a little empty at times, well, everyone paid some kind of price in life. Being alone was his.
Besides, it was a great deal more preferable than constantly making the wrong choices.
His mother still hovered over him. “I worry about you most of all, Philippe.”
That was the last thing he wanted. For her to worry or, worse, to do something about that worry.
He had only one response for that. “Don’t.”
She sniffed, taking offense. “I may not be Norman Rockwell’s idea of the perfect mother, but I’m still a mother.”
He knew she meant well. Philippe softened. “Norman Rockwell’s been gone for a long time, I don’t think you need to worry about him. And I appreciate the concern, Mother, but I am a grown man. We march to different drummers. You taught me that, remember?”
