“This was about a cracked sink,” Philippe reminded her.
It was never just about a cracked sink. By the time that stage was reached, other things were in need of fixing and replacing as well. “I thought that the oldest son of Lily Moreau would be more open to productive suggestions—even if they do come from a woman who owns a tool belt.” She saw the surprise in his eyes grow. “I have access to the Internet,” she pointed out glibly. “And I try to learn as much as I can about potential clients before I meet with them.”
He noticed that she said the word potential as if it was to be discarded while the word client had a healthy amount of enthusiasm associated with it. The woman was obviously very sure of herself.
Even so, he didn’t like having his mind made up for him.
“So, are you going to do his bathrooms, Mama?” Kelli piped up as they finally drove away from Philippe Zabelle’s house.
Easing her foot on the brake as she approached a red light, Janice glanced up into the rearview mirror. Kelli sat directly behind her in her car seat, something she suffered with grace. Car seats were required for the four and under set, something she insisted she no longer was inasmuch as she was four and three-quarters.
Kelli was waving her feet at just a barely lesser tempo than a hummingbird flapped its wings. Any second now, her daughter would lift off, seat and all.
Energy really was wasted on the young. “Yes. I’ll be redoing them.”
“And the kitchen, too?” There was excitement in Kelli’s voice.
It never failed to amaze her just how closely Kelli paid attention. Another child wouldn’t have even noticed what was going on. Too bad Kelli couldn’t give Gordon lessons.
“Yes, the kitchen, too.”
That had been touch and go for a bit, but then she’d managed to convince Zabelle there were wonderful possibilities available to him. She wasn’t trying to line her pockets so much as she felt a loyalty to give her client the benefit of her expertise and creative eye.
In actuality, the whole house could do with a makeover, but she was content to have gotten this far. Three bathrooms and a kitchen. Now all she needed was to get to her computer and start sketching.
“And what else?” Kelli wanted to know.
God, but the little girl sounded so grown up at times, Janice thought. Her foot on the accelerator, she drove through the intersection and made a right at the next corner. “That’s it for now, honey.”
Despite the fact that she was a good craftsperson and she had a contractor’s license, obtained in the days when there’d been an actual decent-sized company to work for—her father’s—Janice knew she worked at a definite disadvantage. Philippe Zabelle was not the only man skeptical about hiring a woman to handle his renovations. Her own father had been like that, even though she’d proven herself to him over and over again.
He always favored Gordon over her.
She supposed she was partially to blame for that. Because she loved him, she always covered up for Gordon when he messed up, doing his work for him so that he wouldn’t have to endure their father’s wrath.
Even now, the memory of that wrath made her involuntarily shiver.
Sisterly love ultimately caused her to be shut out. When he died, her father had left the company to Gordon. There wasn’t even a single provision about her—or her baby—in Jake Wyatt’s will.
It was a cold thing to do, she thought now, her hands tightening on the steering wheel as she eked through the next light.
Gordon had had as much interest in the company as a muskrat had in buying a winter coat from a major department store. Without their father around to cast his formidable shadow, Gordon became drunk on freedom. He turned his attention away from the business and toward the pursuit of his one true passion—women. A year and a half after their father died the company belonged to the bank because of the loans Gordon drew against Wyatt Construction, and she, a widow with a young child and three-quarters of a college degree, had to hustle in order to provide for herself and Kelli.
At first, she’d been desperate to take anything that came her way. She quickly discovered that she hated sales, hated being a waitress and the scores of other dead-end endeavors she undertook in order to pay the bills. Dying to get back to the one thing she knew she was good at and loved doing, she’d advertised in the local neighborhood paper, posted ads on any space she could find on community billboards and slowly, very slowly, got back into the game.
But every contracting job she eventually landed was preceded by a fair amount of hustling and verbal tap dancing to convince the client that she was every bit as good as the next contractor—and more than likely better because she’d been doing it for most of her life. She was the one, not Gordon, who liked to follow their father around, lugging a toolbox and mimicking his every move. Dolls held no interest for her, drill bits did.
“Mama,” the exasperated little voice behind her rose another octave as Kelli tried to get her attention, “I asked you a question.”
Their eyes met in the mirror. Janice did her best to look contrite. “Sorry, baby, I was thinking about something else for a second. What do you want to know?”
“Is he gonna want more?”
For a second, Janice had lost the thread of the conversation Kelli was conducting. “Who?”
She heard Kelli sigh mightily. She pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh. Sometimes it almost felt as if their roles were reversed and Kelli was the mom while she was the kid.
“The man with the pretty painting, Mama.”
Now Janice really did draw a blank. “Painting?” she echoed, trying to remember if she’d noticed a painting anywhere. She came up empty.
“Yes. In the living room.” Kelli carefully enunciated every word, as if afraid she would lose her mother’s attention at any second. “There was a big blue lake and trees and—didn’t you see it, Mama?” Kelli asked impatiently.
“Apparently not.”
Art was definitely Kelli’s passion. The little girl had been drawing ever since she could hold a pencil in her hand. The swirls and stick figures that first emerged quickly gave way to recognizable shapes and characters at an amazingly young age. Beautiful characters that seemed to have personalities radiating from them. It was her fervent dream to send her daughter to a good art school and encourage the gift she had. Kelli was never going to go through what she had, wasn’t going to have her ability dismissed, devalued and ignored.
“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