laughed, taking a seat himself. “Comes from telling my brothers what to do.”
“You were a fledgling bully?” she asked. Because the lasagna was hers, she did the honors, cutting portions.
“I was the father figure. Or, I should say,” he amended, “the stable father figure since there were an abundance of other father figures milling around most of the time.” He stopped abruptly as his words echoed back to him. This wasn’t like him. “Why am I always spilling my guts to you?”
Her smile was encouraging, understanding. “I have the kind of face people talk to. I’m more or less invisible,” she explained. “They don’t feel that they’ll see me again once the job is over, but for the duration, they have invited me into their home and since I’m there, they come to regard me as someone they can talk to.” She grinned, sinking her fork into the piece she’d taken. “I’m like the family pet without the emotional investment.”
That definitely was not the way he saw her. “We never had a pet.”
“Not even goldfish?”
He shook his head. “For a while, Mother traveled around too much for us to have pets. And then when she finally bought the house and we stayed behind while she went on her tours, she made it clear she didn’t want anything with fur, feathers or fins finding its way to our mailing address.” Because he felt that he’d said too much again, he changed the subject. He nodded at his plate. “This is good.”
“Thank you.” His compliment pleased her more than she thought it might. Careful, J.D., you’ve slid down this path before and all you got for your trouble is skinned knees. “I wouldn’t have brought it if it was bad.”
The reply tickled him. “So, what other talents do you have?”
She didn’t have to stop to think. “That pretty much covers it.”
In his estimation, that was more than enough. She cooked like a house afire and could build a replacement if the need arose. “You ever think about starting your own restaurant?”
Not even for a moment. “Ninety-five percent of all restaurants fail in their first year. I need a sure thing and working with these—” she held up her hands “—is a sure thing.”
He could understand her reasoning, not that the world of contractors was all that stable. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”
“It was necessity.” She paused to take a bite herself. “After my mother left, it was either learn to cook or eat ready-made things out of a box.”
He curbed the desire to ask her about her mother. If she wanted him to know more, she’d tell him. As for preparing things out of a box, she’d just described the way he lived. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“Have you read what they put inside that stuff?”
He shrugged, then swallowed what was in his mouth before answering, “Food.”
“Food whose ingredients are guaranteed to give you high blood pressure and shut down your kidneys by the time you reach middle age.” Turning, she reached into the blue and white box and took out a small round bowl. “I brought you fruit for dessert.” She took off the cover. “Blueberries. They’re rich in antioxidants.”
He laughed, shaking his head as he looked at the offering. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re pushy?”
“Maybe once or twice,” she allowed.
He was willing to bet it was more than that.
Philippe glanced down at his plate. Somehow, he’d managed to eat the entire portion without realizing it. The blueberries, however, held no interest for him. He moved back from the table.
“Thanks, that was really good. But you don’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know.” She gathered up the dirty dishes, putting them back into the chest.
Philippe started to offer to do them for her and then realized that he couldn’t. She’d ripped out his sink that morning. With the chest between her hands, she began to make her way to the front door. He noticed that she was leaving her tools behind.
“Don’t you need to take anything else with you?”
She glanced back at the toolbox. “Why? You’re my only client.”
He took the chest from her, indicating that he was going to follow her out with it. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Why?”
“Well, it means that business is bad, right?”
She shook her head. “No, it means that I only do one client at a time.” She unlocked the door and took the chest from him, placing it behind the front seat of her truck. “I was serious about that. This way, it’ll get done faster.”
“And with your brother working with you, it’ll be even that much faster.”
She was going to have to keep after Gordon, she thought. He did good work—when he was working. But given half a chance, he’d take off for a few hours or catch a nap.
“Absolutely,” she promised.
Ten minutes later, J.D. had left and he was back at his desk. His appetite appeased, his brain cleared, Philippe was in a much better frame of mind to take another crack at the program.
Bathed in absolute quiet, after a few minutes, Philippe realized that he found the silence almost deafening.
With a resigned sigh, he shook his head and turned on the radio to fill up the empty spaces.
Somewhere between the time his alarm sounded and he toweled himself dry from his shower, it hit Philippe like a bullet right between the eyes.
He was looking forward to seeing J.D. Looking forward to seeing her even with the accompanying wall of noise. The realization caught him off guard. He tried not to dwell on it, tried not to attach any sort of deep meaning to it. He didn’t, by definition, dislike people and she was a person. The woman had turned out to be a decent sort, that was all. No big deal.
If it was no big deal, why did he feel compelled to convince himself of that? It should have just been a given.
Making a disgusted noise that drew into service a mangled French phrase, one of the few things he had learned from his father, he focused his mind on what was important. His work.
Philippe had forced himself up early, showering and shaving a good ninety minutes before he usually left the confines of his bed. With a stale piece of toast and marginal coffee, he sat before his computer, pondering the merit of a particular equation on his screen when he heard the doorbell.
Or thought he did.
It turned out to be a false alarm. Just his ears
