on either side of the doorjamb, Kelli peered into the room before her mother could stop her, then declared in a very adult, very disappointed voice, “Oh, it’s not pretty.” Turning around, she looked up at him with a smile that promised everything was going to be all right. “But don’t worry, Mama can make it pretty for you. She’s very good.”
Philippe raised an eyebrow. “She your press agent?” he asked, amused despite himself as he nodded toward the little girl.
For the first time, he saw the woman in the well-fitting faded jeans smile. Janice ruffled her daughter’s silky blond hair with pure affection. “More like my own personal cheering section.”
An identical smile was mirrored on Kelli’s lips. The resemblance was uncanny.
Stepping back to grab her mother’s hand, Kelli proceeded to tug her into the small rectangular slightly musty room. “C’mon, Mommy, tell him what you’re gonna do to make it look pretty.”
Janice glanced over her shoulder toward the man she hoped was going to hire her and allow her to make this month’s mortgage payment. “I don’t think pretty is what Mr. Zabelle has in mind, honey.”
Kelli pursed her lips together, clearly mulling over her mother’s words. And then she raised her bright blue eyes up to look at his face, studying him intently as if she was trying to decide just what sort of creature he was.
“Everyone likes pretty,” she finally declared with the firm conviction of the very young.
Philippe’s experience with children was extremely limited. It really didn’t go beyond his own rather adult childhood and the brothers he’d all but raised. All of that now residing in the distant past.
Too distant for him to really recall with any amount of clarity.
But since Kelli made decrees like a short adult, he treated her as such and said, “That all depends on what you mean by pretty.”
The smile on the rosebud mouth was back, spreading along it generously and banishing her momentary serious expression. This time, she looked up at her mother and giggled. “He’s funny, Mommy.”
Janice slipped her hand around Kelli’s shoulders, stooping down to do so. “He’s the client, Kel, and we don’t talk about him as if he’s not in the room when he’s standing right beside us.”
“Good rule to remember,” Philippe approved, then decided to ask a question of his own. “You always bring your daughter along on interviews?”
Interviews. Janice had gotten to dislike the word. It made her feel as if she was being scrutinized. As if someone was passing judgment on her. There had been more than enough of that when she’d been growing up. Her father was always judging her—and finding her lacking. Besides, she took exception to Zabelle’s question. It wasn’t any of his business if Kelli came along or not as long as everything else was conducted professionally.
Without meaning to, she squared her shoulders. “My sitter had a date.”
Philippe supposed that was a reasonable excuse, although the woman could have rescheduled. “Good for her.”
“Him,” she corrected. “Good for him,” she added when he looked at her quizzically. “My sitter’s my brother, Gordon.”
Mentally, Philippe came to an abrupt halt. He was getting far more information than he either needed or wanted. If he did wind up hiring this woman to tinker and fix the couple of things that needed fixing, he wanted to keep their exchanges strictly to a business level.
But that wasn’t going to be easy, he realized in the next moment when the little girl took his hand in hers and brightly informed him, “I don’t have a brother. Do you have one?”
He expected Kelli’s mother to step in and admonish the little girl for talking so freely to a stranger. But there was nothing forthcoming from J.D. and Kelli was apparently waiting for him to give her an answer.
“Yes,” he finally said. “Two.”
“Do they live here, too?” Kelli asked. She seemed ready to go off in search of them.
He shifted his eyes toward the so-called handy-person. “Don’t you think you should teach her not to be so friendly with strangers?”
Janice had never liked being told what to do. She struggled now to keep her annoyance out of her voice. The man probably meant well and he was, after all, a potential client.
But who the hell did he think he was, telling her how to raise her daughter?
She took a breath before answering, trying her best to sound calm. She was dealing with residual anxiety, as always when Gordon went out on a date. He had a very bad tendency to overdo things and shower his companions with gifts he couldn’t afford.
When she finally spoke, it was in a low voice, the same voice he’d heard on the answering machine. “I don’t see the need to make her paranoid if I’m around to watch her. Kelli knows enough not to talk to someone she doesn’t know if she’s alone—which she never is,” Janice added firmly. “Besides,” she continued, “Kelli’s a very good judge of character.”
Now that he found hard to believe. “And she’s how old?”
He was mocking her, Janice thought. Probably thought she was one of those doting mothers who thought their kid walked on water. But Kelli seemed to have a radar when it came to nice people. She turned very shy around the other type.
“Age doesn’t always matter,” she told Zabelle. Gordon, for instance, had the impaired judgment of a two-month-old Labrador puppy. Everyone was his friend—until proven otherwise. The later happened far too often. He had a V on his forehead for victim and self-serving women could hone in on it from a fifty-mile radius. “Sometimes all it takes are good instincts.” Something Gordon didn’t seem to possess when it came to women. He fell prey to one gold digger after another. The sad part was that he never caught on. And if she said anything, her brother felt she was being a shrew.
It was hard to believe that he was the older one.
Because he’d asked and her mother hadn’t answered, Kelli held up four fingers and bent her thumb to illustrate what she was about to say. “I’m four and three-quarters.” She dropped her hand and then added in a stage whisper that would have made a Shakespearean actor proud, “Mama says I’m going on forty.”
The unassuming remark made him laugh. “I can believe that.”
“Why don’t we get down to business?” Janice suggested. She wanted to wrap this up as quickly as possible, especially if it didn’t lead anywhere. She hadn’t had a chance to prepare dinner yet. That had been Gordon’s job, but then Sheila, the latest keeper of his heart, had called and he’d forgotten everything else. When she’d come home from wrapping up a job, he’d all but run over her in his haste to leave the house.
“Good, you’re finally home. Gotta run.” And he did. Literally.
“Dinner?” she’d called after him.
“Yeah,” he’d tossed over her shoulder. “I’m taking her out. Seems she’s free after all.”
Which had meant that whoever Sheila
