Loe raamatut: «Playboy Bachelors»

To Helen Conrad, my bridge over troubled waters.

Thank you.

Chapter One

“When are you going to get that cracked sink fixed?” Beau de la Croix asked good-naturedly as he slid back into his place at the poker table.

The question was addressed to Philippe Zabelle, his cousin and the host of their weekly poker game. Beau and several other friends and relatives showed up here at Philippe’s to talk, eat and bet toothpicks on the whimsical turn of the cards. They used colored toothpicks instead of chips or money because those were the house rules and Philippe, easygoing about so many things, was very strict about that.

Philippe’s dark eyebrows rose slightly above his light green eyes at the innocent but still irritating query. Beau had hit a sore spot. Everyone at the circular table was aware of that.

“When I get around to it,” Philippe replied evenly.

“Better hope that’s not soon,” Georges Armand, Philippe’s half brother commented, battling the grin that begged to break out across his tanned face. “If Philippe puts his hand to it, that’s the end of the sink.”

Philippe, the oldest of famed artist Lily Moreau’s three sons, shifted his steely gaze toward Georges, his junior by two years. “Are you saying that I’m not handy?”

Alain Dulac, Philippe’s other half brother, as blond as Philippe was dark, bent over with laughter at the very idea of his older brother holding an actual tool in his hand. “Oh God, Philippe, you’re so far from handy that if handy were Los Angeles, you’d be somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Drowning,” Alain finally managed, holding his sides because they hurt.

Georges discarded two cards and momentarily frowned at the rest of his hand. “Two,” he decided out loud, then looked over to his right and Philippe. “Everyone knows you’ve got lots of talents, Philippe, but being handy is just not one of them.”

Philippe tried not to take offense, but it bothered him nonetheless. For the most part, he considered himself a free thinker, a person who believed that no one should be expected to fit into a given slot or pigeonholed because of gender or race. With the flamboyant and outspoken Lily Moreau as his mother, a woman who made the fictional Auntie Mame come off like a cloistered nun, he couldn’t help but have an open mind.

Even so, it got under his skin that he barely knew the difference between a Phillips-head screwdriver and a flat-head one. Men were supposed to know these things, it was a given, written in some giant book of man-rules somewhere.

The fact that he not only couldn’t rebuild an automobile engine but was pretty stumped if one refused to start, didn’t bother him. Lots of men were ignorant about what went on under the hoods of things housed in their garage.

But not being handy around the house, well, that was another story entirely.

Still, he had no natural ability, nor even a fostered one. He’d always been too busy either studying or being both mother and father to his brothers because his mother had once more taken off with a show, or, just as likely, with a man. Growing up, he’d found himself taking on the role of buffer, placing himself between the endless parade of nannies and his two younger brothers. Once out of their rebellious teens, Georges and Alain had both acknowledged that even though they loved their mother dearly, Philippe was the only reason they had turned out normal. Or at least reasonably so.

That didn’t stop them from teasing him whenever the opportunity arose. Their affection for the man they considered the head of the family actually seemed to promote it.

“One,” Alain requested, throwing down his card first. After glancing at the new addition, he looked up at Philippe. He put on the face that Philippe knew was the undoing of every fluttering female heart at the university Alain was currently attending. A university whose tuition bill found its way into his mailbox twice a year and which he promptly and willingly paid. “Too late to change my mind and get the old one back?”

There wasn’t even a hint of humor on Philippe’s face. “After insulting me?”

“Wasn’t an insult, Philippe,” his cousin Remy assured him. Remy, a geologist, was closer to Alain in age than Philippe. “Alain was only telling it the way it is. Hey,” he added quickly, forestalling any fallout from the man they all admired, “we all love you, Philippe, but you know you’ll never be the first one any of us call if we find that we’ve got a clogged drain.”

“Or a cabinet door that won’t close right,” Vincent Mirabeau called over from the far side of the kitchen. “Like this one.” To illustrate his point, Vincent, another one of Philippe’s cousins and Lily’s godson, went through elaborate motions to close the closet door. Creaking, it returned to its place, approximately an inch and a half away from its mate, just hanging in midspace. “I think you should bite the bullet and hire someone to remodel this place.”

Remy put in his two cents. “Or at least the bathroom and the kitchen.”

Philippe folded his hand and placed it face down on the table, his eyes sweeping over his brothers and cousins.

“What’s wrong with this place?” he asked.

He’d bought the house with the first money he’d managed to save up after opening up his own software design company. The moment he’d seen it, he’d known that the unique structure was for him. To the passing eye, the house where he received his mail appeared to be a giant estate. It was only when the passing eye stopped passing and moved closer that the perception changed. His house was just one of three houses, carefully designed to look like one. There was one door in the center, leading to his house. Other doors located on either end of the structure opened the other two houses. Thanks to his initial down payment, Georges and Alain lived in those. They all had their privacy but were within shouting distance if a quick family meeting was needed. Because Lily was their mother, the need for one of these was not as rare for them as it was for some families.

“Nothing’s wrong with this place,” Beau was quick to say. They all knew how attached to the house Philippe was. “At least, nothing a good handyman couldn’t fix.”

Philippe’s expression remained uncharacteristically stony. “C’mon, Philippe,” Remy urged, “every time you turn on the faucet in the kitchen, it sounds like you’re listening to the first five bars of ‘When the Saints Come Marching In.’”

Before Philippe could protest, Remy turned the handle toward the left. Hot water slowly emerged, but a strange echoing rattling noise in the pipes preceded the appearance of any liquid.

Philippe sighed. There was no point in pretending he would get around to fixing that, either. He didn’t even know where to start. When it came to the faucet, his ability began and ended with turning the spigots on or off.

Tossing a bright pink toothpick onto the pile of red, blue, green and yellow, Philippe asked, “Anyone else want to bet?”

Vincent shook his head, throwing in his cards. “Too rich for my blood.”

“Count me out.” Remy followed suit.

But Beau grinned. “I’ll see your pink toothpick,” he tossed one in, “and raise you a green one.”

Picking up a green toothpick from his dwindling pile, Philippe debated. Green represented five cents; he rarely went higher than that on a single bet. His father, Jon Zabelle, had been a charming incurable gambler. The man had single-handedly almost brought them down and was responsible for Lily Moreau’s brief and unfortunate flirtation with frightening poverty. That period of time, long in his past and no more than three months in length, had left an indelible mark on Philippe. It also allowed him to recognize the occasional craving to bet as a potential problem.

Forewarned, Philippe treated any obstacle head on. Since he liked to play cards and he liked to gamble, he made sure that it would never result in his losing anything more a handful of colorful toothpicks. The big loser at his table wound up doing chores to make payment, not going to an ATM machine.

“I call,” Philippe announced, tossing in the green toothpick to match his cousin’s.

“Three of a kind,” Beau told him, spreading out two black nines with a red one in between.

“Me, too,” Philippe countered, setting down three fours, one by one. And then he added, “Oh, and I’ve also got two of a kind.” The fours were joined by a pair of queens.

Beau huffed, staring down at the winning hand. “Full house, you damn lucky son of a gun.” He pushed the “pot,” with its assorted array of toothpicks, toward his oldest cousin.

“Gonna cash in this time and spend all your ‘winnings’ on renovating the house?” Remy teased as Philippe sorted out the different colors and placed them in their appropriate piles.

Philippe didn’t bother looking at his cousin. “I don’t have the time to start hunting for a decent contractor.”

Vincent’s grin went from ear to ear. He stuck his hand into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Just so happens, I have the name of a contractor right here in my wallet.”

Philippe stopped sorting, feeling like a man who’d been set up. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Somebody named J. D. Wyatt,” Vincent told him. “Friend of mine had some work done on his place. Said it was fast and the bid was way below anything the other contractors he’d contacted had come through with.”

Which could be good, or could be bad, Philippe thought. The contractor could be hungry for work or he could be using sub-grade material. If he decided to hire this J.D., he was going to have to stay on top of him.

Philippe thought for a moment. He knew his brothers and cousins were going to keep on ribbing him until he gave in. In all fairness, he knew the place could stand to have some work done. He just hated the hassle of having someone else do it.

Better that than the hassle of you pretending you know what you’re doing and messing up, big time, a small voice in his head whispered.

For better or for worse, he made up his mind. He’d give it a go. After all, he wasn’t an unreasonable man and the place did look like it was waiting to get on the disaster-area list.

He could always cancel if it didn’t work out. “This J.D. have a phone number where I could reach him?”

Vincent was already ahead of him. “Just so happens,” he plucked the card out of his wallet and held it out to his cousin, “I’ve got it right here.”

“Serendipity,” Remy declared, grinning as Philippe looked at him quizzically. “Can’t mess with serendipity.”

“Since when?” Philippe snorted.

Remy had an answer for everything. “Since it’ll interfere with your karma.”

Philippe snorted even louder. He didn’t believe in any of that nonsense. That was his mother’s domain. Karma, tarot cards, tea leaves, mediums, everything and anything that pretended to link her up with the past. Although he loved the woman dearly and would do anything for her, he’d spent most of his life trying to be as different from his mother as humanly possible—from both his parents.

That was why he’d turned his back on the artistic ability that he’d so obviously inherited. Because he didn’t want to go his mother’s route.

Lily Moreau had coaxed her first born to pick up a paintbrush in his hand even before she’d encouraged him to pick up a toothbrush and brush his teeth. If he made it as an artist, he could always buy new teeth, she’d informed him cheerfully.

But he had dug in his heels and been extremely stubborn. He refused to draw or paint anything either under her watchful eye or away from it. Only when he was absently killing time, most likely on hold on the phone, did he catch himself doodling some elaborate figure in pencil.

He was always quick to destroy any and all evidence. He was his mother’s son, as well as his father’s, but there was no earthly reason that he could see to admit to either, at least not when it came to laboring under their shadows.

He wanted to make his own way in the world, be his own person, make his own mistakes and have his own triumphs. And this was one of the reasons it really bothered him that he wasn’t up to the task of fixing things in his own place. Neither his father, now dead, nor his mother, alive enough for both of them, could claim to be even remotely handy. If Philippe were handy, he would be even more different from his parents.

But for that to ever happen, he was going to need lessons. Intense lessons. He glanced down at the card in his hand. Maybe this would turn out all right after all.

“Okay,” he nodded, tucking the card into the back pocket of his jeans, “I’ll call this J.D. when I get a chance.”

“Before the bathroom sink breaks in half?” Georges asked.

Philippe nodded. “Before the bathroom sink breaks in half,” he promised. He picked up the deck of cards again and looked around. “Now, do you guys want to play poker or do you just want to sit around, complaining about my house?”

“All in favor of complaining about Philippe’s house,” Georges declared, raising his hand in the air as he looked around the table, “raise your hand.”

Every hand around him shot up, but Philippe focused his attention exclusively on his brother. Grabbing a handful of chips—the crunchy kind—he threw them at Georges. Laughing, Georges responded in kind.

Which was how the poker game devolved into a food fight that lasted until all the remaining edible material—and the toothpicks—and been commandeered and pressed into service.

The result was a huge mess and a great deal of laughter, punctuated by a stream of colorful words that didn’t begin to describe what had gone on.

Hours later, after he had gotten them to all lend a hand and clean up, the gathering finally broke up and they all went their separate ways. Alain returned to his law books and Georges declared that he had a late date waiting for him, one that, he’d whispered confidentially, held a great deal of promise. Which only meant that Georges thought he was going to get lucky.

Remy, Vincent and Beau went back to whatever it was that occupied them in their off-hours. Trouble, mostly, Philippe thought fondly. Probably instigated by Henri and Joseph, first cousins and two of the more silent members of the weekly poker game.

It was still early by his old standards. But his old standards hadn’t had to cope with deadlines and program bugs that insisted on manifesting themselves despite his diligent attempts to squash them. Program bugs he needed to iron out of his latest software package before he submitted it to Lyon Enterprises, his software publisher. The deadline was breathing down his neck.

He didn’t have to work this hard. He chose to work this hard. Philippe had made his fortune on a software package that he’d designed five years ago, a package that had become indispensable to the advertising industry. Streamlined and efficient, it was now considered the standard by which all other such programs were measured. There was no need for him to keep hours that would have only gladdened the heart of a Tibetan monk, but, unlike his late father, he had never believed in coasting. He liked being kept busy, liked creating, liked having a schedule to adhere to and something tangible to shoot for every day. He wasn’t the idle type.

His mother’s second husband, Georges’s father, had been a self-made millionaire, owing his fortune to a delicate scent that lured scores of women with far too much money on their hands. André Armand was a man who slept late and partied into the wee hours of the morning. It was because of André that they had the lifestyle they now enjoyed.

Even before André had married his mother, the man had taken to him. The moment the vows were uttered, he’d taken him under his wing, viewing him as a protégé. But Philippe quickly learned that although he really liked the man, the life André led was not one that appealed to him at all, even as an adolescent. It was because of André that Philippe had come to the conclusion that no matter how rich he was, a man needed a purpose.

He’d never forgotten it, nor let either one of his brothers forget it. He’d made sure that his brothers did their lessons and excelled in school, even when they said they didn’t need to.

“You need to make a difference in this world,” he’d told them over and over again, “no matter how small. Or else all you are is a large mound of dust, just passing through.”

As he slipped his hands into his back pockets, the tips of the fingers of his right hand came in contact with what felt like a piece of paper. Drawing it out, Philippe stared for a second before he recalled where he’d gotten it and why.

The contractor.

Right.

Well, if he didn’t make the call right now, he knew he wouldn’t. Life had a habit of overwhelming him at times, especially whenever his mother was in town and rumor had it Hurricane Lily was due in soon. Details tended to get buried and lost if he didn’t attend to them immediately.

Do it now or let it go, Philippe thought with a half smile.

Making his way to the nearest phone, Philippe glanced at his watch to make sure it wasn’t too late to call. It was a little before ten. Still early, he thought as he began to tap out the embossed hunter-green numbers on the card.

The phone on the other end rang three times. No one picked up.

Philippe was about to hang up when he heard the receiver suddenly coming to life.

And then, the most melodic voice he’d ever heard proceeded to tell him: “You’ve reached J. D. Wyatt’s office. I’m sorry we missed you call. Please leave your number and a detailed message as to what you want done and we’ll get back to you.”

Obviously this was either Wyatt’s secretary or, more likely, his wife. The sensual sound of her voice planted thoughts in his head and made him want to request having “things done” that had nothing to do with renovating parts of his house and everything to do with renovating parts of him. Or his soul, he silently amended.

He was currently in between encounters. Encounters, not relationships, because they weren’t that. Relationships took time, effort, emotional investment; all of which he’d seen come to naught, especially in his mother’s life. There’d been some keepers in his mother’s lot, most notably Alain’s father and a man named Alexander Walters. But as much as his mother loved being in a relationship, loved having a man around, she had always been the restless kind. No matter how good a relationship was, eventually his mother felt the need to leave it, to shed it like a skin she’d outgrown. She’d left all three of her husbands, divorcing them before they’d died. Remained friends with all of the men she’d loved even years after she’d moved on.

His mother couldn’t seem to function without a relationship in her life, especially when it was in its birthing stages. She loved being in love. He had never seen the need for that, the need for garnering the pain involved in ending something. He’d never wanted to be in that position, so he wasn’t. It was as simple as that.

Feelings couldn’t be hurt if they weren’t invested—on either side. After a while, it seemed natural to have female company only on the most cursory level. To enjoy an encounter without promising anything beyond tonight and then moving on.

He didn’t know any other way.

The beep he heard on the other end of the line roused him, bringing him back from his momentary revelry. “Um, this is Philippe Zabelle.” He rattled off his telephone number. “I got your name from a friend of a friend. I need some remodeling work done on two of my bathrooms. I thought you might come by my place at around seven tomorrow night if that’s convenient for you.” He recited his address slowly. “If I don’t get a call from you, I’ll be expecting you tomorrow at seven. See you then.”

Philippe hung up. He absolutely hated talking to machines, even ones with sexy voices. As he went up the stairs to his bedroom, he thought about how people were far too isolated and dependent on machines to do their work for them.

And then he smiled to himself. It was a rather ironic thought, given the nature of what he did for a living. His smile widened. The world was a strange place.