LITMIR.BIZ

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nodded as if he’d just agreed with her. “The tile is very bland,” she pointed to the wall. “It dates the room, as does the carpet. And you’re missing grout in several places.” She indicated just where. “My guess is that it was probably scrubbed out over the years.” She based her assumption on the fact that there didn’t appear to be any visible mold. Left to their own devices, most men had bathrooms that doubled as giant petri dishes, growing several different strains of mold and fungus. “Whoever’s been cleaning your bathroom has been doing an excellent job, but scrubbing does take its toll on tile and grout after a while.”

      He wasn’t sure if she was giving him a compliment or trying to get him to volunteer more information about his personal life. In either case, he shrugged. “I just find things to spray on it—whenever I remember,” he added, thinking of the last time he’d had the opportunity to go to the grocery store.

      The tiny snippet of information impressed her. “A man who cleans his own bathroom.” She said it the way someone might announce they’d just discovered a unicorn. “I’ll have to have my brother come meet you.”

      That was the last thing he wanted—unless her brother was part of her crew. The second he had the thought, he realized she had somehow subtly gotten him to consider the idea of renovations rather than a simple replacement.

      Still, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He looked at her in silence for a minute, then decided to ask a hypothetical question. “Okay, pure speculation.”

      “Yes?” she returned gamely, mentally crossing her fingers.

      “If I were to do this bathroom over.” And now that he thought of it, it did look pretty washed out and lifeless. “What would something like that run?”

      There was no easy answer. She was surprised that he expected one—was he the type that liked having everything neatly pigeonholed? “That depends on what you’d want done.”

      Nothing until five minutes ago, he thought. “Nothing fancy,” he said aloud. “Just replacing what’s here with newer fixtures.”

      She glanced down at the worn short-shag carpeting that went from one wall to another. Why would anyone have ever considered that acceptable? “And tile for the floor.”

      That surprised him. J.D. had hit on the one thing he’d been toying with having done—when he got around to it. He’d never cared for having a carpet in the bathroom. It got way too soggy from wet feet.

      “And tile for the floor,” he echoed, agreeing.

      Well, at least they were beginning on the same page. “Different quality fixtures affect the total sum,” she maintained.

      “Ballpark figure,” he requested, then amended it by saying, “what you’d charge for your labor, since I’m guessing the materials would cost me the same as you if I went and got them myself.”

      “More,” she corrected. He looked at her quizzically. “Unless you just happen to have a contractor’s license in your pocket.”

      He patted either pocket, causing Kelli to giggle. He realized he liked the sound of that. “Fresh out.” He hooked his thumbs in the corners of his front pockets. “So I get a break hiring you?”

      She didn’t want to come across as pushy. People who applied too much pressure wound up losing their potential customers. It was the one thing she’d learned by watching her father. “Or any contractor.”

      He couldn’t ask what the materials would come to until he decided on the materials. But he could ask her about her fee. He’d never liked flying blind. “Okay, what’s your bottom line?”

      This time the giggle needed two hands to keep it restrained—and still it came through. “Mama doesn’t have a line on her bottom,” Kelli piped up, her eyes dancing with amusement.

      For a second, as he stared down into the eyes of the improbable woman behind the initials, he’d almost lost his train of thought. He’d definitely forgotten that her daughter was there.

      Philippe laughed now at the serious expression that had slipped over what had been an incredibly sunny little face. “I didn’t mean—”

      “The bottom line means what things will cost,” Janice explained to her daughter, speaking as if Kelli were a business associate being trained on the job.

      Maybe she was, he thought, then dismissed the idea as ridiculous. It was way too soon to be training that little girl to do anything but enjoy life to the fullest and he had a sneaking suspicion those lessons had already been given.

      “Oh,” was all he trusted himself to say.

      Janice turned toward him and after pausing a moment to take things in again and, doing a few mental calculations in her head, she gave him a quote.

      He stared at her incredulously. “You’re serious,” he asked.

      “Yes, why?”

      The why was because she’d given him a bid that sounded much too low, even if it did only include her labor and not the cost of materials. “How do you stay in business with fees like that?”

      She breathed a silent sigh of relief. He wasn’t one of those tightwads who thought everything had to be haggled down.

      “Low overhead,” Janice quipped without hesitation. She ventured a little further. Once people got their feet wet, they usually decided they wanted something else done. She began with the logical choice. “Is this the only bathroom you want renovated?”

      “I didn’t even want this one renovated,” he informed her, then abruptly stopped. The quote she’d given him was more than reasonable, coming in far lower than he would have expected. He wasn’t up on the price of bathroom renovations, per se, but one of the people who marketed his software packages had just had a bathroom redone. The man had proudly given him a quote that had taken his breath away. Philippe remembered thinking that his maternal grandfather had paid less for his house when he’d bought it forty years ago than the man had paid to have his bathroom upgraded. “The other two are upstairs.”

      “You have three bathrooms?” Kelli asked gleefully, her eyes huge.

      He had no idea why the little girl would find that a source of wonder. “Yes.”

      “We only have two,” she confided, then leaned into him and added, “And Uncle Gordon is always in one.”

      Janice saw Zabelle raise his eyes and look at her quizzically. She didn’t want him thinking that Gordon was strange. “My brother is staying with us while he gets back on his feet.”

      Kelli’s silken blond curls fairly bounced as she turned her head around to face her. “Uncle Gordon gets on his feet every day, Mama.”

      It was an expression, but she didn’t feel like trying to explain that to Kelli right now. Instead, she stroked Kelli’s hair and said, “Only for short periods of time, baby.”

      Instinctively, Janice glanced at the man whose house they were in. She recognized curiosity when she saw it, even though she had her doubts that the man even knew the expression had registered on his face. She felt obligated to defend her brother against what she guessed this man had to be thinking.

      “My brother’s had a tough time of it lately.” Lately encompassed the period from his birth up to the present day, she added silently.

      Zabelle seemed to take the information in stride. “At least he has family.”

      The comment took her by surprise. Janice hadn’t expected the man to say that. It was by all accounts a sensitive observation.

      Maybe the man wasn’t half bad after all.

      “Yes,” she agreed with a note of enthusiasm in her voice as she came to the landing, “he does. By the way,” she said, leaning outside the bathroom wall and looking at him, “I noticed your kitchen.”

      This time, he thought,

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