LITMIR.BIZ

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you did what you had to do in order to keep going. Pawning her rings had been her only option at the time. Bills needed to be paid. The rings didn’t mean very much if there wasn’t a roof over Kelli’s head. After Gordon had lost the business, she was very mindful of not putting her daughter and herself in jeopardy of losing the things that were most important to them. That meant not waiting until the last minute before taking measures to safeguard home and hearth.

      “Can we go out to eat, Mama?”

      Trust Kelli to ground her, she thought. She felt guilty about letting herself get sidetracked. “You bet, kid. You get to pick the place.”

      That required absolutely no thought on Kelli’s part. “I wanna go to the pizza place.”

      Pizza was by far her daughter’s favorite food. Janice laughed. “You are going to turn into a pizza someday, Kel.”

      Her comment was met with a giggle. The sound warmed Janice’s heart.

      “Where’s your cheering section?” Philippe asked two evenings later when he found only J.D. on his doorstep. He leaned over the threshold and looked around in case the little girl was hiding.

      “Home,” she informed him. He stepped back to let her in. “My babysitter doesn’t have a date tonight.” When Gordon’s newest flame found out about his cashflow problems—basically that it wasn’t even trickling, much less flowing—she quickly became history. When she’d left to come here, Kelli and Gordon were watching the Disney Channel together. “Kelli wanted to come along.” But this was going to involve long discussions of fees and she preferred not subjecting her daughter to that. “I think she likes you.”

      Walking into the living room, Janice abruptly stopped before the framed twenty-four by thirty-six painting hanging on the wall.

      My God, it was so large, how had she missed that the first time?

      Because she was focusing on landing this job, she thought. She tended to have tunnel vision when it came to work, letting nothing else distract her. Although she had to admit that she had noticed Philippe Zabelle would never be cast as the frog in the Grimm Brothers’ “The Frog Prince.”

      Janice redirected her attention to the painting. It was breath-taking. Kelli had an eye, all right. “I know she likes your painting.”

      “My mother’s painting,” he corrected, in case she thought that he had painted it. “I’ll let my mother know she has a new fan. I know she’ll be delighted to hear that she’s finally cracked the under-ten set. Most kids don’t even notice painting unless they’re forcibly dragged to an art museum.”

      Forcibly dragged. Zabelle sounded as if he was speaking from experience. Had his mother forced art on him, attempted to make him appreciate it before he was ready? She’d taken Kelli to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles when the little girl had still been in a stroller. Kelli had been enthralled.

      “Most kids didn’t start drawing when they are barely three,” she countered.

      He led the way to the kitchen table. She had paperwork for him, he surmised. He eyed her quizzically. “Drawing?”

      Pride wiggled through her like a deep-seated flirtation. “Drawing.”

      He assumed she was being loose with her terminology. He remembered his brothers trying to emulate their mother. Best efforts resembled the spiral trail left by the Tasmanian devil.

      “You mean as in scribbling?”

      “No,” she said firmly, “I mean as in drawing.”

      He laughed softly, pulling out a chair for her. “Spoken like a true doting mother.”

      Janice took mild offense. Not for herself, but for Kelli. Her daughter deserved better than that. “I’ll show you.”

      “You carry around her portfolio?” he asked incredulously. When he saw her reaching into the battered briefcase that contained the contracts she’d brought with her for him to sign, Philippe realized that only one of them thought that what he’d just said was a joke. She snapped open the locks and lifted the lid. “You’re kidding.”

      Janice didn’t bother answering him. A picture, as they said, is worth a thousand words. She could protest that Kelli was as talented as they come, but he needed to see for himself. So, lifting up several manila folders and her trusty laptop, she took Kelli’s latest drawing out of the case. It was of a white stallion from Kelli’s favorite cartoon show.

      Very carefully, she placed the drawing on top of her briefcase and then turned it toward him.

      Philippe’s eyes widened. “You’re not kidding,” he murmured.

      As he admired the drawing, he shook his head. There was no way the bouncy little thing he’d met two nights ago had done this. He sincerely doubted that she could sit still long enough to finish it.

      He made contact with J.D. “You did that.”

      She laughed softly. “I wish. My ability doesn’t go beyond drawing rectangles and squares. I can do blueprints,” she concluded. “I can’t do horses.”

      Zabelle took the drawing from her. She curled her fingers into her hand to keep from grabbing it back. She was very protective of Kelli and that protectiveness extended to her daughter’s things and her talent. It was a trait she would have to rein in if Kelli was ever going to grow up to be an independent adult.

      Philippe gave her one last chance to withdraw her statement. “She really drew this.”

      “She really drew that,” Janice told him proudly.

      For the first half of his life, when his mother wasn’t immersed in the creation of her own work or either nurturing along a new relationship or burying an old one, she had tried her very best to get him to follow in her footsteps. While he shared her talent to a degree, he had rebelled and steadfastly refused.

      His reasons were simple. Art was her domain, he wasn’t going to venture into it. Nor was he ready to stand in her shadow, struggling to be his own person. He needed a medium, a venue that belonged to him alone. A path apart from hers.

      But that didn’t keep him from admiring someone else’s gift. “Can I hang onto this for a little while?” he asked abruptly.

      The request caught Janice by surprise. “Why?”

      The man just didn’t strike her as the post-it-on-the-refrigerator type, which was where this had been until, on a whim, she’d packed it in with her contracts. She’d told herself that it would act as a good luck talisman.

      “I’d like to show this to my mother the next time she flies in here.”

      “Your mother’s out of state?” she asked, a little confused.

      “No.” He pulled out a chair and straddled it, resting his arms on the back. “She’s right here in Bedford, California. My mother’s a little larger than life and she gives the impression of flying whenever she enters a room.”

      “Oh, I see.” She found herself wanting to meet this dynamo. Her own mother had left a long time ago, before she ever really established a relationship with her. She just remembered a tall, thin woman with light blond hair and an air of impatience about her. Eventually that impatience had led her out the door, a note on the kitchen table left in her wake. “Well, then I guess it’s all right. If she asks me about it, I’ll just tell Kelli that the lady who painted the landscape in your living room is going to look at her drawing.”

      “Why not just tell her that I have it? Why give her this longer version?”

      She could see he hadn’t dealt much with children. “Would you like a short person laying siege to your house?” she deadpanned. “The minute I tell her that you have it, that you thought it was good, there will be no peace,” she amended, her eyes on his. “Kelli will want to know what your mother thought of it, if she liked it. She’ll want to know what

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