Playboy Bachelors: Remodelling the Bachelor

For the moment, Janice forgot about the tile. This was more interesting. “Why?”

It seemed ironic that his mother’s reasoning seemed to align itself so readily with what J.D. had said about tile. “Because she feels that maybe she’s settling, that maybe there’s something even more spectacular out there and she’s missing out.” He raised his eyes to hers. “This one,” he repeated. “I’ll take this one.”

So in some odd way, he was rebelling from behavior he’d witnessed as a child, she thought. Rebelling or not, she didn’t want his bathrooms to suffer.

“You’re sure you’re not settling?” she prodded. An odd look came into his eyes, but she pushed forward. “Look, I realize that you’re not marrying the tile, I just want you to like the finished product.”

“I already told you, I like it. You can order however much you need. Can we go home now?” He repeated the question as if this time around it was rhetorical.

Philippe was surprised when she gave him an answer that was different from the one he’d assumed he would be receiving.

“No.”

“No?” he echoed incredulously. How could the answer be no? “But I just did what you wanted,” Philippe pointed out. “I picked a tile.”

This was definitely not going to be her easiest assignment, despite the fact that the man claimed to be easy to please. She didn’t want this to be something to get over with, she wanted it to leave a lasting impression on him, to catch his eye and dazzle him every time he walked into one of the bathrooms—or the kitchen for that matter.

“For the bathroom,” she told him. “I won’t go with the obvious, that there are three bathrooms to be remodeled—”

He cut in with a wave of his hand. “Same tile for all of them.”

Janice pushed forward, pretending she hadn’t heard that. “You still have to choose a slab for the kitchen counter, a backsplash, tile for all the floors, cabinets for the kitchen and bathrooms, fixtures, a tub for one, showers for the other two—”

“Wait,” he cried, raising his hands as if he were physically trying to stuff a profusion of things back into a box that had exploded before him, a box that was not allowing him to repack it. “Wait.”

Temporarily out of steam, she paused to take a breath. “Yes?”

“What the hell is a backsplash?”

She grinned. “It’s the area of the wall that runs along the back of the—”

His hand was up again, dismissing the explanation before it was completed. There was a bigger issue here. “I have to pick all those things out?”

“Well, yes.” She’d shown him the blueprints. Hadn’t any of this registered? Exactly how did he think this was all going to happen? “Oh, plus appliances for the kitchen.”

Philippe stared at her, trying to process what she was saying and what it would cost him, not in the monetary sense but in man-hours. The latter was in short supply and he couldn’t really spare what he did have available to him. At the outset, when he’d agreed to come with her, he’d expected the whole ordeal to last maybe an hour. Less if he could hurry her along. But what she was proposing would take days, days he didn’t have.

This wasn’t going to work out.

His first impulse was to tell her he’d changed his mind about having the rooms remodeled and pay her whatever penalty went with terminating the contract between them. An alternate plan was to postpone the work indefinitely, or at least until his own work was finished. Debating between them, he did neither.

For the same reason.

Instinct told him that J. D. Wyatt needed the money this job would bring in. So he chose another course, one that made complete sense to him. “You do it.”

He couldn’t mean what she thought me meant. “Excuse me?”

“You do it,” he repeated.

A couple had come in with two children, the older of whom seemed to be around three and in excellent voice. He was exercising the latter and could be heard emitting a high-pitched scream from the far end of the store.

Unable to hear what Philippe was saying, Janice moved closer to her client. “Do what?”

“Pick for me,” he told her simply.

“You want me to pick out your appliances.” It wasn’t a question so much as a stunned repetition.

“Yes. And all those other things you mentioned, too,” he added.

“You have no idea what my taste is like.”

He shrugged, fingering the tile he’d just selected and nodding at it as if it was privy to his thoughts. “Match it to my taste.”

It took everything for her not to throw up her hands. Was he being difficult on purpose? “I don’t know what your taste is like,” she protested with feeling. “Other than bland.”

He grinned, the corner of his eyes crinkling. “There you go.”

Again, something stirred inside her, responding to the man and the moment. Stop that, she upbraided herself silently. “The idea is to get away from bland,” she reminded him.

“I’ve got a contract deadline that I’m not going to make if I’m standing here in a tile store. Now it’s either my way or we postpone this until I have some free time.”

And that wouldn’t be until November, based on what he’d said earlier. The easiest thing was to do as he said. But doing what he suggested went against her grain. Stuck, she thought for a second.

“How about this. I bring you samples and pictures of the things I picked out.” She’d make sure he had a selection to choose from. She didn’t mind being the go-between. It took longer, but that was part of her job and came under a heading related to hand-holding.

The thought of holding his hand created a warm wave inside her and increased her pulse rate.

Janice pushed it down and moved on. “That way you at least know you don’t hate my choices.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He would have agreed to anything that would get him out of the store and on his way home again.

“May I help you?”

A salesman materialized behind them. Happy to see someone he assumed would bring this all to an end, Philippe pointed to the royal blue ceramic tile he’d initially selected. “We want that tile.”

The man beamed as he nodded. “Excellent choice, sir.” Philippe had a feeling the man would have declared his selection “excellent” even if he had chosen something out of chewing gum. “And how much tile will you be requiring?”

Philippe shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “J.D., you’re on.” He gave every indication of retreating.

“That’s what I like to see,” the salesman declared. “A husband who lets his wife make the decisions. I’m sure you’ve done your homework, little lady.”

Philippe stopped retreating. He didn’t have to be his mother’s son to know that J.D. had to find that tone offensive. He slanted a glance toward her, waiting to see her reaction.

“I have,” she replied gamely, giving no indication that she would have enjoyed giving the man a swift kick for his patronizing manner. “And I’m not his wife, I’m his contractor.”

The clerk seemed taken aback for a moment, but then, to his credit, he rallied. “Even better.”

She was tempted to ask him why just to hear his answer. But that would be argumentative and she just wanted to move on, for Zabelle’s sake. So instead, she put out her hand.