“I don’t know. Jake says she isn’t forty yet and that she married Jean Claude when she was thirteen.” Pausing, she glanced at the picture with a frown. “But Christian doesn’t look any older than Lucern, Etienne or Bastien.” She tilted her head. “I wonder if they were Jean Claude’s kids and not hers.”
“They have to be,” Joey decided. “She just isn’t old enough to have kids that age.”
“No, she isn’t,” Nicole agreed and then shrugged. “Still, even if she was thirteen when she married Jean Claude, she’s got to be thirty-five or something.”
“She doesn’t look a day over twenty-five,” Joey said firmly.
“I know. Nice huh?” Nicole said enviously. She’d probably look forty when she was thirty-five.
“Yeah, that’s what money does for you,” Joey said wistfully. “Enough money and you can look young forever.”
“Or you can look like a fan tester,” Nicole said dryly.
“A fan tester?” Joey asked with confusion.
Nicole nodded. “You know, the whole too many face-lifts thing where they look like they’re staring into a high-powered fan.” She pulled the sides of her face back with her hands so that her mouth and eyes were pulled into wide slits.
Joey chuckled, but then asked, “Do you think she’s had face-lifts?”
“Marguerite?” Nicole asked, letting go of her face. She shook her head and turned back to her search. “Nah. I think she just has some amazing fricking genes.”
“Hmm.” Joey covered the paintings again and wandered back to her. “What are you looking for?”
“I bought these sonar mouse-repellent things,” she muttered, giving up on the bag in front of her and grabbing another.
“You have mice?” Joey asked with a grimace.
“No. At least I don’t think so,” she added. “But I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Oh.” He grabbed the bag nearest him and began to help look through it. “Are these them?”
Nicole had just found two of them in the bottom of the bag she was searching, but glanced up and nodded when she saw that Joey was holding up half a dozen more. “Yeah. Thanks.”
As she got to her feet, he moved over to the rolling table she kept her paint brushes and other paraphernalia on and grabbed a pair of scissors to begin cutting open the packages. “So where are we plugging these in?”
Nicole smiled faintly at the “we” and leaned up to kiss his cheek as she reached his side. “You’re a star, Joey. Thank you for helping me.”
“Geez, sis. I’m just opening the containers and plugging them in. It’s not that big a deal,” he assured her.
“But I appreciate it,” she said simply.
Joey snorted and shook his head. “God, how did you end up so pathetic?”
“Nice,” Nicole said, smacking him in the back of the head when he set down the scissors to pull out two of the little white repellent gizmos.
Joey grinned and said, “You spent too much time around Pierina growing up. She encouraged that nice gene from Mom to bloom and grow. You should have spent more time around me. I got Dad’s selfish asshole gene, I could have encouraged that in you.”
The words surprised a laugh from Nicole and she ruffled his hair affectionately. “The very fact that you think you’re a selfish asshole means you aren’t.”
“Ha! Got you fooled,” he said with amusement, and then concern entered his gaze and he caught her arm.
“What?” she asked, and glanced down. She’d pushed up her sweater sleeves while searching, revealing the bottom of a large, dark bruise on her arm.
“What happened here?” he asked, pushing the sleeve further up.
Nicole blew her breath out and grimaced. “I took a bit of a spill coming out of Canadian Tire earlier tonight.”
“That’s more than a spill,” he said quietly.
“It’s just a bruise, Joey. I’m pretty sure I have several more of those. My hip and knee are both sore as heck and feel stiff, and I think I must have wrenched my neck as well. But at least I didn’t break anything.” Nicole shrugged and tugged her arm free. “I’ll take a dip in the hot tub before bed tonight and tomorrow it will all just be a good story to tell.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t look impressed. “Well if you don’t feel better tomorrow, you should go see the doctor. Maybe he can give you something . . . for clumsiness.”
“Ha, ha,” Nicole said dryly. “Come on, smart boy. Let’s go plug these in.”
“Where are we putting them?” Joey asked, gathering the little items in his hand.
“One in every room,” she answered, stopping to plug one into the socket by the door. “We’ll do the kitchen last. You can distract Jake while I plug one in there. I don’t want him to think I have mice. He might quit.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” Joey said with amusement.
“No, we wouldn’t,” she assured him. “He makes the yummiest omelets ever . . . and his coffee’s good too.”
“Can’t wait to try it,” Joey said as he followed her out of the studio.
Seven
“So, Joey, what do you do?” Jake asked quietly as he cut into his steak. He’d bought more steak today at the grocery store and when Nicole had insisted he join her and her brother for dinner, had quickly cooked one up for himself. He used to like his medium rare, now he ate it rare, so it hadn’t taken long to cook. There had already been enough salad and he’d bought those frozen hot and spicy potato wedges to have with the steak. As for the sauce, while the recipe had only been for two, there had been more than enough for three.
“I’m retired. Used to be in land development though,” Joey answered lightly as he dug into his peppercorn steak.
Nicole and Joey had both assured him the peppercorn sauce on the steak was very good, which was a relief. He’d worried about it while out shopping. It had seemed to be his first possible successful attempt at cooking before they’d left the house, but he’d feared it might dry out or curdle while they were out. It hadn’t, and when he’d warmed it up it had actually tasted better than when they’d left.
Thank God, Jake thought with an inner sigh. He’d developed a headache shortly after returning to the house . . . which was something new. He hadn’t had a headache, or a sniffle, or any other ailment since being turned, and was glad he hadn’t. His head was throbbing and aching so bad he could hardly think. Even his teeth were beginning to ache with it.
“Joey’s being modest. He started with nothing, and built an empire,” Nicole said proudly. “He had a hand in building some of the biggest malls and complexes in the Toronto area. In fact,” she added with a proud grin at her brother. “He’s done so well he retired last year and now travels and lives a life of leisure.”
“Impressive,” Jake said quietly, rubbing at his forehead. He’d already known that, but it seemed better to pretend he didn’t. There was no reason Marguerite would have told him that in the normal course of events if he was just a cook/housekeeper. At least he didn’t think so. He could be wrong though. This damned headache was really messing with his thinking.
“Jake’s pretty impressive himself,” Nicole told her brother. “He was vice president of a company called V.A. Incorporated up until a couple years ago.”
Joey peered at Jake dubiously. “V.P. huh? You’re pretty young for a V.P. Was it a family position?”
“I’m loosely related to the owner now via marriage. However, I wasn’t at the time I worked for him,” Jake said stiffly, wondering if it was his headache that made the question seem like an insult.
“So, was it a small company then?” Joey asked.
“No,” Jake said simply. His head hurt too much to bother describing all of V.A.’s holdings. If the guy wanted to know about the company he could Google it.