Blood Brothers Page 0,54

Layla when I'm having that really big drink by the fire you're going to build."

"I can live with that."

"Then, seeing as you're a town honcho, you'd be the one to ask about finding a nice, attractive, convenient, and somewhat roomy house to rent for the next, oh, six months."

"And the tenant would be?"

"Tenants. They would be me, my delightful friend Cybil, whom I will talk into digging in, and most likely Layla, whom-I believe-will take a bit more convincing. But I'm very persuasive."

"What happened to staying a week for initial research, then coming back in April for a follow-up?"

"Plans change," she said airily, and smiled at him as they stepped onto the gravel of his driveway. "Don't you just love when that happens?"

"Not really." But he walked with her onto the deck and opened the door so she could breeze into his quiet home ahead of him.

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

THE HOUSE WHERE CAL HAD GROWN UP WAS, IN his opinion, in a constant state of evolution. Every few years his mother would decide the walls needed "freshening," which meant painting-or often in his mother's vocabulary a new "paint treatment."

There was ragging, there was sponging, there was combing, and a variety of other terms he did his best to tune out.

Naturally, new paint led to new upholstery or window treatments, certainly to new bed linens when she worked her way to bedrooms. Which invariably led to new "arrangements."

He couldn't count the number of times he'd hauled furniture around to match the grafts his mother routinely generated.

His father liked to say that as soon as Frannie had the house the way she wanted, it was time for her to shake it all up again.

At one time, Cal had assumed his mother had fiddled, fooled, painted, sewed, arranged, and re-arranged out of boredom. Although she volunteered, served on various committees, or stuck her oar in countless organizations, she'd never worked outside the home. He'd gone through a period in his late teens and early twenties where he'd imagined her (pitied her) as an unfulfilled, semidesperate housewife.

At one point he, in his worldliness of two college semesters, got her alone and explained his understanding of her sense of repression. She'd laughed so hard she'd had to set down her upholstery tacks and wipe her eyes.

"Honey," she'd said, "there's not a single bone of repression in my entire body. I love color and texture and patterns and flavors. And oh, just all sorts of things. I get to use this house as my studio, my science project, my laboratory, and my showroom. I get to be the director, the designer, the set builder, and the star of the whole show. Now, why would I want to go out and get a job or a career-since we don't need the money-and have somebody else tell me what to do and when to do it?"

She'd crooked her finger so he leaned down to her. And she'd laid a hand on his cheek. "You're such a sweetheart, Caleb. You're going to find out that not everybody wants what society-in whatever its current mood or mode might be-tells them they should want. I consider myself lucky, even privileged, that I was able to make the choice to stay home and raise my children. And I'm lucky to be able to be married to a man who doesn't mind if I use my talents-and I'm damned talented-to disrupt his quiet home with paint samples and fabric swatches every time he turns around. I'm happy. And I love knowing you worried I might not be."

He'd come to see she was exactly right. She did just as she liked, and was terrific at what she did. And, he'd come to see that when it came down to the core, she was the power in the house. His father brought in the money, but his mother handled the finances. His father ran his business, his mother ran the home.

And that was exactly the way they liked it.

So he didn't bother telling her not to fuss over Sunday dinner-just as he hadn't attempted to talk her out of extending the invitation to Quinn, Layla, and Fox. She lived to fuss, and enjoyed putting on elaborate meals for people, even if she didn't know them.

Since Fox volunteered to swing into town and pick up the women, Cal went directly to his parents' house, and went early. It seemed wise to give them some sort of groundwork-and hopefully a few basic tips on how to deal