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Chapter 5
Corbin lay on his back, too dazed to rise or even attempt to fight the enraged creature that had launched herself at him like a rabid raccoon. Snarling, spitting, howling, and cursing, she straddled his hips, raining blows on his chest and face.
She was half-naked, too, wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of panties, feet bare upon the dew-dampened grass and stones. He wondered incongruously whether she’d cut herself running down the driveway.
He cursed and twisted, trying to dodge her whirlwind hands slapping at him. She was half his size but she packed a wallop.
Next to him, the kid was hopping around, shouting, “Mom, Mom, no!” and trying without success to peel the madwoman off him. When he finally regained his wits enough to grab her blurred hands and hold them in a vise, she screamed with frustration, trying her utmost to wrench them away and get to slapping again.
He could easily have bucked his hips and thrown her off but knowing his strength he was afraid to hurt her, especially when there was a child watching. So he demanded irritably, “Ça y est! Arrêtez. Arrêtez!” When that had no effect, he tried, “Stop, for God’s sake! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She stopped fighting, but still those thick thighs of hers were clamped around his midsection—very tightly, he noted—and she got to screaming again. “Leave my son alone! Where do you think you were going with him? I’m going to call the—”
The kid was still dancing around in agitation, hands clasped, pleading. “Mom, Mom, please, stop.”
She was panting, as out of breath as a racehorse. Her dark brown hair a wild curtain, partially hiding her chocolate eyes from view. Skin glowing bright red from exertion and heightened emotions, full lips parted. “What are you….” she began again, and then ran out of steam.
When he was sure she wouldn’t try to snatch out one of his eyeballs, he said, as clearly and non-threateningly as possible, “Madame, would you please let me up?”
The kid was grasping his mother around the waist, trying manfully to help her rise, and eventually she did, swaying a little on her feet. His little face was pale, and his eyes bugging in shock. “He’s not a bad guy,” the kid whispered. “He’s here to help.”
La follewas also staring at him, her pretty full mouth hanging open, and she seemed to be making an effort to slow her breathing back down to non-heart-attack levels. Eventually she said, “Who are you? Why were you talking to my son? Where were you taking him?”
He dusted himself off, surveying his clothing which, already grungy from this morning’s 10km mud run, now looked positively disreputable. No wonder she’d assumed the worst of him.
“Perhaps you should have asked me that before you attacked me, non?”
She looked mildly embarrassed but lifted her chin and repeated her questions.
He responded mildly, with bruised dignity, “My name is Corbin Durant. I have been hired to assist you in the refurbishment of this building,” he indicated it with a wave of the arm, “by one Madame Queenie Abara—”
The crazy woman went white, choking on her spit and clapping her hands to her mouth. “Oh, God!”
He felt a shadow of spiteful satisfaction at her horror and went on with precision-cut words. “I have been trying to reach you by phone, using the number provided to me by Madame Abara, but my calls have gone to voicemail….”
She flushed now, her pallor replaced by hot pink. “My phone died… I don’t have an adapter….” With her hands she demonstrated the shape of the European electrical plug, so different from its American counterparts.
He didn’t bother to acknowledge that. Typical careless American, blithely traveling to another country and assuming that everything and everyone there would bend to accommodate them.
He pointed down at his admittedly disreputable clothing. “I do not usually meet with new clients dressed in this manner, but I live not far, and as I completed my usual morning run I happened by and spotted your young man walking in the driveway, so I decided to stop and introduce myself.”
She glanced sharply at her son, who nodded solemnly to corroborate his statement. Corbin felt profound relief. The last thing he needed right now was an allegation of child endangerment.
He straightened even further and continued with dignity. “I assure you that I meant the child no harm, and I apologize for causing you any distress. I fear that you may have misinterpreted the interaction between he and I and come to the wrong conclusion.” He didn’t bother to add, because you are stark raving out of your mind,folle comme un balai.
She was stammering apologies, searching for excuses, but Corbin was overwhelmed by a profound sense of wrongness; this project was not for him. This woman would be hell to work with, it was clear; an untamed wildcat. And while the few moments he’d spent chatting with the young man had been pleasant, there was no way he was going to subject himself to the trials of working with her.
Besides, this wasn’t the type of job he usually took on. The house itself was in shambles; he knew it well, having jogged past it almost every day, and it was widely known in the area for being a folly, a money pit. Anyone who wanted to fix it up and actually live in it would have to be quite mad.
He’d only agreed to do it at the pleading of his mother, who was a fervent Queenie fan, and who had alternately begged and badgered, as mothers tend to do, until he’d given in and said yes. Now, he bitterly regretted it.
But regrets didn’t last. This idiocy could be rectified. He made up his mind that as soon as he made it home and got out of these filthy sweats, he was emailing Madame Abara back in Atlanta, Georgia, and informing her that he was quitting.
He simply didn’t need the hassle.
The American woman blustered on, bubbling over with more apologies, so he decided to put her out of her misery at once. “Madame, I regret to inform you that I will not be participating in your project. It seems to me that I would not be right for it, and as such, I will be informing Madame Abara that I am cancelling the contract.”
She gasped in horror, staring at him. Then once again she was on him, this time grasping his forearm. “Please… please don’t do this. This project is huge; I need help.”
