Capturing the Millionaire (Silhouette Special Edition #1863)

It wasn't supposed to rain in October. Not in Southern California, anyway.Alain Dulac was pretty sure it was a law written down somewhere, like the requirements for Camelot. As he tried to steer his sports car, a vehicle definitely not meant for this kind of weather, he found that his visibility was next to zero. Because, as the old song from the sixties went, it never rained in California--but it poured.And that's what it was doing now. Pouring. Pouring as if the entire Pacific Ocean had gotten absorbed into the black clouds that were hovering overhead and were now dumping their contents all over him. He would have been alert to the possibility of a flash flood--if he could see more than an inch or so in front of him. He wasn't even sure where he was anymore. For all he knew, he could have gotten turned around and was headed back to Santa Barbara.By the clock, it was a little after 4:00 p.m. But to all appearances, it looked like the beginning of the Apocalypse. There was even the rumble of thunder, another unheard of event this time of year.His windshield wipers were fighting the good fight, but it was obvious they were losing. A few seconds of visibility were all their efforts awarded him.Alain swallowed a curse as the car hit a pocket of some sort and wobbled before continuing on its road to nowhere.It would have been nice if the weatherman had hinted at this storm yesterday, or even early this morning, he thought darkly. He gripped the steering wheel harder, as if that could afford him better control over his car. If there had been the slightest indication that today was going to turn into something that would have made Noah shudder, Alain would have postponed going up to Santa Barbara to get that deposition until the beginning of next week.Archie Wallace certainly looked healthy enough to hang around until Monday. At age eighty-four, the former valet--or gentleman's gentleman, Alain believed the old term was--looked healthier than a good many men half his age. Alain could have waited to get the man's testimony instead of risking life, limb and BMW the way he was right now.That's what he got for going into family law instead of criminal law. Not that, he'd discovered, there weren't a host of criminal activities going on behind the so-called innocent smiles of the people who came into his firm's office.For the first time since he'd left Archie's quaint cottagelike home, a hint of a smile curved Alain's lips. Nothing wrong with camera time, he thought. As he turned the notion over in his head, he found that he liked the idea of getting his own spotlight instead of being in one by proxy. Heretofore his main claim to fame was being the youngest of Lily Moreau's sons. His mother, God bless her, was as famous for her lifestyle as she was for her exotically colorful paintings. At times her lifestyle overshadowed her work.Alain had no doubt that the reporters who'd come to cover her last show were as interested in the dark, handsome, quarter-of-a-century-younger man at her side as they were in the latest paintings that were on display. Kyle Autumn was Alain's mother's protege and, to hear her talk about him, the love of her life.At least for this month.The fact that Alain and his two older brothers each had a different father bore testimony to the fact that Lily loved her men with a passion. But that passion was anything but steadfast.She was a better mother than she was spouse, and, luckily for the art world, a better artist than she was either of the two.Alain had no real complaints on that score, though. Long ago he'd realized that Lily was as good a mother as she could be, and he and Georges had always had Philippe. As the oldest, Philippe was more like a father than a brother, and it was from him that Alain had gotten most of his values.In a way, he supposed that Philippe was responsible for his having gone into family law.Ferrarella, Marie is the author of 'Capturing the Millionaire (Silhouette Special Edition #1863)', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373248636 and ISBN 0373248636.