P a r i s ~.•*•.~ALEX WALTER~.•*•.~

003•

After the incident at the pool, Will lead the two girls back into the house.

"Girls I am so sorry. Try not to take it personally."

Monique understood why he felt like he needed to apologise, and appreciated that he had. By how quickly it came to him, she realised he must have spent a long time doing it. Apologising on Cole's behalf. Cole seemed like the person to dislike doing it himself, to always believe he was right and everyone deserved what they got.

"Um, Will, how many of these kids are George and Katherine's?" Jackie asked, Monique was glad she broached the subject, as it was something she would also like to know.

"Oh. You didn't know. There's eight of us kids. Plus Lee and Isaac are cousins on Dad's side." Will replied

"I mean, uncle Richard said you had a big family, but-" Monique said before being cut off by Jackie.

"Wait, you all live here?" She asked.

"Uh, no. I live in town with my fiancee Hayley, but everyone else, yeah." They were both a little relieved by that.

"This is you room." He said, as he brought them to a room with a very squeaky door, it sounded like it hadn't been opened in while.

In it were two twin sized beds, each with the biggest of the girls suitcases on it, the others stacked precariously at the foot. The room itself had shelves and tables filled with jars of old paintbrushes, canvases, and bottles of paint in every colour. Every surface, minus the beds, was filled. Next to the bed nearest the wall was an easel, holding a a painting of a stormy sunsewt sky. It was brilliant, the hues were perfect, every brush stroke perfectly placed. And there were paintings on the walls too. A beautiful sequence of snowy mountains, below them a meadow of wild flowers. Monique's bed was in the the corner of the room, the cabinet beside it sat beneath one of the two windows in the room.

"It was my Mom's art studio."

"Wow."

"Its beautiful."

The Howards spent a few moments taking in everything. Jackie felt a bit guilty for taking up space, and Monique was just glad that they weren't sleeping on the couch. That was until Cole, who by this had managed to put on a shirt, walked in dropping a rather heavy sounding box on the ground.

"Will, are you going to help? There's a ton of stuff to bring up." He said, head held high as if he were talking over them.

"We could do it." Monique offered, but she was quickly shut down.

"No. You two make yourselves at home, okay?" Will told them.

"Yeah. Don't worry about it. Oh and princess, maybe think twice before volunteering yourself as well as New York over there." Cole said. his voice was low and gruff, even his words shared the same smirk plastered on his face as he stepped out of the room, following Will down the stairs.

Monique watched from the window as he caught up to the older boy still smiling smugly, unaware that Will shared her opinions on his attitude and had asked him to stop.

"Can you drop the attitude?"

"I'm helping, aren't I?"

"You know what they've been through, even you must feel a little sorry for them."

"They're gonna have to learn to take a little rough and tumble, okay. They won't survive here otherwise." Was all Cole said before walking over to the old, brown barn door. As he pulled it open will realised that there was a lot of stuff to bring up. Boxes of all different sizes, with scrawled on labels like 'Jackie Note books' and 'Monique H shoes'.