by Arlene James
“The gazebos serve as bathhouse and bar,” Brodie told her. Bringing her cup and saucer to the table, he dropped a thick linen napkin in her lap. “Have a pineapple tart,” he said, placing that plate before her as well. It wasn’t a question or even a suggestion, and she bristled slightly at the tone of command, but when she lifted her gaze to his, she found his lips twitching against a smile, and her indignation immediately wilted. “They’re one of Marcel’s specialties,” Brodie went on, “and you know how temperamental chefs can be. You’ll offend him deeply if you don’t eat.”
With that, he presented her a fork. She snatched it from his hand, and he walked around her chair and dropped into the one next to her, mouth quirking with that smile he still strove to suppress. He knew how he affected her, blast him, and she didn’t doubt that he was somehow doing it on purpose. Leaning back, he prepared to enjoy his coffee at leisure while watching her steadily over the rim of his cup.
In pure defensiveness, Chey broke the crust of the tart with her fork, anything to distract her from Brodie Todd’s sultry perusal. Still warm, the tart exuded a piquant, sharp-sweet aroma that made her mouth water. She cut off a bite and shoved her fork beneath it, lifting it toward her mouth even as she blurted, quite without meaning to, “You’re not eating.”
He chuckled and sipped from his cup before saying with mock severity, “I’m being disciplined.”
Chey closed her lips around the flaky confection at that moment, and the full flavor of the cooked pineapple burst within her mouth. She widened her eyes, savoring the incredible taste as she chewed and swallowed. “Oh, my,” she said.
“Which is why Brodie’s already had four of those this morning,” his grandmother revealed with a chortle.
Chey lifted an eyebrow at his version of “disciplined,” but she could understand why he’d stuffed himself. The thing was pure heaven. She began to eat with genuine gusto.
Brodie sipped from his cup again and admitted unrepentantly, “I could eat the whole plate of them. And I will, too, unless some kind soul does it for me.”
“In that case,” Chey said, swallowing another delicious bite, “I just may have another.”
He laughed at that, sliding down in his chair and putting back his head so the sound could roll up from his throat. “I love a woman with healthy appetites!”
“If she eats like you,” Viola said, placing the jam pot between her great-grandson’s legs, “she’ll have to work out like you.” She grimaced and confided to Chey, “All that sweating and grunting. I don’t understand why a person doesn’t just eat less.”
“Grandmama is the queen of self-denial,” Brodie said affectionately. “She won’t even taste one of Marcel’s tarts.”
“Of course not,” Viola sniffed. “I won’t try crack cocaine, either, or tobacco or any number of harmful things.”
“Her list of harmful things, however, does not include mint juleps,” Brodie divulged, and Chey laughed around a bite of tart.
Viola feigned shock. “The mint julep is the most efficacious concoction ever invented by man.”
Brodie smirked. “The mint julep is nothing more or less than crushed ice, a sprig of mint, some sugar and a glass full of hard liquor.”
Chey wiped her mouth with her napkin and reached for her coffee, while Viola lifted her chin and primly announced that a little hard liquor never hurt anyone. Brodie winked at Chey and said, “Lest you think that Grandmama overindulges, I should tell you that she strictly confines her alcohol consumption to two mint juleps a day, one at lunch and one as a night cap.”
“That’s right,” Viola confirmed, “and I’m as healthy at eighty as you are at thirty-six.”
Chey’s jaw dropped along with her coffee cup, which she barely managed to direct back to its saucer. “You’re eighty?”
“Eighty-two, to be exact,” Brodie answered for his grandmother, who preened blatantly—until a blob of strawberry jam hit her smack in the chest. All eyes turned to the child, who looked as surprised as everyone else. Having buried his hand in the jam pot up to the thumb joint, he obviously hadn’t foreseen the difficulties of trying to clean it by shaking.
“Seth!” Viola exclaimed, while Brodie just groaned and put his head in his hands. Wide-eyed, Seth stuck his entire hand in his mouth, while Viola wet a napkin in her water glass and dabbed at the stain on her dress.
“You’ll have to forgive my son,” Brodie said with a sigh, lifting his head and looking at Chey. “He’s only three.” While speaking, he reached over and removed the jam pot from his son’s lap. “I suppose he really needs a nanny.”
“What he needs is a mother,” Viola retorted.
Brodie sent her a direct look and said carefully, “He has a mother.”
“Humph.” Abandoning the stain, Viola rewet the napkin and reached for the boy, who yelped, scooted out of the chair and ran in a wide loop around his father, right to Chey, reaching for her with both hands. It apparently never even occurred to the little imp that he might not be welcome, and she reacted completely without forethought, as she had done any number of times with her numerous nieces and nephews. Grabbing up her own napkin, she caught that small sticky hand before it caught her. As he was already climbing over the arm of the chair, she quickly guided his feet away from her skirt and, for lack of any better option, settled him in her lap. He laid his head back against her chest, looked up at her and exclaimed loudly, “You pwetty like Mommy!”
Chey smiled limply. Suddenly she wondered why the newspapers hadn’t mentioned Brodie Todd’s wife. The next instant she pushed the thought away as insignificant and said politely, “Thank you. Now if you’re going to sit in my lap, young man, you have to have that hand washed.”
He acted as if he didn’t hear her, but when Viola leaned forward and began cleaning his hand with the damp napkin, he sat still—as still as a three-year-old can sit, anyway. Brodie said, entirely too lightly, “You obviously have experience, Mary Chey. Do you have a child of your own perhaps?”
She lifted her gaze to his and said purposefully, “No. But I do have thirty-one nieces and nephews.”
His cup rattled in his saucer. “Thirty-one?”
“It’ll be thirty-two before long.”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“Nine.”
When he didn’t immediately reply to that, she looked up at him. His mouth was hanging open. “Ten kids?” He sat back in his chair with a plop. “Holy cow. This one runs me absolutely ragged.”
“I can imagine.”
“I’m sure you can.” He sat forward again. “Don’t misunderstand me. I love this little terror.” He smoothed a hand over the top of the boy’s bright red head. “I wouldn’t trade what I have with him for anything in this world, but I just couldn’t do it ten times.”
“Not many people can,” she said. “The most any of my brothers and sisters have is five. That would be Frank, he’s the oldest, and Mary Kay. Bay and Thomas and their wives each have four. Johnny—he’s the baby—Mary May, Matt and Anthony have three apiece, and Mary Fay has one and is expecting one.”
Brodie was smiling. “Are all the women in your family named Mary?”
“Each and every one,” she confirmed, “including my mother, who is Mary Louise, and both of my grandmothers. I guess my mother’s something of a poet at heart because she rhymed us all. Mary May, Kay, Fay and Chey. I think she ran out of the standard options by the time she had me. Did I mention that my brother Bailey is called Bay?” she asked rhetorically. “And me, they call Mary. I guess Chey was just too much for everyone.”
For some reason he was grinning very broadly. “But you prefer Chey.”
“Well,” she admitted, “Mary is awfully common, especially in my family.”
“There is nothing at all common about you,” he told her blatantly.
“I should hope not,” she quipped, ignoring a shiver of delight.
He reached across the table then, and covered her hand with his, and
suddenly the comfortable, chummy atmosphere evaporated. “I think it’s time I showed you the house,” he said silkily, “unless you were serious about that second tart.”
“Regretfully not,” she said, pulling free her hand and scooting back her chair. “Like your grandmother, I prefer to exercise a little more self-control.”
“Don’t be fooled by Grandmama,” he said, getting to his feet. “As if Seth doesn’t provide her with enough exercise, she works very hard out in the garden.”
“Gardening isn’t work,” Viola protested ardently. “It’s pure relaxation.”
“For you,” he said, bending down again to pluck the boy off Chey’s lap so she could rise. “It’s pure torture for me.”
Viola pointed toward the weight bench. “That would be torture for me.”
“To each his own,” Chey said brightly.
“An excellent theory,” Brodie commented, passing the boy to his grandmother. “I have a theory about self-control,” he went on, reaching out an arm to bring Chey to his side. “General restraint makes occasionally losing it quite enjoyable. Don’t you agree?” he asked in an intimate voice that stopped her heart and closed her throat.
Chey coughed and muttered, “I, um, prefer not to lose mine at all.”
“Maybe you just haven’t found the indulgence you can’t resist yet,” he suggested softly.
She couldn’t have answered that if she’d wanted to, and he knew it. She saw it in his eyes. Abruptly, he dropped his arm and looked to his son. “Don’t wear out Grandmama. Understand?” The boy nodded, two fingers in his mouth. Brodie bent and took his son’s small face into his hands, turning it toward Chey. “Tell Miss Chey, ‘Good to meet you.’”
“Goo to mwee oo,” the boy said around his fingers.
Viola pulled his hand from his mouth and instructed him to try again. He managed it better this time.
“It was nice to meet you, too,” Chey said. She widened her gaze to include Viola. “It was especially nice to see you again, ma’am.”
“I know you’ll do well for us, dear,” Viola Todd said. Then she looked to her grandson and a silent communication passed between them.
He bent and kissed first the boy and then his grandmother on the cheek. Straightening once more, he moved toward Chey, lifting a hand to take her arm. Automatically, she shied from his touch. It was a foolish thing to do, foolish and telling, and it brought a flush of embarrassment to her cheeks. Brodie just smiled knowingly and clasped his hands behind him, the hunger in his pale blue eyes as blatant as any declaration. Well, Chey mused as she strode off in front of him, she now knew what it felt like to be a pineapple tart on that man’s plate.
Chapter Two
“We’ll start down here on the first floor and work our way up,” Brodie said in a brisk, businesslike tone.
Chey nodded at that and folded her arms tightly as they passed through the doorway into the central hall side by side. “How many rooms are there?”
“Twenty-eight rooms on the first two floors, counting the butler’s pantry and linen storage. The third is made up of the laundry, an apartment belonging to Marcel and Kate, the couple who cook and keep house for us, and the attics, which are a virtual warren of irregular cubicles crammed with furniture and junk. Kate and Marcel have just finished renovating their own space, so that need not concern you, and I don’t foresee using the attics for anything other than storage, but you’re welcome to take a look. Much of the furniture appears usable to me, but you would be the better judge.”
Chey nodded with interest. “These old houses often turn out to be hiding valuable antiques. It’s possible we’ll find some of the original furnishings.”
“That’s good. I like the idea of authenticity—within reason, of course.” He opened the first door they came to. “This is one of the worst,” he said, “the breakfast room.”
She peeked inside, leaning past him to do so. The room was indeed a shambles. A plumbing leak had caused the ceiling to fall in and the wallpaper to peel. The carpet had rotted away and left the wood planking beneath exposed. A swinging door, now off the hinges, leaned against one wall. Large, multipaned, ceiling-to-floor windows looked out into the garden room, and like those of many homes of the period, which were taxed according to the number of rooms and doors they contained, the bottom section could be raised to create a direct pass-through. “I assume that doorway leads to the kitchens,” she said, pointing to the vacant space next to the unhinged door.
“Yes, via the butler’s pantry, which also opens into the formal dining room. We could go through that way since the floorboards are sound, but it’s such a mess I’d rather not take a chance on ruining that pretty suit you’re wearing.”
She ignored the compliment, quickly withdrawing from the room. “I have to come back and take measurements, anyway.”
Thereafter, she kept her distance. They made a thorough survey of the entire first floor, which, in addition to the breakfast room and kitchens, included an actual ballroom, a large formal parlor, a formal dining room capable of seating two dozen comfortably, a cloakroom, a billiards room, a “smoking” room, an informal family room, two rest rooms, a “ladies withdrawing room” now claimed by Viola as a type of office, and an antiquated elevator from the 1930s. The kitchen had been completely renovated with modern, restaurant-quality appliances and fixtures, but Chey was relieved to see that the original brick floors, exposed beams and fire ovens had been left alone. The formal rooms were dingy and unattractive, having been last redecorated in the 1950s. The billiards room had been gutted; some of the floor had rotted. The cloakroom and smoking room had been relegated to storage, while the family rooms were shabby and horribly “updated” with shag carpets and cheap paneling. The two rest rooms were barely adequate, and the library, with falling shelves and a fireplace that undoubtedly leaked, was in deplorable shape.
The second floor had fared better and boasted a long, wide landing that ran the length of the back of the house and opened onto a balcony that overhung the garden room. Two smaller hallways branched off the wider, central one, allowing access to fourteen separate chambers. As in so many older homes, some rooms could only be reached by traveling through others and several doorways had been blocked by previous renovation. A cramped, rickety servants’ stairway plunged straight down into the butler’s pantry, its lower access blocked by a locked door and table. Chey noted that the shaft, which ran all the way to the third floor, provided perfect access for a central air-conditioning system, which had to be a prime consideration, given the hot, sticky Louisiana summer now rapidly approaching. Chey decided to make it a priority issue.
Brodie had set up a temporary office in a room at the front of the house that opened onto his personal bedchamber, and he’d had special electrical and telephone lines installed there to protect the several computers that he had up and running. The electrician he had employed had done a cursory inspection of the remainder of the house and had reported that some sections had been rewired as recently as twenty years previously, while some rooms utilized wires much older and some were without electricity altogether. Brodie, therefore, had engaged the man to draw up a rewiring schematic and present a proposal, which he now plucked from the metal table that he was using as a desk and handed over to Chey, much to her delight.
“Thank you,” she told him, tucking the rolled schematic under one arm. “This will make it easier to put together my bid.”
He seemed amused by her choice of words. “What bid?”
“I thought you wanted me to bid on the project,” she told him, confused.
“I want you to oversee the project,” he said flatly.
“You mean, you’ve already made a decision?” she asked, astounded.
“I made the decision before I wrote the letter,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Before you even met me?”
He folded his arms and perched on the corner of the metal table. “There are better ways to judge a person when it comes to business, M
ary Chey. I assumed you’d know that. Besides, my grandmother met you at the tea, went there for that express purpose, in fact, as soon as my investigation confirmed you were the best person for the job.”
“You had me investigated?” she demanded.
“Thoroughly, your business dealings anyway. I never pry into a person’s private life.”
Chey was temporarily dumbfounded. She tried to be offended, but he’d picked her for the job, after all. Still, it rankled somewhat, knowing that someone had delved into her past. “That’s an odd way to conduct business, isn’t it?” she asked with some asperity.
“On the contrary,” he said calmly, “it’s an efficient way of doing business.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Chey glanced around, a purely defensive gesture, and realized that art objects and other items from all over the world comprised much of the clutter. “What about personalities?” she asked. “Clashes happen, you know.”
“The way I look at it,” Brodie said, bringing her attention back to him, “it’s easier in the long run to work with someone who does a good job even if you don’t particularly like the individual, than to discover that someone you genuinely like is going to shaft you with shoddy work.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” she said coolly.
“My way,” he retorted succinctly. “So, do we have a deal or not?”
“That depends,” she said smoothly, though in truth she had no intention of turning down the job. “Exactly what is the deal? I mean, if you don’t want me to bid on the project, then I can only assume you’re offering a salary?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. I know exactly how much this job is worth to me, how much it will probably cost and what a reasonable profit on it would be for you. I propose to deposit everything I’m willing to spend into a special bank account to which you will have unlimited access. I expect fully three-fourths of the sum will go into the house. The rest is yours. If you overspend, you diminish your own earnings. If you underspend…well, I’m warning you here and now that I expect quality for every penny and I’ll be personally inspecting the work and the invoices.”
