Her Secret Affair

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.”