Her Secret Affair

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, Mary 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.”

It was eminently fair, provided he put up enough money. “What if I’m not satisfied with the sum you’re willing to spend?”

“Then I’ll look elsewhere,” he said simply. “But I think you’ll approve. And just for the record, the way I see it, I’m buying your expertise. That means you are in charge of everything that has to do with refurbishing, repairing and redecorating the house. Everything.”

“Except you’ll be checking up on me,” she pointed out.

“Just to be sure I’m getting my money’s worth,” he clarified. “I won’t be second-guessing you. You are the expert here, aren’t you?”

His directness, like everything else about him, unsettled her. She was used to tiptoeing around certain issues, to employing great diplomacy and tact in swaying her clients to allow her to act for them. She said, with a little more asperity than she intended, “You bet I am.”

He grinned, the wretch. “I’m banking on it, not that it’s much of a gamble. I happen to know that, in addition to your degree in architecture and design, you have a good deal of experience in restoration and the attendant construction disciplines. In fact, I’m told that you have actual on the-job experience in trim carpentry, plumbing and masonry.”

He actually knew about the summers she’d spent working in the trades with her brothers! She didn’t know whether to be offended or impressed. The former felt safer. “Then why did you ask?” she snapped.

He chuckled unrepentantly. “Just to see how you’d respond. I dislike false modesty.”

“And I dislike arrogance.”

He laughed outright. “Is it arrogant to do your homework? To be sure someone’s up to the job?”

She couldn’t really argue with that, but she didn’t have to like it. Folding her arms huffily, she said with heavy sarcasm, “I suppose you think you’re a better business person than I am, because I’ve never gone to such lengths to check out anyone I’ve contracted with.”

“But then you aren’t the one ponying up a million dollars.”

Her mouth fell open. It was almost twice what she’d expected, and she’d been prepared to fight, wheedle, beg and wrangle for that! She swallowed her mental exclamations and got her mouth wrapped around a sensible reply. Eventually. “Uh, that…I can definitely work with that.”

He chuckled. “I should hope so.” He straightened and extended a hand toward her. “So then, are we agreed?”

She’d have been insane to balk at that point. “Absolutely.” She put her hand in his. Lightning shot up her arm and down her spine. What was it about him that did this to her?

“I’ll have the contract in your office tomorrow morning,” he said, then, releasing her, he rose smoothly from the corner of the desk and swept his arm toward the door. “Now, shall we finish our inspection?”

She slipped by him untouched, but she was well aware that he was amused by her reluctance to come into physical contact with him again. She only wished that she could be amused about it. The fact was, it troubled her greatly. Men did not affect her this way; she didn’t allow it, and she didn’t like it one bit that she seemed to have no control over the matter where Brodie Todd was concerned. It left her little recourse except to restrict her attentions solely to the business at hand and ignore everything else.

He took her through his own Spartan, dreary bedchamber, several empty ones, three cramped, outmoded bathrooms, and Viola’s slightly more personable suite. He pointed out every element of Seth’s rooms, from the corner cabinet filled with toys in the playroom to the narrow bookcase crammed with reading material in the bedchamber. Brodie was especially concerned about the lack of amenities available for guests, explaining that he often entertained influential people, even foreign dignitaries on occasion, but he emphasized that the family rooms must come first. They were just leaving another nondescript room when a small body hurtled around the corner and flung itself at Brodie’s knees, exclaiming, “Daddy, I see Mama!”

Brodie looked up as Viola came into view, huffing slightly from trying to keep up with the boy. “How is she?” he asked. “Anything new?”

Viola shook her head. “She seems completely unchanged to me, and Brown says she’s seen nothing beyond the usual eye flutters and twitches.”

Brodie sighed and nodded. Viola stroked his arm consolingly. “Poor thing,” she said. “I know you want her to improve.”

“I want her to damned well wake up,” he muttered fiercely, but before anything else could be said, Seth loudly demanded, “Twucks now, Gramuma!”

A duet of voices, Viola’s and Brodie’s, instantly instructed the child in the art of courtesy, and he rewarded them with compliance, changing his demand to a plea. “We pway twucks now pwease?”

When Chey and Brodie left the room, Viola was on her hands and knees on the floor unrolling a mat with a scale drawing of a highway system on it while Seth pulled out an entire carton full of toy trucks.

“I really should hire a nanny,” Brodie said once the door was closed. “Caring for a small child is too much for Grandmama.”

“Why don’t you then?” Chey asked, curious despite her better judgment. Silently she was wondering why the child’s mother didn’t just step in.

Brodie grimaced. “I don’t want my son raised by servants. It might be different if his mother could devote a little attention to him.”

“Why can’t she?” Chey heard herself asking.