Her Secret Affair

For the first time, Brodie’s control seemed to slip. His handsome face hardened, and his hands tightened into fists. “See for yourself.” Abruptly, he led Chey down a hallway toward the last of the rooms, saying, “I don’t want her disturbed any more than necessary, for reasons you’ll understand, I’m sure. I’ve already seen to her needs as best I can. In fact, I doubt it’s necessary or even desirable that you do much with her suite, but I thought you ought to see it, at least.” With that he opened the door of what seemed a combination sitting and hospital room. The walls had been plastered and painted coral pink. A ruffled sofa and chair stood around a plush rug and a delicate table over-flowing with a large vase of fresh flowers. The rest of the furnishings were strictly utilitarian, however, from the hospital bed to the monitors and intravenous pole. A small metal cart bearing a tabletop television and stereo was parked at the foot of the bed. Music played softly.

A tall, husky woman with short, tightly curled gray hair stood up from a comfortable chair as they entered the room. Chey nodded, but Brodie ignored the other woman, moving instead to the bed. The big woman’s mouth turned down at both ends, but it struck Chey as her usual expression rather than one of present disapproval. Chey approached the bed more out of curiosity than anything else and watched silently as Brodie sat down beside the small figure lying there. He picked up a slender, manicured hand and held it cupped in his own, speaking softly, telling the other person who Chey was and why she was there. Carefully, Chey sidled toward the foot of the bed, desperately wanting to see the person to whom he was speaking. What she saw shocked her deeply for two reasons.

The first was that the woman appeared to be comatose. The second was that hers was the face of an angel framed by bright, strawberry blond hair flowing over her shoulders and frilly white lace nightgown. Someone had made up her face, adding subtle color and shadow, but the angel herself slept on unaware. Indeed, only the gentle rise and fall of her chest gave any indication at all that she actually lived. Chey felt slightly sick to her stomach and told herself that it was compassion for the poor thing upon the bed, as well as her husband and son. It was at least partly that, but it was also more, and Chey was, at bottom, honest enough to admit to herself that she felt a twinge of pure envy as she watched Brodie reach up and gently cup, then pat one rosy, angelic cheek before rising to his feet once more and joining her at the foot of the bed.

“The doctors say it’s best to keep familiar things around her, so we brought her own furniture with us. We painted the walls her favorite color and set up the room exactly as it was in Dallas.” He nodded at the large woman standing to one side. “As her nurse, Brown came with us.” Finally, he addressed the older woman. “This is Miss Simmons, Brown. She’s going to transform the house, bring it all up to form for us. If you or Janey have need of changes in your rooms, Miss Simmons is the one to consult.”

“I could use some fresh paint on my walls,” Brown stated matter-of-factly, “and the toilet in the bathroom runs all the time. I don’t need nothing else.”

“And Janey?” Brodie asked. “What about her?”

Nurse Brown bristled. “I take care of her needs.”

A muscle flexed in Brodie’s jaw. “I realize that,” he said tightly. “I meant, do you need any changes to make your job easier?” The woman shook her head. Chey couldn’t help noticing that her eyes were as cold and steely a gray as her hair. Brodie tilted his head. “Fine. If you think of anything later, just let me know.” With that he turned toward the hall door, motioning for Chey to follow. He pulled the door closed behind them, muttering, “Hateful old sow.” He glanced at Chey and said, “Sorry. But that woman rubs me the wrong way.”

“Then why keep her on?”

He grimaced. “Because she’s devoted to Janey. They knew each other before, you see. Brown was, is, a friend of the family. Janey’s mother died when she was small, and I guess for that reason Janey’s always depended on Brown. After the accident, Brown wouldn’t leave her side, and since the doctors think that if Janey wakes up again, it will help to have familiar faces and things around, I’ve kept her on.” He sighed, fingered his short, thick goatee and said, “I wouldn’t have moved Janey at all, frankly, but my grandfather died six months ago, and Seth and I are all the family my grandmother has left, so I decided to move everyone home to New Orleans, and that meant bringing Janey, and therefore, Brown with us.”

Chey nodded her understanding, then ventured carefully, “Exactly what is Janey’s condition, if you don’t mind my asking?”

He shook his head and moved once more down the hallway toward the stairs. Chey fell in beside him as he spoke. “She’s in a coma, obviously. The doctors don’t know exactly why, some sort of trauma to the brain. She was drinking that night. It was March, Seth’s first birthday, as a matter of fact. Anyway, she fell into a nearly empty swimming pool. It’s a miracle she didn’t drown, but I sometimes wonder if that wouldn’t have been kinder.”

Chey stopped and waited for him to turn to face her. “I’m sorry,” she told him sincerely. “Two years of watching your wife languish in a coma must have been very difficult.”

“Ex-wife,” he corrected.

Chey blinked at him, the air fixed in her lungs. He wasn’t married! Not that she should care. Better if he were. But surely he hadn’t divorced his wife after she’d been injured. In Chey’s opinion, that would have been despicable. It wasn’t, however, any of her business.

He folded his arms and tucked in his chin, looking down at her, his blue eyes holding hers as surely as any physical touch. “We should get up to the third floor now,” he said, changing the subject.

She nodded, and he moved down the hallway once more. As he led her toward the upper and final story of the house, he talked about the changes he had made to accommodate the couple who cooked and cleaned for him. He’d had everything updated to their personal specifications, including the plumbing and wiring. Obviously, he considered it their private domain. The attics, however, were of prime interest to her, and she was right about the treasures hiding there.

Though dusty and disorganized, the place was crammed with enough antiques to keep an antique-lover happily busy for days just cataloging and investigating, exactly what she determined to do. At first glance it looked as if she could furnish the entire house with what she found there. It was an absolute treasure trove, and though she wasn’t dressed for it, Chey could not resist digging through the most easily accessible portion. Before she realized it, she was absorbed in her discovery. She forgot about the pristine condition of her suit and everything else. It was one magnificent find after another, and the next thing she knew, Brodie was pushing hair out of her face, hair that should have been confined in its usual sleek twist. She looked up at him, shocked speechless to find him so close. He wound a golden-blond strand around his forefinger and tugged gently. She felt it all the way to the soles of her feet.

“I thought Wonderland was the temples of Malaysia or the rivers of India,” he told her softly, “but I see that for you it’s a musty old room full of used furniture.”

Her heart, which seemed to have leapt up and lodged in her throat, was beating so hard she could barely speak, but somehow she managed to form the words, “Not used, antique.”

His smile spread all the way across his face. “Antique,” he conceded. Then she realized that his face was descending toward hers, that he meant to kiss her. She tilted her chin up, but at the first electric brush of his lips against hers, she yelped and hopped away, bumping her upper thigh on a sharp corner. Dumbly, she looked down and recognized a walnut sugar chest, probably built about 1840. One part of her mind spun out an assessment. A plantation piece from the days when sugar was a precious commodity kept under lock and key, it was not found much north of the Mason-Dixon line and would make an excellent occasional table. Another inner voice screamed that she should run before something awful happened, something that would change her life forever, something for which she was not prepared.

Defensively, she grabbed a lamp and cradled it in front of her as a shield, babbling, “I have to get back to the office, but if you don’t mind I’d like to take some of these things with me for appraisal.”

He looked at her for a long moment as if trying to decide whether or not to remove the impediment and press the advance, but then one corner of his mouth kicked up in a wry smile and he nodded. “Just show me what you want, and I’ll carry it downstairs.”

Inwardly, she breathed a sigh of relief—and tried her best to ignore the underlying disappointment.

Brodie stood leaning against a pillar on the front porch, thoughtfully stroking his goatee as he watched Chey’s flashy little car roll down his drive toward the street, the almost nonexistent back seat crammed with several items he’d lugged down from the attics for her, among them the lamp she’d latched onto when he’d tried to kiss her. The lamp might be a priceless, once-in-a-lifetime find, but it was more likely that she’d latched onto it in pure self-defense, because he’d definitely scared her with that attempted kiss. What he didn’t understand is why the hell he’d done it.

Oh, she was a spectacularly attractive woman, and he’d fully meant to kiss her from the instant he’d laid eyes on her—starting with those small, slender feet and those long, slender legs and ending with that long, slender neck, pretty oval face and sleek, pale golden hair. He wanted to ruffle her cool exterior, pull down that hair, kiss off that pink lipstick, rip the buttons from that neat, tailored suit, watch those light green eyes darken with unregulated passion. He wanted to strip her naked and lay her down. But Brodie Todd was a pragmatic, if sometimes emotional, man, and he’d realized from the beginning that she wasn’t likely just to topple over and invite him to join her.

Unlike so very many women of his acquaintance, this one was going to take finesse. He accepted that as part of the challenge, a sort of enhancement. In her enthusiasm over the contents of the attic, she’d given him proof of the passion he’d suspected all along, and he’d lost sight of the big picture, the ultimate goal. She had gotten so caught up in her dusty, jumbled finds that she hadn’t even noticed when her stockings shredded and her bright hair began sliding free of its confinement. He had become so caught up in her that he’d forgotten to go slowly, to move cautiously—until she’d literally leapt away from him, and then it had taken all his control not to drag her back to him. He was surprised that she hadn’t bolted in that very instant, but she’d taken her time, pretended indifference by concentrating her attention and her enthusiasm on the things in the attic. Then she had run, and she was running still.

He wondered how far he would have to let her go before he could coax her back to him. He did not wonder why he was so damned certain that he was going to do it, not that he was at all certain that he should. It would be complicated. Chey Simmons was not some casual conquest to enjoy one night and forget the next morning. She was going to be around for a while, beginning Monday morning when she had promised to fax the formal designs for his approval. Unfortunately, his fax was going to be down on Monday morning. Yes, continued interaction with his family was guaranteed. Luckily, they had liked her. True, she hadn’t seemed particularly taken with Seth, but she’d handled him well. Then again, she ought to have, considering the size of her family.

Nine siblings. He was still surprised and a little awed by that. He wouldn’t have thought it would, but somehow the size of her family added a complex cachet to her persona. His only frame of reference was the closeness that he had shared with his younger brother. The idea of multiplying that by nine boggled the mind. For the first time, the thought occurred that if he’d had more siblings, he wouldn’t be so alone now. Then again, people couldn’t be replaced. His brother would still be gone, still be missed. He would still have a hole in his life and heart that could not be filled.

Pushing thoughts of his brother and the accident that had ended his life from mind, Brodie turned back into the house. He was relieved to find that, despite its dilapidation, the place was really starting to feel like home. Mostly it was his family, of course, and part of it was the city—the old queen had lost none of her allure—but a lot of it was the house itself. It spoke to him in the quiet, wordless whispers that only the heart could hear and understand. It fairly begged to be restored to its original and rightful splendor. Nevertheless, he’d dreaded the refurbishment—until now.

Now he was actually looking forward to it, thanks to sweet, aloof Chey Simmons.

Stopping at one end of the staircase in the wide, bisecting hall, he placed one hand on the graceful, curved banister and looked upward. Her concern for Janey had been as genuine as his own, though not for the same reasons, of course. He shook his head and began to climb the stairs toward his son’s room. Along the way, he allowed himself to feel the disappointment of diminished hope for Janey’s condition. The doctors had warned him not to put too much stock in what had happened, but he’d been there, and the impact of the moment remained with him still. It had occurred as they were moving her, when the medical personnel were putting her into the ambulance for the trip to Louisiana from Dallas. After more than two years of unknowing, unseeing, nearly immobile silence, she had opened her eyes, looked at the young man holding the door and said quite distinctly, “Hello.”

Brodie, who had just come out of the house, had stopped dead in his tracks. Then he had rushed to her side, but her eyes were rolling, as they often did, and she had not responded to his attempts to elicit further response. In that instant, she had seemed, sounded, perfectly lucid, but to his knowledge she had not been so since. He had so hoped, had prayed, that she was going to come back to herself and go about her life as they’d planned. He wanted that. He wanted Seth to have a real mother. He wanted her not to suffer. He wanted to be free of the unexpected, unbargained-for responsibility. And now, he wanted Chey Simmons. And he was determined to get some part of what he wanted.

As he moved toward Seth’s room, he made a mental note to call the new doctors again before getting back to work on his exercise equipment. They might not have anything to offer him, but at least it would keep his mind off Chey Simmons. For a while.

Chapter Three

She didn’t even glance away from the computer when her assistant Georges came into the office from the shop. “What is it now?”

“You have an important visitor,” he announced with a flourish, “and I took the liberty of bringing her back.”

Chey looked up with a practiced smile in place. Her mother moved gingerly through the doorway, the strap of her scuffed patent-leather purse clutched tightly in one gloved hand. Sighing inwardly at the sight of the small, warped, straw hat perched atop her mother’s usual coil of smoke-gray hair, Chey pushed back from the desk and got up to kiss the other woman’s cheek. It wasn’t the fact that her mother’s hat was decades out of fashion and that the sprig of honeysuckle which had been pinned to it was wilted and browning that pained Chey, but that she had purchased for the woman any number of stylish new hats which were never worn. As far as Louise Simmons was concerned, nice things were an unconscionable waste. It was as if she simply could not stop being the selfless mother who dared not dream of anything beyond the basics for her children and never of anything for herself. Chey wondered if her mother ever even thought of herself as anything other than just that, a mother. And while Chey was deeply grateful for, even in awe of, that kind of dedication, she had never wanted it for herself, precisely because it seemed so very limiting.

Louise allowed Chey to steer her to the lyre-backed chair in front of the French Provincial desk and sat down, drawing off her gloves. She laid them atop the little pie-crust table at her elbow and said chattily, “I once gave five dollars for a table just like that at a second-hand store. Do you remember that table, Mary?”

Chey pressed her pink, professionally manicured nails to one smooth, golden-blond temple and tamped down her impatience. “I do, but that old pie-crust table is not why you’re here, Mama. What’s going on?”

Louise went straight to the point. “Kay and Sylvester are wondering if you’re going to attend their little fais-dodo for Melanie’s graduation. I told her of course you would, but she said you said something about not being sure of your plans, but it’s only April, and that’s plenty of time to arrange your calendar, so I was sure it wouldn’t be a problem. Still, I thought I’d ask and have a little visit with you at the same time. We don’t see you often enough, you know.”

Chey sat down during this cheery speech and busied herself straightening the already neat desktop as a familiar sense of guilt stole over her. She would, of course, attend the graduation party. She wanted to. And yet, these family celebrations often left her unhappy and resentful.

“The term little fais-do-do is a contradiction in terms, Mama,” she said smoothly, “especially in this family.”

With nine siblings, all married and all with families of their own, Chey sometimes felt like the lone member of a large tribe who just didn’t get it. They were all content to carry on in the time-honored traditions of their clan, marrying young and birthing babies with the same casual joy with which they might play the accordion or fiddle for an impromptu dance in the backyard. Only Chey had resisted the mold. Only Chey had other plans, dreams. Only Chey had remained determinedly single and childless, reserving her dedication for her career. Only Chey did not fit in.

“Kay says that the kids stay out all night long and get into trouble when left to themselves,” Louise went on, ignoring Chey’s comment. “She wants to keep Melanie well occupied with family that night. I thought she was over-doing it a bit, but Frank says she has the right of it, and—”

“Frank would know,” Chey said for her.

“Since his five have turned out so well,” Louise finished with satisfaction.

If by “well” one meant that they’d all gotten through high school before they’d started having babies, Chey mused silently. Only she and a few of her nieces and nephews had gone on to college.

“By the way,” Louise said, changing the subject. “Fay went for her ultrasound yesterday, and the doctor says it’s almost surely a girl. Isn’t that perfect? Now they’ll have one of each.”

“Any hope they’ll stop at one of each?” Chey asked acerbically.