Arlene James - Her Secret Affair

Chey was aware suddenly of the thudding heaviness of her heartbeat, and in the next instant a pair of pictures flashed before her mind’s eye: Brodie Todd handsomely turned out in tux and black tie, and Brodie Todd stretched out in bed, drowsing sleepily, his unshaven beard a bluish shadow on his jaw. She blinked, and found herself staring into a pale blue mirror of her own thoughts. She backed up another step, once again taking in the whole of his face. A lazy smile slowly lifted one corner of his mouth, a knowing, challenging, promising smile that made her heart plummet straight to her toes. It terrified her, that smile, triggered a primal instinct for survival, so that her only thought was to turn tail and run, fast and far, the project and everything else be damned. Then he reached for her, and even that thought dissolved.

He clapped one palm onto her shoulder and grasped her fingers with the other as if he meant to shake her hand even if he had to hold her in place to do it. Lightning shot down her arm and sizzled in her chest. She barely suppressed a gasp. He just stood there, staring at her until she looked away in self-defense.

“Brodie Todd,” he said coaxingly, his voice pitched low and intimate. “You must be the designer, Chey Simmons.”

She lifted a brow, willing her speedy heartbeat to normalcy, and corrected him tartly, “Architect, refurbisher and interior designer.”

“All right.” He chuckled and went on softly, “Interesting name, Chey.”

They stood in silence for several seconds after that. His hands felt heavy and hot. Finally, she forced herself to look at him. The first words out of her mouth were a complete surprise to her. “It’s Mary Chey, actually.”

His smile dazzled. “Mary Chey. I like that. It’s nice to meet you, Mary Chey. You’ve been very highly recommended, your talent much praised. No one bothered to say that you are also quite beautiful.”

Panic surged up in her, and she looked away again. Much belatedly she managed to murmur, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, sliding his hand down her arm from her shoulder. “Let’s have some coffee.” Her feet felt welded to the floor, but he turned her and literally propelled her toward a small, round, glass table off to one side. Viola was there, sitting on the edge of her chair and holding a jam pot for the child, who sat, legs splayed, facing her, his finger in jam all the way to the last knuckle. He pulled it out, curling it at the end, and plunged it into his mouth.

Brodie sat her next to his grandmother, across from the boy, pushing Chey down quite firmly into the slatted iron chair. “How do you take yours?” he asked.

She blinked up at him.

“Coffee,” he said. “How do you take yours.”

“Uh, black.”

He grinned, fully aware of her confusion, and moved to the cart standing next to the glass wall, where he poured coffee from a silver pot into a china cup. Chey followed his every move with her eyes, even as she began to feel more herself. She didn’t register the view beyond until Viola asked, “Do you like our pool?”

Chey abruptly, guiltily, switched her gaze, first to Viola’s face, then to the vista beyond the glass wall. It was magnificent. The pool had been built to mammoth proportions and was flanked with no less than four Grecian fountains. Gazebos with louvered sides had been built at both ends and surrounded with plants. A chin-high, black wrought-iron fence with impressive scroll work had been erected around the entire area. Chey was relieved to see no slide, not even a diving board, nor could she imagine the typical plastic or aluminum lawn chair in this very classical setting. Apparently neither could the designer, for many stone tables and benches had been grouped among the greenery and beneath the trees. To one side, nearest the house and outside the pool gate in a cool, shady spot, stood an elaborate playground surrounded by several inches of dark pine mulch; a little boy’s paradise. “It’s wonderful,” she said succinctly.

“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.”