Her Secret Affair

by Arlene James

  “There’s the mother of my child!” he bawled, pointing his finger at Chey. “She’s already been more mother to Seth than you could ever be, and she’ll be the mother of all my children! So get that nonsense right out of your head! It won’t play with me. I know you too well, Janey. All Seth has ever been to you is a meal ticket. You’re just as greedy as Harp!”

  “You don’t understand!” she told him desperately. “For myself, I’m quite satisfied with our original agreement. But I was afraid!” She pointed a finger at her father. “He pushed me in the pool, you see, flung me down there and cracked my skull! Just because I couldn’t get you to give me more money!”

  “You traitorous bitch!” Harp howled. “Don’t you put this off on me! You were the one who said a million didn’t leave you enough to even share with your old man! If you’d done what I’d told you at the beginning, none of this would’ve happened!”

  “Oh, dear God,” Viola said softly.

  “As to that original agreement,” Lionel Harvey said, pulling his briefcase up onto his lap while obviously trying to inject a note of calm into the proceedings, “I believe, in light of this new information, that the changes we’ve made are most appropriate, even generous.” Flipping the latch open, he reached inside and extracted several papers.

  “What changes?” Janey asked warily, signaling her sputtering father to silence with a slicing motion of her hand.

  “It’s simple,” Brodie answered sharply, forcing himself to reign in his temper as best he could. “The money, the original million, has been held in trust for you from the beginning. Anyone else could live comfortably on the interest, but whether you can or not is another matter entirely, one in which I have no concern. I agreed to give you the money, and I’ll hold to that, but before I release it, I’m going to require your signature to an addendum to the original agreement.”

  “All right,” she said. Satisfied that she was going to get the money, she folded her arms. Obviously it made no difference to her what she had to say or do for it, but Brodie couldn’t leave her uninformed.

  “By signing,” he told her, “you release all claim on Seth, even visitation. That goes for you and your family.”

  Janey nodded her head sharply. Harp, however, as if suddenly recalling his trump card, quickly intervened.

  “Oh, no, you don’t! I got as much right to that boy as you, more even, ’cause you ain’t even his father!” When that announcement failed to elicit the reaction he expected, he tried again, sneering, “You’re just his uncle.” Silence ensued. Harp looked around in bewilderment and bawled, “His brother knocked up Janey!”

  The women looked away at his indelicate phrasing, and Harvey laid a finger alongside his nose as if cleaning something from the inside corner of his eye. Brodie just knocked back the remainder of his champagne and set aside the glass, placing it on a nearby side table. Chey had moved away and now sank down into the chair she had earlier vacated, sipping from her glass thoughtfully. Brodie felt a spurt of unease, but it was quickly sublimated.

  “You’re not telling anyone here anything they don’t already know, Harp.”

  Harp frowned and changed tack. “Just ’cause the secret’s out don’t mean I can’t still take you to court! I’m that boy’s grandfather. I got just as much right to him as you do, and I ain’t letting you get away with this!”

  “Oh, put a sock in it, Daddy!” Janey yelled shrilly.

  “You shut up and let me handle this!” he shouted back.

  “Actually,” Lionel Harvey said, again the voice of reason, “you might want to rethink that.”

  “Really?” Harp sneered. “And why would I do that?”

  “Well, for one thing, this type of litigation is quite expensive. You, sir, cannot afford to fight my client in court—unless your daughter is willing to bankroll the litigation, and even then, I daresay, Mr. Todd’s pockets are much deeper than hers.”

  At that, Janey sat down and folded her arms once more, seemingly oblivious to the wet champagne stain trailing down the front of her dress. “Not a penny,” she told her father bluntly.

  “Damn you, Janey!” he began, then broke off. “We’ll discuss this later,” he said through his teeth.

  “Then there is, of course, the matter of your record,” the attorney went on smoothly.

  Harp shifted his weight from foot to foot, sneering. “I ain’t got no record in Louisiana!”

  “Strictly speaking,” Brodie said blithely, “that may not be so. You see, we know you masterminded Dude’s little break-in at Chez Chey last night, and more importantly, the authorities know.” Brown groaned, Janey rolled her eyes, and Harp literally paled at that, but Brodie pressed on. “In fact, I have it on good authority that, even as we speak, Dude is spilling his guts to the District Attorney. It appears he’s been most forthcoming, detailing every scam you ever ran, and I understand that the state of Louisiana will be delighted to forward you and that information right back to Texas.”

  “Oh, Harp!” Brown gasped, heaving herself up from the floor. “They’ll revoke your probation!”

  “At the very least,” the attorney confirmed dryly.

  “And if they don’t, I’ll tell them what you did to me,” Janey promised maliciously.

  Howling obscenities, Harp bolted. Brodie stepped aside and let him flee. Brown, however, pounded after him, calling, “Harp! Harp! Wait for me!” She caught him just as he reached the door to the hall, latching onto his scrawny arm with her much beefier ones.

  “Get away from me, you useless old cow!” Harp yelled, pulling forward and shoving her back at the same time. They struggled for a moment, her demanding to be taken along, him intent on ridding himself of her.

  “But you need me, Harp!” she begged.

  “Why would I need a frumpy, ugly old fright like you now?” he shouted, finally ripping his arm free of her grasp. “I don’t need you, and I sure don’t want you!” With that he reeled out the door and ran.

  Clinging to the door frame, she stared after him, tears rolling from her flat little eyes. “But Harp,” she whispered, “I love you.”

  The entire room seemed moved by that faint declaration. Brodie looked at Chey, who bit her lip and, after a moment, looked away. Janey sighed and got up to walk over to Brown, sliding a supportive arm around the older woman’s heaving shoulders.

  “It’s all right,” Janey said. “I need you. I always have.” Brown looked up at that, then began to sob against Janey’s shoulder. Janey patted the other woman awkwardly.

  Brodie cleared his throat and said, not unkindly, “I’ve reserved a suite for you at a good hotel and paid for a week’s stay. Marcel and Kate will help you pack, and Nate will drive you over. I’ll transfer the money and let you know how to access it.” Janey nodded, and he went on. “I’d appreciate it if you’d go now.”

  “Of course,” she said, and turned Brown toward the door, but then she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “Thank you,” she said, and dropped her gaze as if acknowledging that such simple words could never balance the scales, not that she would ever turn down the cash for any reason. He nodded as she moved her sobbing nurse toward the door.

  Lionel Harvey got up then, papers in hand, and reached inside his coat for an ink pen, saying, “I’ll get these papers signed before Ms. Shelly leaves the premises.” He looked down at Viola and asked, “Would you mind witnessing the signature, ma’am?”

  “Not at all,” she said, rising regally to take his arm. As the pair strolled past Brodie, they stopped so Viola could press a cheek to his. “It’s all over now, dear. It’s finally over.” With that she glanced toward Chey, then turned and allowed Lionel Harvey to escort her from the room.

  “I’ll let the authorities know that Harp Shelly’s on the move,” Nate said.

  “Thank you,” Brodie told him, lifting a hand to his forehead.

  Nate left the room, and Brodie closed his eyes, sighing deeply. He felt rather as if he’d been dragged behind a fast-moving t
rain. For a moment, he was lost, wondering what catastrophe or crisis required his energies next, but then he remembered that this was a moment of triumph. He ought to be happy, and so he would be.

  Turning on his heel, he opened his arms to Chey, but she just stood there, staring down at the champagne flute swinging gently from her fingertips. The bottom fell out of his stomach. He lowered his arms, pasting a smile on his face.

  “We did it, sweetheart,” he said hopefully. “The Shellys are history.”

  She looked up, but her smile was a wan, wasted thing. “Yes. They won’t bother you anymore. I’m glad I was able to help.”

  A cold breeze shivered through him where none could blow. “But?”

  She shook her head slightly, and it felt as if a fist clamped around his lungs. “Nothing,” she said after a moment.

  Thoughts, words, ideas whirled through his mind, but it was all chaos, all but one idea. “You’re upset because I didn’t warn you about the announcement.”

  She looked up sharply again, and after a moment said, “Not really.”

  He didn’t quite believe that, couldn’t, didn’t dare, believe that, so obviously explanations were in order. “I didn’t know I was going to do it. I only decided at the last moment. You have to admit that it was an appropriate way to burst the Shellys’ bubble.”

  She nodded, as if understanding perfectly. “We agreed that I was to play the spoiler. I understand. It’s only…your grandmother won’t be disappointed, will she?”

  He shifted his weight warily. “About what?”

  She flipped her hand back and forth between them. “About us.”

  It felt as if he’d swallowed a rock the size of his fist. “Why should she be disappointed about us?”

  “I mean, when we don’t get married.”

  That rock suddenly weighed a ton. He staggered beneath the weight of it. “B-But…I know I didn’t make a proper proposal, but I thought…y-you’re the one who said your family wouldn’t approve of us…as we have been. Marriage is the only logical conclusion, then. Isn’t it?”

  Apparently, it wasn’t. She walked over to the table where he had earlier set his glass and placed her own next to it, so close that the crystal hummed elegantly with the friction. “I can’t marry you, Brodie,” she said so softly that he could barely hear.

  “I don’t understand. We discussed this. I-I’ll even hire a nanny. With two parents it won’t be as if the nanny’s raising him, and Grandmama is here. She’s devoted to Seth, you know.”

  “It isn’t Seth,” she whispered.

  But if it wasn’t Seth, he thought, what was it? Then it hit him. It must be him! He remembered then with painfully acute clarity that she had never once actually said that she loved him. “I-I thought…that is, I assumed…. My God, Chey, we’ve been sleeping together, sharing a room!”

  “And that was a mistake,” she said, tears thickening her voice.

  “Why?”

  She turned suddenly, exclaiming, “I’m not the woman for you, Brodie! You need a normal woman who wants all the normal things, like children of her own.” She looked away, murmuring, “Yours and hers.”

  Seth again. Anger was building behind the hurt now because what Chey said made no sense to him. Clearly, she was avoiding the truth. She didn’t love him, and she didn’t care for Seth, either. In some dispassionate corner of his brain, he knew that he was in too much pain to think rationally. Instinctively he sought to remove the source of the pain.

  “I don’t understand,” he told her coldly, “but if that’s how you feel, then you’d better go.”

  “All right,” she said, folding an arm around her middle. “I’ll leave as soon as Janey’s gone.” With that she wrenched around and headed for the door.

  Momentarily frozen, he watched her walk away, unable quite to grasp what had happened. She was wiping tears from her face as she left him, and that struck him as very wrong, but he was too hurt and angry to really analyze it at the moment. All he could think as he stood there alone in that lovely room she had made for him was that he could not bear to go on living in this house without her.

  It was only later that he came to the conclusion that he’d missed something, that there must be more here than he had seen and heard. All right, she hadn’t said that she loved him, but she’d allowed him back into her bed, and he’d have bet his last cold cent that she wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t love him. So what was really going on here? If her tears were any indication, she hadn’t wanted to leave him, and yet she’d insisted she wasn’t the woman for him, and at the same time she’d claimed Seth had nothing to do with it! Was this simply Chey reverting to type? Was she running now just because that was what she always did when he got too close? He felt sure that was the answer.

  Okay, so she had run. Again. He could bring her home. He had done so before, and he could do it once more because, by golly, that woman belonged here with him. He was going to require help this time, though. Luckily, he knew just where to get it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chey looked down at the tastefully embossed invitation in her hand, an intense longing knotting her insides into painful contortions. She had looked at it often over the past week, unable to make herself toss it into the trash. The party was only two days away, and she couldn’t possibly go even if she wanted to. She just couldn’t trust herself to see him again.

  “So that’s it?” Georges asked drolly. “You go your way, he goes his, and never the Fair Havens and the Chez Chey shall meet?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” she said, trying for flippant and achieving only morose.

  Georges rolled her a skeptical look over one shoulder as he helped himself to coffee from the pot in the corner of her office, adding, “In this city? I don’t think so. Even if you turn down his invitation to this reception, you can’t avoid him forever.”

  He was right, of course, she realized with a pang. She and Brodie were bound to cross each other’s paths at some point. She had hoped that, given enough time, she could manage. Three weeks obviously wasn’t enough time, though it had seemed like an eternity to her.

  “Besides, it isn’t very business-friendly, you know,” Georges went on doggedly. “This is the official debut of the restored, refurbished and redecorated Fair Havens. Any other architectural designer would be there with bells on and business card in hand. It’s even been suggested that you could give a short tour and talk about what you’ve accomplished there. We’d have to hire help to keep up with the workload if you did.”

  Right again. Chey parked an elbow on the desktop and propped her forehead in one upturned palm, still staring at the neat white card with its slim, elegant black script. She was perversely aware that the business could go hang for all she cared these days. Somehow, without Brodie, not even the most precious things in her life seemed to mean anything anymore. All she wanted to do, all she kept dreaming about, was throwing herself into his arms and begging him to take her back, but she knew where that would lead. He had said it himself that day.

  The mother of my children. The mother of all my children.

  He hadn’t been speaking of one child, of Seth. He’d been speaking of future children, more children. Something defiant and desperate in her demanded, Well, why not, if that’s what he wants, if that would make him happy?

  It wasn’t as if she hated children, after all. She loved cute, cuddly babies as much as the next woman—especially when she could give them back to their mothers and go on about her business. Yet, she knew she’d naturally love a child of her own, just as she loved every child within her permanent orbit, all her nieces and nephews. Seth. She closed her eyes. How had she come to miss his bright little face so? Did he miss her, too? Did he ask for her? Wonder about her?

  “Of course,” Georges went on, needling her deliberately, “you might get there and find that you’re already replaced.”

  Unwittingly she lifted her head at that, spearing him with an entirely too telling look. He pr
etended to be mulling the thought over.

  “Still,” he murmured, “it would be better to find out in a controlled environment, don’t you think? I mean, what if you should just run into him about town with some luscious thing hanging on his arm?”

  The idea was staggering for her. The pangs of jealousy she had suffered about Janey before she’d known the truth of that situation paled in comparison.

  “Even if you accept the fact that a man like Brodie Todd will always have a woman within reach,” Georges went on blithely, “it’s never easy to stumble upon your own replacement. I should know.” He smirked at that, explaining with self-mocking sarcasm, “I divorced my second wife for incompatibility. We were complete opposites. Couldn’t wait to get rid of her. Six months later I walked into a little diner down on Royal and spotted her cuddling with another man in a booth, and…well, the dyspepsia had nothing to do with the food because I didn’t stay to eat. In fact,” he murmured, almost to himself, “I haven’t ever been back.”

  Chey swallowed painfully. Even knowing that Brodie had been married to Janey, even thinking that they might once have been in love, she had never allowed herself to picture them together, certainly not as she and Brodie had been together, not making love, not joined in body and soul. When she’d found out how wrong she’d been about him and Janey, the depth of her own relief had frightened her. Could she be wrong about this? Might there not be room for negotiation? Surely, if he really wanted to be with her, Brodie would take her desires into consideration—as she must do with his.

  Oh, God. Oh, God, what had she done? Perhaps it wasn’t too late. It had only been three weeks, after all. He couldn’t have found anyone else so quickly, not if he loved her. Then again, what self-respecting man in his right mind would languish indefinitely for a woman, any woman? Of course Brodie would move on. Eventually.