Калинка-малинка для Кощея. Марина Комарова

fashionably wide heels completed the ensemble. With her long blond hair coiled into a tight roll against the back of her head and her makeup sparingly but expertly applied, she presented a sleek, neat business persona.

      A small brass bell suspended from a wrought-iron arm hung by the door, and Chey gave the clapper a vigorous shake. The resulting peal echoed loudly all over the estate, causing the gardeners to pause at their labors and raise their heads and Chey to grab the bell with both hands in order to quell it. The door emitted a rusty crack and squeaked open. A small, pale woman greeted Chey.

      “Miss Simmons? I’m Kate, the housekeeper. Won’t you come in?”

      “Thank you.”

      Perhaps five feet tall and thin to the point of emaciation, Kate wore her medium-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She seemed both bursting with energy and dangerously frail. Turning, she said, “The family is in the garden room at the back of the house.” Indicating with a glance over one shoulder that Chey should follow, she set off briskly, bouncing up onto her toes with every step, arms swinging at her sides. No wonder she was so thin, Chey mused, the woman could burn more energy just walking than Chey could at a mad dash. She led Chey down the broad central hall, past the elegant, curving staircase and all the way across the big house in mere seconds, only to abandon her after brusquely announcing, “She’s here.”

      Chey had the impression of glass and greenery and cobblestoned floor in the heartbeat before a husky, cultured female voice made her head turn to one side. “Hello, again. It’s Chey, isn’t it? Or would you prefer Miss Simmons?”

      Chey smiled at the long, patrician face of the woman who approached her, her long, sleek body dressed in lightweight, pale green bouclé knit with a bright scarf looped loosely about a long, swanlike neck. “Mrs. Todd. Nice to see you again, and Chey is perfect.”

      “Then you must call me Viola.” Long, slender, slightly gnarled fingers curled around Chey’s hand. “Let me introduce you to my grandson and great-grandson.” She whirled away, and her chin-length, ruthlessly bobbed silver and white hair whirled with her. “They’re over here, on the other side of this jungle, wrestling with a weight bench, whatever that is.”

      Chey followed, thankful for the sedate pace as she wound her way through a virtual forest in pots and wooden boxes. She heard a clang and muttering, followed by a screeching little voice that insisted, “Wet me, Daddy! Wet me!”

      Just ahead of her, Viola came to a stop and said urgently, “Seth, don’t!”

      At the same instant, a deeper, gruffer voice barked, “Son, no! You’ll—” a wail interrupted, followed by more clanks and a gusty sigh, “—smash your finger,” the man finished resignedly. “Here, let me look at it.”

      The wails were already subsiding as Chey stepped up beside Viola Todd. The man was on his bare knees, his dark head bent over the small body in his likewise bare arms, a shambles of pipe and padded board beside them.

      “It’s not bleeding,” he said, examining the tiny finger. “The nail looks okay. Just a pinch on the end.” He lifted the little fist and lavishly kissed the uplifted finger. “Some strawberry jam ought to fix it. Let Grandmama see to it.” He gave the affectionate title a French pronunciation. Grahn-ma-ma stooped and opened her arms. Chey was shocked at the bright red head that hurtled into those outstretched arms.

      “Gramuma, I poke my fingder in the jam jar?”

      “If you please,” Viola assented, grunting as she lifted the child off his feet.

      “Pwease,” he intoned solemnly, squeezing his grandmother’s face between two chubby palms, the injured finger sticking out.

      Viola laughed and carried him away, saying only, “Brodie, get up and speak to this woman.” Over her shoulder, the red-headed imp stared at Chey curiously and waggled his fingers in a hello wave. She smiled in reply before turning her attention back to the man now rising slowly to his feet.

      Something about him made her step back in shocked awareness. Perhaps it was his height, for he stood easily six inches taller than she. Or perhaps it was all that bare, bronze skin, as he wore only jogging shorts, a loose muscle shirt and running shoes without socks. Then again, it might have been the contrast between his pale blue eyes and the coarse, ink-black hair mowed flat across the top of his head and precisely groomed into the neat, meticulous mustache and goatee which framed his sculpted mouth and squarish chin. Or perhaps it was the face itself, which, while all sharp angles and flat planes, was unabashedly handsome. Or it might have been the frankly curious, blatantly appreciative manner in which that pale blue gaze leisurely traveled over her and came to rest, finally, on her face.

      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