uh, just ring the bell, I guess.”
“If you don’t mind,” Carol said, dragging Gilli back the way they had come.
Gilli stopped howling long enough to glance back at Anna, who impulsively stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes. Gilli first looked surprised, but then she giggled, causing Carol to pause and look down at her. Grinning, Anna climbed the shallow brick steps and rang the bell. Odelia let her in, swinging black onyx chandeliers from her earlobes and chattering gaily about how excited they all were to see her designs.
Excited they might have been, but see her designs they did not. Neither were they interested in her estimates. Instead, Hypatia presented her with a “more complete list,” of the items they would be needing: place cards, menu cards, table assignment cards, letterheads, donation forms, receipts, a spiral-bound auction catalog, name tags, item tags, signs…The list seemed endless.
While Anna tried to take in the expanding size of the order, the sisters chatted about their various ideas for the final logo design, all three at the same time. Anna mentally tossed everything she’d done to this point and quickly jotted down ideas as the sisters shot them to her. At one point she put her hand to her hair, just trying to take it all in. Hypatia reached over then to lay her manicured hand on Anna’s shoulder.
“How would it be,” Hypatia asked, “if you worked up designs for each of us?”
“Using your individual ideas, you mean?” Anna raised a mental eyebrow at Miss Magnolia’s “nature” theme, Miss Odelia’s “lace and satin” and Miss Hypatia’s “biblical” motif. “I can do that.” Along with a new idea of her own, she decided, suddenly picturing the fluted, Roman Doric columns of Chatam House topped with an elegant swag of flowers intertwined with the BCBC emblem, which itself contained a Bible.
“You just let us know when you’re ready to meet again,” Mags said. “We’ll have the teapot simmering.”
“That’s very nice of you,” Anna returned, a thought occurring. “So you’ll be wanting me to continue coming here?”
“Is there a problem with that?” Hypatia asked.
“No, no. Not so far as I’m concerned. Dennis may not always go for it, though.”
Hypatia just smiled. “Oh, he seems perfectly willing to indulge three old ladies who like their creature comforts too well.”
Anna laughed. “Well, I certainly can’t argue that the print shop compares in any way to Chatam House.”
“What does?” a smooth male voiced asked.
Anna looked up as Reeves strolled into the room, dispensing kisses and smiles on everyone but her. At last, he turned a cool nod in her direction. “Anna Miranda.”
Anna grit her teeth. She hated her full name. Hated it. Sometimes the chants of children’s voices rang in her dreams. Anna Miranda the brat. Anna Miranda the brat…
She couldn’t blame them really. They’d had parents and siblings, and she had resented that fact greatly. Of course, as children do, they had picked up on her envy. Accordingly, they had sneered, and she had made their lives miserable in every way she could imagine. Eventually she’d learned to channel her animosity into jokes, earning herself a few friends and the designation of class clown. Reeves had never thought her the least bit funny, though. She faced him and returned his greeting in kind.
“Reeves Kyle.”
He lifted an eyebrow before turning his back on her. “More printing?” he asked his aunts.
Anna bit her tongue, literally.
While the aunts gushed about everything they had discussed, Anna secured her notes, reminding herself that this was business between her and the Chatam sisters. Reeves’s opinion did not matter, and she had been foolish to think for a moment that it did. Or that it might ever change.
“Aunt Hypatia,” Reeves asked, having listened carefully for some minutes, “are you certain that this printer is the right one for the job?”
He’d thought about it a lot. Actually, to be completely honest with himself, he’d thought about Anna Miranda, almost constantly. For some reason, he couldn’t seem to get her off his mind. He kept picturing her contrite face as she’d made her apology last week, and somehow he now felt in the wrong.
She’d always done that to him. She made his life miserable and one way or another he always felt to blame. How did she do that, and why did she have to turn up again after all these years? What was God trying to tell him? That his life could be worse? That was exactly what he was trying to avoid and not just for himself. Having seen the print shop and knowing his aunts’ expansive plans, Reeves truly felt that they would be better off taking their business elsewhere. Yet, because of one thing or another—primarily the complaining e-mails he’d been receiving daily from Marissa—he’d put off making the argument until now.
Hypatia smiled her serene smile, the one that could make a troubled ten-year-old feel that all might actually one day be right with his world, and answered him. “Absolutely certain. Why do you ask, dear?”
Why? Because he didn’t trust Anna Miranda. No matter what she said, there would surely be a shocking message buried in a letterhead or something else inappropriate. His aunts had always defended her, however, telling him that he didn’t understand her situation. The opposite seemed true to him. At least she hadn’t shuttled back and forth between her warring parents throughout her childhood as he had, never quite belonging either place. Maybe her grandmother, Tansy, was a bit difficult and not the warmest person, but at least she’d provided Anna Miranda with a stable home.
“A larger shop would be better able to handle a job this size,” he argued, “and with Dallas just up the road—”
“In other words, you think our shop will do shoddy work,” Anna interrupted hotly. “Or is it just my abilities that you doubt?”
Reeves clenched his jaw. He had studiously avoided making eye contact with her, but now he leveled a stare at her face. “I didn’t say that. I just don’t want my aunts to be embarrassed. This scholarship fund is important to them.”
Odelia laughed, her pendulous earrings wriggling. “Oh, sweetie,” she chuckled. “We’re embarrassed all the time.”
“Not that Anna Miranda has or would embarrass us,” Mags put in quickly.
“Anna Miranda is a very gifted artist, Reeves,” Hypatia told him, “and she’s a very dear girl.”
Very dear? Not the Anna Miranda he remembered. And no girl, either, he thought, not anymore. How, he wondered, did she manage to appear so casually polished and smirk at the same time? She looked…womanly, innately female, right down to that twisted little smile.
“Besides,” Anna Miranda said, “there are a surprising number of items needed, but not so many copies of each that a larger printer would find it worthwhile.”
Reeves opened his mouth to argue with that, but just then Gilli came sliding into the room in her stocking feet, her hair wet, her T-shirt and pants twisted.
“Daddy, I had a aksident and Carol made me take a bath!” she complained.
Automatically, he
