A Purrfect Romance

While Bridey checked out the veal and couscous, Mack checked out Bridey, looking her over, comparing her to the other women he dated. What he saw was that Bridey Berrigan was totally at ease. She had none of the self-conscious preening and haughtiness that his usual dates brought with them, the preoccupation with their furs and jewels, their hair and their nails. Involuntarily, he glanced at Bridey’s hands and saw all the little marks of her kitchen work. For some reason, they seemed very sweet, very appealing.

The realization hit him like a fist in the chest, hard.

This one is a real woman.

It took his breath away. Mack Brewster wasn’t used to being blindsided.

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My thanks must begin with a most appreciative nod to a very special man, Damien Miano. It was Damien, who knows everyone, who set everything in motion. Without him, I would not have found Liza Fleissig and Ginger Harris-Dontzin and their amazing LizaRoyce Literary Agency. Liza is a treasure of energy and effective representation, and I cannot imagine my literary life without her. To my editor, John Scognamiglio, and to Rebecca Cremonese and the whole team at Kensington Books, I owe my most sincere and grateful thanks. An author dreams of the kind of care and attention I’ve received from them. With my deepest affection, I acknowledge two special friends from childhood—Harriet Harvey, who was present at the creation, and Sheila Kieran, who has been my role model in so many ways. And then there are The Six—Janet Asimov, Barbara Friedlich, Leslie Bennetts, Sandra Kitt, and Carrie Carmichael—wonderful, intelligent and creative women who have been a precious source of good professional advice, encouragement, and support. (In case the reader notices that I’ve named only five, I assure you, no one has been slighted; I am the sixth of The Six,) I also thank most warmly an old friend, Mary Santamarina, at the New York County Surrogate’s Court, who was an invaluable legal resource. To the many friends and associates who have encouraged and guided me along the way, no page is long enough to name you all and express my thanks as fully and as sincerely as you deserve. I have appreciated every word of affection, advice, and support you’ve given me.

But most of all, I acknowledge my three girls, Annie, Mary, and Margaret. Thank you for everything. You already know what you have given me.

T
he Last Will and Testament of Henrietta Lloyd Caswell Willey lay open on Douglas Braye’s big cherry wood desk, and Doug Braye himself was glaring at it malevolently, his gray eyes narrowed under his bushy eyebrows. Even his hair, white and wiry like his bristling eyebrows, seemed charged with angry electricity. He tapped his pencil on the desktop in irritation. Behind him, from its place of honor on the paneled wall, the enormous portrait of his father, old Mason Braye, dead now these twenty years, looked down severely, seeming to join his son in an effort to find words adequate to express their combined displeasure.

Finally, having reached the limit of his exasperation, Douglas tossed the pencil onto the papers in front of him and leaned back in his chair.

“The woman must have been mad!”

Gerald Kinski said nothing. What could he say? He picked nervously at a tiny wisp of lint that rested on the lapel of his pin-striped suit. He fidgeted with his bow tie. He ran his hand over what was left of his thinning gray hair. He’d been dreading this meeting with the other senior partners ever since the news of Henrietta’s death had reached him, and now he slumped deeper into the big leather chair. Maybe, with luck, he could disappear into it.

“And you, too, Gerry. What could you have been thinking? How could you let this happen?”

This from Art Kohler, the third man in the room. Even in good times, Art walked under a cloud of gloom and doom, and right now he was more than usually morose. He paced back and forth in front of the windows as he always did when things were going badly, with his shoulders hunched and his hands clasped tightly against his vest, where his ulcer was flaring dangerously.

“I thought it was a whim,” Gerald said miserably. “I thought I could get her to change her mind in time.”

He felt stupid even as he said it. No one ever got Mrs. Willey to change her mind; eighty-four years old, with a will like iron, like a force of nature, an act of God, a great cosmic power, and even more so ever since Neville’s death twelve years earlier. He remembered how he’d tried, tactfully, to reason with her, and how she had risen imperiously from her chair.

“Just do it!” she had ordered as she sailed from the room.

Who’d have guessed, only three weeks later, she’d just suddenly fall dead like that? On a beautiful afternoon in early spring, a lovely day in April, just going out for her regular stroll down Park Avenue? Tom, the elevator operator, had opened the door for her, she’d gasped and rolled her eyes heavenward, whispered, “Oh, my dear Neville,” and there she was, dead as a doornail in poor old Tom’s arms. The man was still in shock.

“Forty years this firm has been handling the Willey account,” Douglas was saying, “and we’ve always given them solid, conservative representation. What would my father have said?” He gestured behind him to the portrait. “My father would have said this firm is now in the hands of idiots!”

Braye, Kohler and Kinski was one of New York’s most conservative law firms; the three men were the sons of the firm’s founders. They had devoted decades of their professional lives to carrying on the traditions their fathers had begun. And now Gerald Kinski, certainly old enough to have known better, had committed a lawyer’s worst mistake. He had allowed an eccentric client’s foolishness to outweigh his own good judgment.

“We’ll be the laughingstock of the whole New York Bar,” said Art, who stopped his pacing only long enough to throw his arms into the air. His eyes, always heavy lidded, underlined by deep, black, baggy circles, looked more miserable than ever, and he cast his gaze toward the ceiling as though he expected it to fall on them all.

“I know. I know.”

Gerald Kinski felt the dignity of all his sixty years slipping away from him. Like a six-year-old who’s been summoned to the principal’s office, he was awash in shame and trepidation.

“And just wait till the papers get hold of this.”

“I know. I know.” Kinski was beginning to sound like a broken record.

“Stop sounding like a broken record, Gerry,” Douglas said. He leaned forward on his desk, his elbows resting on either side of the offending papers, his fingertips pressed against his temples. “My God. Seventy million dollars and she’s left all of it to a couple of goddamn cats.”

He looked down at the paragraph and read aloud: “ ‘—and being without surviving heirs and there being therefore no natural objects of my bounty, I hereby direct that the residue of my estate—’ ”

Here Douglas looked up from the paper and interrupted his reading to snarl at his squirming partner. “That’s seventy million dollars, Gerry. Seventy goddamn million dollars.”

He forced himself to calm down enough to go on reading. “‘—the residue of my estate, including my apartment at Six Twelve Park Avenue and all its contents, shall be placed into a trust, the proceeds of which shall be used solely for the care and support of my beloved companions, Silk and Satin. I further direct that the said apartment together with its contents shall be maintained as their residence and that the said trust shall terminate only upon the demise of both of them, except that if there be issue of either of them, such trust shall continue in full force and effect for the benefit of such issue, in perpetuity—’ ”

Again, Douglas looked up from the paper as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just read. “It’s crazy,” he said sharply.

“I know. I know.”

“And what’s this ‘in perpetuity’ crap? You know better than that! A first-year kid in law school knows better than that!”

Gerry shrugged helplessly. “I know,” he said weakly. “But she insisted—”

Art Kohler stopped his pacing long enough to stare down to the sidewalk forty-three floors below. He apparently decided against jumping and instead dropped into one of the empty chairs.

“That fancy Park Avenue apartment,” he moaned, “and all its contents—enough antiques to stock Sotheby’s auction house. Eighteen rooms. Seven bathrooms. A wood-burning fireplace in every bedroom. And that kitchen! It’s big enough to feed the whole Russian army. All for two goddamn cats. How could you, Gerry?”

“I know.”

“Oh, stop saying that!” Douglas squared his shoulders and picked up his pencil. “We have to think. We have to do something.”

He tapped for a while.

Then he said, “First of all, we have to get someone to live in that place, take care of those animals.” He made some notes on a yellow pad.

“Post an ad somewhere, Gerry. Something discreet. Get us someone sensible, reliable. Someone who won’t give us any trouble. Someone who’ll appreciate a chance to live rent-free in a dream apartment. I’ll leave it up to you to handle the screening—but try not to screw it up, okay? Maybe we can keep the press away from this.”

He dropped his head back into his hands and dug his fingers into his bristling hair.

“Oh, God!” he groaned. “My father must be spinning around in his urn.”