A Purrfect Romance Read Free

you know? Playing with the cats, like a kid. Pretty girl she is, with all that red hair and big green eyes. Silk and Satin will be in good hands with her.”
    “Young and playful, huh?” Art Kohler was still looking for trouble. “Do you think she’s reliable? There’s a lot of valuable stuff in that place. Will she be careful, do you think? We have to be damned sure nothing happens to those two cats. Anything happens to those cats, we’re in big trouble. You’re sure she understands?”
    “Oh, sure. I made it real clear—absolutely clear—the safety and prosperity of those two cats is her solemn responsibility.”
    “And you checked her out thoroughly?”
    “Of course. And I’m satisfied she’s okay. She’s twenty-four and unattached. Her parents died in a car crash when she was just a kid, and she was brought up by her paternal grandmother and a mob of uncles and aunts and cousins. She has no family here in the city. She’s been living with a girlfriend for the last few months.”
    “Where’d she go to school?”
    “She graduated from the Culinary Institute at Hyde Park. Where, I might add, she took special honors as a pastry chef. I called the dean there and he gave her a first-rate recommendation, said she’s totally steady, dedicated to her career. She’s been working at the Cheval Vert for the last couple of years, but now, with this chance to live rent-free, she’s quit her job and plans to work full-time on a special project—some kind of cookbook, I think. She’s got enough saved to live on, buy her supplies, do her research, that sort of thing. She’s really dedicated a hundred percent to this project and she needs a place where she can test her recipes. That big kitchen in the Willey apartment is absolutely a godsend for her. She was ecstatic when she saw it.”
     
    Ecstatic was hardly the word for it. She’d been impressed, of course, as Mr. Kinski led her through the vast apartment, through its many bedrooms, through the separate suites for Neville and Henrietta, through the library, the guest rooms, the servants’ quarters, the laundry room, and the sewing room. But he had saved the best for last, and when he opened the swing doors into the huge, virtually professional kitchen, Bridey’s mouth opened in a sudden, involuntary o and her eyes went wide.
    This is spooky, she thought, looking round at the spotless chrome and white tile. The simple ad had said nothing about a kitchen, but the brief notice had jumped out at her as if it had her name on it. She’d taken a chance and now, like magic, a fabulous door to her future was opening, as though divine providence had taken an unexpected shine to her.
    “Mr. Willey had been in the diplomatic service,” the lawyer explained, “and he and his wife entertained on a very lavish scale. You’ve seen the dining room.”
    She was recovering from her first astonishment and, while Mr. Kinski kept talking, she proceeded to walk around the enormous workstation in the middle of the kitchen, trailing her hand lovingly along the impeccable countertop, touching appreciative fingers to the hanging pots and pans, the racks of exotic utensils suspended above the work surface, the drawers below containing every imaginable cooking aid.
    “It’s perfect,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “Just perfect.”
    “The dining room alone seats twenty,” he added, “and the Willeys often had a hundred or more for cocktail parties and fund-raising affairs. Mrs. Willey was enthusiastic about good cooking, like yourself, and because her husband had been posted all over the world, she had developed considerable culinary experience. She was always collecting new recipes. If she had a guest from a foreign country, she’d take him—or his wife—into the kitchen to teach her chef the secrets of some new dish or exotic cooking technique. They might all wind up spending the evening in the kitchen with the cooks instead of in the living room trading