Anna Meets Her Match Read Online Free PDF Page A

herself in flour. Hopefully, no one planned to pan fry her, though given Carol’s exasperation, Anna wouldn’t have been surprised.
    “I wanna make cookies!” the girl sobbed.
    “Hilda is saving the cookies until you get cleaned up,” Carol told the distraught child. She cast an apologetic look at Anna. “I’m sorry, Miss Burdett. A mishap in the kitchen. The misses are expecting you.”
    “Uh-huh, and Mr. Leland?” Anna glanced around, expecting Reeves to arrive at any moment to take his wayward offspring in hand.
    Carol shook her head. “He’s not in from work yet.” Glancing at Gilli, she muttered, “Works too much, if you ask me.”
    “Hmm. Well. I’ll, 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