by Lorin Grace
“But I haven’t showered!”
“You did this morning. Use face wipes. Hurry! I have a masterpiece to create.”
Mandy hopped into the bathroom as Candace brought up a search for Debbie Reynolds. “Don’t get your hair wet!”
Fifteen minutes later, Candace was forcing yet another bobby pin into Mandy’s hair. Mandy’s cell phone rang, interrupting them. Daniel’s number flashed across the screen.
“Hello?”
“Amanda, I’m sorry about this, but my flight got grounded due to the storm. I’m stuck in Minneapolis. Can we take a rain check?”
“Sure.” Mandy started pulling out the bobby pins.
“Would tomorrow work for an early dinner, around four? I need to get back to Chicago that night.”
Mandy didn’t want to seem like she had no social life, but she also didn’t want to put off the date any longer. “It works.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t call earlier.”
Mandy caught herself worrying her lip in the mirror. “Don’t worry about it. Things happen. And being grounded at the wrong airport is the best cancelation excuse I have ever had.” She tried to infuse her voice with laughter.
Candace slumped on the bed.
“See you tomorrow.”
Mandy set the phone on the nightstand, then stood to unzip the side zipper of the dress.
“He isn’t coming, is he.” Candace started gathering the bobby pins.
Mandy shrugged. “I knew it wouldn’t happen.”
“But he made a date for tomorrow, right?”
Mandy hung the dress back in the closet. “It probably won’t happen either.” She hoped Candace didn’t see her swipe at an unwelcome tear. It wasn’t as if she had been looking forward to the date. Had she? She pulled on a terry robe and started rehanging the mass of clothes now littering her bed.
“I’d stay and eat some ice cream with you, but my date will be here in a half hour. I’m thinking raven tresses this time. He didn’t say a word about the red on Tuesday.”
“Wow, three times with the law student.”
Candace picked her towel up off the floor. “No, only two. The first was a group thing I went to with one of the girls from the studio.”
“So, is he polite or color blind?” Mandy shook out the yellow silk blouse.
“Not sure. I could arrange to lose my wig when he kisses me.”
Mandy sucked in a breath. “That is mean, and you know it. That accountant is probably still traumatized.”
They burst into laughter. Mandy had come home to find Candace and her accountant mid-kiss. He ended it so abruptly he’d stepped away with his hands still buried in one of the longer haired wigs, revealing Candace in all her bowling-ball glory.
Candace caught her breath. “It wouldn’t have been bad, but his frat ring was caught, and he couldn’t get the wig off. ‘Hi-yah! Hi-yah!’” She mimicked him trying to fling it off his hand.
“Stop it.” Mandy sunk onto the bed, holding her sides. “I’m going to pee my pants.”
“When it hit him in the face, he screamed like a girl!” Candace threw her arms up and ran from the room. “Made you laugh!” she yelled from down the hall.
Still laughing, Mandy hopped to the bathroom. Grandma Mae called it the curse of the weak bladder. Looking in the mirror, she wiped the tears from her eyes and wondered how many of them were from laughter.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Daniel pulled a chair out for Mandy before taking his seat. He took her crutches and laid them on the floor by the wall. She should have worn pink so at least one of them felt comfortable. The yellow blouse and navy skirt still screamed business meeting even after Candace had added one of her scarfs. A bright flash to her left caught her eye.
Daniel handed her a menu. “Just don’t pay attention to them.” His voice low enough she wondered if he had spoken. Then, louder, he said, “The chef here studied in Ireland. If you can find a way to work one of his blueberry lemon scones into your choice, you won’t be disappointed.”
“Scones, as in the British-tea type?”
“His scones make me want to give up coffee for Earl Gray.” Daniel’s eyes crinkled at the corners.
Another flash, this time from a table behind her. Voices murmured. Mandy caught her name and stiffened. Daniel tapped her leg lightly with his toe. “You okay?”
Mandy shook her head, then nodded. “I mean, I am fine. Just not used to the attention.”
“We could order something to go. I tend to forget how uncomfortable eating with people watching you can be.”
“I think leaving would cause more of a stir, don’t you? I’ll make sure not to order anything difficult to eat, like spaghetti.” Mandy pretended to read her menu while her heartbeat slowed.
“Sorry, I should have driven farther or opted for fast food.” Daniel offered a tentative smile.
“Do you ever get used to it?”
“It is kind of like a zit. If you pick at it, it becomes more noticeable, but if you ignore it, it goes away.”
Mandy laughed. “That has got to be the worst analogy I have ever heard!”
“It is what my lawyer told me when I was fifteen.”
“Your lawyer?”
“My lawyer, guardian, and foster father, Mr. Thomas Morgan. Not sure what to call him, but he was the one in charge of me after my grandfather and father were killed in the accident. Most of his advice has been very helpful. He is semiretired now, but still makes his presence known in my life almost daily.”
“And the zit analogy helped?”
Daniel gave a half smile. “Not really, but when I pictured the paparazzi as big zits waiting to be popped, it kept me from getting mad.”
“Ew.”
“Hey, I was fifteen.” He raised his hands in mock surrender.
Another flash, this time over Daniel’s shoulder.
“You know, people need to learn to turn off their flash if they want to take clandestine selfies.” Daniel’s comment was too loud to be directed at her. Just beyond him, a teenage girl tripped on her way back to her table, her face a deep red.
Mandy frowned. “You realize she will be scarred for life?”
“Not likely. By the time our waiter comes, she will have uploaded the photo to three different sites and declared that DC talked about her.” He took a sip of water and settled back in his seat.
Mandy watched the girl tapping on her phone at a speed few of her students could match. Instead of giving him the satisfaction of knowing he was right about it, she set down the menu. “I think I’ll have the herb-crusted salmon.”
“Good choice.”
Once the waiter had taken their orders, Mandy started the conversation. “It probably isn’t any of my business, but I have been curious. What does one do in London for two days?”
“Sit in stale-smelling boardrooms with a bunch of stuffy people and negotiate contracts to advertise our restaurant chains.”
“I thought C & O was in steel, not food.”
“We’ve diversified over the years. My mother started the restaurants before I was born. She ran them as a separate company. After she—well, it made more sense to bring them under the same umbrella. I spend most of my time on that part of the business. In fact, most of the steel portion has been sold off over the last decade.” The half smile again.
A hand clamped down on Mandy’s shoulder. Mandy didn’t need to look to know it was Coach Robb. “Well, Mandy, I see you managed to make time in your busy schedule to leave your computer.”
Mandy tried to brush the hand off her shoulder. She opened her mouth to respond, but Daniel’s voice filled the space. “I believe Miss Fowler is uncomfortable with your manhandling. You should return to your table.”
Coach Robb never retreated—on the field or off. Mandy tried again to remove his hand as she made introductions. “Coach Robb, this is Daniel Crawford.”
“You only go for the rich, nerdy type? Don’t know what you are missing.
” The hand squeezed her shoulder before its owner stalked off.
“Sorry about that.” Mandy grimaced as she lifted her glass to her mouth.
“Boyfriend?”
Mandy nearly spewed the sip of water she’d just taken. “Only in his imagination, along with every other woman he sees.”
“He asked you out for tonight?”
“Not specifically. His invitation was more open-ended.”
Daniel’s eyebrows asked the question for him.
Mandy knew she should explain further. “He has been trying to get me to go out with him for a while.”
The delivery of their salads saved her from further comment.
Daniel picked up his fork. “You know he is still glaring at me. You sure there is nothing I need to know about?”
Unable to speak because of the bite of avocado in her mouth, Mandy shook her head. Daniel waited.
It had to be the chewiest avocado on earth. Mandy contemplated her answers. Telling him that Candace called the coach “Mr. Handsy” probably wouldn’t go over well. “Let’s say I actively avoid him as the words ‘not interested’ don’t seem to be in his vocabulary. I am sure you have met a few people like that.” Another cell phone flashed, as if to punctuate her sentence.
“Touché.” Daniel saluted her with a forkful of salad. “I may have met one or two thousand like him?”
“Only two thousand?”
A tinge of a blush colored his cheeks.
Teasing him was as easy as it had been twenty years ago. “I’m sure if they knew how adorable you were in Hulk swim trunks and with mud on your face, you would have to double that.”
Daniel gave a fake shudder. “I should have never let you talk me into those. I wanted the Spiderman ones.”
“But, as Grandma Mae told you, they were not on sale.”
The smile slid from Daniel’s face. “When did she pass?”
“Four years ago, near the end of my student teaching. I came home, and she was sitting in the rocker like she did every afternoon—only she wasn’t rocking.” Mandy waved a hand in front of her face, trying to fan away the moisture that had started to gather in her eyes.
“You were living with her?”
“Yes, she didn’t want to move to a retirement home or down with my parents. So I chose to come to school up here.”
“I tried to drive by her house the other day and couldn’t find it.”
“Tornado.” Mandy stuffed a bite of roll in her mouth to give herself some time to keep the tears at bay.
“Three years ago, right? I think I had every roofing company in the state calling me for months.”
She jumped on the new subject. “Why didn’t you get the roof fixed? From the photos I took, it looks like you may have some water damage.”
Daniel studied the tomato on his fork. “I assure you, repairs were made. I just didn’t replace the roof. I was kind of mad the tornado wasn’t a few hundred yards northwest.”
“You wanted it to destroy the mansion?”
Daniel steered away from answering that question. “Were you in the house?”
“No, I had already moved into town. Grandma Mae told me I would inherit the house but must have never informed her lawyer. Uncle George let me stay until the end of the semester and graduation. He was trying to sell the property, the house was vacant when the tornado hit. Grandma’s was the only house destroyed in that tornado as it hit so far north of town.”
“It did take out most of the back fence, as I recall, as well as the archway and main gate.”
“Yes, you had no problem fixing that.” With a hideous chain link fence. Mandy hoped the bitterness she felt was not evident. How could he have neglected fixing the mansion? Boarding up windows did not constitute a fix in her book. Didn’t he know how rare a late-nineteenth-century home was in this part of the country?
Daniel opened his mouth to reply, but the waiter chose that moment to deliver their entrees.
He picked up his fork. “You loved that house, didn’t you?”
“Grandma Mae’s? Yes, but I love the memories more—working in her garden, watching stars from the gable room.”
“Don’t forget the Morse code window.” Daniel bit into his steak. The book in his grandfather’s library had been most helpful. At first they had used the lights in their bedrooms to communicate, but switching the light on and off fast blew Grandma Mae’s breaker, so Daniel acquired a pair of heavy-duty flashlights.
Daniel tapped his knife on the table. “Dash-dash-dot, dash-dot.” G-N—their code for “good night.”
“Dash-dot, dash-dot-dash-dash,” Mandy tapped back.
“N-Y. Not yet? You never did want to stop.”
Mandy shook her head. “I couldn’t stop if I didn’t think you were happy.”
“What do you mean?”
Too late Mandy realized what she would have to reveal. “You needed to go to sleep happy so you wouldn’t cry, or your grandfather wouldn’t let me play with you.”
“How did you know that?”
“The first time Grandma Mae took me over to the mansion, I met your grandfather. He said I could only play with you if it kept you from crying at night. Scared me to death.”
Daniel set down his utensils. “You never said anything about that.”
“Grandma Mae told me it should be a secret because big boys didn’t like to cry and asked me to do my best to make you smile.”
“Did she tell you why I cried?”
Mandy shook her head. “She said it was your secret and when you wanted to tell me, you would, and I was never to ask. I think Grandma Mae repeated that almost every day before I climbed the fence.”
Daniel shook his head. “You must have asked me every other question in the universe that summer, but you never asked that one. Do you know the answer yet?”
“That summer your mother died. Wikipedia solved that one for me a while ago.”
“You looked me up?”
“Hasn’t every woman over the age of ten?” Mandy wanted to return to their teasing.
“Why?”
She hid behind her napkin for a moment, wiping an imaginary crumb. “Because I wanted to figure out if Mr. Most Eligible was the boy I caught frogs with.”
“One and the same.”
“Are you sure?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As soon as the question left her lips, she knew she shouldn’t have asked it. Daniel didn’t answer. Mandy took another bite of her fish, which seemed to be composed of bones as she tried to swallow.
“Sorry, that was rude of me,” she squeaked out.
Daniel set his fork down. “No, you’re right. I’ve become jaded. And suspicious. As I have proven.” He gestured to the crutches. “I am sorry.”
“You don’t need to keep apologizing. Why did you think I was a land developer?” She ignored the flash of another camera.
“About a year ago I started looking at options. I have at least six offers on the land I have been sitting on, waiting for Grandfather’s stipulations to expire so I can sell. A couple of the buyers are getting desperate, sending surveyors, photographers, etc.”
“Why would you want to sell your home?”
“It never really was mine. I lived there until I was two, but I don’t remember it. Spent a few Christmases there as a child and one very memorable summer. After my mother died, my father and I only went back a few times. To me the mansion was my grandfather’s home, never mine.”
“Surely you don’t want to destroy it. Architecturally it is a perfect example of Victorian Gothic revival. I am surprised it isn’t on the National Registry.”
Daniel made a face. “Grandfather was adamant about that. Didn’t want some government park official telling him he couldn’t paint the place purple if he wanted to.”
“Purple? Like the house out on Spring Creek? If you did, I would trespass just to paint it period colors.”
“If you did, I wouldn’t yell or be rude.” Daniel�
��s voice took on a somber tone.
Mandy wanted to return to a lighter subject but she couldn’t figure out how. “Did you know they almost called in the bomb squad over the camera delivery?”
“Really? Why?”
“Your private carrier bypassed central receiving and delivered an anonymous box straight to the dean’s secretary. I am glad they didn’t try to detonate it.”
He flashed the same smile that graced every fangirl’s pin board. “Oh, I didn’t know it would cause trouble.”
“Don’t worry about it. Dr. Christensen, my adviser, is still laughing about everyone running around like Armageddon was in the box. Says it’s the most life that has been in the college all year. The dean is happy to have a replacement camera with little effort. And I’m glad to be able to graduate. Having an MFA gives me a few more options than teaching high school for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t you like teaching?”
Mandy swallowed her bite of asparagus. “I love teaching the students who want to learn, but many of my students are trying to get an easy A or just filling hours. They don’t want to be there and make no attempt to hide it. Then their parents call me when they get a C.”
The waiter approached. Daniel ordered a double batch of the scones to go.
After the waiter left, Mandy asked, “Why to-go?”
“We seem to have garnered more than the local cell-phone paparazzi. The photographer who just stuck his head into the lobby looks like a pro. We will be leaving through the kitchen if Geoff will let us.”
The waiter delivered their boxed scones, and Daniel handed him three bills with smiling Ben Franklins on them. After retrieving the crutches, he helped Mandy out of her chair and whispered, “Pretend you are going to the restroom, then slip into the kitchen. I’ll be there in a moment.”
The waiter held open the kitchen door and gave Mandy a little nod. Daniel entered before she needed to say anything. Without a word, he motioned her to follow. They passed a short man dressed in white, Daniel nodded and held up his box. Now Mandy understood Daniel’s choice of parking space —better than to have to walk around the building if a quick exit became necessary. As he opened the door and swept her into the cab, a man ran around the side of the building, a camera dangling from his neck, another from his hand. Before he got into position, Daniel had the truck out of the parking space.
