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?”