Page 19 of Daddy's Little Librarian
“One sandwich or two?” he asked, pulling out enough bread for three.
“One,” she said.
He added another pair of slices and put the bread away. “Crusts on or off?”
“Off,” she stammered slightly. “I do eat them, though. I like to pretend they’re French fries.”
He cocked an eyebrow, tried not to smile lest she think he was doing it at her expense, and made up four turkey and Swiss sandwiches, crusts off on one.
He began a search of the cupboards again.
“Top set,” she said. “Two to the left of the sink.”
He found the plates and made their suppers: a sandwich and a short stack of crust ‘fries,’ along with a handful of baby carrots and some grapes for her; three sandwiches, the rest of the small bag of baby carrots and a sprig of grapes for him.
“What did you go to prison for?” she asked, setting Bat Bear up beside her plate so the two of them could share it.
“No stuffies on the table,” he said between bites, and she stopped what she was doing and moved Bat Bear to sit on the stool beside her. She glanced at him to make sure that was all right; he allowed it. “I was stupid. I thought I could trust someone, and I couldn’t.”
“Your partner?” she said.
“You watch too many movies.” Polishing off the first sandwich and picking up another, he said, “Does the rodent know?”
She didn’t try to play stupid and pretend she didn’t know what he was referring to. He liked that about her. He also liked how she hunched her shoulders and suddenly found anything and everything in the area so much more interesting to look at than he was.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Tell me you did not let Chipmunk be your Daddy.”
“Gopher,” she corrected. “In my defense, he introduced himself as Robert.”
“When did he become the Groundhog?”
A corner of her mouth twitched. “Our third date, I think. And the way he said it made it sound more like a job than a name. You know, like go-fer. He’d go-fer this, or go-fer that.”
“We have those in prison too,” he said, unimpressed. “They’re nowhere near as nice as Morgan Freeman makes them out to be.”
“Morgan Freeman?” She blinked at him.
“You never saw The Shawshank Redemption?”
“No.” Finishing her ‘fries,’ she started on her grapes.
“Carrots too,” he said automatically.
“I only like them when they’re candied or cooked with ham. You know, so they taste good.”
“Carrots, too,” he said again, and making a slight face, she ate one next. “The movie doesn’t matter. What does matter, is that you knew Mouse-boy was a rodent and you still agreed to date him.”
“He was still being nice back then.”
“Uh huh.” He watched her pick up a carrot, then pick up her sandwich. Taking a bite of sandwich, she tried to palm the carrot. “Not if you know what’s good for you.”
The corner of her mouth grimaced, but she put it back on her plate. She looked at him. “I really don’t like them.”
“You’ve only got four more to go.”
She made herself eat another one, and he made a mental note of her anti-preference.
