Page 4 of Daddy's Little Librarian
Hopefully, this Kurt fellow was half as rough and tough as Sadie seemed to think he was. Hopefully, she hadn’t exaggerated his abilities. Not that it wouldn’t be understandable if she had. She was a grandmother. Grandmothers should see their grandkids through rose-colored glasses. It wasn’t just a prerogative; it was practically a law. But if she had, if Kurt wasn’t the big, tough bodyguard she had said he was, and Gopher found out what she was trying to do—she didn’t want to know what would happen next. It would be bad though. She knew that much.
As they passed the watercooler and reached the lobby doors, Sadie leaned into her and whispered, “Try not to slouch, dear. You only have one chance to make a first impression.”
Scotti straightened automatically, but even as she did it, it trickled through her head to wonder why it mattered how she was standing if all she was doing was introducing herself to the man she hoped to hire? She glanced at the older woman out of the corner of her eye, hesitant even to ask. “You—you’re not playing matchmaker here, are you, Sadie?”
“Absolutely not. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to run a quick brush through your hair before he comes?”
Scotti caught herself before she touched her hair. She frowned. “I need a bodyguard, not a romantic complication.”
“You’re almost thirty now, aren’t you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Sadie gave her an exaggeratedly innocent blink behind the coke-bottle-eyeglasses that hugely magnified her pale blue eyes. “Why, nothing whatsoever, dear. Why should it?” She then reached up and, before Scotti could stop her, briskly slapped the apples of her cheeks several times. “You really ought to wear a little makeup. You’d be so much cuter, you know.”
“Sadie!” Scotti cried, dismayed, but already the hunched older woman had shuffled almost to the main exit. Rubbing her stinging cheeks, Scotti hurried to catch up. “Did you tell him I wanted to talk to him?”
“It’s not me who wants to hire him, dear.”
“Does he know he’s even meeting me?” Scotti’s stomach instantly knotted.
“A grandmother doesn’t like to get involved.”
“Does he know anything about anything?!”
“A grandmother doesn’t like to get involved!”
“Sadie!” Scotti cried, the knots instantly pulling tight enough to strangle, and her heart sinking now too.
Out the door, Sadie went, and Scotti almost followed before she caught herself. The heavy library doors were made of thick wood and glass so darkly tinted that no one on the outside could easily see in. That gave Scotti a slight advantage as she held one door slightly open. She peered down the outside steps, searching what parts of the parking lot that she could see for Gopher’s signature Hot-Rod Red Mustang. It was a sunny day. If he was out there, chances were good the top would be down and he’d be in plain sight. Possibly eating an apple, which would give him a reason to have his knife out where she could see it, and remember.
Scotti swallowed hard. She studied every car that she could see, but she didn’t recognize any of them. Nor did she see anyone loitering suspiciously.
“I don’t see him yet,” Sadie said, shuffling out as far as the top of the library steps. She paused to search the full lot, even the parts that Scotti couldn’t see from just inside the entryway, and then she came shuffling back. “Maybe we should come up with some sort of secret code before he gets here. You know, on the off chance that he’s not what you’re looking for.”
So no one’s feelings would get hurt if Sadie’s grandson turned out to be less like Arnold Schwarzenegger and more like Woody Allen. “Good idea,” Scotti agreed, a little relieved. She never liked hurting anyone’s feelings.
Sadie straightened with an excited clap. “I’ve got one! How about ‘The pig is in the poke’?”
Scotti couldn’t begin to see how that might be unobtrusively worked into normal conversation. “What about ‘nice car’?”
“Oh, he doesn’t have a car yet,” Sadie said. “He hasn’t had a chance to buy one since the government, uh… released him from his responsibilities. Do you like egg rolls?”
Scotti shrugged with her eyebrows. “I don’t know. Depends on who makes them. Why?”
“No, no, dear. I mean that can be our secret code.”
“Oh.” She brightened. “That might work. After we meet and I’ve had a chance to feel him out a bit, you could invite me home for egg rolls, and I’ll say yes if I want to hire him or no if I don’t.”
Sadie tsked. “Well, that won’t work. I never cook Chinese, and Kurt knows that.”
“We’ve got to think of—” Scotti began, but Sadie suddenly threw up her hands.
“Shh!” the old woman loudly shushed her. “Here he comes! Here he comes!”
Had Scotti been any shorter, she’d have been tackled to the ground in Sadie’s exuberant attempts to smooth down her hair and pinch more color into her cheeks.
“Ouch! Stop it!” But Scotti’s protests were cut abruptly short when the old woman spun her around and gave her a sharp push, straight out the door into the shadow of the library porch, and quite literally into the startled embrace of one of the most handsome men Scotti had ever had the good fortune to fall into. She didn’t even mind that he was soaking wet from head to toe. His red and black flannel shirt fit him like a second skin, so did his dark blue jeans. The man could have been a clothing model, or a body builder, or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s personal stunt double, from the shoulders down. His physique more than made up for any secondhand wetness now soaking into the front of her business dress.
