Page 21 of Under Pressure

Sean didn’t hesitate as he dropped his jaw so Don could shove a third in his pie hole. After that, Don pointed at the door. “Out.”

Axel poked his head back around the corner. Johnny planted his feet. And Sean, while chewing on the eclair, glanced longingly at the oven just as the alarm went off with a persistent beep, beep, beep!

“That’s it,” Don said and marched to the living room. He pulled the yardstick he’d stored on top of the curio cabinet down and headed back to the kitchen. The boys saw it, and all three of them stumbled backward.

“Now, Grandpa, be reasonable,” Johnny stuttered as he crashed into the frame of the door.

“Don, good heavens!” Winnie cried.

Don hit the wall with the wooden stick, getting the loud slapping sound he was going for and Johnny and Sean both turned and ran.

Don reached the door and slammed it behind them. He took a deep breath and faced his friends.

Harry and Walt were chuckling along with Rosa and Samantha who was looking down at her lap to hide her face. The rest of the women didn’t seem that amused.

“Was that necessary?” Polly asked, signaling to the yardstick.

Nancy went to the oven, nudging Harry out of the way, and turned off the alarm, then pulled the cake out.

Don shrugged. “Hollow threat.” He’d swatted his grandkids on their bums a time or two when they were kids. Never very hard. The best part of a yardstick was that it looked scary because it was long. The sight of it alone was enough to get people behaving. Or moving . . . Don pointed at the door with it. “They left didn’t they?”

Rosa swatted a hand through the air. “That’s nothing. When my kids misbehave—” She whipped off her shoe. “I give them a whack or two with myzapato, and they start behavinginmediatamente.”

Don signaled to Rosa with an open hand, palm up, as if to saysee? He returned the yardstick to the curio cabinet, then came back to the table.

“How are you holding up?” Nancy asked in almost a whisper as she set the cake on the one open spot atop the stove and turned it off.

“Fine, fine.” Don picked up two of the cookie trays on the table and handed them to Walt, then picked up the third and handed it to Harry. Harry’s eyes gleamed behind his glasses.

Beneath the cookie sheets, was the murder board, or matchmaking board as everyone called it, that they normally had hanging up inside the conference room in The Palms Community Center. Don had spent hours last night refashioning it for his purposes. He may have added a few embellishments. But he’d had to. Sean was a special boy, and this mission was going to take a lot of work. Now more than ever Sean would need a woman in his life. It was the only way to save him from himself during this time.

Don pointed around at the sixty-seven photos of different women he’d taken pictures of here in Diamond Cove that he set up on the right side of the table, all with their stats on the back, ignoring the picture of Sean on the left. “This isn’t all of them,” he said. “I’ve still got another fifteen on my phone that need to be printed off.”

Samantha opened her tablet and took note.

A gasp sounded from somewhere across the table but Don didn’t bother to look.

“When did you take all of these pictures?” Winnie asked.

Now Don glanced up. “Yesterday.” There was no time for dillydallying now. It had only taken him eight hours and thirty-three minutes to get all these and another two to print them all off and set them up on his table. He hadn’t even stopped for lunch. A very productive day if he did say so himself.

Samantha pointed one dainty fingernail at the table. “What’s my picture doing on here?”

Don glanced down, and sure enough, there was Samantha’s lovely smiling face. Whoops. She wasn’t supposed to see that. With a rush, he grabbed up the photo. “Mistake. I have pictures of all you ladies in my phone.” He signaled around to the group of women, pointedly ignoring Harry and Walt. But his remark seemed to soften the women up substantially.

Rosa patted the side of Don’s face. “Que lindo, amigo.”

“What about us?” Harry asked, picking up one of the chocolate-covered croissants from the cookie sheet on the stove and taking a bite.

Walt handed a tray to Polly, then grabbed a lemon bar from off the top of the refrigerator.

Don ignored Harry and waited for Walt to take a bite. “What do you think?”

Walt nodded. “Really good.” The bar left a smear of lemon in Walt’s mustache.

“I’ve never tried that recipe before,” Don said. He’d found the recipe in a shoebox in their closet. He still had at least a dozen more Sketchers shoeboxes of the like to go through.

Balancing the tray he still held, Walt gave him a thumbs up with the hand that held the now half-gone lemon bar.

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