Page 108 of The Nanny and the Nerd
Freaking curtseyed!
Delores Lambert DuBois was a literary treasure and a celebrated writer, not the Queen of England!
“What was that?” Rowen asked under his breath.
“A misplaced curtsy,” she whispered back, watching as her idol chuckled.
“Why don’t you two come around back. I think you could use a drink. We can join my husband on the patio. He’s getting the wine,” Delores said, gliding, literally gliding, down from the front porch as she gestured for them to follow her to the side of the cottage.
“Yes, that would be…” Penny trailed off. She needed to reboot her brain—and fast!
“Lovely,” Rowen finished, taking her hand as they followed Delores. And thank God he was there! Otherwise, she might have combusted on the driveway.
Delores led them through the gate into a covered outdoor seating area with breathtaking views of the island and the ocean. Fragrant potted plants peppered the space as white, twinkling lights lining a large umbrella cast the porch in a warm glow. Penny inhaled, and it was like breathing in romance itself.
“I must say, Penny, your fella is quite persistent,” Delores remarked.
“How so?” she replied, damned proud of herself for putting two words together and not curtsying in the process.
“She doesn’t know?” Delores asked Rowen as they each took a chair at a weathered circular table under the lights.
Rowen crossed his legs, then uncrossed them. “I was able to connect with one of Ms. DuBois’s relatives. And through that person, I was able to schedule this meeting.”
Penny watched the man closely as he adjusted his glasses. But his answer didn’t tell her anything!
“How would you know any of Delores’s…” She glanced at the famous author. “You don’t mind if I call you Delores, do you? When I’ve imagined talking to you in my head, I call you Delores. Sometimes, Dee, because we’re besties in my mind.”
Crap! She sounded like a lunatic again!
“Delores is my name,” the woman replied, biting back a grin.
“Thank you, Delores,” she said, not about to test the Dee theory, then focused on her sneaky tech mogul. “I’m still confused about how you set this up.”
He shifted in his seat. “I used Gale Tech resources to look into it.”
“You cyber stalked Delores Lambert DuBois!” she cried.
Rowen loosened his collar. “I wouldn’t put my actions in that category.”
“What category would you put it in?” she pressed.
“I simply used the resources available to me to research Ms. DuBois. I learned that she has three sons who live in California. Each son is married, and each has three sons. The ages of the children span from thirteen to nineteen. A total of nine male teenagers.”
“Okay, go on,” she answered warily. This got creepy quick—but that was kind of Rowen’s thing.
“As you may or may not know, thirty-six percent of teens in this age group play video games. Eighty percent boys and twenty percent girls,” he rattled off.
This man!
“I did not know that, but keep going,” she replied.
“All right, from there, I deduced there was a high probability that at least three of Ms. DuBois’s grandsons would be gamers. I cross-referenced this list of total DuBois’s in the area with our gaming userbase, then contacted the adult teen males aged eighteen or older with the last name DuBois.”
“Are there a lot of them?” she asked. This explanation was almost as insane as the alarm code!
Rowen cleared his throat. “More than you’d think.”
“And you did that for me?”
