style="font-size:15px;"> “Dinner. Tonight,” she repeated in surprise, and wanted to smack her forehead again.
Put together like that, it sounded as if she thought he was asking her out on a date, which, of course, was ridiculous. Thomas Waverly was a busy man. His time was at a premium. More likely he preferred to get this out of the way so that he didn’t have to waste office hours on what, for him at least, amounted to an inconsequential matter. That explanation made sense until a little voice whispered in her head that he needn’t be bothered at all. A man of his stature had plenty of subordinates to take care of such things, including the efficient older woman who’d so kindly asked him to see Elizabeth in the first place earlier that day.
As if he could read her mind, Thomas said, “I know it’s a little unorthodox, meeting over dinner, but I have something I’d like to discuss with you. An opportunity that is …” He paused again, just long enough to have Elizabeth holding her breath. “Well, in itself, rather unorthodox.”
“Oh?” Color her intrigued. Before she could respond further, however, her dog sent up a booming howl of protest as the squirrel he’d been chasing perched on the lowest branch of the front yard’s big oak and chattered noisily down at him.
“Howie!” she yelled.
Even though she’d moved the phone away from her mouth, she heard Thomas say, “I apologize. You have company. I should have realized.”
Elizabeth nearly laughed out loud at the statement. Did he think she was entertaining a man? More like man’s best friend. Sadly, no males of the two-legged variety had darkened her door in several months.
“Not how you mean,” she told him, even though she found her dog to be excellent company. She’d rescued Howie from the local pound nearly two years earlier. He’d been on death row, though the pound didn’t actually call it that. Still, his fate had been determined, his date with a needle full of sleepy juice scheduled. His crime? Few people wanted a nearly three-year-old, seventy-five-pound pooch who could be every bit as stubborn as he was affectionate. “Howie’s my dog. He’s chasing a squirrel.”
“A futile endeavor, I take it.” There was a smile in Thomas’s voice.
A fellow dog person? That made him even more appealing in her book.
“Very, which is why he’s barking loud enough to wake the dead.” She held the phone away from her and covered the mouthpiece long enough to holler the dog’s name a second time.
Mrs. Hildabrand, her neighbor from across the street, would be on her front porch any minute to warn Elizabeth that the police would be on the way if Howie didn’t quiet down. The elderly woman already had called the authorities twice in the past month with noise complaints. The officers the department sent out had been kind and even understanding. But Elizabeth couldn’t afford to press her luck. Thankfully, this time Howie obeyed her command to cease and desist. He trotted to the porch and then through the door she’d opened for him, tail held high and wagging madly, probably for the squirrel’s benefit.
“So, about tonight, do you have any plans?” Thomas asked.
“No. Not a thing.” Because the stark reply made her sound, well, pathetic, she amended quickly, “What I mean is, nothing that can’t be rescheduled.”
Or recorded on her DVR. Yes, her social life was that pathetic.
“Terrific.”
The relief she heard in his voice left her as curious as what his “unorthodox proposal” might be. After all, Thomas Waverly struck her as the sort of man who was always in control and only asked questions whose answers he already knew. Yet, he was acting very much like he needed her rather than the other way around.
They made arrangements to meet at an Italian restaurant where the highly rated menu came with equally high prices. Elizabeth had eaten at Antonio’s exactly once, and then, since she’d gone with a girlfriend, she’d ordered only a bowl of soup. Everything else was beyond her budget, especially once a glass of wine had been factored in.
After hanging up, she paced her living room, absently stopping to pick up the magazines that Howie had knocked off the coffee table with his tail. The dog paced alongside her, his tongue lolling out from his open-mouthed grin.
“I’ve got an hour before we meet.”
Howie panted, as much from his recent exercise as from the heat. The house had no air-conditioning and wouldn’t for the foreseeable future. She didn’t have the extra funds in her household budget for that kind of luxury. Everything she had, she poured into her work.
“An hour,” she repeated. “That’s not a lot of time. I need to make the most of it.” She let out a laugh that was brittle with nerves. For her benefit as much as the dog’s, she added, “I’ve worked my way through the alphabet when it comes to donors. Obviously, at W, I’m getting a little desperate.”
Howie stared at her, as if he suspected there was more to those nerves than desperation on behalf of the nonprofit she’d started from scratch a decade before.
“I need to do something to make Thomas Waverly sit up and take notice.”
When Elizabeth sat down in front of her laptop, the dog laid his head on her knee. She planned to print out a batch of success stories from Literacy Liaisons’s client list. The testimonials were proof of how life-changing learning to read could be. But as she perched on a chair in front of the computer screen, she fiddled with the ends of her hair and became distracted. She was due for a trim.
“Maybe the next time I see my stylist I’ll ask about a perm. What do you think, Howie?”
The dog lifted his head from her leg. She swore he looked confused, and no wonder. Why was she thinking about this now?
“Never mind.”
Howie continued to stare at her.
“Look, I know this isn’t a date.” She patted his broad head. Again, for his benefit as well as her own, she said, “But it never hurts to look one’s best. Dress for success and all that.”
With that in mind, she snatched up the phone and dialed her best friend’s number, sighing with relief when Melissa Sutton picked up just before the call would have gone to voice mail. It was hard to catch her very social friend, even on her cell.
The two women had been tight since college, even though they seemed to have little in common with the exception of their commitment to battling illiteracy, which was why after a stint as a packaging engineer, Melissa had showed up at Literacy Liaisons, willing to take a significant cut in pay for rewards of another kind.
The similarities ended there. Where Elizabeth was reserved and, admittedly, a bit of a wallflower, her friend, who was nearly as petite as Elizabeth, managed to stand out. It wasn’t only her infectious laughter and bawdy sense of humor that caught men’s attention. Mel was a bona fide head-turner. On more than one occasion, Elizabeth had witnessed her friend’s effect on men. It was almost comical the way they fawned over her and catered to her every whim. If only that kind of charisma could be bottled up and sold.
“I have an emergency,” she said in a rush.
“My God, Elizabeth, what’s wrong?”
“I need some of your
