Until She Met Daniel

A short while later, she straightened from putting the last dish in the dishwasher and pushed the door shut. His arm slipped around her waist as he pulled her against him. His lips found the sensitive part of her neck, while his hands pulled her shirt free from her skirt. He laid his hands on the bare skin of her waist.

“Definitely, let’s have an early night,” she gasped, letting passion sweep away other, less pleasant thoughts.

* * *

MANDY GLANCED AT her watch.

Finally. Four o’clock, Friday afternoon. The week had felt longer than usual. With Daniel around, she found it hard to relax and act normally—there was something about him that kept ruffling her nerves. But at least her mouth had stopped running off quite as much when he was around. Well, most of the time.

Still, things seemed to be settling down. There was no way she could avoid seeing Daniel since their offices were in the same hallway, only thirty feet apart. But he was usually busy at his desk or poking through various departments and talking with city staff members. He hadn’t come over to her house again, either. She was trying to keep Mr. Spock inside, though he was becoming surly over the restriction.

Unfortunately, Daniel had annoyed a few of the seniors when he’d tried to check out the Senior Center, but she’d told them it was her fault for not making it clear that the program ran independently. After all, when she’d mentioned he wasn’t her supervisor, she had been talking about helping with the paperwork, so it wasn’t a totally lame assumption to think the center was still under the city’s authority. Besides, he needed to know what was happening in the town, and the senior program was very important to the community.

The majority of the seniors had finally shrugged off their irritation. And while Daniel hadn’t taken them up on the offer, he’d been given an open invitation to the daily senior lunch.

“Hey, Mandy.” Susan walked into the office and dropped into a chair. “Did you hear about the council meeting last night?”

“Not much. I missed out on the day’s quota of gossip. We didn’t have the regular senior lunch, other than delivery to the shut-ins, because almost everyone went on that bus tour down the coast.”

“You didn’t go with them?”

“Buses make me nauseous, and having a dizzy passenger along can spoil everyone’s fun. Besides, now I’m nicely caught up on paperwork and will hardly have to touch it next week. Hallelujah. So, how was the meeting?”

“Part of it was getting to know Daniel. Everyone liked him well enough, which is good, all things considered.”

Mandy remembered Susan’s worries when the council had interviewed Daniel via Skype, and not in person. They’d never expected to find someone with his experience and credentials, and jumped to offer the job for fear he’d be grabbed by another town if they waited for a face-to-face meeting. Susan had questioned why someone with his qualifications and unbroken history working in large metropolitan areas would take a job so far from the city.

“It’s good they like him,” Mandy said. “Did anything else happen?”

“They discussed the town’s water supply. We need more, plus there was talk about a new sewer system and treatment plant.”

“Water is a problem in this part of California?” Mandy asked. “I know there are shortages down south, but I thought we were far enough north to make it the land-of-plenty when it comes to H2O.”

“It’s one thing to have it come out of the sky, another through water faucets. And to be honest, sometimes it doesn’t come out of the sky enough. We need to expand the reservoir or find another solution, but when I got home and told Chris about it, he became all uptight. You know how he is on the environment.”

“No joke.”

Though Susan was a decade older than Mandy, the two of them had hit it off from the beginning, and Mandy liked Susan’s husband equally well. Chris Russell was a forestry and wildlife expert, working for the U.S. Forest Service, and was passionate about saving the world for his son and future generations. They’d had glorious debates on the subject, sitting on the Russells’ backyard deck while eating stir-fried tofu or spinach lasagna—Chris’s efforts to save the environment included being a vegetarian. That was another subject they’d debated. She didn’t think you could call yourself a vegetarian if you still ate seafood.

Susan yawned. “I guess we’ll figure it out, but I wish it hadn’t come up so close to Friday night. Chris will have a hard time staying off the subject, and I’m not in the mood for hearing him rail about it for hours.”

Mandy swallowed a grin. Friday evenings were Chris and Susan’s regular “date” night. They had started it a few months earlier when they’d confronted the fact that their only child would be heading to college that fall. They wanted to be sure they connected as a couple, not just as parents. It made sense to Mandy. Not that her folks had found it a problem—the elder Colsons had simply related to Mandy and her brothers as if they had already been adults, and to each other more as colleagues than husband and wife. Or that was how it had seemed to Mandy.

“Wear that black dress we found when we went shopping in Santa Rosa,” she suggested. “He might have trouble concentrating on water sources and treatment plants when he sees its plunging neckline.”

Susan’s face brightened and a speculative gleam entered her eyes. “Good idea. Guess I’d better get home and give myself the full beauty treatment.”

A few minutes after Susan had left, Daniel knocked on her doorjamb. “Good afternoon.”

“Hi,” she replied. “How’s it going? Getting settled at your house?”

“There isn’t much to do right now. The movers don’t deliver until Monday.” He paused, frowned, then turned to close the door of her office. “Listen, I couldn’t help overhearing bits and pieces of discussion about the water project with your visitor.”

Mandy shrugged. She didn’t expect conversations to be private, not with her door standing open. Folks who wanted things to stay confidential either closed it, the way Daniel had, or they suggested taking a walk in the park at the back of City Hall.

Now Daniel stepped closer and spoke softly, though the door was closed and few people remained in the building so late on a Friday afternoon. “It might not be a good idea to discuss the water issue with anyone.”

“Oh?” Mandy generally tried to keep an open mind, but what right did he have to try to control what people talked about? “Why?”

“It’s just that it may be controversial—these things usually are.”

“Susan is a friend,” Mandy answered shortly. “We talk about stuff. Besides, meetings are public and anyone can attend. Something of this sort will be chattered about all over town.”