A Sweetheart for the Single Dad

He left her standing there, still with no idea if he was trying to avoid her deliberately.

And with nothing else to do but go on with her kitchen duties, Lindie went back to clean up and finish the afternoon.

* * *

At six o’clock the community center was turned over to adult education, art and fitness classes.

Rather than shoving kids out the door at the stroke of six, one person from the daytime schedule remained with them in the lobby to keep an eye on the children waiting to be picked up.

That night Sawyer was the person.

While Lindie still wasn’t sure if he was open to it, his staying back finally gave her the chance to talk to him so she joined him.

“Get into any more mischief?” he asked as she sat with him on a bench.

“I don’t think so. I did talk to Clara about not even telling her sisters what I’d done, about just giving the loot over to her grandmother on the sly and letting her grandmother take it from there.”

“I hope that happens and Clara doesn’t just down five candy bars herself—on the sly.”

“I have faith in her,” Lindie said, knowing that too many times in the past she’d said that same thing only to discover that her faith in someone had been unfounded.

But hopefully that wouldn’t be the case here.

Sawyer nodded with a slow, we’ll-see kind of air to it as he kept those keen blue eyes on her for a lengthy moment.

“Stuff will get to you here, Lindie. You have to be careful. There are a lot of hardships, a lot of need, a lot of sad things going on. But you can’t just step in with a quick fix or a pocketful of candy bars every time. That can end up a disaster.”

“So you just ignore it?”

“No. You ask questions. You try to find out if there might be a bigger problem that could have a better all-around solution or help that doesn’t depend on you hitting the vending machine.”

Lindie shot him a mock frown. “I thought I was to blame for everything and was supposed to make things right.”

“Not like today,” he said.

“Instead I should have turned it over to the Candy Bar Outreach program?”

“Instead you ask if there were other things Gramma couldn’t afford at the grocery store—like milk or eggs or cereal or meat. You try to find out if there’s enough to eat in general—healthy stuff. You might have found out that it wasn’t only candy bars that Gramma couldn’t swing. And if that’s the case—or even if you just find out that things are a little too tight—you hand over the information to Marie who will talk to our social worker. Then the social worker will look into it to see if maybe food stamps would help ease some of the burden. What you heard today could have been a clue to a much bigger problem than Gramma not getting her sugar fix.”

“Oh,” Lindie said, knowing that once again she should have proceeded with some caution.

“It’s better if you don’t just rush in,” he said as if he’d heard her thoughts. “The social worker here is great. She’s amazingly diplomatic and she knows how to approach these things so nobody ends up feeling like their toes have been stepped on, or like their kids have aired dirty laundry. They can get the help they need and keep their pride intact.”

Lindie flinched. “You think I offended Gramma?”

“Again, I know these girls and I’ve met Gramma and she’s a really nice, down-to-earth, levelheaded lady, so I know this isn’t going to cause problems at home and she’ll probably just eat the candy. And I already talked to Marie, told her it might be good to have the social worker do an interview to see if Gramma needs some help with the expenses of four kids added to her budget. But from here on—”

“I’ll watch myself,” Lindie swore, thinking that this was the second time today she’d had to make that vow when it came to this place.

Sawyer accepted it easier than her grandmother had, though, because he seemed to relax his posture, stretching both arms along the top of the bench and looking at her as if he was getting his first glance of the day.

Then, in a more conversational vein, he said, “So, what is it you do for the family business if you aren’t their assassin—which, by the way, I’m still not quite convinced of since you’re hanging around. You aren’t just hoping for the chance to make toast of me tonight, after all, are you?”

“Is that why I wasn’t assigned the rec room? You fear for your life?” she countered.

His expression showed some confusion. “I don’t have anything to do with where volunteers are sent for the day.”

So, possibly, it hadn’t been a conspiracy?

He wasn’t trying to get away from her now—or even trying to persuade her to leave. Instead he was chatting with her. Lindie decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and drop her suspicions.

“I have a degree in communications.” She answered his question simply. “So I oversee our public relations. And sometimes, if it’s absolutely necessary for someone in the family to speak out, I’m our spokesperson.”

“How come I haven’t seen you before this, then? Because believe me, I would have remembered.”

The appreciation in the way he was looking at her convinced her that was true. But she tried not to take it to heart. “I’ve been our spokesperson several times in my eight years on the job but it’s always been to announce positive things, so they probably didn’t interest you enough to pay attention.”

He was paying attention to her now, though. Close attention. “I know Camden Inc. is family owned and operated,” he said. “So how does that work? What’s the hierarchy? Who’s the boss?”

“The titles are really just formalities. Camden Inc. was left to H.J.’s ten great-grandchildren. The way he set it up, we run it—we’re the board of directors—and we each have one vote in everything so no one carries more clout than anyone else.”

“And that works?” Sawyer asked skeptically.

“It does for us. To be honest, it’s the way we were brought up. Our grandmother—we call her GiGi—raised us after the plane crash that killed our grandfather and all of our parents. Ten kids is a lot to handle. But for it not to be constant war, we were taught a lot about cooperating with each other, about solving the problems and disagreements we had. I guess we learned really well how to get along and that crossed over into business.”

“And was Howard or Mitchum your father?”

That could have been a loaded question given the history between his father and Howard, so Lindie was glad to say “Mitchum was my dad. There are six of us. I’m a triplet and we’re the youngest. Along with our cousin Jani, who’s our same age.”

“You’re a triplet?”

“With my sister Livi and our brother Lang.”

“So Howard had—”

“Four kids. My cousins,” she said a bit defensively in case he was going to say anything against them or their father. Then to redirect the conversation, she took a different tack. “Even though there are so many of us, though, we’re easy to work with. Don’t worry that it would be complicated to take us on as a client.”

“Not going to happen,” he reminded her, though he seemed amused.

“I’m just saying that you’re welcome to talk to any vendor, any outsourcing, anyone we deal with, because you won’t hear complaints that they don’t know who they’re answering to or are ever pulled in different directions by us. We’re one solid unit, decisions are majority rule, and we all know how to cope with being on the losing side of a vote.”