Until She Met Daniel. Callie Endicott

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      She set out extra fillings for the quesadillas on the counter. The tortillas were particularly delicious when packed with chopped cabbage, tomatoes, avocado, salsa and other things. They were good with meat, too, but... She pushed the thought away. She’d known Chris was a vegetarian when they had married, and at least he wasn’t vegan. Proper vegan cooking was complicated, having to mix certain foods to ensure you ate complete proteins. Luckily, Chris was a cheese fanatic, and hadn’t been able to give up dairy products.

      He also hadn’t given up an occasional fish dinner, though that was a problem for her since she was allergic to seafood.

      By the time Chris had returned to the kitchen, everything was ready. He’d shaved, and the base of her abdomen tightened. Shaving usually meant he hoped for a hot night in bed, so maybe their trip had done more than she’d thought. Or it could be the knowledge that, as much as they missed Evan, being alone in the house also had a few advantages.

      He grinned knowingly. “How about an early night?”

      “Sounds good to me.”

      They served their quesadillas and added the salad on the side before taking their plates to the kitchen table. Their view looked out to a wooded area beyond the house, which was much better than the four walls of the dining room they rarely used. But as soon as they sat down, Evan’s absence hit her, and she had a feeling Chris felt it, as well.

      “We could move the extra chair into the other room,” she suggested. “I hate seeing it empty. But Evan might feel strange if he came home for a visit and saw it wasn’t there.”

      “True, though I don’t think he’ll be home until Thanksgiving.”

      Thanksgiving was over two months away. More than ever, Susan regretted giving in to Chris’s insistence they have only one child. His arguments had made sense at the time, all about reducing population pressure and taking care of the environment, but it would be nice to still have kids in the house.

      “We’ll need to plan something extra special for the holiday,” she said.

      “Yeah, thank God this is our year to stay at home,” Chris muttered vehemently. “Dinner with your parents is like stepping into the eighteen hundreds.”

      The muscles between Susan’s shoulder blades twinged. She and Chris had worked out a compromise about Thanksgiving. Since he’d grown up in foster homes, he had no family to visit, and he disliked going to her parents’ home. So they alternated, going only every other year.

      “You could be more gracious about the way you say things like that,” she told him, more annoyed than usual.

      He seemed surprised. “You don’t enjoy spending Thanksgiving with your father any more than I do.”

      No, she didn’t, but it was hard when Chris was so vehement about his disdain for the Jensens. Actually, for her father. He liked her mom well enough, though he claimed Karen Jensen didn’t have a backbone.

      Neither do I, came the unpleasant thought. It wasn’t true, but maybe she should call her husband to account more often when he was rude about her family. She just didn’t want to fight about it tonight, so soon after returning from their vacation.

      “They’re my parents,” she reminded him. “But let’s forget it for now.”

      Chris’s expression eased and they continued with their meal. When his leg brushed hers, she knew he was still in the mood for an early night.

      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.”

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