“New idea,” he said, pointing both index fingers at her. “Get all the old donors to go through their grandmother’s stuff, or whatever, and then have a dress-up day. Kids. Current donors. Boom.”
“I don’t want to be a naysayer,” she said, “but this plan relies on our current donors having historical artifacts just lying around and then wanting to put them in the hands of kids? I mean, I like kids, but their hands tend to be… not so clean?”
“Yeah, okay, I see the flaw there,” he agreed. “Right. So, I didn’t want to give you my best idea first, but now seems like the right time for it.”
“I’m all ears,” she said, popping a bite of bear claw into her mouth.
He spread his hands in front of him like he was showing off a banner.
“Time machine,” he said seriously.
Winnie almost choked on her bite of pastry as she laughed heartily at that.
“Hear me out,” he said through his own laughter. “What’s the better way to experience history than by visiting? It’s fun for the whole family, Winnie!”
“You’re right,” she said, reaching up to wipe a tear of mirth from her eye. “There are no holes in that plan at all. You solved it.”
Their laughter continued for a few moments longer before gently fading away into a companionable silence. Without a word, Winnie offered Shane a piece of the bear claw. He took a bite, which was, of course, perfect. When he finished chewing, he gave her a rueful smile.
“Sadly, I am but a humble computer programmer, so unless you’re looking for a more efficient way to build a dataset dashboard in Python, you’re out of luck.”
“I don’t even know what half those words mean,” Winnie said, eyes wide. “And frankly, I don’t want to. But thank you.”
“I didn’t solve any of your problems,” he protested. “In fact, I distinctly remember you commenting on my lack of helpfulness.”
“You listened,” she said as though it was the simplest thing in the world. “That helps.”
He was surprised by how good this little compliment felt. It made him feel almost… bashful.
“Well, good,” he said. “I’m glad…” He scrambled for something else to say to cover up how uncomfortable he felt. “I was also glad to see that you got your car back,” he seized upon, gesturing toward the windows.
She blinked, evidently faintly surprised by the shift in the conversation, but her smile came back easily.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “It was just the car battery, like we suspected. I mean, it was totally dead. No jumper cables were ever going to make it work again, but it was an easy replacement.” She rapped her knuckles on the table. “You know, knock on wood and all that, since car troubles are usually such a pain.”
“Well, good,” he said. “That’s… good.”
He would have liked to stay longer, but Winnie’s phone rang. She looked down at the device and grimaced.
“Ooh, boy,” she said. “This is one of our… more challenging contractors with the historical society. I’d better head out and take this.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” he said, quickly moving his coffee out of the way as she scrambled to shove her possessions into her bag. “Good luck. With the call and with the fundraising ideas. I’ll see you again soon, I hope?”
He watched as Winnie headed toward the door, shooting him a quick smile and a wave over her shoulder even as she answered the phone.
As the door swung shut behind her, he noted how very much he did hope that he would get to see her again. Soon. Yeah. He hoped that it would be soon.
CHAPTER TEN
“Okay, Winnie, you can do this,” Winnie muttered to herself, hoping that positive self-talk would help where things like pacing, bouncing her knee up and down, and staring at her computer screen until her eyes went blurry had failed. “Ideas. Ideas. You have good ideas.”
Alas, encouraging words were destined for the fail pile along with the many other things she’d tried.
She glanced out the window. It was bright and sunny outside today in that quintessentially autumnal way, all golden light filtering gently through orange and red leaves. The aggressive bluster of the last few days of the week had gentled into a soft breeze.
It was like something out of a movie. Winnie would have to be a fool to miss out on this kind of weather. Goodness knew that there were too few days of it before the frigid bite of winter started to settle in.
Not to mention it was lunchtime. Nobody ever had good ideas on an empty stomach.
