“Actually,” Rebecca said, interrupting her grandmother before she could go off on a tangent, “I was calling to ask Grandpa an important question. Is he home?”
“Well, good night, where else would he be?” Grandma snorted. “Jake won’t let him on the job site anymore since he took down all the trim the boys had just put up on the last job. I swear, you cannot let that man out of your sight for even a min—”
“Could I please speak to him, Grandma?” Rebecca asked sweetly.
“Well of course you can, sweetheart. You just wait one minute.”
Grandma put the phone down on the phone table and bellowed, “Elmer! Your granddaughter wants a word with you!” A moment passed, then another, before Grandma shouted, “I SAY-YED, YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER WANTS A WOOOORD WITH YOU!!”
A moment later, Grandpa picked up in another part of the house. “Robbie-girl?”
“No, Grandpa, its Rebecca.”
“Becky! How’s my sweet girl?”
“I’m doing great, Grandpa. But I’m working on a little project, and I need your help.”
“I’ll do what I can, honey. Just a minute,” he said, and put his hand over the receiver. That did not, however, muffle the sound of his shouting. “LIL! Hang up the gosh-dern phone!”
Grandma picked up the phone. “You take care, sweetie, and you give my sweet Graybie-baby a big hug from Grandma Lil.”
“I will.”
“So what do you need, Becky?” Grandpa asked.
“Have you ever heard of the Silver Panthers?”
“Heard of ‘em? Why, I practically invented ‘em!” Grandpa cheerfully claimed, and launched into a long and extremely circuitous tale of how exactly he had invented them, during the course of which Rebecca had to remind him twice what he was talking about (Grandpa liked to talk). But from his discourse, Rebecca gathered he had been a member of the Silver Panthers at some point in time, and at the end of his lengthy little tale, when Rebecca could get a word in edgewise and could tell him what she needed, he snapped his fingers. “Piece of cake,” he said, and told her he’d have that list of attendees by Monday or there would be some butt kicking across Texas.
Rebecca visualized him doing just that in his enormous white support shoes, and thanked him profusely.
Later that afternoon, when she and Grayson wandered down to the bank of the river—her to sit in her Adirondack and chill out with a margarita courtesy of Jo Lynn, and Grayson to throw a stick in the river so that the dogs could refuse to go in after it, Rebecca closed her eyes and dreamily imagined the look on Big Pants Popinjay’s face when she announced at the next campaign meeting that a little fundraising with the Q-tips was not only doable, but on.
That night, when she had at last turned out the light (having read the first half of Please Understand Me—Character and Temperament Types), she lay there for a very long time staring into the dark, thinking about what Robin had said.
The part about needing to get laid.
Chapter Ten
How’s that working for you?
DR. PHIL
In Austin, Matt was having thoughts of Rebecca, too—there was definitely a love-hate thing going on there, for sure. At least he had figured out the root of his problem with her: She reminded him of Tanya Kwitokowsky, a vicious, mean-spirited Nazi commando and his archenemy in the second grade.
Yep, back then, he was always standing in the corner for some alleged but totally unfounded schoolhouse infraction, and Tanya was sitting in the front row, directly in front of Mrs. Keller, her papers nice and neatly arranged, her fat pencils carefully lined up and awaiting the next assignment. She had been the most infuriating teacher’s pet he would ever know in his many years of schooling—a girl who was quick to point out when he was doing something wrong and beamed like sunshine when he was sent to the corner. And the most infuriating thing of all? He had wanted nothing more, even at that tender age, than to look up her skirt.
Same as he wanted to look up Rebecca’s skirt in a major way.
Which made the fact that she really had no business on this campaign (with the exception of patriotic office decorations) all the more exasperating. Nothing against Rebecca— she was charming in a not-of-this-earth way. And she wasn’t stupid. Matt suspected she was stupid like a fox, really. And okay, he did marvel at how prepared she seemed to be for the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants gig this campaign had a tendency to be.
But she was ridiculously uninformed about everything. It really was like she had just landed here from another planet. At least, he thought wryly, if she was an alien, that would explain a few things. However the most annoying thing about Rebecca Lear was that he couldn’t figure out why he was thinking of her all the damn time.