Boardroom Bride and Groom. Shirley Jump

wanted to look…” Nick cut himself off before he said the word good, which would imply that he cared what Carolyn thought of his appearance. And he didn’t care. At all. “Professional.”

      “Let’s see how ‘professional’ Carolyn looks in your eyes today.” Daniel winked. “And like I said, how long the two of you resist each other.”

      Carolyn sat at a picnic table on the fairgrounds of the Lawford City Park, surrounded by busy, chattering children, and did her best to keep her gaze off the park’s gaily decorated entrance and on the task at hand. The problem was, she wasn’t very good at either.

      She’d bought a new dress—darn Mary and her suggestion—just that morning. She shifted on the bench, acutely aware of the bright-blue-and-white dress and how she had gone to an awful lot of work on her appearance for something that was supposed to be casual.

      “Geez, Miss Duff, can’t you make an eagle?” a little girl with a name tag that read Kimberly asked. “I learned how to make birds in kindergarten.”

      Carolyn cursed whoever had come up with the craft for this table. A bald eagle paper bag puppet, AKA a torture marathon with paper. There were wings and talons and a beak to make. Little pieces of construction paper to glue all over the place. One side had to be the front, and Lord forgive if she got it wrong because then, apparently, the eagle couldn’t eat.

      The kids had already informed her, with a look of disdain, that her first eagle attempt would have died of starvation. So now Carolyn was making her second lunch bag bird.

      And clearly mangling the thing into a version of roadkill. “There aren’t any rules decreeing we have to make an American eagle. What about a Monarch butterfly? Or a nice little robin?” She gave Kimberly an encouraging, work-with-me smile.

      Kimberly returned a blank stare. “Isn’t this a birthday party for our country? And isn’t the eagle our country’s bird?”

      The kid had her there. Darn, these third-graders were awfully smart.

      This was one more reason why Carolyn hadn’t had children. Because she wouldn’t know what on earth to do with one after delivery. Why she’d been assigned to this table, she’d never know. It had to be one of Mary’s brainstorms.

      Speaking of whom, Mary waved to her from across the field. Carolyn gave her a grimace back. Mary either didn’t see the facial gesture or chose to ignore it. She just went back to blithely setting up the food. The younger children were attending a puppet show put on by a local bookstore. The performance was due to end any second and thus the children would be arriving soon. Then the rest of the festivities would get underway. The third-graders at Carolyn’s table had pronounced themselves too “old” for such a babyish activity, so Carolyn had been asked to oversee them and keep them busy in the meantime.

      A flutter of nerves ran through Carolyn at the thought of meeting her sponsored child. She chided herself. She was an attorney. She’d faced down threatening criminals. Blustering defense attorneys. Stern-faced judges. She shouldn’t be nervous about meeting a five-year-old, for Pete’s sake.

      “Uh, Kimberly, let’s forget the eagle. And create another display of patriotism.” Carolyn crumpled the lunch bag into a ball and reached into the craft bucket for new supplies. “Here we are, children. Flags. The perfect Fourth of July symbol.” She handed each child squares of red, white and blue paper, then cut out red strips. This she could do. She hoped. Carolyn began gluing, drizzling the white Elmer’s along the edge of the red strips, then laying them on top of the white squares. The glue smeared out from under the red strips, turning it into a messy puddle, dampening the construction paper and turning the tips of her fingers pink.