“Claudia must have loved that,” I chuckled. Claudia and I both had social work backgrounds and used to work together to support the families. Now that I had moved in to the public relations role, she was all by herself except for the volunteers. She was a kind woman and would do anything to help the families, including pick up all the toys strewn around the common areas, but Teresa yelling at her to do it was something entirely different. “So should I hide in my closet and hope she doesn’t see me?”
“I think you’re too late,” said Ryan, glancing in the other direction. “I can hear her coming.”
I shrugged off my jacket and turned on my computer quickly, hoping to make it look like I was very busy with important work and couldn’t possibly have time to do whatever it was Teresa wanted me to do.
“Natalie!” I heard her call. I groaned silently. “Ryan, is Natalie at her desk yet?”
I looked at the time on my computer as it booted up. Nine o’clock on the dot. I wasn’t even one minute late and Teresa was already on me. This was more like the Teresa I was used to, at least. I sat down in my uncomfortable chair and tried out my perkiest smile as she was rounding the corner. “Morning, Teresa,” I said cheerfully. “Just getting settled. It’s only nine.”
“I know you’re not late. No need to make a big deal,” said Teresa. “We have our high profile volunteer coming later today, as you know, so we need to make sure that everything is ready. Wouldn’t want to make fools of ourselves getting him a chair, or anything.” She smiled.
Well, at least yesterday’s incident was funny to her. I wanted to say something sarcastic about rolling out the red carpet for a volunteer, but I bit my tongue. Teresa was the director, so she made the rules. “What’s my assignment for the day?” I asked instead.
“He’s coming at eleven, so you can meet with him and show him around. Figure out exactly what he wants out of this, if a consistent schedule will work best, or just coming in as he’s available. I’m sure he’s got other commitments, too. If you can negotiate a deal for him to do the things we really need him to do, all the better.”
“Wait, you want me to be in the person in charge of him?”
“Well, yes, of course.” Teresa frowned and put her hands on her hips. “I thought that was clear. You were the one in the meeting with him.”
“But isn’t volunteer coordinating more part of Claudia’s job?”
Teresa frowned, and at that moment I knew that I shouldn’t have said that. Teresa like go-getters, people who went looking for work. She didn’t like people who tried to shift responsibility to someone else, except I guess if it involved not putting folding chairs away properly. I understood why she felt that way, too, so I felt bad about my comments.
“But promoting Hartley House is your job. Dominic Rosetti is a high profile volunteer who we are going to try and collaborate with to raise our profile. Ergo, it makes sense that working with him is a component of your job.”
She was pulling out words like ergo. She was undeniably displeased. “Of course,” I said quickly. “Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t stepping on Claudia’s toes.”
“Don’t worry,” said Teresa. “It’ll be fine.” She managed a quick smile before turning to head back to her office.
Once her door was closed, Ryan leaned forward in his chair so he could see around the corner. “Dude, don’t you want to hang out with Dominic Rosetti all day? Because I’ll definitely trade you. I’ll show him around and become his best friend and maybe he’ll give me season tickets. You can sit at my desk and look at spreadsheets all day.”
“Wow, you do know how to make a tempting offer,” I joked. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Don’t say I never offered,” he said with a smile, and turned back to his computer.
So I was going to have to spend my day with Dominic Rosetti. I leaned back on my lumpy chair and took a deep breath. This was my job. I didn’t have to like him. I just had to show him around and introduce him to our families.
Before I had time to stop it, the thought popped in to my head that at least I had worn something kind of cute today. Hartley House was a pretty casual place to work, but I was wearing my most flattering jeans and a cute, trendy top, and I’d even bothered with a necklace and earrings and straightened my hair. A total coincidence, I assured myself. I was going to Libby’s yoga class after work and everyone at her after-work classes dressed well. I just wanted to fit in with them.
I spent the morning setting up various social media accounts, and following pages I thought might be relevant to us. The hospital, news channels, any local minor celebrity I could think of, grudgingly including Kelli Carter. As the numbers on my clock crept closer to eleven o’clock, my stomach got more and more tense. Finally, a few minutes before eleven so Teresa wouldn’t come looking for me, I made my way to her office.
“There you are,” she said, looking up as I came in the room. “I was just about to come looking for you.”
I knew it.
“Dominic should be here any minute,” she continued. “Are you nervous?”
“Mostly just excited,” I lied.
“Me too. You may have noticed I’ve been a bit on edge this morning.” A bit? Ha! But I just nodded sympathetically, and Teresa kept talking. “I’ve just been looking through our pile of applications this morning and we have so many families who need help. I could only choose one. How do you decide something like that? I picked a family who have a one-year-old baby with a rare autoimmune disorder. They’ll be here next week, after Kaylee Stewart’s family goes home. We really need the money for a second location, and visibility in the community is the way to get that money. We’re full right now and I hate saying no to people.”
She sighed loudly, and I instantly felt like a terrible person. She was right. It wasn’t about Dominic Rosetti laughing at me. It was about helping these families, and that was what I was going to do. I put on a smile and went to meet Dominic Rosetti.
He came in through the front door. “Morning, Natalie!” he said cheerfully, like we were already great friends. He looked at me intently, and I took a step back involuntarily. “Oh, good, looks like I didn’t give you a bruise yesterday. I feel really bad about that, by the way. I’m really sorry. I don’t think I said that yesterday, but I am.”
I smiled tightly. “Thank you. Why don’t you hang up your coat and then we’ll go in to the kitchen to talk.”
Dominic did as I suggested and followed me in to the kitchen. “This place is pretty nice,” he said, looking around. “Huge kitchen.”
“The house is around seventy years old,” I said. “It used to be a fancy mansion belonging to a local banker. We renovated extensively when Hartley House bought it and moved in. Families can prepare meals in the kitchen – as you see, we have multiple cooktops and ovens, so more than one meal can be prepared at once – and we have several big tables for everyone to eat.
Planned meals are also available if people want them, they just have to sign up so the cooks know how much food to prepare. The kitchen is one of the main social hubs of Hartley House, and the other main gathering place is in the living area. We’ve got some toys and books in there, and board games and puzzles, and of course TV so our families have a spot to hang out when they’re not at the hospital.”
“Lots of Tigers fans here?” he asked with a grin.
“I think people are pretty in to football right now, actually,” I shot back, “and hockey. In the summertime when there’s nothing else to watch there are sometimes baseball games on.”
“Ouch!” Dominic Rosetti exclaimed. “Not a baseball fan. Okay, then. Noted.”
I felt awful and self-conscious again, like I had just fallen in to my boss’s desk and spilled water on my pants all over again. I wasn’t a baseball fan, it was true. It was so boring I couldn’t stand watching it, and the hot dogs weren’t nearly as good as some people thought they were. I couldn’t cross the line and be rude to him, though. Not when we needed him.
“I’m sure once they know you’re going to be coming around here and helping, everyone here will be a Tigers fan.” Hopefully that was sufficiently flattering. I almost gagged on the words hoping even more he hadn’t detected my skepticism.
“Very diplomatic.” He smiled, and I got the awful feeling he was making fun of me. Maybe he could read me better than I thought he could.
I took a deep breath. “Let’s go sit down together and we can talk about the details of how this is going to work, okay?”
“Sure,” agreed Dominic Rosetti, and we left the living room. I led him to the tables in the dining area, so we could sit near each other with a bit of space between us. There was nowhere for an extra person at my closet desk unless they were practically sitting in my lap, and I didn’t want Dominic Rosetti to be sitting that close to me. It would never do for him to be close enough to hear my heart beat since I was unable to control it.
I set my notebook on the table and reached for a chair. “Let me get that for you,” said Dominic, reaching in front of me to pull out a chair.
Normally, I would be flattered that a man went an extra step to pull out a chair for me. But not when that man had accidentally smacked me in the head with a chair the day before and caused me to spill water all over my pants. “No, that’s okay, I’ve got it,” I said, grabbing the chair away from him. “I don’t trust you with chairs.”
Dominic Rosetti laughed out loud. I didn’t. He stopped laughing and cleared his throat, then walked over to the other side of the table and sat down.
“So,” I began. “You said that you want to be here on a regular basis, helping with the day to day stuff. I’ve got a calendar here, and maybe we should plan out when your days would be. It’s usually a bit quieter here during the day, as you can see, so maybe you’d like to be around in the mornings or late afternoon. Not all of our families have cars here with them, so helping out with drives might be a good idea. The hospital is only a few minutes’ walk away and many people choose to just walk over even if they have access to a car, because of parking issues, but if the weather is bad – like it was the other day – that can be an issue. So you could act as a chauffeur between here and the hospital on days with bad weather, maybe.”
“Sure,” said Dominic. “That sounds great. I’d also love to help out with the little kids, if that’s possible. I know you said there are a lot of parents here with young kids. I mean, I’m sure they like being with their siblings, but they probably get tired of hanging around the hospital too. I’d like to do something special with them, maybe. Take them on some kind of outing, maybe.”
“Okay, how many car seats can your vehicle transport?” I asked, and Dominic’s face fell.
“Oh yeah. I forgot about car seats. I drive a Honda Civic.”
It seemed weird that a guy with such a huge salary was driving a Honda Civic. My brother-in-law, who was a manager at a call center, drove a Honda Civic. “So maybe not, then.”
“Even if their parents wanted to leave them at Hartley House for the morning or something so they could go to the hospital alone,” said Dominic. “Or if they wanted to escape for a couple hours in the evening. I can hang out with the kids here. Play games with them or something.”
“Baby-sit. You want to be Hartley House’s babysitter,” I repeated. “Well, sometimes Claudia stays here with the kids during the day.”
“Great! I’d love to help her,” said Dominic, even though I had been hinting that we already had someone doing that job.
Maybe I was being unfair. I stared down at my notebook, its lined pages suspiciously free of notes from a productive meeting. Who would it hurt if Dominic and Claudia baby-sat a few toddlers during the day while their parents went to the hospital? Maybe he was great with kids. “Okay,” I relented. “I’ll speak to Claudia.”
I checked the time and saw that it was lunch time. What was I supposed to do with him for lunch? I had brought mine, but he hadn’t been carrying a bag when he’d walked in to the house.
“It’s okay,” said Dominic. “I was just going to go out somewhere and grab a sandwich or something. You want to come with me?”
“No, I brought my lunch,” I said.
His smile dampened. “Oh, okay. When should I be back?”
“Um, well...” I wanted to tell him that he might as well go home for the day, because I had no idea what I was going to do with him for the rest of the day and needed to come up with a plan. I searched for the words to let him know in a professional way. “You know, you can take a long lunch if you want. Maybe come back around three? Some of our families will be coming home around then and we can introduce you, if you’d like, that is.” That would give me a few hours to come up with a plan, at least.
“Sure,” he said easily. “Three it is. I’ll see you then!” He gave me a wink and headed towards the door, leaving me standing in the kitchen with a very unsettled feeling in my stomach.
5
Teresa pounced on me as soon as I was back at my desk after lunch. “Where’s Dominic?” she asked, frowning. “Did you send him away?”
“I told him to take a long lunch,” I said. “I showed him around this morning, and he’s going to come back in the afternoon when some of the families are around and meet them.”
That must have been an acceptable reason to Teresa, because she didn’t press me any further. “And was it a productive morning?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “He’s interested in doing stuff with the kids while their parents are at the hospital.”
“The kids in hospital?” Teresa frowned. “They’ve already got baseball players, football players, whoever, lining up at the children’s hospital to have their picture taken with a chronically ill child. Everyone loves a photo op with a kid with cancer.”
“No, the little kids staying here with their moms and dads,” I explained. “Jackson Maycomb, Lillian Wachowski, those kids.”
“Huh,” said Teresa. “Well, okay. Make sure you give him the forms to fill out for a police background check this afternoon.”
“On my list of things to do,” I promised, and Teresa turned away from me to harass Ryan.
I spent the next few hours trying to come up with a tentative schedule for Dominic Rosetti. The last thing I wanted was having him hang around Hartley House aimlessly for the next six weeks. Maybe mornings two days a week, afternoons another two days a week, evenings a fifth day...
“Hey, Natalie,” Ryan interrupted my thoughts. “So, uh, I heard you telling Teresa that Dominic Rosetti was coming back this afternoon.”
“Yeah, he is,” I replied. I shifted in my uncomfortable chair, trying to find a less lumpy spot. “I told him to come back to meet everyone when they get back from the hospital.”
“Not to be a total dork about this,” said Ryan, looking a little embarrassed, “but, um, do you think...”
I sighed. “You want to meet him too? You’re right, I guess. I should take him around and introduce him to everyone here, too.”
“What’s he like?” asked Ryan. “Teresa says he’s great. Really enthusiastic.”
I thought about how he had laughed when I had fallen with Teresa’s water bottle all over me. “Great sense of humor,” I said, with a straight face. “You’ll like him,” I added, since I knew Ryan probably would.
“Yeah, I heard you tell Teresa he wanted to do something with the little kids. That’s pretty cool. Not a lot of guys are down with hanging out with a bunch of toddlers they aren’t related to for a few hours. That’s not the same as hanging with little league players who’ll idolize him. Toddlers will only care if he makes them laugh.”
“True,” I said slowly, thinking about it. My brother wouldn’t. At family get-togethers he would awkwardly play with my nephew Owen a bit, constantly checking over his shoulder to see if his fiancée was watching, but it wasn’t something he was volunteering to do. “I guess that’s a good point.”
I sat in my terrible office chair for two hours, watching the
clock tick the minutes away until he was going to come back. I scribbled notes to myself in my notepad – introduce staff, plan schedule, background check paperwork. I spent forty-five minutes looking at office chairs online, trying to find a decent quality one for a price we could afford. I came up with nothing, and then Dominic was back.
6
As I’d promised Ryan, I took Dominic back to our office space first. “Sorry, I should have done this earlier when you first came in,” I apologized. “Anyway, this is where the offices are – that’s Teresa’s office, where we met yesterday, and this is Ryan Wallace. He does the bookkeeping for the organization.”
Ryan jumped out of his desk. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “Dude, it’s so great to meet you. Big Tigers fan here. Pumped to see what you can do with the team this year!”
Listening to him, you never would have known that before yesterday Ryan had never even heard of Dominic Rosetti. At least he was a fan of the team and that part was true. I stood politely to the side, refraining from rolling my eyes, while Ryan and Dominic slapped each others’ backs and talked about baseball.
Finally, Dominic glanced over at me. “Where do you work, then?” he asked.
“She’s right around the corner from me,” Ryan answered for me.
“That’s right,” I said. “My desk is right around here.” I stepped around the corner and gestured towards my closet desk and lumpy chair. “I have a whole closet to myself.”
Dominic laughed. “Aw, you do have a sense of humor after all, I guess!”
I stared at him. “Pardon me?”
“Oh,” said Ryan, and I wished he would put his headphones on and go back to work.
Dominic tried to backpedal. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything negative by it. It’s a pretty sweet closet, as far as closets go,” he said. “Can I try your chair?” He sat down and gave it a little spin, wincing slightly.
Good Works (Hero Hearts: Contemporary) Page 3