Secret Admirer by Gail Sattler Page B

Bryan the day off. Rick called me on my cell—he’s sick and won’t be in. I have to go out for a meeting with a couple of new accounts in an hour. I want you to pull one of the drivers in to help with the phones and reshuffle his route. I’ll see if I can get someone off the casual list to come in on short notice. Do you know where it is?”
    Todd glanced up at the clock. If he was to endure a testing period to see if he was worth his salary, today would be the day. He only hoped he’d learned enough in a month to meet Gary’s expectations. “I don’t know. Last I saw the list, Bryan had it. I don’t understand his filing system, but I can try to find it.”
    â€œNever mind. Shannon has a copy. I’ll use that one,” Gary said as he left the lunchroom.
    Todd poured his coffee, then froze, nearly overflowing it until he realized what he was doing.
    Gary was going to get the list from Shannon. But Shannon wasn’t in yet.
    That meant Gary was going to get into Shannon’s desk.
    He couldn’t stop his supervisor from looking for something he legitimately needed, but Todd had his own good reasons for not wanting Gary to open her top drawer. Maybe he would only go through the bottom drawer where Shannon kept her files and nowhere else.
    But Todd couldn’t take the chance.
    He left his mug on the counter and dashed across the lunchroom to the office. “Hey, Gary,” he said, trying his best to quell the panic and sound casual as he entered the main office area. “I think I know where it is. I’ll be right back.”
    Just as Gary straightened, Todd heard the thud of a drawer closing. Because he was looking at the front of the desk, he couldn’t tell which drawer Gary had been in.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Gary said, holding a paper in his hand. “Shannon is very organized. I found it. Let’s get busy. I have to be out of here soon.”
    Todd swallowed hard and returned to the lunchroom for his coffee. He had to tell himself that since Gary’s expression had been neutral, he hadn’t seen the new note Todd had left for Shannon this morning. If Gary had opened the top drawer, the stark white paper with the red ribbon and red foil wrapping of the chocolate kiss would have been impossible to miss.
    The phone started ringing at the same time he set his mug on the counter. He handled the call quickly, then chose a dri ver to help him. While Gary made a few phone calls from his office, Todd called the foreman and talked to him about pulling the priority deliveries out of Bill’s truck and loading them into another. By the time Gary found a driver to replace Bill, Todd had everything under control. Or at least everything would be under control until the phones started ringing.
    Gary stood beside Todd at the counter, checked the changes he’d made to the routing, and nodded. “Looks good. I have to go. Call my cell if you need me, but everything looks fine.”
    Todd forced himself to smile. “Yeah. See you sometime after lunch.”

Six
    Shannon gritted her teeth as she watched a couple of the ladies from the accounts department yakking incessantly while standing in front of the lunchroom counter. She didn’t want to be rude, but the kettle had boiled, and she could now make her tea. Or at least she could if she barged between them and elbowed them out of the way, which was almost what Todd had done to poor Faye the other day. Normally, she wouldn’t even consider being so rude, but Shannon wanted to get to her desk.
    Not that she wanted to get to work so fast. She wanted to open her drawer to see the new note of the day.
    Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She walked forward and stepped between them to reach for the kettle, smiling politely while they stared at her in silence for interrupting them.
    She dunked and redunked her tea bag, wondering if it took this long every day or if she’d