OCCUPATIONALLY SPEAKING

Dotty West vaguely heard the bell on the door to The Pie Plate ring as it opened, but she was lost in thought and didn't turn to look at who came through. She'd just dropped off another cookie order — the biggest one yet — and she was running on far less sleep than usual thanks to staying up baking half the night. Nancy was down with a terrible cold, and Jack was no help (though he'd tried), and Amanda had been up to her eyeballs in work of her own. Dotty's arm hurt from mixing nuts and chocolate chips and dried fruit into three different kinds of batter and her eyes felt as if they needed a pound of cucumber slices just to get back to their normal state.

She sat staring at the back of the seat opposite her, wondering how many cups of coffee she'd need to stay awake all day, or at least how many she'd need to make it home so she could take a nap. She nearly jumped out of her skin when someone spoke from the end of her table.

"Morning, Dotty," Billy Melrose said, and she put a hand over her heart.

"Oh," she said, gasping. "Mr Mel — Billy. You surprised me."

"Sorry. I just wanted to say hello."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, then felt her face flush at how rude it sounded. She could almost hear her mother's voice in her ear, urging her to temper her response and be more polite, this man was her daughter's boss, for goodness' sake. "I mean, aren't you usually at the, um, office by now?"

He chuckled, apparently unruffled by her initial tone of voice. "Yes, I usually go in early. But I had some business on this side of town and thought I'd stop in for a pastry."

"Well, have a seat," she said, gesturing to the empty bench across from her.

He hesitated. "You sure? I don't want to bother you."

"Oh, don't be silly. Sit down. I was just spacing out, as the boys say. I dropped off a big order just now and I needed a little fortification for the drive home."

Billy chuckled and slid into the booth across from her. "It's a beautiful morning."

"It is. I watched the sun rise over a batch of maple walnut clusters."

Billy chuckled and flipped over his coffee cup as a waitress floated by. She filled it, topped up Dotty's, and slid a menu in his direction. "How's business?"

Dotty sighed. "Excellent, I'm sorry to report."

"Amanda said you've been run off your feet. Not what you wanted?"

"I should be grateful," Dotty admitted, sipping her coffee. "I mean, I like doing it and it's fun for the most part. But it's a lot of work sometimes."

"Maybe you need an assistant," Billy suggested.

"Oh, I have one. She's out sick right now. I think I probably need two assistants if things keep going because she's the same age as me and doesn't want the work either." She sighed. "Anyway, half of my problems are your assistant's fault."

Billy blinked. "Francine? How's she tangled up in this?"

"She has given my name to about six different people on the party circuit or whatever she calls it, and they keep putting in ridiculous orders for their afternoon teas or charity functions or whatever else these rich people do while the rest of us slave away."

Billy laughed, his cheeks dimpling and his dark eyes bright. "Should I tell her to stop?"

"Well that's the thing — part of me wants to say yes, but a big part of me says no, of course not. It's going to fund a lovely trip to Italy if it keeps up."

"Italy!" Billy slid his menu toward the edge of the table without looking at it. Dotty suspected that, like Lee, he rarely deviated from his favorites, but the woman serving them was new and probably had no idea. "Have you been before?"

"No, this is my first time. Jack, the man I'm… seeing… has been, years ago, but I've never had the opportunity." Dotty sipped her coffee. "We're planning to go in the spring."

"You'll like it," Billy told her.

"That's what everyone says." She felt a little flutter of excitement when she thought about it, and made a mental note to remind herself of that the next time she was up at two o'clock in the morning making pralines. Not that she planned on doing that very often.

Their waitress came to take Billy's order, and when she'd left he gave Dotty a conspiratorial look. "If you see my wife, I got the fruit plate."

Dotty laughed. "I won't tell, I promise."

"She's got it in her head that I need to be on some kind of strict diet," he said, smoothing his tie. "It's torture."

"Oh, I'm sorry. And I've been sending in all that extra baking with Amanda. It must be terrible for you."

"Oh, I still eat it."

"I meant the deception."

Billy chuckled. "I live with it."

"Well, I suppose you're used to it. Occupationally speaking, I mean. I don't mean you deceive your wife all the time."

"I know what you mean," Billy said, amused.

"Though you know Amanda got pretty good at deceiving me. I don't know if I'd know if she was eating pastries instead of the fruit plate."

"From what I understand you figured everything out on your own," Billy said, mildly. "So perhaps you're better at seeing through the deception than you think."

Dotty waved a hand as if brushing his words aside. "I had a lot of time to think about her activities," she said after a moment. "I wasn't what you'd call especially busy in those days." She shrugged at Billy's questioning look. "The boys were at school, and I spent my days tidying up and doing laundry and you know, she came home with a lot of holes in her clothes. Far more than I'd imagine an assistant producer would ever get. One time she left a shell casing in her pocket." Dotty lifted a hand to her mouth as if she'd misspoken. "I don't mean she ever left anything sensitive out in the open, just that there were things in isolation that I noticed and one day they all added up."

Billy nodded. "Well, I certainly know where Amanda gets her flair for deductive reasoning."

Dotty rolled her eyes. "I don't know about that. She's always been far more like her father than like me. Logical, practical to a fault. I liked to enjoy things a bit more, you know?"

Billy's grin told her he knew.

"Jamie has that streak, too. The logical streak. I mean he talks less but he's thinking about things all the time." Dotty hesitated, unsure if she'd be crossing some kind of line by wading further into what could be a sensitive topic. "Can I ask you something?"

Billy nodded, clearly curious.

"Did your family know what you did for a living all along?"

"Jeannie did. She knew all about the Agency before I even worked there. Encouraged me to apply, in fact. We always told our kids I worked for the government, but they were in their teens before we really told them what I did at work every day. They thought I was a lawyer for a film company. That's what everyone thinks." He paused. "Amanda told me the other week that she and Lee want to tell the boys about the Agency."

"And what did you say?"

"I told her to go ahead, the same way I told her to tell you." Billy smirked a little at her look of surprise. "You just beat her to the punch."

"Well goodness, I hope they don't." She waited as the waitress brought Billy's strudel, golden and perfect and studded with sugar, and topped up her coffee again. She'd never manage a nap now, she thought, even as she sipped it. "They were going to tell me because of the wedding. Because you were coming."

Billy's fork hovered above the pastry. "Yes," he said. He paused. "How did they explain me to Phillip and Jamie?"

"They said you were a friend who'd helped them out of a tough spot and left it at that. So I suppose Jamie has been spinning wild tales in his head ever since."

"Is he prone to that?" Billy asked, digging into his strudel. Filling spilled out on the plate, a pool of raspberries and sugar that Dotty knew was the perfect mix of sweet and tart.

"He can be. Amanda was, too. Oh, she had the wildest stories as a kid. She told me a dragon chased her home from school once. She wanted a new bicycle." Dotty's cheeks flushed, suddenly. "Oh, goodness. I shouldn't tell you stories like that. I mean you're her superior."

But Billy only grinned at her. "It's nice to hear stories like that once in a while. It's easy to forget we agents are humans, too."

"I suppose it must be." A memory nudged its way to the front of her consciousness, and she frowned. "Come to think of it, she told me some wild stories as an adult, too, only they turned out to be true."

"Occupational hazard," Billy said, wryly, dabbing at his mustache with a napkin.

Dotty sipped her coffee. "You know, it's funny," she said, thoughtful now, "how much that job changed our entire family."

Billy nodded. He sighed. "I suppose it did. I'm sorry for that."

"Oh, I don't mean in a bad way. I really don't." She reached out as if to touch his hand, then stopped just short of it, reminding herself again that this man was Amanda's boss, or had been. "What I mean is… I know she was bored when it all started. I didn't see it then, but I felt that way, too. And then all these things happened — a trip to Germany, for instance, I mean imagine — and it became more and more obvious to me that the world wasn't as small or — or bland — as I'd always thought it was."

The corners of Billy's mouth turned up in a small smile. He took another bite of his strudel.

"It's not as nice, either, I know that, too. But what I mean is that our focus was so narrow. All I really wanted for her five years ago was to get married again to a kind man who'd come home every night, because that's what I had. I never thought she'd want a career. That's what I was used to."

"There's nothing wrong with that," Billy said. "You wanted her to be happy."

"Yes, but she wouldn't have been. I see that now. I don't know that I'd have been, in her shoes, either." She sighed. "I don't know that I would be now."

Billy finished his last bite of strudel and set down his fork. He sipped his coffee, studying her with dark eyes that danced with amusement. "You're going to hire another assistant and keep letting Francine throw your name around at parties," he said.

"Yes, I probably am." Dotty lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "And then I'm going to Italy in the spring. But first I think I'm going to help Amanda and Lee tell the boys about everything. Maybe if they hear my perspective they'll find it easier to deal with."

"They're lucky to have you in their corner," Billy said.

"Well, that's where grandmothers are supposed to be, isn't it?"

"True." Billy's strudel was finished and he reached into his pocket for his wallet. "I suppose I should get moving," he said. "Back into the fray."

"Me too." Dotty saw him pull out a couple of bills and waved his hand away. "Oh, don't. Let me." When he looked at her with raised brows and a curious expression, she felt that flush creep up her cheeks again. "I wasn't very nice to you the first few times we met, and I feel terrible about it. I've wanted to apologize for quite some time. So let me buy your breakfast today."

"Well that's very kind of you. But we didn't meet under the best circumstances. I didn't take it personally."

"Well look, just let me do this thing and we'll forget all about it, then. And if your wife asks if you bought a pastry this morning, you can say no with a clear conscience."

Billy let out a big laugh as he got up from the booth. It was the kind of laugh that made Dotty understand exactly why Amanda liked him so much. Lee, too. He really was a kind person.

Dotty laid down her money on the table and joined him. "You know," he said, "if you ever get tired of the cookie business I probably have an opening on my team."

"Ha!" Dotty slung her purse over her shoulder. She felt less tired now. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I wouldn't do it in a million years."