When she finished telling him, Roger seemed leaned away from her. His lips had parted slightly and his eyes had misted over. Linda knew there was no way he could fake that. He said "That's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard."
They stood together in silence by the counter for awhile longer. Linda knew Roger was going to want some type of an answer. "About the Grand Benefactor…I won't be able to give you an answer tonight. I need to discuss it with my husband first."
"I understand entirely," Roger said, patting her on the hand before reaching into a compartment of his briefcase beside his opened laptop. "In the meantime, how about a dance?"
He pulled two small objects from the compartment, which at first looked like two big spools of thread. They were connected together with a wire, from which dangled a lead. Roger plugged the lead into the laptop. Linda realized that they were external speakers.
She laughed. "I suppose you have a music file on their somewhere?"
"You betcha," Roger said, as he kicked bits of wood aside and set about doing a quick cleaning of the large dance floor. Linda helped him. When they had cleared off the floor sufficiently, Roger pressed a key on the laptop and took her into dance position.
"I have to warn you, I'm a little bit rusty," she said, as she pressed up against him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
He grinned. "It's like riding a bike." The upbeat, jaunty melody of a foxtrot filled the entire studio as the little speakers were quite powerful. Roger led her through a flawless twinkle and they began.
After they shared three dances together, the falling late afternoon sun cast long shadows and made the inside of the studio too dim to go any further. Besides, Linda wanted to get home to her husband, her son, and a nice warm meal.
She waited a couple of hours past their dinner of Inge's scrumptious chicken and dumplings with vegetable stew. With Hayley out of the house now, Stephen seldom played video games. He would usually just vedge out on his recliner, sometimes pulling the laptop stand to him to go over figures or projects while his sports programs played on the sixty inch flat screen. That night, he kept the laptop stand in its corner and just watched a baseball game while taking sips of beer.
"Absolutely not," Stephen said, when Linda had finished telling him the details about Roger's "Grand Benefactor" offer.