What the Heart Wants (What the Heart Wants, #1)(96)
And if they didn’t? No, that wasn’t an option. She had to keep this job. Everything depended on her success, not only for her, but also for her family, just as it had since she was four years old, when Gramps had discovered she had a freakish memory and a gift for mimicry. With his disability pension stretched to the limit, she’d become the major support of the family, although Kimiko, her mother, occasionally sent a check to help with expenses.
She draped her arms on the steering wheel and stared at the gold building gleaming in the bright October sun. It looked like an old high school, but Pendleton Swaim, her contact with the theater group, had called it the town museum and said the board met there.
She glanced at her stylishly oversized wristwatch. She was early, which gave her time to get the lay of the land before she met with her new employers.
She’d been hired, sight unseen, at the recommendation of Johnny Blue, who’d starred in the last show she’d worked in before she’d met and married Colin all those years ago. Well, it wasn’t entirely sight unseen. All of America had watched her grow up as an assortment of third-banana little sisters on TV sitcoms, and then, when she was too old for the bangs-and-pigtails roles, as Johnny’s robot assistant. Of course, now that he’d moved on to films, Johnny was on the showbiz A-list, while she wasn’t worth a Z.
She rubbed the scar on her upper left arm and compressed her lips into a determined line, then opened the car door, stood up, and smoothed the skirt of her belted safari-style dress. Even now, a member of the theater board might be looking her over from one of those dark windows in the yellow building. She glanced down at her sensible pumps. Was she dressed conservatively enough for a small Texas town?
Just in case, she adjusted her portfolio under her arm, segued into her no-nonsense persona, and, despite there being no traffic, waited for the light to turn before she marched across the street. As she walked up the wide front steps of the yellow building and through the imposing front door, her heart pounded with fear and excitement, just like it always did before a performance. There was no turning back. Now to locate the meeting room before anyone arrived.
According to the directory on the wall beside the stairwell, she was on floor two and the Bosque Bend Theater Guild met on the third floor, in Room 300. She hurried up the stairs, passing a group of schoolchildren wielding plastic branding irons, who were being herded along by a trio of anxious-looking adults.
The door was locked, but she could see through the window in the door that there was an elevated stage at one end of it. She nodded. The room was an appropriate place for a theater guild to meet, and it would be a good place to practice too. The performances, as Pen Swaim had told her, would be in the big auditorium in the center of the building.
Since she had a little extra time, she might as well spend a few minutes checking out the local scene. She walked back down to the second floor, looked around, then wandered into a display room. One wall featured an interactive history of the Indian tribe that had been the area’s first settlers, but grimy-looking fossils dug out of the Bosque riverbank dominated the space. Moira moved on to the next room, which featured rotting saddles, wicked-looking branding irons, and ambrotypes of squinty-eyed cowboys, all donated, according to the legend beside the display, by Rafe McAllister of the C Bar M Ranch.
She checked her watch again. Eight minutes till blastoff. A leisurely stroll up the stairs and she’d still be five minutes early, the perfect statement for a new hire who was ahead of the mark.
She turned the corner toward the front of the building and collided with a fast-moving freight train.
A flame-haired man the size of a building, who was holding a strawberry blonde child by the hand, steadied her with a light touch on the arm, his eyes twinkling. “Didn’t mean to mow you down, ma’am. We’re makin’ an emergency run for the ladies’ room.”
Ma’am? He was calling her ma’am? Like John Wayne and Gary Cooper in the old westerns? Did small-town Texans really do that, address all unknown females as ma’am? Holy Hollywood! Did Red have a horse hitched up to a parking meter outside?
Moira tried to smile back—her real smile, not the clenched-teeth grin she’d been taught to use for character shots—but Big Red was halfway down the hall before her lip muscles could get themselves coordinated. She stared after him in awe and wonder. Maybe there was more to Bosque Bend than a last-ditch job and a boringly tame history museum after all. Red had the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen.
Red and the little girl stopped in the middle of the hall.
“Come with me, Daddy. I don’t want to go in there by myself. It’s big and dark and honks like an angry elephant.” The child was dancing with purpose, and the high pitch of her voice echoed off the hard walls.
Red bent down to her. “Delilah, Daddy can’t go in there. It’s only for girls.”
“Then I’ll go with you to the daddies’ bathroom, like when I was little.”
“That’s not gonna fly, baby. Tell you what. Daddy will stand right here by the door, and if you yell, he’ll come a-chargin’ in and rescue you.”
Moira approached them, making sure her smile was properly adjusted this time. “May I help? I was just about to use the restroom myself.” She turned to the child. “Delilah, my name is Moira.”
The little girl gave her a hard stare, then broke into her own smile. “Okay. I like you. You’re pretty.”