PIA STOOD ON THE SIDEWALK, trying to breathe. The sense of panic was becoming familiar, as was the blurring of the world around her. Determined not to faint, she drew in deep, slow breaths, supporting herself by putting a hand on the brick building.
Think about something else, she commanded herself. Cookies. Brownies. Ice cream.
Chocolate-chip brownie ice cream.
After a few seconds, her vision cleared and she no longer had the sense that she was going to collapse—or run screaming into the bright, warm afternoon. Everything was fine, she told herself. And if it wasn’t, well, she would fake it until it was.
She straightened, determined to return to her normal professional self. She had a meeting and this time she was going to get through it without doing anything to embarrass herself. No one would know that she’d just—
“You okay?”
She looked up into Raoul’s warm, dark eyes. He stood by an open side door she hadn’t noticed. His expression was both wary and concerned, despite which he looked plenty handsome. Which was pretty rude of him, if you asked her. The least he could do was be forgettable. Especially when she was feeling vulnerable.
Slowly, she turned toward the glass windows next to her and held in a groan.
“You saw that?” she asked cautiously.
“The part where you clutched your chest, bent over and nearly passed out?”
Oh, God. Heat burned her cheeks. “Um, that would be it.”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
She wanted to close her eyes and disappear. But that would violate her mature mandate. Instead she squared her shoulders, sucked in a breath and curved her lips into what she hoped was a smile.
“Sorry. I was distracted.”
He motioned for her to step into his office. “It seemed like more than that.”
“It wasn’t,” she lied, firmly clutching her oversize handbag. “So, as you can see, I’m here and ready for our meeting. I have several ideas for linking the camp with existing festivals. Either with a booth, or as a sponsor. A nonpaying sponsor. We force our corporate friends to cough up the big bucks to get their names on a banner, but we’re more forgiving with the nonprofits.”
“Good to know.”
His office was large, with plenty of windows. There were four desks and lots of open space. She glanced around at the blank walls, the few boxes pushed next to a copy machine and the lone visitor chair.
“I guess decorating isn’t in the budget,” she said.
“We’re still settling. Currently, it’s just Dakota and me. We had more people working in the summer, but they were mostly up at the camp. I wanted room to expand.”
“Apparently. It’s nice. I would have expected a few football posters on the wall.”
“They’re not unpacked yet.”
“When you do get them out, they’ll add plenty of color.”
He motioned to a square folding table in the corner.
Once they were seated on the plain chairs, she withdrew a file folder from her bag and set it on the table. She was aware of him sitting close to her but was willing to pretend she wasn’t. One crisis at a time, she told herself.
“In case you haven’t heard,” she began, “Fool’s Gold is the festival capital of California. We have a major event every single month. By major I mean we draw in over five thousand people and we fill at least fifty percent of the hotel rooms. The result is a nice influx of cash for our city.”
She paused. “Do you want this level of detail?”
“Sure. Information is never bad.”
She thought about some of the very tedious city council meetings she’d sat through—especially the budget ones—and knew he was wrong. But she kept that thought to herself.
“Currently tourism is our largest source of income and employment. We’re working to change that. In addition to the existing hospital, we’ll soon have a new facility that will include a trauma center. We also have the university campus. Those three sectors provide a lot of employment, but in this town, service jobs rule. One of the long-term goals of the city is to bring in more high-paying manufacturing jobs, so we’re not constantly exchanging the same tired dollar, week after week. But until that happens, the festivals bring us both jobs and money.”
She opened the folder she’d brought. “In addition to the major festivals, we have smaller events that draw a regional crowd. No ‘heads in beds,’ as the chamber of commerce likes to say. As in no one spends the night. That’s less money for the town, but also less work.”
Raoul took the list of festivals and scanned them. She’d marked the ones that would get the most family interest.
“If we can come up with a good angle, say a famous football player headlines the right event, we can draw some media attention,” she said. “I’m guessing we can get TV here based on your celebrity, but it would be nice if we could find a good tie-in and maybe get on one of the morning shows.”
“Bringing money to the town and donations and sponsorship to the camp?” he asked.
“Exactly.”
This was good. Focusing on work helped her stay calm. Because if she thought about that morning…