He laughed, a rumbling basso. “It’s football, ma’am. Bosque Bend lives for football, like all the rest of Texas.”
His drawl was getting deeper. “Ma’am” was two syllables now, and the first syllable of “football” rhymed with boot. “Like” was pronounced lahk, and the o in “town” sounded like the a in cat. Her old vocal coach would have had a field day with Big Red.
Delilah wound her arms around his leg. “Daddy, I’m tired. Can we go home now?”
The overhead light sparkled off the gold wedding band on Red’s left hand as he lifted his daughter into his arms. “I’ve got to stay in town to take care of some business, sweetheart, so I’ll have to take you over to Aunt Sissy’s. You can play with Baby Zoey and take a nap.”
Delilah pulled away from her father, and her lower lip pushed out. “Don’t wanna stay with Aunt Sissy and play with Zoey! Wanna stay with the pretty lady!”
Red looked at Moira and raised an eyebrow briefly, like the reverse of a wink, and his deep voice turned to velvet. “Honey, I’d like to stay with the pretty lady too, but I can’t stay with either of you right now. Got some work to do.” His gorgeous eyes focused on Moira, and his voice took on a warm lilt. “Maybe the pretty lady could meet up with me later this evenin’ over drinks and we could get better acquainted.”
Moira gave him her best arctic stare. “I don’t think so.” Pivoting on the heels of her sensible black pumps, she marched back down the hall.
What a creep! Making a pass at her in front of his innocent child. She wouldn’t want to be his wife!
Cool it, Moira. It doesn’t matter. According to Google, Bosque Bend had a population of almost twelve thousand, so the odds were that she’d never see Big Red again.
She walked up the stairs, and glanced toward the auditorium doors across from Room 300. Pendleton Swaim had told her they were kept locked, but he’d get her a key. It didn’t matter. The stage wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and Pendleton Swaim had written the new show for this particular venue, which meant there shouldn’t be any wicked surprises.
“The holiday season is our big moneymaker,” he’d told her when he interviewed her by phone. “Everyone wanted to do a musical, so I wrote one. Lots of singing and dancing. Lots of kiddos too. We try to get the whole community involved. Little actors grow up to be big contributors.”
“What’s the plot?”
“Well, I’ve always been partial to O. Henry because he’s a distant relative, so I decided to base the play on his most famous short story, ‘The Gift of the Magi.’ It’s the one about the husband pawning his watch to give the wife a comb for her hair and her selling her hair to give him a fob for his watch. O. Henry was living in Texas at the time, but I never thought the story had a Texas feel to it, so I switched it to London, which allowed me to use a lot of kids in the play—guttersnipes, bootblacks, flower girls, and the like. Never did like the way it ended, so I expanded the story to two acts, wrote a libretto, and gave it a happy ending.”
“Sounds good to me.” She was all for happy endings. In fact, she was in search of one of her own. God knows, she’d seen enough of the other side of the coin.
*
Moira paused outside the door of the Room 300 and murmured a few calming oms, then smoothed down the skirt of her dress again and fluffed up her new, short hairdo.
Costuming makes the character, as the wardrobe mistress of The Clancy Family had told Moira when she’d rebelled against the pink-and-white dresses Nancy Clancy always got stuck with, and now she wanted to look like a competent, complete professional. No pink and white, no ragged jeans, no resemblance to the scatterbrained Nancy Clancy, smart-mouthed Twinky Applejack, or any of the myriad other roles she’d played. That part of her life was over. She was herself now, Moira Miranda Farrar, and she’d be the one directing not only the show, but her own life as well.
Setting her jaw, she turned the doorknob.
An awkward, white-haired Ichabod Crane of a man rose in old-fashioned courtesy and pulled out the chair next to him. “Come sit by me, Moira. I’m Pendleton Swaim.”
Moira gave the assemblage a confident smile, then walked briskly to the table and took her seat. Pretend like you’ve done this a million times before.
Pen beamed at her. “So nice to meet you in person. I must confess that I never watched The Clancy Family, but I hope I redeem myself by saying I did catch a couple of episodes of Johnny’s sci-fi show.”
“Quark Kent, MD.” Johnny had been a teenage Martian doctor with comic-book-hero powers, and she’d played his mechanical assistant. It was the nadir of her acting career, clanking around in a tin suit and pretending to have a robotic crush on Johnny, but she kept the smile pasted on her face.