“Rafe McAllister? I saw some items in the museum that he’d donated on behalf of the C Bar M Ranch.”
Pen nodded. “Josiah Colby established the ranch in 1855, but couldn’t make a go of it until Gilbert McAllister came on the scene right after the Civil War. The Colbys have pretty much died out, but the current generation of the McAllisters is going strong and has been quite generous to Bosque Bend. Now that Rafe’s got the museum up and running, he’s negotiating for us to buy the old Huaco Theater just off Austin Avenue and restore it as a permanent home for the theater guild. He thinks we can get a historical marker for it too.”
Moira’s eyebrows went up. “That’s quite an undertaking.”
Pen shrugged. “Rafe’s an architect, so he knows what he’s doing buildingwise. The plan is to move us onto a more professional footing so we can draw audiences from Waco and some of the smaller towns around here. That’s where you come in. Carolyn Gomez-Sweeny, the Eisenhower Consolidated drama teacher who started us out four years ago, said that we’ve reached the point where we needed to hire somebody full-time.”
Moira glanced around the table. “Is Ms. Gomez-Sweeny here today?”
Pen retrieved a card from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Carolyn’s having to step back—school stuff and the new baby—but she wanted you to have her phone number in case you want to ask her about anything.”
The door opened again and all the heads bobbed up again, but this time, they stayed up. A smile spread across Pendleton Swaim’s face. “Rafe!”
Moira turned to see a tall redhead with a cardboard box under his arm enter the room. He gave the group a familiar, easy smile, and his eyes twinkled like summer sparklers.
Nooooo!
Big Red started passing scripts down the table. “Sorry to be late, folks. It was that dang copier again.” Moira froze in place as his gaze moved down the table, then traveled back up and settled on her. “Glad to see our new director made it.”
She forced the corners of her mouth to curve up, but her blood ran cold.
*
Wet autumn leaves slushed under her tires as Moira backed her six-year-old Toyota out of its parking space in the asphalt lot across the street from the museum. The mid-October temperatures in central Texas seemed to be as mild as back in Pasadena, but this intermittent rainfall was driving her crazy. Pray God it wouldn’t get too cold later on. She and Isis didn’t have a heavy coat between them.
Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel as she waited at the street for a break in the traffic. Damn! That was Rafe McAllister standing at the curb in front of the museum, and he was looking her way. She’d like to run the jerk down. No, Moira, play the game. Isis is depending on you. Arne is depending on you. Gram and Gramps are depending on you.
Moira thought she was off the financial hook when she married Colin Sanger and he arranged for a monthly allowance to help support her family. But when Colin died, not only did the allowance cease, but Moira also learned that he’d hadn’t changed his will after they were married. That meant his ex-wife was now enormously rich and the Actors Guild’s coffers were overflowing. All Moira’s family had to live on was the sale of the jewelry Colin had given her, the yearly stipend she received from the father she’d only met once in her life, and residuals from The Clancy Family reruns.
She was still better off than Isis, whose father had never bothered to contact her after Kimiko left him for another man. But then, Bennie Birdsong had been their mother’s second husband—or maybe her third. It was hard to keep track. Her mother was currently preening herself as Kimiko O’Donnell, Lady Eglantine. That wouldn’t last long, but at least she’d sent a couple of checks back home to Pasadena this time. Not much, of course—it cost a lot of money for a fifty-two-year-old woman to maintain her looks enough to compete with the latest wave of twenty-year-old honeybuns.
Moira mulled over her meeting with the theater guild as she drove onto Bowie Avenue, then cut over to Austin Avenue, Bosque Bend’s main drag. Apparently the major purpose of the get-together had been for everyone to look her over. Accordingly, she’d smiled like a demented dolphin and shaken everyone’s hand, even Rafe McAllister’s.
And his gorgeous eyes had sparkled at her the whole time.
*