Page 34 of Always You (A Lilac Bay Novel)

“She’s a smart cookie, that one,” Crystal agreed.

“We watch her every morning,” Zane said. “Don’t we, Eddie?”

There was lots of nodding and hands up in the room so I continued.

“For those of you who don’t know her, Heather Dale is a major television personality. She currently hosts a daytime talk show. Sometimes she hosts specials in the evening—and that’s what this will be. Heather Dale is hosting a new show, in primetime—a reality competition about small towns in America. They’re going to highlight several towns over the course of the summer and the viewers will be able to vote on their favorites. Once they’ve picked a winner, that town will receive a bunch of prizes—”

“Like what?” Edward asked.

“Well, money, for one thing. For the schools and the library and the senior center, and whatever else we’d want to use it for.”

“We could build a new fishing dock!” Jerry said.

“We could do a lot of things.” I looked around the room meaningfully. “They’re going to be awarding five hundred thousand dollars in prizes and grants.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

“Half a million dollars?” Posey squeaked. “Seriously?”

“Well, we should enter!” Sherry said. “What are we waiting for?”

Andrew made a scathing noise behind me.

“Wedidenter, Sherry. Haven’t you people been listening? We’re finalists.”

The shocked silence gave way to an eruption of noise. Everyone was turning to their family and neighbors to squeal in excitement and talk about what we should do with the money.

Mayor Jones stepped to my side, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Ladies and gentlemen, being chosen as finalists is a great honor for our town. And we have none other than our own Riley James to thank for that. Riley entered our town in this contest because she believes in us. And thanks to her, we might just get a chance to show the world how special Lilac Bay really is.”

“That’s wonderful, Riley!” Rose called, clapping. Soon everyone else was clapping too, my sister standing, while my nephews jumped up and down on her vacated chair.

“Andrew and I applied,” I said, a blush coming to my cheeks. “This wouldn’t have happened without Andrew.”

“That’s not true at all,” he argued. “This was all Riley’s idea. I just helped a little.”

I turned to glare at him, but he merely grinned at me, clapping along with everyone else.

“When do we find out if we made the show?” asked Donovan Tucker, the principal at the Island School. I could just see the gears in his head spinning, thinking of all the ways the school could spend some serious cash.

“The producers will be sending a camera crew this week sometime,” Mayor Jones explained, only to be interrupted by a fresh onslaught of squeals and exclamations.

“A camera crew? Coming here?”

“Sherry, you’ll have to set my hair this week. Look at my roots all growing out! I can’t be on TV like this!”

“Do you think they’ll want to interview all of us?”

“People, please!” Mayor Jones called. “We’re getting way ahead of ourselves. We have real planning to do here!”

The din subsided a bit.

“The camera crew will be coming just to get a few shots of the island,” I explained. “And the producers will want to look around and meet a few of you, visit a few of our businesses, that kind of thing. Just to see if we’d be a good fit.”

“What we need to do tonight,” Mayor Jones went on, “is, first of all, to decide if this is something we want to participate in. Personally, I think it will be wonderful exposure for our little island. But we won’t move ahead unless the people of Lilac Bay are in agreement.”

“Well, of course we are!” Cora called from the back of the room.

“Nonetheless, we’re going to take a vote,” the mayor said. “And once we’ve done that, we need to establish a welcome committee to work with the producers and organize things. So, let’s get started, shall we?”