Page 45 of Always You (A Lilac Bay Novel)

“Eight,” he corrected.

“Eight! Eight times! That’s a record for this island, isn’t it?”

“It is.” A bit of his usual swagger seemed to come back. “Hasn’t been done in nearly two hundred years of the island having a government.”

“Well, that sounds damn impressive to me,” I told him, placing my hands wide on his desk and leaning across toward him. “You are Mayor William Jones. Respected. Admired. An All-American baseball player—”

“It was football, actually.”

“Whatever,” I said quickly. “The point is, you don’t need silly acting experience to go out there and put a good face on our island. All you have to do is your job, Mayor. You just have to be you, and I promise you’ll make us all proud.”

“You think so?” he asked, looking hopeful—and a lot more confident.

“I know it. Now let’s get down to that dock to show these people how hospitable we can be, right?”

“Right!” He stood, his normal grin firmly affixed to his face, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Let’s go do this!”

I gestured for him to go ahead and he marched through the door, his head held high. As I followed him from the office, I saw Andrew standing just to the left of the door. He gave me a thumbs up.

“You heard that?” I whispered.

“Yup. You handled it perfectly.”

“Thanks. I just hope—”

“Riley?” the mayor called from the other side of the office. “Don’t dawdle, dear. We can’t be late.”

“Yeah, I’m the one that’s making us late,” I muttered. “Wish me luck,” I said to Andrew.

He patted my shoulder as I passed. “You don’t need luck, Riley.”

The producers weren’t anything like what I expected. I think I had been picturing something a little more glamorous—I mean, these people were from Manhattan, which was basically a million miles from Lilac Bay—metaphorically, at least. I had pictured expensive suits and designer shoes—a cross between Olivia fromScandaland Miranda fromSex and the City. Instead, the two women who led the camera crew off the ferry looked pretty much like—well, like normal people. The blond looked to be around Libby’s age, maybe forty or so, while the brunette was probably my age. Both of the women wore jeans and light jackets; the blonde’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and both wore sensible sneakers on their feet. They could have easily lived right here on the island. The camera crew was even more casual, each of the three guys wearing cargo pants and hoodies, two of them with baseball caps hanging low over their foreheads.

“Hello!” the brunette said, and I immediately recognized the voice of Gina, the woman I had spoken to on the phone several times over the last two weeks.

I hurried forward to introduce myself and Gina shook my hand, smiling warmly. Up close I could see that she was probably a few years younger than me. She wore her brown hair in a shiny, not-too-sleek bob—which may well have been the effect of her journey across the windy bay. Gina had the perfect clear skin and bright energetic eyes that I myself had said goodbye to somewhere around my twenty-eighth birthday. The kind of face that indicated someone too young and carefree to know the meaning of the wordsunder-eye concealer.

“I’m Gina Stanley. We spoke on the phone,” she confirmed, turning to the second producer. “And this is Chris Cunningham.”

The older woman shook my hand, smiling without much of the warmth of her colleague.

“Chris is the executive producer of the Heather Dale Show. She’s just here to get a sense of the town—she’ll mostly be running things from New York.”

“Gina will be here for all of your features,” Chris said, her eyes scanning the dock area. I got the impression that not much got past her. She exuded confidence and efficiency in a way that already had me feeling intimidated. “She’ll manage the crew and run your features and report back to me.”

“We’re going to have a lot of fun,” Gina said, and I wondered if she was trying to reassure me.

“Great,” I said, trying to exude some confidence of my own. “Why don’t you meet our committee?”

I introduced the others and the mayor stepped forward to give the little welcome speech I had prepared for him. Gina smiled and nodded while he spoke, giving every indication of listening, while Chris’s eyes continued to scan the dock. I wondered what this looked like to her, the entryway to our little town. There was a tackle shop up at foot of the dock and the ferry ticket booth across the sidewalk. The marina stretched to our left, small boats bobbing in the water. Directly ahead was the green lawn of Town Square. Walking paths crisscrossed the grass, while towering oak and maple trees provided shade for the benches and the small play set. The square was usually quiet this time of day, but there seemed to be an awful lot of activity for eleven on a Tuesday before the tourist season even started. Which I was sure had nothing to do with the fact that camera crew had arrived.

“We’re so happy to be here,” Gina said, once the mayor had finished his speech. “Why don’t you show us around, and then we can hash out the details for your initial shooting schedule.”

Within minutes of leaving the dock, I was thankful for Gina. She put everyone at ease—even the mayor had stopped sweating. The camera crew started filming the minute they got off the ferry, but Gina assured us they were just gathering B-roll, and told us to pretend like they weren’t even there. As we walked, she kept us talking. What did we do on the island? How long had we lived here? Why did we love it so much? And maybe it was just a facade because she worked in television, but she really seemed to be interested in what we had to say.

We popped into the Lilac Cafe for coffee and she ate three of Rose’s famous cherry fudge cookies, proclaiming them to be the best she’d ever had. She happily greeted the islanders who ever-so-casually crossed our path in the hopes of getting on camera. She listened to the mayor rattle off an incredibly detailed (and incredibly boring) history of the gazebo in Town Square. And when we stopped in at Cora’s for lunch, she asked David’s advice on the best local beer before ordering.

Chris, meanwhile, was mostly silent, scribbling things in a notebook or tapping away at her phone, making me feel nervous every time I looked at her.