Page 66 of Always You (A Lilac Bay Novel)

This isn’t good, I thought to myself.We’re falling apart. You have to do something, get everyone on task.

“Excuse me,” a familiar voice behind me said, and I spun in place to see Chase standing there, two girls at his side. “I just wanted to offer our help,” he said. “This is Julia, and this is Angie. Julia teaches dance up at the hotel, and Angie is one of our fitness instructors. They both have experience with choreography.”

I met Libby’s eyes, and I knew she was thinking the same thing as I was. Taking help from employees from the Big Hotel felt entirely wrong. But we were in a jam, and if they could help—

“Thank you,” I said, making a split second decision. “We can use your help.”

Chase nodded, looking pleased, and I turned back to the committee. “We need to get organized first,” I said. “Let’s get all the people that have dance experience together, okay? Then we can assign them teams of dancers. There’s no way we’re going to get anywhere if we try to teach something to this whole crowd at once.”

“Good thinking,” David said, looking a lot calmer now. “I’ll grab Tina and see who else from her studio can help.”

“Posey can dance, can’t she?” Libby asked Rose. “Didn’t she do tap in high school?”

“Everyone fan out,” I said. “Go through the crowd and find people with experience. There are tourists here too, remember, we have no idea how much talent we might have out there. Bring the leaders back here.”

I turned to Mayor Jones and grabbed his shirt before he could disappear into the crowd. “You’re one of our team leaders, buddy.”

“Oh, but Riley,” he said, his eyes wide, but I wouldn’t let him finish.

“No way are you getting out of this. We need you, Mayor Jones. This is your chance to shine.”

He nodded, wiping his forehead one more time.

“Good. I have total faith in you. Now go start asking for help.”

I watched as he headed out into the crowd with the others. Okay. So we had a plan now, at least. That alone made me feel better. Maybe I couldn’t help with the dancing itself, but I could get these people organized.

As I turned to the crowd, I caught Gina’s eye. She winked at me, and I couldn’t help but think that she looked a little bit proud.

“Are those the songs?” I looked up to Chase still standing there.

“Yeah.” I held up the paper. “I’ve never even heard of half of these.”

“Can I see?”

I handed him the paper and he scanned it. “Some of these are pretty old. I bet they were going for cheap licenses.”

“Great. So not only do we have to plan this thing, we have to do it to crap music.”

“Not necessarily crap,” he insisted. “Some of this is classic. I bet you could find most of them on YouTube if you wanted to listen to them.”

“Thanks, Chase. I’ll do that.”

He grinned at me, and I did my best to stay immune to his charms. There was too much to do. “Can I help at all?”

“You could go around and try to find more people with dance experience.”

He nodded. “Got it.”

I decided to take Chase’s advice and get to work checking out the music. I was holding my phone up to my ear, trying to hear over the noise of the crowd, when Jenny found me a few minutes later.

“I’m no help at this,” she announced. “I’m too shy and quiet, no on is listening to me. What are you doing?”

I handed her the sheet of songs. “Trying to figure out what half of these even are.”

She scanned the list. “Hmm, these are pretty old. Oh, I know this one. You do too, I bet. It’s in movies and commercials and stuff.”

“What is it?”