going and don’t talk baby talk to my dog every minute.”
“You don’t have a dog, Maxine,” Juanita snapped. “And you talk baby talk to Bruce Banner all the time when you think I’m not listening.”
“You’re just sour because I beat you at Scrabble this morning. Again,” Maxine replied haughtily.
“I would have won if you hadn’t swapped tiles when I wasn’t looking,” retorted Juanita. “Teach me to go to the bathroom in the middle of the game.”
“And here are the scones,” Vivien said loudly enough to drown them out as they came down from the side stage.
“Ricky!” Juanita flowed down the stairs, her lime-green maxi dress rippling above the ruby slippers. “Thank you for saving us some of the scones. Do you like my new shoes?”
“Miss Savage!”
Vivien absolutely did not sigh at yet another demand for her attention from off in the wings. She didn’t. But she really needed to find some ibuprofen.
She was beyond grateful for the work the teens were doing for the theater—and she could already see vast improvement just in the last couple of hours.
She would also have liked a moment to use the restroom and to check her phone for emails or messages. Vivien was waiting for a trendy clothing label to get back to her about the proposal she’d made for an Instagram post by Louise London—something that would make the actor ecstatic and give Vivien a welcome surge of income while she managed the project. And Louise had been texting and messaging her constantly for updates and news and, basically, for Vivien to hold her hand.
Vivien attended to the volunteer’s question, was interrupted with another problem, and then was finally about to get her own hands on a fresh scone when Stephanie Lillard, the blacksmith’s daughter, caught her attention again.
“Miss Savage, we found a big trunk down in the orchestra pit.” Stephanie was standing in front of the stage where the pit would be if its top (which was part of the stage) was opened up. At the moment, it wasn’t open, and Vivien wondered how the teens had found their way down into it. “Should we check inside it or leave it for now?”
“Take a quick peek inside to find out what’s in there, and then we can decide,” Vivien replied.
Stephanie nodded, and with an enthusiastic smile—who wouldn’t be interested in opening an old trunk?—dashed off to check it out. Vivien snagged a bottle of water and gulped half of it down while she waited, and then spoke briefly to the football coach—who’d shown up to help supervise his team. He’d been a year behind her back in high school.
“Your guys have been amazing today,” she told him. “We’ve accomplished a lot more than I ever anticipated.”
“They were pretty motivated,” Coach Jeffreys replied. “I told them if they filled up one of the dumpsters they could come swim at my house on Wicks Lake this afternoon.”
“Good plan,” Vivien said with a laugh. “And they’re obviously going to be swimming at your place later.”
“You a football fan? You should come by sometime once we start practice—give ’em a watch. They’re going to be a really good team this year, if I do say so myself,” he added with a self-deprecating grin. “First home game is the Friday of Labor Day weekend.”
That was when Vivien realized Coach Andrew Jeffreys was kind of, sort of hitting on her—just like he had done back in high school. And that she kind of, sort of didn’t mind—especially since she was a sweaty, dirt-streaked kind of mess. The coach was much cuter than she remembered him back in high school, with sun-streaked light brown hair, a pair of sparkling hazel eyes, and a set of broad, muscular shoulders.
But before she could reply, the sounds of running feet over the general din of work caught her attention. “Miss Savage, we can’t get it open.” Stephanie and her friend rushed up, looking very disappointed. “Maybe we could try a crowbar.”
“Why don’t you take a break and have a scone—and there are some sandwiches, too.” Vivien looked at the sweaty, pink-faced teens standing around and raised her voice. “Everyone should take a break. All of you come on and take five. Thank you so much. Let’s eat in the lobby, please, not here in the house, though, all right?”
This invitation spread like wildfire as she herded them out to the lobby. What had been a small cluster of volunteers sniffing around the food quickly turned into a horde of hungry, tired, but