It took Margot and Frankie two trips to unload all the props from the van, and that was with Margot forcing her cousin to leave the embalming needles behind.
“So, Aunt Donna said your fishing trip was a disaster,” Frankie huffed as they lifted a rolling cart full of funeral show-and-tell onto the sidewalk.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Margot said.
“Uncle Stan can be a puzzle,” Frankie said. “I’m not making excuses for him. He has his moments when I’d gladly smack him over the head with a bedpan. But I think he’s spent so much time being unhappy, it’s like he doesn’t trust himself to feel good. And any fool can see he doesn’t know how to talk to you. It’s like he tries to let out just a little bit of his feelin’ but the spigot breaks and it all comes up at once as word vomit.”
“Did you notice, earlier, when I said I didn’t want to talk about it?” Margot asked. “That was what is politely called a ‘hint.’ ”
Frankie waved her off. “Yeah, I usually get more information if I just ignore those. Just like I will ignore the fact that I found about ten copies of your resume in the office printer this morning. If you’re gonna misuse the office equipment, hon, you’re going to have to learn to be more subtle.”
“I was up way too late last night tweaking my CV. I’m lucky I made it home with my purse and my pants.”
“Well, that would have caused some talk, which would have added to the gossip already circulatin’ about you and our dear principal. Mama said the church floral guild is all up in arms. Half of ’em are already planning out your wedding bouquet and the other half want to file some sort of appeal with the dating police on behalf of their single daughters.”
“Do I need to explain ‘hints’ to you again?”
“Don’t insult my intelligence and pretend you’re not interested in— Kyle, how are you?” Frankie ended her sentence on a chirpy note, reaching out to pump the principal’s hand as he stepped out of the school office.
Margot’s hands wanted to smooth over her hair. She wanted to check her lipstick in the reflection on the office door. But she knew she looked good. She’d done her makeup less than an hour ago. Still, she stepped behind Frankie, because there were kids running around and her pants were Prada.
“Ms. Cary, good to see you again.”
Margot smiled briefly and then looked to Frankie for help in escaping this conversational death trap. Frankie completely ignored the social cue and abandoned her.
“Well, I better get down to Ms. Rainey’s classroom and set up.”
“I’ll come with you,” Margot insisted.
“Oh, no, you stay here. I’ve got this,” Frankie insisted. She cast a sly look toward Kyle. “I’m sure you have all sorts of things to talk about.”
“No, Frankie, I came along to help you.”
“Actually, if you could stay and chat for a minute, I’d appreciate it,” Kyle said.
“See?” Frankie asked brightly. “He needs you.”
“Traitor!” Margot whispered out of the corner of her mouth. Frankie didn’t look sorry in the least.
Kyle’s face became very serious very quickly. “You should know that I have the restraining order paperwork all filled out on my desk.”
Margot’s jaw dropped. Kyle grinned at her.
“That is not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny,” he told her.
“This time, I’m here in a professional capacity,” she swore. “My uncle was worried when he saw Frankie’s visual aids for Career Day. I’m here to minimize the emotional trauma to the children.”
“No, Frankie’s presentation is probably going to be the most popular one today,” Kyle said. “I know she keeps up an . . . unconventional appearance compared to everybody else around here. But she really has a way of talking to kids. She was a huge hit during Health and Safety Week last year. Her speech was entitled ‘The Many Stupid Ways You Could End Up on My Table.’ Her list was alphabetical and it rhymed. She keeps them entertained, but for all her joking, she won’t go too far. She knows where the line is.”
“You know, I keep thinking my father’s family can’t surprise me any more, and then . . .” Margot shook her head. “So you said you needed to speak to me?”
“Please.” Kyle nodded and motioned toward the door marked OFFICE.
“How is your daughter’s hair?” Margot asked as they passed through a small reception area that smelled of peachy potpourri. The cheerful yellow-painted room was mostly occupied by a desk and a plump, gray-haired lady with narrow brown eyes. The nameplate on the desk read CLARICE YANCY—SECRETARY.
“We ended up having to use that olive oil concoction you recommended, but it’s returned to its normal nonfrizzy state,” Kyle said. “Miss Clarice, if you could hold my calls for about fifteen minutes, that would be great.”
“The first graders are heading to lunch in eighteen minutes,” Clarice said, glaring at Margot. “You know they’ll cover the whole cafeteria in mashed potatoes if you’re not there to keep an eye on them.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll keep that in mind,” Kyle said, smiling winsomely. He took a big bite out of a cookie he grabbed from a decorative metal container. “Did you put nutmeg in these snickerdoodles, Miss Clarice?”
“I know you can’t stand clove,” Clarice said with a sniff.
“You take such good care of me, Miss Clarice,” he said, winking at her. Clarice’s lips twitched into a little smile. But when she realized Margot was still looking at her, Clarice cleared her throat and frowned again. Margot pursed her lips and followed Kyle into his office.
Kyle closed the office door while Margot scanned the space. Instead of the cheerful yellow, the walls were painted a soothing muted blue. The few decorations on the walls involved nature scenes with animals and open spaces. He didn’t display his diplomas or awards. His desk was neat, but not rigidly so, and he kept a framed picture of his girls next to his phone. He’d designed his office to be comfortable for the kids and unintimidating for the parents. It showed a certain amount of awareness that she found endearing. But again, she had to wonder at the split sides to this man’s personality, that the same guy who oversaw lunchtime behavior was the despondent man she’d met at the Dirty Deer.
“Did you just manipulate your secretary out of her bad mood by complimenting her cookies?” she asked, sitting in the comfy wingback chair across from his desk.
“I know it’s a little misogynistic and heavy on the ‘aw, shucks, ma’am,’ charm,” he admitted, dropping wearily into his own chair. “When I was first hired on as a teacher, I tried to be progressive and forthright with her and she got offended, then called me ‘uppity.’ Took me months to win her back over. And now that I’m her boss, there’s a certain way things are handled around here. As I’m sure you’re finding out, bucking the system is not well received.”
“Yes, I have found that to be true,” Margot agreed, nodding slowly. “I take it that you’re not from Lake Sackett?”
He shook his head. “I’m from New York, originally.”
“Really?” Margot said, trying and failing not to sound gobsmacked. “Why? I mean, how? I mean . . . There’s no way to ask nicely. Why would you give up New York for this?”
“My wife,” he said succinctly, and all the good humor seemed to be sucked out of the room. “So Marianne says you were an event planner before you moved down here. What kind of events?”
“Oh, society galas, corporate launches, charity functions, that sort of thing,” she said.
“So . . . large-scale events,” he said, nodding. “Involving a lot of moving pieces, and sometimes on a very small budget.”
“This conversation is starting to feel pointed,” Margot said. “I think I would feel more comfortable if you asked me for what you want instead of giving me cookie compliments.”
Kyle nodded. “Straightforward. I like it. Marianne also mentioned that she’s told you about the Founders’ Day celebrations and how we’re pretty much off in t
he weeds in terms of planning. We’ve got about seven weeks left and we need your kind of help to make the celebrations huge this year. And for me, it’s personal.”
Because she didn’t want to bark no at him right off the bat, she asked, “How is it so personal if you’re not even from Lake Sackett?”
“The former principal, Jimmy Greenway, he worked at this school for more than thirty years. He was a teacher at Sackett Elementary when my wife was a student here. The school library is named after him.”
Margot nodded, pursing her lips, still unsure of what that had to do with anything.
“He announced his retirement years ago, when I was still teaching,” Kyle said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on the desk. Margot couldn’t help but notice how the blue dress shirt he was wearing strained across his chest, the chest she knew was toned and firm. This was not helping her keep her focus on the conversation. “Jimmy promised the school board he wouldn’t leave until they found a replacement, which was nice of him. He stuck around for almost a year while they ran a search. I took the job and Jimmy said, ‘Oh, well, I’ll stick around for a few extra months to help you make the transition.’ I thought, great, what a nice guy, caring enough about the school to put off his retirement and make sure I got off to a good start. Except he never left. He just kept showing up, day after day, checking up on me, making sure I was running bus procedures the way he taught me, making sure the Christmas pageant went smoothly, supervising the milk deliveries at the cafeteria, for God’s sake. And it kept that line blurred as to who was really principal, me or him. The school board finally told him he had to retire or his pension was going to be at risk. So he retired and I thought that would be the end of it. No. He starts showing up at the school as a volunteer. Any time I try to change policies, the teachers go to him to complain and he tells them not to worry about it, just go back to his policies. Parents go to him with problems. It’s like having the Ghost of Principal Past lurking around the hallways, undermining my authority with grandfatherly, passive-aggressive charm. And I can’t tell him to stay home and keep his folksy wisdom to himself, because then I’m the ungrateful city boy who locked a beloved educator out of the school building.”
Margot blinked, absorbing the sheer volume of his rant. “That is very unfortunate, but I fail to see how it connects to Founders’ Day.”
“If I can be seen organizing the kids’ participation in the festival, making it successful, then maybe it will help secure a little authority,” he said.
“You are grasping at some very thin straws.”
“I know, it’s a little far-fetched, but I’m trying to take the high road here. Community politics are very touchy in small towns like this, especially when it comes to schools. If I want to be able to do my job, I have to be seen as someone who’s effective but still respectful of traditions, like Jimmy Greenway . . . and yet slowly undermine those traditions until they go away, unlike Jimmy Greenway.”
“Did Marianne tell you how I lost my last job?”
“Yeah, I saw the news clips on YouTube. Don’t care. I need you.”
Margot sighed and sat back in her chair. Her first thought was that she didn’t have time for this, but honestly, for the first time in her life, she had plenty of spare time. Her job search was basically at a standstill. If word spread that she’d sent out blanket coverage of résumés, she would come across as desperate. She had plenty of hours in the evening that she could devote to the festival, and honestly, the McCreadys would probably be so thrilled she was involved in local events that they would let her conduct festival business from her office at the funeral home. It would be nice to do something to repay their kindness, so at the very least she wouldn’t leave town feeling indebted to them.
And then there was Kyle.
Kyle. Kyle. Kyle.
She’d moved beyond liking the idea of Kyle to actually liking the man with the frizzy-headed, opinionated children and the high-stress job. It would be so much easier to walk away, to prevent an attachment deeper than just liking. And her argument that she might not stay in Lake Sackett long enough to attend the festival herself still stood. But she found that she wanted to help him. Even with their strange, somewhat embarrassing history and the complications of his children, she wanted to spend more time with him. She wanted to help him see her as something besides a tragically manic woman with a tendency toward vehicular frottage.
Oh, who was she trying to fool? She was going to say yes anyway.
She moaned, pinching her nose. “All right, I’ll help. Because I would hate for you to get fired for tossing an old man out of a library window in front of impressionable children.”
He held his hands up as if he was going to cup her face or shout “Hallelujah!” But instead, he let out a long, relieved, cookie-scented breath and said, “Thank you. You are saving my dignity here.”
“You say that because I haven’t put you in a dunk tank—yet.”
“Your attempts to intimidate me mean nothing. You said yes. You’re committed. Now, our first grade class is particularly . . . energetic this year,” he said, pulling on a rain poncho over his clothes. “And if I’m not out there to glower at them, they will launch the fourth great mashed potato war. So I have to go. If you want to meet sometime over the next few days, that would be great.”
“I will call . . . the school,” Margot said. “I will call the school to set that up.”
“You don’t think it would be better for you to just take my cell number?” he asked.
“No, I think it’s better if I don’t have that,” she said. “I don’t think that will look good for you on the restraining order paperwork.”
“I deserved that,” he said, glancing at the clock. “I don’t mean to be blunt, but you seem to appreciate honesty. I find you very attractive. I enjoy whatever this dynamic is, but I’m not looking for a relationship. I’m not ready for one right now, maybe not for a long time. And you strike me as a relationship kind of lady.”
“You’d be surprised,” she muttered, thinking of her last three lovers, who barely qualified for the title.
He opened the office door. The noise and bustle of hundreds of children came pouring through the doorway. Clarice was already staring at Margot as if the secretary was accusing her of something ill-bred and skanky, but she just couldn’t figure out what it was yet.
“Probably should have kept the door open for your groveling,” Margot whispered out the side of her mouth. “I think I just ruined your reputation.”
“I didn’t grovel,” he protested.
Margot lifted a blond brow. “Dunk tank.”
“I groveled a little bit.”
AS PREDICTED, THE McCreadys were overjoyed that Margot was going to take over the Founders’ Festival. Almost as predictably, her introduction to the planning committee was a complete disaster—not flamingo level, but close.
Kyle wasted no time, scheduling a planning meeting the next evening. Following an afternoon of combative mourners and depressing organ music, Margot actually found herself eager for the cheerful noise and color of the school. She may have followed Kyle’s lead and worn her raincoat to protect her clothes, despite the fact that the sky was blue and cloudless. This was her favorite DKNY suit and she wasn’t risking a drive-by mashed potatoing.
Kyle had asked her to meet with the parent volunteers just after classes let out, during their regular weekly session. He’d apologized for not being able to get her an updated planning committee manual, but Sara Lee hadn’t provided him with “this week’s” draft. The way he emphasized this week’s made a shudder of apprehension ripple down her spine.
Margot had almost convinced herself that she was going to be able to work with Kyle and remain completely unaffected. She could push through her attraction to his big brown eyes and his adorable half smile and the little dimple on his left cheek with the power of professionalism and poise. At least, that’s what she told herself right up until he put his hand on the small of her back t
o usher her safely through the children rampantly zigzagging down the hall.
And her resolve melted like Aunt Leslie’s fried ice cream.
Margot followed Kyle into the library, where several adults sat around a small round table, poring over papers as a thin blond woman with a ruthlessly sharp pageboy said, “Just trust me on this, Sweet Johnnie. People aren’t gonna want brownies at a cake walk. That’s why it’s called a cake walk. Just stick to the list of desserts I gave you.”
Margot scanned the group quickly. A heavier woman balanced her round chin on her palm, frowning as she glanced over the papers in front of her. An older man wearing a frayed John Deere cap and overalls was glaring into the distance. A silver fox wearing a Lake Sackett Elementary Staff polo shirt was staring at the ceiling like it was his job.
Margot pursed her lips. She’d run across civic groups like this before, people serving because they hadn’t been able to find a way out of being volunteered. They didn’t want to stand in the way of tasks being accomplished. They just didn’t want to be put out themselves. They wouldn’t give her any trouble.
Margot’s eyes narrowed at the blonde. She was the only one looking up, the only one shuffling through a binder filled with notes with any purpose. Clearly she was in charge. This had to be Sara Lee, the misguided but very committed leader. Margot could tell just from the sleek hair and the rigid posture that Sara Lee was going to be a problem. Actually, the dessert micromanagement was the biggest clue, but the posture didn’t help.
“Hey, folks, this is Margot Cary, E.J.J.’s great-niece. She’s a fancy event planner and she’s going to be helping us iron out some of the plans for the festival. Miss Margot, this is Sara Lee Bolton, Sweet Johnnie Reed.” The heavyset lady refused to meet Margot’s gaze, choosing to stare at the papers on the table in front of her. Margot wondered if Sweet Johnnie had been chosen for this committee because she was too quiet to do anything except what Sara Lee told her. Kyle continued the introductions. “And this is, ahem, Jimmy Greenway, and Dobb Cunningham.”