Glory shot him a black look and lashed the floor with the broom.
Suddenly Glenn burst in from the back room and beckoned Sherrie over to him near the stage with urgent scoops of his hand.
She joined him. Whereupon they engaged in what sounded like an impassioned murmured conversation, interspersed with darted looks right at Glory.
Uh-oh.
Finally their little scrum broke apart and Sherrie called brightly, “Glory, can we have a quick word?”
Shit, shit, shit.
“Um... Of course.” She propped the broom against the wall and approached with slow, steady dignity. Like a penitent, or someone headed to the gallows.
In keeping with the thrills and chills and spills of the last couple of weeks, she wouldn’t be surprised to be fired. Or promoted. Or to be told the restaurant was closing for a month in order to bolt the stools and chairs to the floor so they could neither be projectiles nor drums.
Glenn got right into it. “Listen, Glory, I just got off the phone with your friend Franco Francone. Wyatt Congdon is going to be passing through Hellcat Canyon tomorrow and he’d like to hear you sing while he’s here.”
Whoosh! Her heart launched right into her throat. And lodged there.
For a moment she felt a delicious weightlessness, as though she’d literally been fired into space—she couldn’t feel her limbs.
It felt like a full minute before she could speak. And all the while the two of them were beaming at her so broadly she almost needed a visor for the glare.
“Wyatt Congdon is just going to be ‘passing through’ Hellcat Canyon?” Her voice was two octaves higher than usual and sounded like she swallowed a moth.
She cleared her throat.
“Who knows what the hell these music people do?” Glenn asked. “Maybe he had a few minutes in between gilding his toilet and polishing his Grammys, and he feels like taking a drive in the country. He can give you fifteen minutes around seven in the morning tomorrow. According to your friend Mr.Francone.” Glenn was practically twinkling.
Sherrie chimed in. “I’ll unlock the front door and let him in and then Glenn and I will skedaddle until eight. We’ll be down at Eden’s flower shop if you need us for anything.”
Thisis what they’d been planning in murmurs. They were so much nicer to her than she probably deserved.
Glory gave a short, stunned laugh.
But... wait. There was something she needed to know.
“Where will... um... Mr.Francone be while this is happening? Did he say?”
“He’s in Napa for a few weeks, then I think he said L.A., and then he’ll be back in Hellcat Canyon to film a few scenes with J.T. McCord. Oh! He was pretty adamant that I write something down to tell you.” Glenn scrabbled his reading glasses from his shirt pocket and pushed them onto his face but still held the order pad at arm’s length. “‘Tell Glory it’s a thank-you for backwoods wisdom. And tell her we’re square. And good luck with that macho jerk.’”
Glory smiled slowly. She was pretty sure the “we’re square” was Franco Francone’s way of telling her she didn’t owe him a thing. She had indeed schooled him.
“I take it you know what that means? Is Wyatt Congdon a macho jerk?” Glenn wanted to know. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”
The jerk in question was, of course, Eli. At least as far as Franco was concerned. “If Congdon is a jerk, I’m sure I can manage him.”
“Oh, honey, if anyone can, it’s you,” Sherrie said.
They all smiled so hard and brightly at each other that Giorgio forgot himself for a moment and smiled, too.
Justlookat what happened when you did the true, right thing, Glory thought, bemused.
In an indirect way, this was all Eli’s doing.
“Mr.Francone’s a nice boy, isn’t he?” Sherrie prompted. “Is there anything... you know, there, with you two?”
“Nope,” Glory said firmly. “Let’s just say he kind of wagered on something and he lost. And this is his way of making good on his bet.”