Above It All (Eureka, Colorado Book 4) (Contemporary Romance)

by Cindy Myers

  “What about Bob? He and Gerald never got along, and yet he ended up with those mine shares. Do you think he knew the body was down there all along?

  Cassie slid out a chair and climbed onto it. “Everyone! Listen to me!”

  All conversation died as everyone turned to stare. “That’s better.” She forced a smile to her lips. No one had to know how nervous she was about this. Last year, the debut of the pageant had been big, but this year was going to be so much better. She would have the attention of the world on her.

  “Now, if everyone is ready, we’ll get started. Shelly”—she turned to the young woman, who was seated in a corner, head bowed over her script—“I thought it might be appropriate if you addressed the audience before the play begins.”

  “No.”

  Oh really, was the girl going to be difficult about everything? “Think of this as your chance to say whatever is on your mind.” And if she could say in the press that Baby Shelly was going to speak, it might draw even bigger crowds.

  “No, Cassie.” Shelly’s smile was tight, no teeth showing. “I think the focus should be on the play—on the founders and . . . and your script. Anything else wouldn’t really be in keeping with the spirit of the day.”

  “Because we all know crowds of people will be coming to learn about the history of Eureka,” Doug Raybourn said. Doug was the best actor in the company and he knew it; when Cassie glared at him, he merely smirked.

  She’d have to deal with Shelly later. Maybe the girl was right and they should keep the focus on the play. Or maybe Cassie herself could say something to introduce both Shelly and the play. Something about rebirth and new beginnings—that sounded suitably poetic. Yes, that might be the best solution. And really, it was probably most appropriate that she speak first. “All right, let’s get on with rehearsal.” She opened her script and cleared her throat.

  “Sorry we’re late.” Mindy Payton, along with Travis Rowell, pushed through the clot of actors around the door to the conference room. “We were over at the Dirty Sally and lost track of time.”

  Cassie could have guessed the young woman’s whereabouts from her flushed cheeks and bright eyes. Disgraceful, these young people and their loose ways. “I don’t know why you’re here,” Cassie said. “This meeting is a rehearsal for the play. Only actors should be here.”

  “I’m helping Shelly, remember?” She moved over to join her sister. “You’re the one who suggested it.”

  Cassie frowned. “I meant you should work with her at home, in between our rehearsals.”

  “Well, I’m here now, so I might as well stay,” Mindy said.

  The young woman clearly wasn’t going to leave without a fuss that Cassie didn’t have time for. “Fine, but he doesn’t need to be here.” She nodded to Travis.

  “I’m here in my capacity as a reporter.” Travis followed Mindy into the room, notebook in hand. He grinned at Cassie. “Is that all right, Miss Wynock?”

  “Oh, well.” She smoothed her hair. “If the paper is interested, I suppose that’s all right.” Maggie had confirmed Cassie’s suspicions that Travis wasn’t really a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, but maybe she was just jealous. It wouldn’t hurt to let him sit in on the rehearsal, on the off chance that he would write about it for some newspaper.

  “He’s not—” Mindy began, but Travis stumbled into her, apparently stepping on her foot. She cried out, and he steadied her with his hand on her arm.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “That was clumsy of me. Are you all right, Mindy?”

  “Uh, sure.” She moved closer to Shelly.

  “All right, then.” Cassie returned her attention to the script. “Let’s get started. Shelly, I believe you have the first lines.”

  Shelly cleared her throat and held up her script. “What a desolate place this is, Emmaline,” she said. “And yet, there is such wild beauty in these mountains, too. I’m glad you and Festus invited me to make the trip west with you.”

  “This wild land needs the gentling touch of women like us,” Cassie said. “We are the ones who carry the keys to civilization in our breasts.”

  “Yes, I long to see culture and the maturing influence of education brought to these far reaches of humanity,” Shelly read.

  “Wait a minute! Hold on a second.” Mindy stepped between the two women.

  “What is it?” Cassie asked. “Why are you interrupting?”

  “Because you two haven’t been speaking five minutes and you’re already boring the audience to death.”

  Someone behind Cassie giggled. “I thought boring people was the point,” Doug said.

  “No, no, no,” Mindy said. “Instead of you two standing and declaiming at each other, you need some action. Something interesting.”

  “The action comes later,” Cassie said. “When gold is discovered and Festus founds the town.”

  “But can’t the women be doing something besides talking?” Mindy asked. “Maybe they could be panning for gold or something.”

  “Women didn’t pan for gold,” Cassie said. “At least, I’m sure my great-grandmother didn’t.”

  “But they probably did laundry in the river, right?” Mindy said. “Maybe they find some gold then.”

  “The women aren’t focused on gold,” Cassie said. “They’re focused on the wealth to be found in education and civilization.”

  “Like I said, boring.” Mindy rolled her eyes.

  “This is not a shoot-’em-up melodrama,” Cassie said stiffly. “This is an educational, historically accurate dramatic presentation.”

  “She’s got a point, Cassie,” Doug said. “The opening could stand to be spiced up a bit.” He turned to Mindy. “Do you have any ideas?”

  She took Shelly’s script and flipped through it. “Instead of starting with a boring speech, why don’t you begin with them running from the Indians?” she said. “Over on page ten.”

  “The point of that scene is that the Indians, the local Utes, turned out to be friendly,” Cassie said.

  “Exactly,” Mindy said. “It’s a great twist that the audience won’t necessarily be expecting.”

  Cassie resisted the urge to gloat. After all, she was responsible for that bit of brilliance. But she had to keep her mind on her job here. “I don’t think it’s wise to start out with the pioneers looking so foolish,” she said. “I wanted to introduce the characters as good, intelligent people before I showed their mistakes.”

  “Haven’t you heard that people like flawed characters?” Mindy asked. “Start with them fleeing the Indians—that’s how they find this pretty little valley, right? It’s exciting, it’s action-oriented, and then after they’ve made friends with the Indians and decide to stay, the women can decide to build their school while the men go off to dig for gold.”

  “I like it,” Doug said. Others around him murmured agreement.

  “What do you think, Shelly?” Cassie asked.

  “Um, I think maybe we should try it.” Shelly looked from her sister to Cassie.

  Cassie pressed her lips tightly together. She wouldn’t let any of them see how their criticism hurt. She’d worked hard to write a sophisticated presentation, but Mindy’s ideas were probably more in line with the mentality of the tourists who would likely make up the majority of the audience. People who wasted their time with reality television and game shows probably weren’t up to the kind of edifying drama she’d been aiming for.

  “Fine,” she said. “We’ll give it a try. Everyone, turn to page ten. Festus, I believe you start.”

  Doug posed, one hand on his hip, the other shielding his eyes, as he gazed across an invisible valley. Cassie moved to his side. “What is it, dear?” she asked, brow furrowed, eyes wide, doing her best to convey anxiety.

  “Indians,” he said. “This could mean trouble.”

  From there, they progressed through the scene, with Festus leading his little band of pioneers into a valley, where they end up trapped by the Indians, who turn out to be welcoming,
not hostile. In the end, the Utes agree to let the pioneers live on the land and Festus and the chief shake hands while the rest of the cast looks on.

  “It’s a pretty good scene,” Doug said when they were done.

  “Yes, but it hardly showcases the characters of Hattie and Emmaline,” Cassie said. “They’re supposed to be the stars.”

  “The audience will be looking forward to them all the more for the delay,” Mindy said.

  “Do you really think so?” Cassie asked.

  “Trust me, I have professional experience.” Mindy directed her dazzling smile to the company in general.

  Cassie turned to Travis. “Be sure you emphasize in your article that Shelly and I are the stars of the production,” she said. “That the focus is as much on the female pioneers as the men.”

  “Right. I’ll, uh, put that in my article.” He bent his head and scribbled in his notebook.

  “All right, then.” Cassie turned back to the beginning of the script. “We’ll put the conversation between Hattie and Emmaline here. And I suppose they could be picking flowers or something suitably genteel while they talk. That would certainly emphasize the beauty of the area.”

  Doug snorted. “You don’t think your ancestor did her own wash?”

  Cassie ignored him. “Now, Shelly, if you could speak up a little. We want to be sure the audience hears you.”

  “Lift your chin up and look out at the audience, that will help,” Mindy said. “And don’t worry about seeing them—the stage lights will be bright enough for that not to be a problem.”

  Cassie nodded. “That’s right.” Say what you would about the young woman’s flighty personality, she appeared to know what she was talking about. She lifted her own chin. “Let’s begin that scene again.”

  An hour later, they’d run through most of the scenes once. Mindy, backed up by Doug and some of the other actors, had persuaded Cassie to shorten a couple of scenes. She hated to lose the beautiful dialogue she’d written, but of course, she always had the option of adding back in her own speeches during the actual performance.

  “I think we’ve done enough for tonight,” she said, at five minutes past nine o’clock. She closed her script. “Thank you for your help, Mindy.”

  “You should be in the play,” Doug said.

  “Well, I am a professional,” Mindy said. “But this is really for local amateurs, right? I’m just happy to help.”

  “I’m sure you’ve been a big help to your sister.” Cassie smiled at Shelly.

  “Oh yeah. A big help.” Shelly fussed with her tote bag, her hair falling forward to cover her face.

  “I want you to do well in your big debut,” Mindy said.

  “I’m sure you do,” Shelly said. “After all, the more attention on me, the better for you.” She raised her head, eyes dark with more emotion than Cassie had ever seen her display. Was Shelly angry about something?

  “Oh really, Shelly. Everything is not always about you,” Mindy said.

  “How I wish that wasn’t true.” She slipped the tote bag’s straps over her shoulder and moved past her sister, out the door.

  Doug was the first to break the silence that followed. “What was that about?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Mindy shook her head. “She’s the one who asked me to help her with the play.”

  “She probably didn’t think you were going to be so good at it,” Travis said.

  “Do you think she’s jealous?” Doug asked.

  “Shelly, jealous of me?” Mindy laughed. “Trust me, that’s never going to happen.”

  “You might be surprised.” Travis stuffed his notebook into his messenger bag, his expression thoughtful. “Your showing up in town has changed a lot of things for Shelly. Maybe it’s even changed her opinion of you.”

  Chapter 17

  Late Friday afternoon, Shelly fussed with setting the old oak farm table she’d bought at an estate sale the first year she and Charlie were married. She folded starched cloth napkins this way, then that, moved the water glasses half an inch to the right, then stepped back to admire the effect. Some people turned to yoga or long-distance running for stress relief, but she preferred simple domestic tasks. Setting the table or folding laundry or making beds became a moving meditation, centering her on home and family, and the things that really mattered in her life.

  “You don’t have to go to all this trouble for me,” Mindy said from the doorway. She sauntered into the dining room, country chic in a hot pink tank top and tight jeans ripped just so at the knees. Shelly had not seen her sister since she’d run out of the rehearsal last night. She’d heard Mindy come home late, stumbling a little on the stairs and cursing under her breath as she made her way up to the guest room under the eaves. When Shelly left for work this morning, Mindy was still asleep.

  “It’s not for you.” Shelly set a vase of flowers in the center of the table—three blossoms cut at different heights, as elegant as anything out of a magazine. “I do this every night.” But of course, Mindy hadn’t noticed.

  “Oh please.” Mindy rolled her eyes. “Why bother? I doubt if Charlie or your boys care. And you’re eating macaroni and cheese, for Pete’s sake. Who are you trying to impress?”

  “I like my family to sit down to a nice table.”

  “You always did have to be Miss Perfect.”

  The acid tone in her voice made Shelly flinch. “There’s nothing wrong with setting a nice table for my family.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with letting people use paper napkins either, or letting them eat in front of the TV, for that matter. We did it all the time when we were kids, and it didn’t stunt our growth or anything.”

  Pain, like a hand squeezing at the base of her skull, made Shelly’s head pound. She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it, shook her head, and turned away. Mindy wouldn’t understand, so why get into it?

  “What?” Mindy followed her into the kitchen.

  “Nothing.” She bent to open the oven door. The aroma of hot, melting cheese made her mouth water.

  “You were going to say you wanted something better for your kids, weren’t you?”

  Heat suffused her face, and not from the oven. “Is that so wrong?” she asked softly. All those evenings of thrown-together dinners in front of the television, she’d longed for her family to sit down together at the table and talk about their days. She wanted them to focus on each other instead of characters in a television show.

  “That’s the trouble with you, Shelly,” Mindy said, her voice rising. “You always thought you were too good for the rest of us. You let all that attention from the newspapers and magazines and television go to your head. You wouldn’t share any of your good fortune with the rest of us. You couldn’t even share your stupid little historical-society play with me last night without getting all bent out of shape. No wonder Mama worked so hard to keep the fever over Baby Shelly alive—that was all we ever had of you.”

  Her voice shook on the last words. Shelly whirled and was stunned to see her sister pale, her eyes glossy with unshed tears.

  “Mindy, I never—”

  “Just shut up.” Mindy clamped her mouth shut, swallowed hard, and turned and fled from the room, her feet pounding hard on the steps all the way up to the little guest room under the eaves.

  Shelly turned off the oven, tossed aside the quilted mitt she’d donned, and followed her sister. She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. What if Mindy locked her out? Maybe that was part of their problem—they’d been locking each other out too long.

  She climbed the stairs slowly, giving herself time to think of something to say to her sister. No magically healing words had popped into her head by the time she stood outside Mindy’s door, but she made herself knock anyway.

  “Go away!”

  Shelly knocked again.

  “I said, go away.”

  Shelly tried the knob. It turned easily in her hand. She pushed open the door. “I’m not going away.”


  Sunlight through the dormer window revealed Mindy sitting on the side of the bed. She sniffed and scrubbed at one eye with the back of her hand. “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said.

  “I’m not sure I want to talk to you, either, but I think we should.” She sat on the bed beside her sister. “Why did you say that down there—about my fame being all you and Mama and Daddy had of me?”

  Mindy looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does.” It mattered more than she’d ever let herself admit.

  “Don’t you remember anything about our childhood?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mindy shifted to face her once more. “You were always different, always apart from the rest of us,” she said. “We’d all be in the living room after supper, watching television, laughing together, but you were locked in your room, your head in a book. If we wanted to go out for fried chicken, you whined because you wanted to stay home and have a fancy dinner with candles and stuff. Whatever the rest of us did or wanted, it wasn’t good enough for you.”

  “I didn’t like to go out because people stared at me. Sometimes they tried to buy us dinner and stuff.”

  “And what was wrong with that? If somebody wanted to pay for Baby Shelly and her family’s meal, why shouldn’t Mom and Dad let them?”

  “I thought you all wanted me with you as a meal ticket.”

  “We wanted you there because you were part of our family. But you never saw it that way.”

  No, she hadn’t seen things that way. Had she really been so wrong?

  “You were so wrapped up in yourself, and all your imagined hurts, you couldn’t even see the rest of us,” Mindy said. “I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised when you finally turned your back on us altogether.”

  “I didn’t think you cared.”

  “Well, we did. And it hurt.” She stood, dashing fresh tears from her eyes. “Did you ever think about how much it hurt?” She grabbed the door handle and wrenched it open again.

  “Don’t go.” Shelly rose and reached for her.

  “I have to. I can’t stay here with you a minute longer.”

  Shelly dropped back onto the bed, too weary to chase her sister down the stairs. She felt as if she’d been struck by an avalanche, carried along in a pummeling wave of emotion that bruised and battered her. Scenes from her childhood replayed in her head: evenings spent reading Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer and fantasizing about a close family that sat down together for tea, or went for long walks together in the country. She never heard the laughter from the rest of them, downstairs engrossed in the latest sitcom; or if she did, she blocked it because it didn’t fit with her picture of herself as the persecuted princess locked in the tower.