Not forever, but for now.
Then I stand up and adjust my pantsuit.
The mayor’s ready, is he?
So am I.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
KAYLA
When I enter the auditorium, I have to squint. It’s darker here than in the sunny lobby, and it’s set up like some kind of congressional hearing, with a table on the stage, where the mayor and town council are sitting, and two long tables on the floor, at the front of an audience of maybe eighty or a hundred. My eyes frantically search for a friend I know is here already, somewhere among the neatly arranged rows.
“Scottie!”
I wave and run to the end of her row, glad I wore Chuck Taylors today instead of heels. She gets up from the metal folding chair and navigates past the people in her row with tight smiles and pardon-me’s.
“What’s up, K? You ready to knock some sense into these fools?”
The woman at the end of the row gasps.
“With words,” Scottie adds with a dismissive wave.
“It’s not about that. I need to ask you a favor.”
“Anything.”
When I tell her what it is, she smiles, already pulling out her phone.
“I’m on it.”
I walk up to the front of the room, where there’s a long table with a place card and microphone for me. The opposite table has Serena, Tucker, and Dakota, as if they’re injured parties in a criminal trial. But it also has Gordon Voss.
Looks like I know where he stands.
At his table in the front of the room, the mayor leans toward the microphone.
“Miss Carville, thank you for being here today. We’re here to discuss your ownership of the Mudflaps.”
“No, we’re not,” I say, almost breathlessly. I stand at my table. “I own the Mudflaps. The one hundred and twelve signatures collected by someone who left my husband at the altar years ago and can’t stand the fact that he moved on like she did doesn’t change the fact. Sorry, Serena.”
Serena jumps up, slamming her hands on the table. “That’s one hundred and twelve voters.”
“In a town of forty thousand. That’s fewer than the number of bobbleheads we gave away at our last home game.”
“A lot fewer,” Scottie adds. “We gave out two thousand. And there were just under seven thousand in attendance, well within the league average.”
“Bribery, if you ask me,” Serena mutters, but she does it into the microphone, so she’s clearly trying to be heard.
“No, that’s called marketing,” a woman on the town council says. Trudy, her name plaque reads.Truthful Trudy wears teal and tells it like it is. “Please continue, Miss Carville.”
“With all due respect, I’m not here to defend my ownership of a team I already own. I’ve met every legal requirementfor ownership and the team is making money. Mr. Voss, I understand where your concerns originated, but if you still think there’s an actual problem here, all you have to do is compare our ticket sales to last year’s. Or you could view our merchandise sales—we’re growing with college kids throughout the region. Or maybe you should simply try coming to a game and asking the people in attendance.”
“We have asked people in attendance,” Mr. Voss says, scratching his cheek like he has a rash. “We sent Mr. Sinclair.”
“You mean you sent my ex. I was sitting near him during that game. He didn’t talk to a single person in the stands. He specifically sought out people with an axe to grind.”
“Now, that’s not fair,” he argues. “We have reports. People think you threaten the family atmosphere.”
