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Chapter
One
Board meetings—bored meetings—might be the death of Edme. Three hours and counting, and by Edme’s estimation, they weren’t even approaching the halfway mark. She weighed up the benefits of lobotomy by mechanical pencil.
“Right.” Peter smoothed his salt-and-pepper Clark Kent do into a place it had never left. Looking around the table, being sure to meet every eye, he flashed his sparkly white veneers. “Our favorite part. Play selection.”
Christ! Eddie barely kept the eye roll internal. She’d forgotten that particular nugget of soul evisceration on the agenda.
“Smashing.” Lillian clapped her slender, elegant hands and beamed at her husband. “This is my favorite part.”
Peter winked. “I know it is, poppet.”
Giggling, Lillian flipped her gleaming raven hair over the heroin-chic protruding bones of her shoulder and batted her big greens at Peter. “I know you know it is.”
Peter smoldered. “Poppet.”
“Babe,” Lillian purred.
Jesus kill her now. Eddie threw up a little in her mouth. Across the table, she caught Bianca’s quickly masked shudder of ick. Bianca was new to the scintillating world of the Paradise Players of Claymont, Ontario. Eddie’s grandmother, Dee, had brought her into the fold a couple of months earlier. That would be about a month before Dee had up and disappeared on her first cruise with Jean-Claude, and left Eddie to suffer death by bored meeting. And Peter.
Unfortunately, that cruise had set in motion a domino of subsequent cruises, and Jean-Claude and Dee were currently shuffle-boarding their way to Alaska, leaving Eddie to die by increments every first Wednesday of the month.
Perched beside Bianca, hanging on to the edge of his seat by his bony ass bones, Rodney shot his transparently white hand into the air. “Um…Mr. Chairman.” He tapped on the mouse pad of his laptop. “I believe a review of the budget would be in order before we commence with play selection.”
As treasurer of their community theatre group, a review of the budget was always in order in Rodney’s world.
One quick thrust with the BIC up Eddie’s nose had to hurt less than this.
“Oh, Rodders.” Lillian wrinkled her adorably upturned nose. “Must we?”
“Yes, Lillian.” Rodders tightened his thin lips beneath his precisely clipped mustache. “The budget”—he pointed to his screen—“will form the basis from which we select our season. How many plays we intend to stage, the cost of rights, production costs.” His dark eyes gleamed with the feverish delight of a man in numbers nirvana. He slid a glance to Eddie. “The ongoing costs of maintenance to the building and projected repairs.”
Dee owed Eddie so big for this, and Eddie was keeping the sort of detailed inventory that would make Rodders cream his pressed chinos.
They were all looking at her, even Patty had paused crocheting another baby blanket for her next grandchild to peer over the top of her half-moon glasses at Eddie.
Words! They were expecting words from her.
“The…er…maintenance costs are the same as last year.” Eddie did her best impersonation of a woman with her shit together. “And no new projects planned for this year.” None that Dee had told her about anyway.
Dee had been a little short on detail as she’d ridden—or sailed—into the sunset with Jean-Claude.
“See.” Lillian pouted. “We don’t need to discuss the budget at all.” She shimmied her shoulders. “We can just get to the good part.”
“Poppet.” Peter threw her the indulgent look of a man besotted with his much younger wife. How much younger was open to constant speculation as Lillian was as tight with her age as she was with her carbs. “Rodney keeps us all on the straight and narrow. He’s the GPS on our magic bus. He keeps us all traveling in the right direction.”
“Fucking budgets.” Patty sniffed and jabbed her hook into the wisteria wool. “Suck the godsdamned life out of all of us.”
Eddie was with Patty.
A snort came from Bianca’s general direction before she dropped her gaze to the scarred tabletop. “Sorry.”
“May I proceed, Mr. Chairman?” Rodney’s mustache twitched.
“Proceed,” Peter intoned, voice thick with the weighty import of a doomsday prophet.
Eddie dropped her gaze to her well-worn, paint-splattered leggings. She picked at a smear of vermillion as Rodders launched into his big moment. Her top eyelids started their dangerous drift towards her lower lids as her busy night threatened a takeover that would drive her system into shutdown. She’d dreamed of him again last night. Slate blue eyes, tawny brown hair, bone structure to crack a walnut on, and that outrageously pillowy mouth. The way he looked at her as if she was working a stainless-steel pole at The Brass Rail and he wanted to make it rain hundred-dollar bills.
