Inwardly Jenna shuddered at the thought. She’d seen enough of what kind of damage the tabloids and rumors could do to a family. Ever since the accident during the filming of her last project she’d shrunk away from any kind of media event. But Rinda was in another time and place, trying everything she could think of to make the upcoming Christmas show a smash. At least by Falls Crossing’s standards.
“Think what it would do for this production and for the theater troupe in general if you were on the stage! We could pay off some of the debt on this old place and jazz it up. Insulate it, for Pete’s sake. Even put in a small wine bar. And that’s just the start—think about computer-operated lighting and sound systems and new costumes and curtains that aren’t in shreds after being mended and remended!”
“Whoa!” Jenna held up the flat of one hand. “Slow down. You’re getting waaay ahead of yourself. I told you I’d help out around here, including some of the financing, but when it comes to acting or putting my name on anything, I said ‘no’ and I meant it. For now. I remember being very specific about wanting some time and space for myself and my kids, to get away from Robert and Tinseltown and just have the chance to be a regular mom.”
“As if!” Rinda said, snapping up her copies from the shelf of the Xerox machine. “You’ll never be a ‘regular’ mom.”
“Okay, so that might not be possible, but I really want to avoid any kind of…hype.”
“You mean you don’t want your famous name and face exploited?”
“Thank you! Yes. Today I have to concentrate on such glamorous things as fixing my pump—we’re out of water at the house and Hans thinks it’s the electric pump. Then I’m hoping that my Jeep starts when I get home. Otherwise I’ll have to have it towed to a garage.” She crossed the fingers of her left hand and held them up. “Maybe it’s just being ornery with all the bad weather.”
“Or maybe you’re just cursed by the gods of all things mechanical?”
Jenna groaned and thought of the things that had happened over the last week—her problems with her computer and connecting to the Internet, her cell phone that wouldn’t hold a battery charge, the microwave that had recently given up the ghost, and now the frozen water pump and Jeep that wouldn’t start. “Let’s hope not. It could be a long winter if that’s the case.”
“It’s gonna be, anyway. Haven’t you heard? This is supposed to be the coldest winter in seventy or eighty years. They’re takin’ bets down at the lodge that the river will freeze over and that hasn’t happened since the early 1930s, I think.”
“By ‘the river,’ you mean the Columbia? It actually froze?” Jenna asked, thinking of the huge, swift channel of water that cut through the cliffs and flowed speedily to the Pacific Ocean. How cold would it have to be to freeze a river that size?
Rinda grinned and finished her coffee. “Yep. It was a solid, thick sheet of ice. People who had cars could drive across it.”
“That’s
unbelievable,” she said, looking out the iced-over windows.
“Are you having second thoughts about moving up here?”
“Second, third, twenty-seventh, you name it,” Jenna joked.
“What’s the temperature in L.A. today? Seventy? Eighty?”
“Eighty-two and balmy.”
“Crank out the sunscreen!”
“Very funny,” Jenna said, taking another long swallow from her cup and feeling the warm coffee slide down her throat. With all the problems she was having, she wondered again if she’d made a mistake in moving so far north. Though she’d denied it to herself, she second-guessed her plans. Had her exodus from L.A. actually been, as Cassie had often accused, an example of Jenna running away from her problems, rather than to solutions? Had she made a mess of things rather than found a better life for her little family?
The door to the theater banged open and along with a rush of frigid air, Wes Allen, Rinda’s brother, strode in.
“Hey!” Rinda called, beaming.
“Hi, Rin. Jen.” He nodded at Jenna, his gaze hesitating a beat too long on her face. As always. It was a little thing, but it bothered Jenna.
He was taller than his sister by nearly a foot and blessed with the same genes that gave them both thick, dark hair, trim bodies, and straight teeth. “Thought I’d come in and check out the lights one more time before I went to work. Maybe I can figure out where the short is.”
“That would be a good idea,” she said, giving him an older-sibling stare. “You know, I’d really hate to have this place go up in flames.”
Jenna glanced around the hundred-year-old wooden building. A tinderbox by any insurance adjuster’s standards.
“Have a little faith. I won’t let that happen.” Wes was nothing if not self-assured. He poured himself a cup of coffee, sat on the corner of her desk, and picked up the stack of copies she’d slipped into a folder. “Are these the flyers for the new production?”
“Yeah.”
He slid one out and eyed it critically as he blew across his cup. “Not bad. Did Scott do ’em?”
“Mmm. My budding artist,” Rinda said.