“I’m withholding judgment,” he told Velma. “But I will say, at this point, we don’t have any other option. All our eggs are in this basket. If we don’t have that influx of cash at the end of the year like we’re used to, it could be catastrophic.”

Velma nodded, flipping the visor back up. “Well, let’s go let a TV show save our collective ass.”

He pulled into the old high school parking lot, noting the fleet of other vehicles already parked. Production vans, construction trucks, a handful of rental vehicles. It looked like Cat had called in her own personal army.

Paige’s words played back to him. He felt he was a good judge of risk. And his risk meter was screaming warnings at him where Cat was concerned. There was no way he was lowering his defenses around the woman. He wasn’t putting the fate of Merry in the hands of a vapid TV star who cared more about her appearance than she did the welfare of his friends and neighbors. No, he was going to watch Catalina King like a hawk.

--------

The woman was a four-star general. At least that was the impression she’d forced on him at the meeting in an old science lab. Noah had expected Cat to sit back and file her nails or not even be present. He hadn’t expected her to take point, pacing in front of the small, hodge-podge crowd of city council, production staff, and county services. And he certainly hadn’t expected her to casually mention that she was producing the series. He wanted that information to make him even more nervous. But he was too busy feeling a little shell-shocked at just exactly how well she knew Merry and its current predicament.

She’d marched them all through a potential timeline, fielding questions and making adjustments accordingly while keeping everyone present focused on the end goal. The Christmas Festival. Noah itched for a shot of caffeine while he digested the information. Velma listened intently next to him.

“Excuse me, Ms. King?” Elroy Leakhart, the balding school principal and Noah’s co-chair for the Christmas Festival, raised his hand.

“Cat,” Cat reminded him.

“Right. Cat.” Elroy squinted through his thick glasses. “When do you think we’ll be able to open the Christmas Festival? This seems like an awful lot of work to get done.”

“You’re right. It is,” Cat told him. “Even if everything goes perfectly, with a timeline this tight, we aren’t going to have the park and the rest of the downtown up and functioning by December 1,” Cat said. “We could cut projects and focus more on the park, but that would mean that Sunshine’s Diner doesn’t get rebuilt or the Hais’ house isn’t touched or the dozens of other flooded homes don’t get the help they need.”