“Yeah,” he said without a hint of embarrassment. “A pretty face who makes a living in front of the camera.”

“I’m more than just my face, Noah. And the more is what gets shit done.”

Noah eyed her warily. “I guess we’ll see. I brought you a coffee. Not to be nice but because it’s polite.”

She made a grab for the cup he offered. “I’m accepting your thoughtless gift not because I think you’re generous but because I need caffeine to survive.”

“Coffee truce,” Noah nodded.

“For the next fifteen minutes.”

“I can be polite for fifteen minutes.”

“I guess we’ll see,” she said, turning his own words against him. “So, you had questions about the Christmas Festival itself.”

“Yes. Namely how you expect to make up an entire month of tourism revenue in just a day. You’re not exactly Santa Claus.”

“No, but I am a very organized, very dedicated miracle worker. No one says no to me.” She shifted into business mode. She’d spent her entire career dealing with men who underestimated her. She’d always proven them wrong before, and she’d pull out all the stops here in Merry just to wipe that doubting smirk off Noah’s face.

Cat called up a document on the laptop and sent it to the dinosaur of a printer she’d found in the school’s abandoned office and lugged back into the classroom she considered her temporary office. The show’s budget was so strained that the addition of a new printer could implode the whole damn thing.

“This is a draft of the plan,” she said, handing him the sixteen pages. “I’ll refine it more this week before finalizing. So, if there’s something in there that’s an issue, I need to know ASAP.”

“And if I have a problem with something, you’ll do what?”

“Listen politely to your concerns and take great pleasure in explaining to you why everything will work in terms a three-year-old could grasp.”

“Are you trying to make me take my coffee back?”

“Mine,” she said, her fingers tightening on the cup. “Here are the highlights. Thanks to the attention from the show as well as a series of Facebook ads and geographically targeted social media posts, we’ll remind everyone in the tri-state area about the festival. We’ll be shooting, a lot of it B-roll—in layman’s terms, supplemental footage like crowd shots, downtown video that gets cut into the main interviews and filming.”

“You think people will want to come to the festival just to be on TV?” he asked.

Cat grinned. “Uh. Yeah. Supporting a great cause that we’ve spent four weeks selling them on and the chance to be in the finale? You’re going to have thousands of people show up here on Christmas Eve.”

Noah harrumphed and continued skimming the pages.