else to plan the parties around here.” She sank into the chair next to Charity. “Hi. How was your weekend?” she whispered.
“Good. Quiet. Yours?”
Pia started passing out slim folders with a picture of the American flag on the front. “I worked on the plans for Fourth of July. I was thinking we could mix it up this year. Have the parade and party on the eighth.”
Alice, the police chief, rolled her eyes, but the woman next to her, someone Charity thought might be named Gladys, gasped.
“Pia, you can’t. It’s a national holiday with a tradition going back more than two hundred years.”
“She’s kidding, Gladys,” Marsha said, then sighed. “Pia, don’t try to be funny.”
“I don’t try. It just happens spontaneously. Like a sneeze.”
“Get a tissue and hold it in,” Marsha told her firmly.
“Yes, ma’am.” Pia leaned toward Charity. “She’s so bossy these days. Even Robert’s afraid.”
Charity’s gaze moved to Robert who looked more amused than frightened. He glanced at her and smiled. She smiled back, hoping for a hint of a reaction. A flicker. A whisper. A slight pressure that could be interpreted as a tingle.
There was nothing.
“We have quite a bit of business to get through this morning,” Marsha said. “And a visitor.”
“Visitors,” another woman said. “That always makes me think of that old science fiction miniseries from years ago. The Visitors. Weren’t they snakes or lizards underneath their human skin?”
“As far as I can tell, our visitor is human,” Marsha said.
The mayor was obviously a woman with infinite patience, Charity thought as the meeting continued to spiral from one subject to another.
“Now about the road repaving by the lake,” Marsha said. “I believe someone prepared a report.”
They worked their way through several items on the agenda. Charity gave a brief rundown on the meeting with the university and the fact that the letter of intent had been signed. Pia talked about the Fourth of July celebration that would indeed be held on the appropriate date, then a five-minute break was called.
Robert rose and left. The door had barely closed behind him when Gladys leaned across the table toward Charity.
“You were out with Josh the other day.”
Charity didn’t know if the words were a statement or an accusation. “We, ah…He took me on a tour of the city. The mayor suggested it.”
Marsha smiled serenely. “Just trying to make you feel welcome.”
“You don’t send Josh to see me,” Gladys complained.
“You’re already comfortable in town.”
“How was it?” another woman asked. She was petite, in her mid-forties and pretty. Renee, maybe? Or Michelle. Something vaguely French, Charity thought, wishing she’d actually written down the names as people said them.
“I really enjoyed seeing the area,” Charity said. “The vineyards are so beautiful.”
“Not the tour,” Renee/Michelle said. “Josh. You’re single, right? Wow, how I would love to spend some quality time with him.”
“Sometimes at night I see him walking around town all hot and sweaty,” Gladys said, a slight moan in her voice.
“I know,” someone else added.
Renee/Michelle glanced toward the door, as if checking to see if Robert was within earshot. “Once, he came to the spa.” She turned to Charity. “I run a day spa in town. You should come in for a massage sometime.”
“Um, sure.” She couldn’t believe they were actually talking about Josh this way.
“He wanted me to wax him.” Renee/Michelle turned back to Charity. “They all get waxed. It cuts down on air friction.” She turned her attention back to the group. “He was on the table, wearing these tiny little briefs. Man, oh man, all I can say is that the rumors about his equipment are not exaggerated.”
Renee/Michelle sagged back in her chair and sucked in a breath. “That night my husband got the best sex of his life and he never knew why.” She fanned herself with her hand.
Robert walked back into the room, a can of soda in his hand. He looked around the table, then sighed. “You’re talking about Josh, aren’t you?”
Charity resisted the urge to squirm in her seat.
“Of course,” Pia said. “We can’t help it.”
Charity wanted to snap that he was just one guy and not all that, but she was afraid she would sound like she had something to hide.
“He’s the man,” Robert said with a shake of his head.
“Some big investor back east came here and wanted to open a bike school or training camp,” Gladys said. “Josh wouldn’t do it. He said he wouldn’t exploit his fame that way.”
Most of the women in the room sighed.
Charity privately thought he probably hadn’t done it because being involved would cut into the hours he spent getting laid. If anyone here was special, it was Robert, not Josh. Robert was a regular guy, doing an honest day’s work with minimal appreciation. Sure Josh was famous and a great athlete, but he wasn’t a god. No matter what her hormones might try to tell her.
Marsha slipped on her reading glasses. “If we could get back to the subject at hand,” she said, her quiet voice instantly silencing the other chatter. “Tiffany will be here any minute and I’d prefer we be discussing something of merit when she arrives.”
“Tiffany?” Police Chief Alice asked. “Seriously?”
“Tiffany Hatcher.” Marsha scanned the paper in front of her. “She’s twenty-three and getting her Ph.D. in Human Geography. And before you ask, I went online and looked it up. It’s the study of why people settle where they settle. In other words, she’s studying why we don’t have enough men in Fool’s Gold.”
The women all looked at each other. Robert chuckled. “You have me.”
“And we’re ever so grateful,” Gladys told him. “But you’re only one man.”
“I do what I can.”
Charity tried not to laugh. He caught her eye and grinned.
Marsha sighed. “As much as I wanted to keep our problem quiet, apparently that’s not going to happen. Tiffany is very excited about the opportunity to publish her thesis when it’s finished. So the whole world is going to know.”
“Unless no one reads it,” Alice said.
“I don’t
