Bristol took a deep breath, added a smile, then forced her feet to move.
By the time nap time rolled around, Bristol was exhausted.
Jennifer, one of her afternoon teachers, had called in sick, so they’d all been juggling to distribute the kids without overburdening anyone in the process. When they were at full capacity, it was a tight squeeze, but she always managed to make do. Of course, it required her to get into the thick of things and help out, putting aside her daily duties.
Bristol knew she should probably hire one more teacher since this seemed to be a recurring problem, but she’d been putting it off. She employed four full-time teachers and two part-timers in order to maintain a low student-teacher ratio. Plus Renee, their full-time cook/nurse/bus driver.
During the school year, it wasn’t too bad since a good portion of her students were in elementary school. Summers usually required her to flip the two part-time teachers to full so they could manage. But it was never enough when she had one or more teachers calling in.
Truth was, she’d been hoping for the reprieve the holidays would bring. A lot of her full-time kids were known to take two weeks off around Christmas, the parents keeping them home for whatever reason. She’d been hoping to keep her overhead low until the new year. If she had any hopes of fixing up her house, she had to save some money, and that started with managing her business wisely.
As she sat at her desk in the front office, writing up an incident report for the bruise caused by Jessica’s flying block, her cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen, grinned, then answered the call. “Hey, girlie. I was meanin’ to call you.”
“I just bet you were,” Bianca Stewart, the town’s beloved mayor and Bristol’s best girlfriend, said with a chuckle. “Everyone’s first order of business is to call the mayor. Did you have a complaint, too?”
Bristol grinned. “No, ma’am.”
“Well, you’re the first for the day.”
“I doubt that’s true.”
“Oh, it’s definitely true. I knew this position wouldn’t be a walk in the park, but seriously. People bitch about the most mundane shit.” Bianca sighed. “But I didn’t call you to complain.”
“No?”
“I’ll save that for our next margarita night. Now I’ve got to tell you about a very interesting phone call I received.”
“From?”
“Kaden Walker.”
Bristol’s insides clenched painfully tight, a weird shock of jealousy jolting her.
“Kaden?” She leaned back in her chair, tried to sound casual. “What—” She had to clear her throat. “What did he want?”
“He’s volunteered himself for the auction.”
She swallowed hard. “He did?”
“Yep. Himandhis brother. One entry. I hear I’ve gotyouto thank for that.”
“I … uh … yeah. I talked to Kaden this mornin’, asked him about the auction.”
“Do you have any idea how hot a commodity those two’ll be?”
Oh, she had some idea.
“The two of them alone’ll probably bring in enough to cover the cost of all the meals. Which means we’d have money left over for more meals, more hungry mouths fed. Oh, sweet Jesus, Bristol. This is amazing.”
Yes. Amazing.
“And you couldn’t ask for a better opening than this,” Bianca said.
“Opening?” She was totally lost.
“You and two smokin’-hot cowboys?”
Bristol choked on a laugh. “What are you talkin’ about?”
