Bluegrass Hero. Allie Pleiter

a council meeting. No, that was a face he never saw across the table at town hall.

      Gil hit the power button to open the windows in the farm van as they drove into town Friday night. This had better be worth it.

      “Hey,” came Steve’s aggravated voice from the back row of seats, “the hair.” Steve was in his late teens and still growing into his gangly limbs.

      “Hey,” Gil shot back, “the air. My lungs outrank your ‘do.’ And since when did you care so much about your hair?” At this rate, all of Middleburg would catch the scent of them before they even pulled into the parking lot. When he’d planned on attending the theater tonight, Gil hadn’t counted on needing to sit downwind.

      Steve made a show of holding down his unruly but now unruly-and-gelled locks. “There’ll be women there. They love plays and stuff. Especially musicals.” He said the word as if musicals were at the bottom of the theatrical food chain in his opinion.

      “Any females present will be watching the stage, Steve, not you. The only one who’ll be watching you closely tonight is me.”

      “I don’t think so,” came another voice from the back of the van. “That hair’s bound to draw stares.” A rousing chorus of commentary on Steve’s hair rose up from all over the van.

      “Settle down, gentlemen, or—”

      “—you’ll turn this thing around,” came the simultaneous response from every seat in the van.

      Remind me, Lord, why it is that I do this again? Gil pulled into the high-school parking lot with a sigh. Some days he truly felt as if he was shepherding these young men into maturity. Other days, it felt more like herding hyperactive water buffalo.

      And tonight, it was a toss up as to whether you’d smell the water buffalo or the guys first.

      If Emily Montague happened to be there, he’d make sure his fragranced little herd sat right next to her. That way she’d get a good whiff of what she’d done.

      As it turned out, the only one sitting near Emily Montague was him. By the time he’d rounded up his “herd” and gotten them into the auditorium, they’d ended up on the far left, split between two rows. Which meant he had guys to the left of him and ahead of him. Gil was on the aisle, with Emily directly across from him in the next section. While such an arrangement granted him a good view of them (not to mention most of them within arm’s reach, should they act up), it also gave him a clear shot of Emily for the entire evening.

      She was sitting with Janet Bishop, the woman who owned the hardware store, and Dinah Hopkins, the woman who owned the bakery where he took the guys each week. They laughed and chatted in between scenes as if they’d been friends for a while. While Janet had short, dark, practical hair, and Dinah’s was a wild red, Emily’s hair couldn’t seem to decide if it was blond, brown or red—opting instead for a chaotic mixture of all three. It tumbled across her head and down her shoulders in cascades of near-curls that looked too natural to be set, but pretty enough to have been fussed with some. He’d never seen her in a bright color—she always wore pale and pinkish tones that reminded him of Easter.

      When he thought about it, her obvious rapture with the play made sense. It was just the sort of nostalgic thing that would appeal to a woman living in a bitty, white, gingerbread cottage that sat like a little frosted cupcake just off Ballad Road. Her window boxes were always full. He suspected all her china matched perfectly. He could see her in the role of Marian the Librarian, even though Audrey Lupine—the woman onstage who actually was the Middleburg librarian—was remarkably good. Audrey added to the true-to-life nature of the play already established by the Middleburg High School marching band playing Harold Hill’s marching band.

      Gil’s eyes kept straying to Emily all through the ballad “’Til There Was You.” She rested her chin in one hand and let her head fall to one side during the second chorus, even though the leading man didn’t have a voice to match Audrey’s. She sighed at the song’s ending kiss, and he felt it somewhere under his ribs.

      At intermission, Gil ventured over to the Arts Guild bake-sale table. After shelling out an unnatural sum to Dinah for a dozen Rice Krispies treats that were big enough to be Rice Krispies bricks, he ran into Emily and Janet at the lemonade pitchers.

      “How are the soaps working out—or should I say not working out?” Emily ventured, nodding her head toward the guys.

      Janet Bishop smiled. “I heard the story. Your farmhands put in quite an effort tonight.”

      “I had to roll down the van windows on the way here,” he complained, and then realized the rudeness of his insinuation. It was Emily’s product, after all. “No offense, of course. I’m sure you gals think they smell great. I’m just not used to my boys smelling like the fragrance counter at a department store.”

      “I must admit, it does seem like they were…enthusiastic in their use of the soap.” A wry smile crept up one corner of Emily’s mouth.

      “And the hair gel,” Janet added. “And a bunch of other…things.”

      “Tell me about it,” Gil replied, taking a swig of lemonade. “I can hardly wait for it to backfire.”