“That sucks,” Mo said, feigning sympathy. Byron Atkinson’s B-Reel Productions was the creator of Building Bridgehampton, and he seemed to have some magical ability to come up with shows that Rebecca adored.
“You haven’t even heard the worst of it,” Rebecca replied. She took a sip of the espresso and paused for dramatic effect.
“Krystee is pregnant. With twins!”
“But that’s great, right? After all that infertility drama last season? Twins should be a huge ratings boost. Not that they need it.”
“It would be a ratings boost. Except that her idiot doctor has put Krystee on immediate enforced bed rest. She’s only at ten weeks! Alan and Shayla wanted to give me the news in person. They’ve shuttered the show.”
“Really? How awful. Can’t they just let Will take over for the rest of the season and do some establishing shots of Krystee on the phone, discussing the house with him?”
“I wish,” Rebecca said. “But let’s face it, Will has the personality of boiled brussels sprouts. We all know Krystee is what puts the sparkle in Going Coastal. Our viewers don’t want to see her staring at her swollen ankles, chewing prenatal vitamins, and knitting baby booties.”
“So what’s gonna happen?” Mo asked. “Reruns?”
“Not if I can help it,” Rebecca said. “We need fresh content, and we need it now. I’ve been going over some stuff we’ve had kicking around in development…”
“What about my new idea?” Mo broke in. “Becc, I swear, you’re gonna love it. Just let me show you.”
“I got your email. Saving Savannah?” She wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t sound very sexy. In fact, it sounds totally granny.”
Mo took out his phone and thumbed through the photos until he came to the shots he’d surreptitiously taken of Hattie Kavanaugh at the coffee shop, along with the ones he’d taken of Hattie and Cass outside the Tattnall Street house. He passed the phone over to Rebecca. “Does she look granny to you?”
He’d captured Hattie mid-sentence. Her hair was held back with a bandana, her cheeks sprinkled with freckles. She wore not a speck of makeup as far as Mo could tell, but some kind of light seemed to emanate from those hazel eyes of hers. She didn’t have the glamour of a Krystee Brandstetter, who managed to look sexy even in a hard hat and welder’s goggles, or the exotic appeal of Hayden Horowitz, the glamorous real estate host of Building Bridgehampton, but to Mo, that was a selling point.
“Cute,” Rebecca said, handing the phone back.
“Look again, Becc,” Mo said, thumbing over to the next photo of Hattie, taken as she climbed into her pickup truck. “This girl really has something. She’s fresh as buttermilk, absolutely no phoniness about her. And she’s fierce. Won’t back away from a challenge. Viewers will eat her up. The women will want to be like her, the men will want to sleep with her. And she’s got that southern accent—not that grits-and-gravy, syrupy one—more like the tour-guide-at-the-museum southern. Kinda refined. Educated.”
Rebecca thumbed through the rest of the photos, stopping at a shot of the Tattnall Street house. “This is the house she’s rehabbing? It’s gawd-awful.”
“That’s the project she’s about to finish,” Mo said, taking the phone back. “Of course, we’d start the show with a new house. Something smaller, more relatable.”
“What’s her story?” Rebecca asked. “I mean, who is she? How did you find her?”
“I was having breakfast at a place down the street from my hotel and I overheard her and her father-in-law talking about this house they were working on. I was intrigued, so I rode around until I found the house. And her.”
He deliberately omitted the whole falling-through-the-kitchen-floor anecdote.
Rebecca wrinkled her nose again. “So this girl is married? I don’t want another Krystee and Will situation.”
“Not married. Widowed,” Mo said. “According to her best friend, she married her high school sweetheart, but he was killed in a motorcycle accident a few years ago.”
“A widow. Hmm. I kind of like the possibility. Plucky young widow … rehabbing old houses. That’s a story line our viewers could sympathize with.”
“Right?”
Rebecca tapped the phone. “Who’s this woman she’s talking to in front of the house?”
“Her best friend, who’s also the construction foreman.”