Certainly 23

Chapter 23

***

*Past

She didn't want to be on the same level with someone so rude, but at this point, wouldn't it be right to get down to his level? He was an arrogant bastard, who didn't have the slightest sense of decorum.

“You have to protect what’s yours. Do you think it’ll be solved if you just leave it in someone else’s hands and just stomp your feet?”

"What do you know..................!"

"At the very least, you could run this place a lot more convincingly than that guy in there."

Patrick's next words stopped Bridget in her tracks. She hadn't expected that, and she stared at him blankly, her anger forgotten.

To be honest, everyone had told her that Ronan should be the head of the Grand Theater. Ever since her parents' funeral, when Ronan had been talking about being the head of the theater, no one had thought anything of it. This was despite the fact that the theater had been owned by Mr. and Mrs. Pennington and had passed to their only daughter after their deaths.

The attitude of the staff working at the theater was the same. They viewed Bridget as the boss's young daughter, who was living innocently and without knowing anything, so they secretly still treated her like a child.

This was especially true if they had only seen her a couple of times without knowing the real story. She had never heard anyone say outright, as Patrick did, that he would have preferred Bridget to Ronan.

Patrick stared at Bridget, who was stunned by this unheard-of assessment, then clicked his tongue nonchalantly.

"Well, I think you have already missed your chance."

"Do you really think we don't have a chance at the Grand Theater?"

There was an urgency in her voice that she didn’t realize it.

Forgetting her anger at him, Bridget spoke a little faster.

"Of course, our theater is old, and with all the newer, fancier theaters, it's harder to get work, and we can't keep our troupe together, but the most popular actor in the city is ours."

Bridget seemed to want some sort of hopeful answer from him, even though all she knew of him was his name and his rude tendency to curse at people's faces. Perhaps some acknowledgment would ease her vague insecurities.

But Patrick's response was blunt, dashing her hopes.

"You're going to fail."

"What?"

"For a theater that relies on one actor, I'm surprised it hasn't gone under yet."

"That..................!"

Bridget couldn't find the words to retort, because his point was exactly what she'd been thinking all along.

She was trying to ignore it for the sake of the immediate audience that came to see Donna, but in the long run, this structure would never work. It was a thought that she had repeatedly echoed in her mind, only to be thwarted by Ronan's strong arguments. Especially with all the operating expenses and theater debt she had to pay right now.

"If you want to save this place, why don't you fix that ridiculous revenue structure?"

Strangely, the man’s words sounded like advice, or perhaps she was just so tired that she found comfort in them.

Looking down at her feet, Bridget replied with a wry smile.

"I thought you were here to convince me to sell the Grand Theater."

"Why would I?"

Patrick said, a hint of resentment in his voice.

"It's Finn Emerson who wants to buy this place, not me."

Bridget raised her eyes. Patrick stood beside her, his pace slow and languid. He exhaled a puff of smoke, his eyes scanning the view below the stair railing.

"I don't buy these things."

It was an unmistakably devaluing statement, but strangely, Bridget didn't find his words offensive. On the contrary, she felt a little relieved that he had no intention of buying it.

"So you're............... just here to look around?"

"Technically, I’m an advisor."

But he hadn't interrupted Ronan and Finn earlier in the office when they were discussing the theater. He didn’t seem to want anything to do with Finn's decision to buy or not.

Bridget stared at Patrick with a strange look in her eyes. He must have felt her gaze, because he rolled his eyes and glanced at her.

"I think you need some advice, too."

"Advice on what?"

"Anything."

There was a faint hint of a smile in his narrowed cobalt eyes, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared, like a mirage, and he looked away from her like a man who had lost interest.

Still, Bridget stared at him as if she were mesmerized by something.

"Do you have any advice?"

"About what?"

"Anything."

Patrick responded indifferently to Bridget's shameless words without even looking at her.

"I'm afraid I don't teach kids."

With that, Patrick dropped his cigarette at his feet and crushed it with his shoe. Bridget watched him turn and stalk back to the office, her gaze following the wisps of cigarette smoke that lingered in the air, until all that remained was a crushed cigarette and a circular black mark on the railing where he had stood.

Looking at it, Bridget thought to herself. He must be a very uneducated man to treat the floor like a trash can.

That day, the contract to buy the theater was not signed.

At Ronan's earnest persuasion, Finn agreed to wait a little longer. Next to him sat Donna, flashing her beautiful smile. Ronan curiously offered to provide a place for Finn and Patrick to stay. He had just learned that they were staying until today.

"I don't think you're capable of offering us anything better than the room we’re in now."

Ronan's shoulders slumped at Patrick's cold sneer, but he felt compelled to keep Finn in the room, no matter what. Finn didn't particularly discourage Ronan's behavior. In a way, he seemed content with it. Bridget insisted that she would not change her mind, no matter how much time passed, but neither Ronan nor Finn listened to her.

So Finn Emerson and Patrick Sherman extended their stay at the hotel.

"We can't miss this opportunity!"

Ronan was desperate to win over Finn Emerson, who had offered to buy the theater for a fortune. So he pulled out a playbook that had never failed him before. Donna Greene.

But, to Ronan's surprise, his formula hit a snag for the first time. Finn Emerson, who was supposed to be interested in Donna, instead set his sights on Bridget Pennington. The inside story was that he was interested in the owner of this grand theater, but to an outsider who didn't know, it was a situation that seemed close to flirting.

Ronan was baffled, Donna was furious, and Bridget was, frankly, a little bewildered, for she hadn't expected him to go to such lengths to acquire the theater.

"You can't be out in the theater this early if you're not staying the night here, right?"

At the time, Bridget was cleaning the lobby that connected to the main entrance. On nonperformance days, the staff was usually kept to a minimum, and Bridget tended to take care of cleaning and other simple tasks herself. This was one of those days.

Two men walked through the theater's unlocked front door, leaving footprints on her freshly mopped floor.

Bridget gritted her teeth as she gazed in disbelief at the large shoeprints on the floor.

“There is no performance today.”

"No, I'm not here to see a show."

"And I'm not signing the sale contract today either."

“It's a bit unfortunate, but there's nothing I can do about it."

Bridget gripped the mop tighter. The urge to slam the mop down on those shiny feet and chase them away was overwhelming, but she held onto the strings of reason. 

Regardless of her personal feelings, the fact remained that Finn was a popular playwright. For Bridget, who wanted to revitalize the theater in any way she could, this meant that he was a difficult target to ignore.

Perhaps he himself was aware of this, or else he would not have smiled so nonchalantly as he spoke to her.

"It's human psychology, when you're told you can't have something, you want it more."

She didn't know what it was about this theater that made his eyes light up like that. Bridget exhaled quietly, staring at the ceiling, and then spoke up, her tone soft.

"I know Donna is very interested in Mr. Emerson's work, and I think you might have more in common with her as an artist."

***

Support me @  https://ko-fi.com/doraaaaaaa