They burned beneath his touch. The camel-colored leather of the antique desktop blurred, and he rubbed harder. He hadn’t been in the office for almost three weeks, but it was time. He was the governor, and that was the end of it. Eugenia had gotten Mack out of the room today, so life was now entering a different phase. He hoped. “We don’t have to do this now.” Kurt leaned back on the sofa, laying a sheaf of printouts on the caramel velvet cushion beside him. Sam Foster, the commissioner of finance and administration, sat beside him. “It’s still early days to put the budget together.” “This isn’t going to be an ordinary budget.” Gray’s words were sharp and uncharacteristic. “We can’t spend our way out of this economic slump. The housing market still hasn’t recovered. The flood cost us billions of dollars, and the tornado up north and then all the weather last winter haven’t helped things. We lost millions in state revenue when Opry Mills wasn’t rebuilt. And the Assembly keeps trying to sneak pork through here when I’ve let men who are behind bars go free just to make sure we don’t have to shut the lights off or cut our teacher workforce in half.
