by Tawna Fenske
But exciting, too, just like the prospect of moving out here to the middle-of-nowhere Oregon. We all are—Dean, me, Lana, Lauren, Mari, Cooper—plus a whole bunch of strangers who’ll be occupying these cabins very soon.
“Did I tell you Dean’s narrowed the field for the Chief Financial Officer?” I ask. “He’s interviewing her next week. And get this—there’s sort of a faint connection to your family.”
“My family?”
“Well, your brother’s family. The Bracelyns. I think she’s a cousin or something.”
“Vanessa Vincent?”
“You’ve met her?”
Gretchen nods and swipes a piece of popcorn. “A couple times. She has a twin sister. I knew she planned to apply.”
“That’s her.” I probably shouldn’t say much more about the hiring process, but Human Resources doesn’t fall under my umbrella. “Anyway, she’s a strong contender to be our new CFO.”
Gretchen laughs and grabs another piece of popcorn. “Leave it to your brother to think the financial officer should be hired before medical personnel or law enforcement or schoolteachers.”
“Or someone to run an ice cream shop.” I grab another handful of popcorn and grin as the opening credits flicker onto the screen. “Here we go. It’s time.”
“Finding Nemo on the big screen.” She snuggles closer. “Can I close my eyes through the sad parts?”
I pull her to me, cradling her body against my chest. “I’ve got you. And there’s more happy stuff than sad, trust me.”
“I do trust you.” She grins and burrows into the space between my arm and my ribs. “So much.”
I trust me, too. For the first time in ages.
I trust that making Skeleton Dreams wasn’t a mistake, just like I trust that walking away from that chapter of my life is the best decision I can make.
I trust that I’ll be happy here in Oregon, surrounded by family and friends and the community we plan to build together.
I trust that getting snowed-in with Gretchen is the best damn thing that ever happened to me.
I plant a kiss on the side of her head. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
As Gretchen gives a contented sigh, the screen fills with bright color. It’s still no match for what’s filling my heart right now. I’m so damn happy I could burst.
The sad scene’s approaching, and I lean down to whisper in her ear. “There’s a happily ever after. I promise.”
She smiles and tips her head up to kiss my chin. “I know there is.”
Me, too. I’ve never been surer of anything.
***
There’s more to come in the Ponderosa Resort world, with Izzy and Bradley heading your way in 2020 with Dr. Hot Stuff.
Even better, I’m launching a brand new series starring the Judson family and their plans to transform a former cult compound into something even zanier. You just met Dean in Snowbound Squeeze, and the woman set to steal his heart popped up in an earlier Ponderosa novella, Mancandy Crush.
Keep reading for an exclusive sneak peek at the first book in the new Juniper Ridge Romantic Comedy Series, Show Time.
Your exclusive sneak peek at Show Time
Chapter One
CONFESSIONAL 32.5
Judson, Dean (CEO: Juniper Ridge)
What? No, of course I’m not fucking camera shy. Jesus, Lauren. I grew up with cameras shoved in my face just like you. Production value? [unintelligible muttering] Can’t I just run the business side of—yeah, I know. All in this together, blah blah. I still don’t see why I have to sit here like a trained parrot and—[heavy sigh] Fine. But only for the business. It’s not because you’re doing the sad little sister face. Or because I love you.
Oh, bite me.
Dean
I glance at the clock in my office, trying to decide if I have enough time to grab coffee. In my old life, I had an assistant who’d set a hot mug in front of me before I even thought the word coffee.
But my old life was full of dirty money and blinding lights and the constant stench of desperation, so getting my own coffee is a small price to pay.
Six minutes. That’s how long I have until the candidate for chief financial officer makes her appearance. How long does it take to make coffee, anyway?
“Here are the notes for the police officers’ screen tests.” My sister, Mari, strides in with a folder in her hands and a pencil speared through her lopsided bun. “Lauren emailed you the video files. I think the psych eval on—”
“Doesn’t this seem weird to you?” I fold my hands on my desk as Mari stops moving for once and looks at me. “I mean, we’re hiring professionals based on how well they’ll perform on camera.”
Mari sighs and whacks the folder down in front of me a lot harder than necessary. “We’re hiring them based on the skills they bring to the community and how well they’ll fit into our social experiment.” She gives me the look over the rim of her glasses. “Are we going to keep having this conversation? Because if we are, I’ll ask Lauren to tape my response and you can hit play by yourself.”
“That sounds about right.” Our brother, Gabe, ambles through the door grinning. “I only caught the tail end of that, but if we’re accusing Dean of spending his days in here buffing the banana, I think we should rethink letting him have the big office.”
“Get out.” I glance over my brother’s shoulder at the clock. “I’ve got five minutes until my next interview gets here.”
“She’s already here.” Gabe drops into one of my guest chairs, in no hurry to get gone. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. She’s been out in the waiting room for ten minutes.”
Punctual. That’s a good sign. I make a mental note as Gabe kicks his legs out and folds his hands behind his head “She’s actually sort of related.”
A ripple of unease churns my gut. I’m not a fan of nepotism. I saw way too much of that in Hollywood. “Related to whom?”
“To us,” he says. “Well, me. My wife.” He draws out the word like a guy who has not yet exhausted the novelty of it. To be fair, it’s been three weeks since the wedding, and also his wife is awesome. “Gretchen’s brother, Jon—his dad has this sister—”
“Jon’s late father,” Mari puts in, always big on establishing the human connection. “Who is no relation to Gretchen because she and Jon had different fathers.”
I’m already lost in the branches of my brother’s new family tree. “So, we’re not talking immediate family here?”
Gabe glares. “Will you let me finish, chief tight-ass?”
I sigh and wave him on, glancing at the clock again. I suppose I’ll live without the coffee.
“Anyway, Gretchen’s brother’s father’s sister has these twin daughters, and one of them—”
“Vanessa Vincent,” I interrupt. I like how the name sounds rolling off my tongue, strong and no-nonsense. “Harvard MBA, two years with PricewaterhouseCoopers, expertise in forensic accounting, compliance, and internal audit management.”
Gabe blinks. “You know all of this?”
“I know everything.” Not always, but ever since life took a big nosedive, I’ve made it my business to foresee all possible landmines. Fool me once and all that.
“Anyway,” my brother continues, “she completed our Community Compatibility Questionnaire.” He pauses here and smiles at Mari. “Nice job on that, by the way.”
My sister nods. “Glad to know the psych doctorate is useful to you,” she says dryly.
I give them the universal hurry up hand signal, my duty as the eldest brother. “You were saying?”
Gabe swings his focus back to me. “Vanessa’s answers in the personal information section were really interesting. Under ‘level of interest in finding a spouse or mate,’ she chose negative three.”
I frown at Mari. “I thought it was a scale of one to ten?”
“It was,” she says. “Ms. Vincent somehow found a way to alter the online questionnaire to insert a new answer.”
“The rest of her responses were the same,” Gabe continues. “Under ‘I see myself getting married in the next five years,’ she went with negative six.”
Mari clears her throat. “There’s also a write-in answer with that one. It reads, and I quote, ‘roughly the same as the odds I will wake tomorrow with an overwhelming urge to drive a flaming fork through my eyeball.’”
“I see.” I already liked Ms. Vincent’s resumé, but this is giving me a new dimension.
A dimension I relate to on a primal level. The CFO will be my closest working colleague at Juniper Ridge. While a part of this social experiment hinges on participants pairing up, the opposite is required in my case.
“Thank you for the information,” I tell them. “I’ll take it into consideration.”
Gabe glances at his watch and stands up. “Gotta go. Lauren and I are filming B-roll over in the residences.”
Mari follows, her bun flopping slightly to one side. “Good luck with the interview,” she tells me. “Call us when you’re done. I want to go over my proposal for the psych profiles of culinary community members.”
“No crazy chefs,” I tell her. “Or bakers. Or—”
“Yeah, thanks.” Mari rolls her eyes. “Without your input, I definitely would have put escaped mental patients in charge of our food sources.”
She’s out the door before I can retort, which is just as well. I didn’t have anything clever to say anyway. I glance at my watch and see there’s no time left for coffee.
Heaving myself out of my chair, I make my way down the hall and into the lobby. For a former cult compound, this place is pretty nice. Case in point, this lodge with its high ceilings and springy cork floors and enough offices for all six Judson offspring. There’s also a filming studio, which I’ll be keeping my distance from as much as possible.
Trudging into the waiting area, I’m struck by its lone occupant. Dark hair with just enough wave to leave it rippling around her shoulders as she taps away on a laptop. Slender curves, which I absolutely shouldn’t be noticing. I can’t see her eyes until she looks up and hits me square in the chest with the full force of liquid brown irises the color of warm cognac.
She shuts the laptop and shoves it in her bag on the chair beside her, then stands with a bright smile. “Hello.”
“Ms. Vincent, I presume?” My voice cracks only a little as I extend a hand and do my best to cover the fact that she’s knocked me off balance. “I’m Dean Judson, CEO. Thank you for waiting. Would you like coffee?”
“Absolutely.” She shakes my hand with a firm grip. “It’s great to finally meet you. My cousin told me so much about you.”
“That would be—Jonathan.” I met him when I first came to Oregon to rescue my brother from himself. Since Gabe wound up marrying into Jon’s family, I can’t claim any credit for how great my brother’s doing.
“I’m glad you brought that up, actually,” I tell Vanessa. “The fact that you’re here—it has nothing to do with any family connection. Your credentials were simply impeccable.”
“Impeccable, huh?” She grins and slings the bag over her shoulder in a cross-body style. I keep my eyes locked on her face, unaffected by the sight of the strap pressing a soft path between her breasts.
“Impeccable,” I repeat. “Former accounting manager for America’s second-largest television network. Treasurer and CFO for a Silcon Valley startup.” I take a step back, intent on keeping a professional distance between us. “In your last role you raised more than $50-million in venture capital for a company devoted to water sanitation in third-world countries.”
Vanessa gives a low whistle. “You did your homework. Some of that wasn’t even on my resumé.”
“I believe in being thorough.” There’s an understatement. “Come on. Coffeemaker’s this way.”
I lead her into the breakroom, hoping like hell one of my siblings was kind enough to brew some.
No dice. Lana didn’t even wash her mug that says “I’m actually not funny. I’m just mean and people think I’m joking.”
I rinse it and set it in the drying rack before turning to face the coffeemaker. Christ, this thing has more buttons than my HP 12C Platinum accounting calculator.
But if I can mastermind a decade of Hollywood’s biggest real estate deals and filmmaker financing, I can make a simple cup of coffee. I punch a few levers and yank at something that spurts a sharp hiss of steam. Finally locating the part that holds coffee grounds, I dump the soggy ones in the trash and hunt for a new filter.
“Did you have any trouble finding the place?” I ask.
“Not at all,” Vanessa says, leaning against the counter. “The directions you sent were spot on. This is definitely in the middle of nowhere.”
“That’s by design, I suppose.”
“No joke,” she says. “The BONK Founders wanted their privacy.”
One of the few things to admire about the former members of the Benevolent Order of the New Kingdom.
I stare into the vessel where the coffee grounds go. How much do I put in here? I could check the filter I just tossed, but it seems in poor taste to paw through the trash with a prospective employee watching. And she is watching, I can feel her eyes on me.
“Need help?” she asks cheerfully.
“Nope, I’ve got it.”
I drag a flowered tin from the back of the cupboard and pry off the lid. Coffee grounds. I settle for eyeballing it, dumping in a hefty pile into the fresh filter before slamming the trap door shut. Now where does the water go?
Glancing at Vanessa, I decide to get the interview started. “I assume you’ve been briefed on the concept of Fresh Start at Juniper Ridge.”
I cross my fingers she hasn’t caught on that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Not with the coffee, anyway. I’ve got a handle on the rest.
“Of course,” she says. “Reality television show centered around a thoughtfully-planned, self-contained community.” She’s reciting straight from our website, and I admire that. I admire it a lot. “You’re bringing in a diverse group of individuals representing a variety of professions, backgrounds, and lifestyles, and setting the stage for them to create a completely sustainable microcosm of society.”
“Correct.” Seriously, where does the water go? I yank at a lever and end up unplugging the machine. “It’s part social experiment, part entertainment, part a chance to resurrect a piece of property with some questionable history.”
“BONK was certainly one of the more—colorful cults.”
I appreciate that she’s being tactful, but it’s not necessary. “You mean the part where they believed their leader was the progeny of an extra-terrestrial prophet and Charlie Sheen, or the part where they touted mass orgies as a vehicle for growing the roster?”
She laughs. “All of it. I take it you won’t be shying away from that history?”
“Might as well let viewers learn from others’ missteps so they’re not doomed to repeat them.”
From the corner of my eye, I see her stiffen. When I look up, she’s dropped her shoulders again. Or maybe I imagined the whole thing.
Turning back to the coffeemaker, I pry off a piece that turns out to be the water chamber. Now we’re getting somewhere.
“The BONK founders created one hell of an impressive town, so we’re just giving it new legs.” Belatedly I realize I’ve just cursed at a job candidate. Of course, if cursing offends her, she’s unlikely to fit the Juniper Ridge family. Maybe it’s a job test of sorts.
Or maybe she’s the one testing me, waiting to see how badly I’ll screw up the coffee thing up before I ask for help. I can’t tell from her face if she’s judging. Her expression’s impassive, patient, even serene.
Damn, she’s beautiful.
If I weren’t dead inside, I might notice things like that.
“It’s a clever concept,” Vanessa says, jarring me back to the fact that we’re in job interview mode, ev
en though we haven’t made it to my office. “And financially speaking, there’s high potential for revenue. The files you sent on advertisers who’ve committed—I took the liberty of setting up some spreadsheets, which I’d be happy to show you.”
“That—that would be great.” I glance at her, braced for the coquettish smile I’ve gotten from dozens of actresses. The ‘let’s go to your private office,’ or ‘let me prove how much I want this job.’
But Vanessa’s slipping a pair of glasses out of her purse and setting up her laptop on the breakroom table. As the coffee starts to perk, she opens up Excel and dives right into the numbers.
“In this table here, I’ve factored in the living costs for each member of the cast.” She glances up and lifts a brow. “Are you calling them cast members or residents or what?”
“Community members.” A little dumbfounded, I drop into the seat beside her. “You already started running numbers?”
“I emailed the hiring manger to request some data—Marilyn?”
“Mari.” Who, of course, failed to mention this. “Go on.”
“Anyway, this takes into account the economic contributions of each community member—for instance, farmers, chefs, grocers—everyone who represents the food supply is shown in this column, while those who contribute to safety—police and fire, for example—are represented here on the grid.”
I listen to her rattle off numbers, staggered by how much she’s put into this. We had two other candidates make it to this round, and neither took it this far. I listen with rapt attention, impressed she’s thought of aspects of this that my five siblings and I hadn’t considered in months of planning sessions.
“I’d be happy to email this to you, if you’d like a closer look.” She smiles and glances at the coffeemaker. “Smells like that’s ready. Want me to get it?”
“No, of course not.” I jump up like my chair’s on fire and hurry to grab mugs. “If we were to offer you the CFO position, I’d want to be clear you’re not my assistant. You and I would be partners on the business side of running this operation.”
