by Peggy Jaeger
With her insides shaking like just-set Jell-O, Stacy bit her tongue and nodded.
* * * *
“Melora?” Nikko called when he got back to the cabin. “Where are you?”
“Where I always am,” the girl shouted back. “Purgatory. Or as you call it, your office.”
He should have called her on the snippy response, but Nikko couldn’t summon up enough parental discipline to do so.
The morning’s filming had gone overtime into the lunch hour, mostly due to Jade Quartermaine’s continued incompetence. She’d flubbed the next challenge guidelines three times before Nikko had exploded and ordered Dan Roth to read the teleprompter instead.
Jade had been furious and spitting nails, threatening to walk off the set if she weren’t given another chance. With exhausted reluctance, Nikko had acquiesced and she’d finally gotten the lines timed perfectly.
At any other time during any other production he wouldn’t have been as furious about the messed-up schedule. But this production was different. This time, he had Melora to think about.
As he told the crew to break for an hour and a half, he once again questioned his decision to be the one responsible for Melora’s eating schedule. It would have been so much easier if he’d brought along a personal chef. Then, he’d have been able to just be Melora’s watchdog.
The therapist had made point after point about how Melora was using her anorexia as a way of grieving over her mother’s loss, as a way of establishing some kind of order in her chaotic life, and as a means to deal with her abandonment issues regarding her frequently absent father. If he’d assigned someone else to cook for her, the therapist felt it would distance father and daughter even more. By cooking for her, sharing the meal, and then spending the aftertime together, she’d felt Melora would come to realize how much Nikko truly loved her, wanted her healthy, and wanted her in his life.
But, Jesus, he was tired. Even though he’d shared custody with Flannery, Melora had spent the majority of her time with her mother because Nikko’s filming schedules hadn’t been conducive to having a child around. All that had changed the moment Flannery died and he’d been thrown into the quagmire of single parent to a damaged and grieving teenager.
A teenager who was looking at him with a murderous and mutinous glare in her eyes at the moment.
“You’re late,” she said, bony arms folded across her tiny chest. “I’ve been sitting here for, like hours, bored out of my gourd and withering away with”—she flapped a hand in the air with a dramatic flourish—“ennui.”
Nikko stopped walking toward the kitchen, turned, and cocked an eyebrow at her. “Ennui? That’s a new word for you.” He struggled to keep the humor from his voice. Melora had inherited more than just her looks from her actress-mother.
“It was a vocab word for one of the dumb books I’ve been assigned to read for the summer. The title of it should be Dumb and Dull.”
She followed him into the kitchen and plopped down into one of chairs.
“Did you do anything else this morning aside from read?” He pulled out whole-wheat bread, slices of cheese, and a tub of soft butter.
While he set some of the butter to melt in the frying pan, he spread some more on to one side of the bread, slipped a few pieces of cheese on the unoiled side, and then slapped another slice of bread over that.
“I started the report I’m being tortured to write for Dumb and Dull. I had to print it out, like, in pen, because, Hello! My laptop is still being held hostage. It would be, like, so much easier if I could, you know, type.”
Nikko tucked his tongue into the side of his cheek. “I read somewhere that writing things out in longhand makes you remember them better.”
“I so do not want to remember this book. Ever.”
“Did you do anything else?”
“Took a walk,” she said.
“Did you bring your camera? Take some pictures?”
“Yeah.”
When she offered nothing further, he glanced over at her. She was slumped over the table, her head resting against one flattened palm, her lips pressed together. His heart sighed for her.
“I’m sorry I was late getting back.” He flipped the sandwiches over. “Filming went over and it wasn’t…prudent…to stop until we were done.”
She lifted her head and nailed him with her own version of a steely-eyed stare. “Prudent? And you had the nerve to, like, diss ennui?”
His smile came quick and free as he pulled the grilled-cheese sandwiches onto plates.
“Feel free to use it in your report if it’ll help.”
She rose and pulled two bottles of water from the refrigerator. “The only thing that will help is if, like, I didn’t have to read the book in the first place. It’s so bad they didn’t even, like, make a movie of it. It would have tanked, big-time, you know?”
Nikko watched as she took a large gulp of the water, swallowed, and then took another chug.
It was a control mechanism for getting full fast, without food. She could claim she wasn’t hungry and refuse to eat. He knew as much from the therapist. What he didn’t know was how to effectively address it without her getting upset. If he told her to eat, she’d rebel and refuse to. If he ignored her not eating, she’d continue to do so and starve herself.
He took a bite of his own sandwich, realizing for the first time how truly hungry he was.
“This is good,” he said nonchalantly and took a sip of his own water. “Good old-fashioned comfort food.”
She peered over the expanse of the table at him, a questioning look on her face. “What do you need to be comforted about?”
“You’d be surprised, kid.”
“Try me.”
Nikko shocked himself by considering it. She was neither a child nor an adult, and as such, her opinions on, and experiences with life, were still made mostly from an emotional basis. She’d never worked; never known what it was to deal with deadlines, unions, and project problems.
But she had lived with her mother and if there was one thing Nikko knew, Flannery, born actress that she was, had shown Melora firsthand what it was like living with a mercurial personality who worked in a fast-paced and often fickle industry, and all the drama that followed it.
So he took a step of faith and shared the morning problems.
“Mama always claimed Jade Quartermaine was a spoiled, self-absorbed bitch,” Melora said.
Before Nikko thought to scold her, he stopped. After delivering her opinion, she’d picked up the sandwich and taken a huge bite. While she chewed with more enthusiasm than he’d seen in a while, she looked over at him and added, “She thought Jade was gonna, like, make a play for you a few years back when you were working on that totally lame food-travel show together. I told Mama if you hooked up with Jade I was gonna, like, spurn you ’til the end of time.”
Nikko swallowed, surprised when he didn’t choke on the bread and his daughter’s perspicacious statement.
The program he’d directed Jade in had been trying. She’d been rude to the cast and crew, often showing up late without an excuse and, like today, unprepared. At one point Nikko had threatened to walk out if she didn’t start acting like a professional and do her job.
Jade had tried—unsuccessfully— to seduce him after that and he’d always wondered if she’d done it because she truly wanted him as a lover or because she saw it as a way to wrangle herself out of the corner she’d painted herself into.
Melora finished half the sandwich before taking another chug of water from the bottle and finishing it.
“I’m full,” she said, tapping the bottle down on the table and staring straight at him, as if waiting for him to argue with her about it.
Nikko wanted to. He wanted to point out she still had an entire other half to eat, but remembered what the therapist had said about choosing his battles wi
sely.
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and nodded instead. “I’ll wrap that up for you and stick it in the fridge in case you want something before dinner—”
“I won’t.”
“—because dinner will be a little later than usual. Remember, we’re dining in the mess hall along with the judges and the ranch hands tonight, for the first challenge.”
Melora rolled her eyes and for a moment looked so much like her mother Nikko had to take a breath to steady himself. In a few more years, when maturity filled out her face and she settled into her features, Melora was going to be a beautiful woman, just like her mother. The thought caused him no small amount of worry.
“Do I have to, you know, eat everything the chefs serve? Because I won’t.” She shook her head in the defiant way he’d become used to, pushed back in the chair, and folded her arms across her torso again.
He reached deep for calm. “No, Melly, you don’t. The only ones who really need to take a bite of everything are the judges and the ranch hands, because they’ll be voting. You can eat whatever you want.”
“Then why do I even have to go? Can’t I just stay here, alone? Nothing will happen to me.”
“We’ve been over this, kid.” Nikko shook his head. “I’m in charge of the show and I need to be there. And since it’s dinner, and we agreed we’d spend every meal together, that means you go where I go.”
“I hate eating in front of other people.”
The whine in her voice grated on his already frazzled nerves.
“It makes me feel so…so…ugh!” She threw up her hands.
“No one is going to be watching you eat.”
Just me.
“Everyone’s attention will be on the chefs and the judges’ reactions to the dishes they’re served,” he told her.
“You don’t know that. Not for sure. People stare at me all the time around here because they know I’m your daughter. I hate being on display.”
“You won’t be on display. Stop being so dramatic.”
“I’m not. Listen, can’t you let Stacy be in charge instead? Have her, like, oversee everything instead of you?”
“What? Where did that come from? No. No, she can’t.”
“Why not? Isn’t she, like, your number two? Although that’s a ridiculously gross thing to call someone. I think—”
“Melora—”
“Or let me sit with her, then. She’s cool. She’s nice. She’s normal. She won’t”—she flapped her hand in the air again—“hover, or watch and evaluate everything I put in my mouth. Let me stay with her while you work. She’s—”
“Enough.”
Melora’s mouth slammed shut and a pink tinge flushed down her face from the tips of her ears to her chin.
Nikko placed his hands, palms flat, on the table and counted to five in his head.
Stacy’s name had brought the woman to mind when he’d been trying to forget her very existence. Forget the way her beautiful, bright eyes had dilated under her glasses when his hands went around her arms. Forget the way her naked mouth had turned wet and plump when she’d run her tongue across it as she’d stared up at him. Forget the way he’d gone as hard as stone in a heartbeat when he saw the pulse pounding at her neck and realized how close he’d come to putting his mouth over it.
Christ. When was the last time a woman had stirred his body and engaged his mind like this one had? Not since before the accident for sure, and even further back than that, if he was being truthful.
He’d been annoyed to have her thrust upon him by the network and had been purposefully rude and obnoxious in the hope of sending her packing. In the next breath, he remembered the sense of comfort he’d felt when she was nearby, as if having her around him somehow calmed and soothed his tension away.
Nikko shook his head to clear it. He had enough to worry about with the show and getting his daughter healthy, to stop and engage in frivolous thoughts about a woman who wouldn’t even smile at him.
He looked across the table at his daughter. “She’ll be working the same way I will, and she probably won’t even sit down to eat.”
The teen slumped back in the chair, her arms still crossed over her chest, and heaved a dramatic sigh.
Nikko took a moment before speaking. Yelling was the wrong way to deal with his daughter, he knew that. In a much more controlled tone, he said, “This is my job, Melora. It’s my show and that means I need to be present during every facet of it. Working and overseeing everything. Me. Not a producer.”
“But—”
“No. No buts. Or any other arguments. This subject is closed. Do you understand me? Closed.”
He rose from the table, grabbed both their plates, and brought them to the sink. He hated that he couldn’t just let her be and not have to worry that if left alone she’d spend the evening trying to purge the small amount she’d eaten.
“I’ll wash them,” Melora said in a soft voice shouting with contrition from behind him. “It’s my turn.”
He took a deep breath before shifting out of the way and turned around.
One look at her sad and miserable expression and his heart shattered.
Again, that she was neither adult nor child, broke through him. With a gentle yank on her emaciated arm he pulled her into a hug, settling her head on his shoulder.
As his hands rubbed down her back and skimmed across the spiny protrusions of her spinal column, worry flooded through him.
“I love you, Melora. More than anything. You know that, right?”
“I know.” She’d shifted her head, buried her face against his shoulder, her response muffled by his shirt. “Love you too.”
“I just want you to be happy. And healthy,” he added.
“I’m trying.” He felt the sigh, deep and troubled, expel from her.
He kissed the top of her head. “I know, kid. I know you are. We’ll figure it all out. You and me.”
“Promise?” When she sniffed he hugged her a little tighter.
“Promise.”
Chapter Ten
Stacy ignored the headache pounding behind her left eye while she watched the chefs’ images sail across the multiple screens. Since lunch break had ended and the three-hour time frame to prepare the meal they’d serve that evening had been given, the noise level in the set kitchen had risen to the sound of a war zone, minus the bombs and mortar explosions. With various-sized pots in their hands, banging and clamoring against one another as they ran from the storeroom back to their stations, yelling out warnings to others in their way, the chefs had been in perpetual motion, prepping and cooking.
Nikko stood, calling out directions for the set cameramen about which contestant to follow and where to focus the camera’s eye, without once sitting down or taking a break. She’d made sure to have a fresh bottle of water at his place when they’d started up again, and she’d noticed he’d taken several hits from it while directing.
No thanks or acknowledgement had come her way, but then, she hadn’t really expected them to.
Her lunch break had been spent overseeing the filming of the individual interviews of each chef that would then be edited and interspersed within the footage about their first challenge and the subsequent dinner they were preparing. She’d given a list of questions to each producer and most of the responses had been typical of a first day. The chefs were pumped, primed, cocky, and confident.
Nikko had devised the dinner challenge to utilize the remnants of the morning’s butchering. Each chef was charged with creating a main dish to feed the ranch hands, cowboys, and judges using their favorite cut of beef. From the descriptions the chefs gave of their proposed offerings in the interviews, the flavor profiles filled the spectrum from hot and spicy to savory and smoky.
Her attention was drawn to the man directing the challenge.
Everything sh
e’d heard and read about him had proven true in the few short days since she’d met him. Nikko Stamp was arrogant, demanded perfection from those around him, and was stubborn to the point of obstinacy. She’d seen firsthand all of those qualities.
A few others she’d learned for herself.
He was fiercely protective of his daughter, an attribute she found disarming. Nikko loved Melora, of that there was no doubt. His outburst on the day of the airport run when he couldn’t find her had proven it. And even though his daughter complained about her current situation, Stacy had been witness to the love and worry she felt for the man.
Nikko may have demanded perfection from others, but it was only because he commanded it first from himself.
One thing she’d been flabbergasted to discover, though, was how attracted she was to him as a man. A man who’d made her heart pound and her insides quake by just holding on to her arms.
Hours later, she could still feel the impression of his fingers burning into her skin, as if she’d been branded by his hands. The moment they’d circled around her arms, Stacy’s entire body had been engulfed by warmth, as if an electric blanket had been tossed over her.
The sensation had been shocking and wildly arousing. Yes, he was handsome in a rugged, brooding, and arresting way. His features depicted his ancestry: an aquiline nose that sat squarely in the middle of his face and tapered down to a defined point. A nose she’d found herself being looked down upon several times, usually coupled with a scowl and narrowed eyes.
Thick, wavy midnight hair falling down his neck and flirting with the collar of his shirts was several weeks behind a trim and had her fingers buzzing to run through it.
Full, dense brows arched over watchful, expressive, and attentive eyes she found herself mesmerized by more than once when they were lit on her. His eyes held secrets, intellect, and pain mixed with wariness and caution. Stacy couldn’t for the life of her determine why she wanted to rub his furrowed brow smooth, or kiss away the torment perpetually filling his eyes, but she did.
