by Cora Seton
“It was Linkley. He wants to change some things.” Kai made a face. “He wants to change everything. It’s pretty bad.”
“Uh-oh. What does he have in mind?”
She listened carefully as he described Linkley’s vision for the show, leading Kai to the back of the room when people began to file in to scrape their dirty dishes and stack them neatly by the sink.
“That doesn’t sound like your vision for the show at all,” she said when Kai was finished.
“Not much.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? He’s the producer. He’s the one who can get the show on the air. It’ll be my first television gig.”
“Second one.” She indicated the crew filming them. “Don’t discount Base Camp.”
“Still.”
She understood what he meant. This was an opportunity to take a step up in his career. It wasn’t smart to waste opportunities.
“What if you try working within the framework that Linkley’s given you—but add a little of your own flair?” she said slowly.
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you ever have to use sneaky tactics as a Navy SEAL?”
“Yeah.” Kai chuckled. “All the time.”
“Do the same thing here. Sort of slide your message in wherever you can. I bet Avery could help with that.”
“Avery? How?” Kai leaned against the counter and folded his arms across his chest.
“She’s a screenwriter. You could work with her, plan some bits of dialogue that you can throw in as you cook whatever it is they want you to cook. Sneaky ways to get your point across.”
“You think Avery can help me do that?”
“I know she can.”
Three days later, Kai was ready to concede that Avery was a genius. She’d helped him come up with lots of throwaway dialogue he could toss out in the middle of cooking. Lines that would seem off the cuff to viewers—and producers. Ones that would be difficult to edit out. They practiced timing until he became an expert at tossing them off during the most important parts of whatever recipe he was preparing—moments the director couldn’t cut if they were filming an actual episode.
“There will be a subtext to the whole show,” Avery said. “You’ll be doing one thing and saying something else, hinting that the recipes you’re making are fine for the common man, but that someone who really cares about food—and the planet—would modify the meals in a different way. But the best part is, we’ll gear that subtext right at the manliest men watching the show.”
“I’m cooking with beef today,” Kai said in a hearty, cooking-show-host tone, “but in the field with my Navy SEAL buddies, I’d be using bison.” He laughed. “Hardly. Somehow the US Navy never requisitions bison.”
“You’ve got the idea, though,” Avery said. “Although you’re right; you’ll have to be a little subtler than that.”
Kai thought it just might work.
Over the course of the following week, they got together to work on the plan as often as they could, so when Kai received the paperwork from Linkley, he signed it and sent it back. Meanwhile, he took every opportunity to spend time with Addison. More than once he found her curled up in a chair reading his cooking notebook like it was a novel.
“Why are you so obsessed with that?” he asked. It was kind of a turn-on, if he was honest.
“Because the more I read, the more obsessed with sustainable food I’m getting.”
“Really?” Most of the time he thought he was the only one on the planet interested in that.
“Really. Your approach is different from everything else I’ve read. Usually, people’s suggestions are so basic. Eat plants. Buy local. Your take is more 3-D. You consider everything at once.”
Heady praise, Kai thought. Especially coming from someone whose opinion he valued. He wished Linkley felt the same way about the topic.
“I’ve got to go work with Avery,” he told her. “Want to come? I don’t get to spend enough time with you these days.”
“We spend every night together,” she pointed out. “And every breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“That’s not nearly enough.” Kai pulled her close, kissed her hard and stifled a groan. “I want you right now.”
“Later,” Addison promised. “I’m supposed to meet Samantha. She’s showing me around the gardens again. I feel like I want to know the whole process from start to finish. From garden to plate.”
“I like it when you talk dirty to me.”
They were both late to their meetings by the time they pulled apart, and Kai had to admit Addison’s interest in the topics he loved most fired him up. He couldn’t wait until they cleaned up from dinner and had the rest of the night together.
Only when Linkley’s secretary rang him back the next day did Kai recognize the next hiccup in their plan. When he hung up, he searched out Curtis and told him what had happened. Their friendship had settled back to a solid place, and Kai was embarrassed he’d ever suspected Curtis of wrongdoing.
“They want to film the pilot episode on Halloween? Don’t they realize that’s a national holiday?” Curtis teased.
“Apparently not,” Kai answered his grin with one of his own. “I already told Addison I’d help her set up for the gala. She’s pretty nervous about it. I don’t want to ditch her.”
“I’m sure she’d understand.”
He was pretty sure she would, too. Addison was as accommodating as ever these days, and even if they only got to see each other at rare moments outside of cooking, they made the most of those. He was beginning to get used to having her around—and beginning to depend on her, if he was honest with himself. Her constant presence in the kitchen with him smoothed out his days and gave him more time to work with the others in between times. They’d done what they could to shore up the food supply, planting as many potatoes as they could in the greenhouses and trying to save the wheat, but they’d had to admit that experiment was a failure.
Kai was afraid it was going to be an uncomfortable winter. He was used to hardship, and he was sure he and the other men could get by on meat and vegetables, but hungry people were cranky people, and people who weren’t getting the kind of food they liked were even crankier. He needed a plan, which meant spending every extra moment in the garden and greenhouses with the others, estimating what they could grow in the coming months.
When he slipped into the tent that night, found Addison there ahead of him and told her his news, she only said, “It’ll be fine; I’ll have a ton of help. You just come wearing that toga. That’ll be good enough for me.”
“What toga?” he asked distractedly. They’d long ago brought her sleeping gear into his tent and zipped their sleeping bags together on top of their sleeping pads. Snuggled in the warm nest they’d created for themselves, he was far too busy exploring her body to listen too hard to her words.
“The one I left here in the tent the other day.”
Kai broke away from her and looked around but didn’t see it, but it was dark and the cramped quarters were full of his belongings. “Must have pushed it to the side and not even noticed. I’ll find it in the morning.” He got back to touching Addison.
“Sounds good. We can do a test run. Oh, Kai—”
Kai was too busy rolling her on top of him, lifting her shoulders and taking one of her nipples into his mouth to answer.
Chapter Eleven
‡
Halloween dawned cool and crisp, with a crystal-clear blue sky that promised a fine day and an even colder night.
Mid-morning, Kai passed the rest of the men split into groups working hard to frame in and roof the rest of the tiny houses they’d need for married couples before spring made it possible to build again.
One of those would be his soon, and he felt a pang of remorse that he wasn’t helping, but Linkley and his crew would arrive soon to film the pilot episode of Feed Your Army, and Kai needed to be ready for them.
As he walked
, he practiced all the throwaway quips he and Avery had written and she’d made him rehearse over and over until they fell off his tongue like he’d made them up on the spot. He hoped their idea would work, and he could subversively take over the show and make it what he wanted it to be.
There was still the chance he could blow this whole thing and be right back where he started. But he wasn’t going to anticipate trouble. There was trouble enough in the world without making up more, as his mom always said.
“There’s the man of the hour,” Linkley boomed when he arrived in a limousine an hour later. Short, cocky, suited up for a New York boardroom rather than a fall Montana morning, he made quick work of the introductions and paced straight into the bunkhouse to get the lay of the land. “Christ, would you look at this place? All right, everyone; get to work. It ain’t going to be easy to film here. We should have brought you in to do this on set, but Renata wouldn’t agree to it. Between you and me, kid, that woman’s a ball-buster.”
Kai had to bite back a smile. He and everyone else at Base Camp already knew that.
It took more than an hour for Linkley’s crew to set up, creating an island countertop in the middle of the small kitchen for Kai to work at, setting up bright lights and reflectors. Meanwhile, Linkley introduced him to Mike Machamp, the show’s director, an unassuming man with a voice as loud as Linkley’s when he needed it to be.
“Think tractors, VFW halls, pancake breakfasts and Fourth of July parades,” Machamp said. “Middle America. Salt of the earth. Men who really like a steak. That’s your audience.”
“Hell, yeah.” Kai boomed back at him. He and Avery had decided he’d play this the way Linkley wanted—except for the parts where he wouldn’t. If they wanted a man’s man, that’s exactly what they’d get.
“Right. Exactly.” Machamp brightened at his response. “Except you can’t swear. This is a family-friendly show.”
“Gotcha.” Kai felt as cocky as Linkley. He was ready for this. He’d get his message out, with or without their approval.
“All right. Let’s get some makeup on this soldier,” Linkley ordered.
“Sailor,” Kai corrected, then waved away Linkley’s questioning look. “Not important.”
Ages passed until they were ready to actually film, but finally everything was in place. The director counted him in, Kai looked into the camera and began to speak.
“Hello, I’m Kai Green, and I’ll be your host for Feed Your Army. After spending over a decade protecting this great country as a Navy SEAL, I know all about working up a real appetite, and I’m here today to help you feed your army at home, no matter how big—or hungry—it may be.” There. At least he’d set the record straight about the branch he’d served in.
Linkley was grinning and nodding. Machamp seemed pleased, too. Kai reached down beneath the counter to where the crew had placed all the props he needed and brought out a cutting board and a slab of steak. “We’re going to make chili today. Real manly chili, not some watered-down version your wife makes to feed to her sewing circle. Something that will satisfy the hunger you have for meat.”
As Kai continued reading from the teleprompter, he decided it was time to add a comment or two of his own. He worked on cutting the steak into chunks.
“I’m working with beef today, because beef is standard issue in most grocery stores. But one of the best things about being a man is you get to make up your own mind. That means you can substitute your own ingredients. Want to go for a real manly meal? Try some Grade A bison meat in your chili. Montana raised and grown—mm, mmm that’s good stuff.”
Machamp frowned, and Linkley’s brows met in the middle, but Kai charged on, going back to reading straight from the teleprompter, and they let it pass, just like Avery had said they would. He saved his message about bean to meat ratio for when he was frying up the meat.
“Now, I know some people say a real chili has no beans. I know others who say the beans make the chili. What I say is, we’re all hungry, we’re all on a budget and, heck, we all want to do our part to halt the damage CO2 emissions can cause. So cut your chili with beans. They’re tasty, satisfying, light on the wallet—and light on the planet, too. If you’re a real renegade, like me, you might even throw in lentils.” He kept busy the whole time and immediately switched back to the teleprompter’s words. Once again, the producer’s and director’s worried expressions slipped back into approval. He’d made sure that while he was speaking, he grabbed the pan and flipped the frying meat like he would pancakes with a jerk of his wrist, a cool move it wouldn’t be easy for them to cut out. He caught Byron and another of Renata’s crew members exchanging a look as they filmed the Feed Your Army crew filming him. He’d better make sure he didn’t overdo things.
But by the time filming was over, he’d managed to slip all but one comment into the show’s narrative. He was riding high on his effort, proud of his cooking and his ability to get his message across.
“Good stuff,” Linkley said. “A little too much off the cuff, but we’ll polish that out of you.”
Like hell, Kai thought.
It seemed to take just as long for Linkley’s crew to pack up again, but finally the limo and trucks pulled out of Base Camp and it was time to get ready for the masquerade ball. Back when they’d gone to Alice’s for a fitting, he’d been pleased with the way she’d managed to put his Roman senator’s costume together so he wouldn’t be losing his sheet all night or mistakenly baring his butt during a dance number or some other inauspicious time. He realized now he’d forgotten to look for it in his tent, and he went to find it. He was looking forward to going to the manor and telling Addison all about filming the pilot.
When he arrived at his tent, however, he couldn’t find the toga anywhere. Kai scrambled around, finally pulling everything out of his tent and putting it back piece by piece.
Shit. If he was late, he’d disappoint Addison on her big night, and he didn’t want to do that.
Kai strode back to the bunkhouse, noting the camp had cleared out. They’d agreed they’d take turns on guard duty tonight during the party, each of them spending an hour on patrol. Walker and Clay were taking the first shift. He’d have his turn late tonight. He could see people on their way to the manor. Only Boone was around when he burst inside. Dressed as a pirate, he looked suitably swashbuckling.
“I can’t find my toga,” Kai told him.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. I wanted to be at the manor an hour ago. I need a costume, Boone.”
Boone thought fast. “Curtis has two Dracula costumes. Alice sent him two versions to try.”
“I don’t want to copy him.” He was supposed to match Addison’s Cleopatra costume.
“Buddy, there’s bound to be a half dozen Draculas at any Halloween party. He won’t care.”
Kai felt funny about looking in another man’s tent, but he was desperate, and Boone was with him to vouch that he hadn’t gone through anything private. The costume was tossed right on his bedroll, anyway, so it was no big deal to reach in and pull it out.
“See you up at the manor,” Boone said. “Hope it fits.”
“Me, too.” Curtis was brawnier than he was, so at least he didn’t have to worry about the costume being too tight. As it was, he had to loop a belt around the pants Alice had provided to keep them from sliding down around his ankles. The shirt and pants were basic but dressy. A black sash covered his belt. It was the cape that made the costume, and this one was an ankle-length black satin number lined with scarlet. The mask covered the top half of his face, with holes for his eyes. Satisfied that at least he wasn’t wearing street clothes to the ball, he half jogged up the path to the manor. The last thing he wanted to do was miss Addison’s special night.
“How did Kai lose his costume?” Riley asked several hours later. Like Addison, she was contemplating several Draculas converged in one corner of the ballroom having a toast.
The Russells had provided a huge buffet for the ball and
an equally generous bar, which their guests seemed determined to drink dry. Addison had drunk several glasses of wine herself, and the ballroom had a soft glow that made everything seem beautiful.
She’d done it—pulled off a ball she could be proud of, and everyone at Base Camp was enjoying themselves, along with their guests. She’d met many people from town and was pleased to find that all of them treated her like she belonged here at Westfield.
It was like she’d finally come—
Home.
“I have no idea,” she said hurriedly, not ready to test that thought. “But then, he is a man…”
“You said a mouthful.”
“Are you having fun?” Alice Reed asked, handing Addison a new glass of wine as she joined them. She was dressed like a fairy godmother. Addison thought the costume suited her.
“I’ve been too nervous to have fun,” Addison told her. “But I think it’s going well.”
“I had a hunch you needed the chance to shine,” Alice said. “Isn’t she great at throwing events?” she asked Riley.
“She’s terrific! She’d better watch out, or we’ll make her do all the work at the B and B.”
“Good idea.” Alice winked at Addison and slipped away before Addison could say anything. Boone came to find Riley, and Addison looked around for Kai. It was warm in the ballroom despite the cool temperatures outside. Music swelled again, and a murmur rose as people found partners and began to dance. Addison decided to sit this one out. There was supposed to be a Regency number coming up—they’d coached the musicians to intersperse them between the waltzes and other dance numbers. She couldn’t wait to participate. Kai was a wonderful dancer, and she’d gotten the hang of it after a lot of practice.
A woman in a mermaid costume caught her eye. She’d arrived recently, and Addison couldn’t place her. She was statuesque, and her costume was to die for, all strategically placed sequins that left little to the imagination, with a mask that covered all but her eyes. She wondered who in Chance Creek could afford a costume like that. Whoever it was certainly liked the free bar. Addison had seen her go back for refills on some kind of colorful mixed drink several times already. As she watched, the stranger threw her head back and laughed at something her current partner said, but Addison didn’t think she’d come with anyone—or at least she danced with a new man every song.
