Scrap the entire rest of the day’s plans. No full day of fun for the kids. They were going into town to get a dog. And then the kids were going to be yard-bound.
They hated that—not being allowed outside the perimeter he’d designated as the yard for punishment purposes.
He could see the activity at the studio before he was close enough to hear distinct voices. No cooking had happened the day before, but for all of the upcoming weeks, prepared dishes would be transported out on the bus with the contestants, along with any perishable pantry food—bound for homeless shelters, Natasha had told him during one of their original interviews.
Whatever else was going on, he didn’t know. He could see big black equipment boxes going out on the buses. Probably because his barn didn’t have the security of a television studio.
What he couldn’t see, as he strode closer, was his children.
Angela, Natasha’s second-in-command, stage manager, assistant and, he’d concluded, friend, met him before he’d reached the studio.
“You need something, cowboy?” she asked with a grin. The woman had a curious, flamboyant style, dressed in clothes that were as tight as they could be, and yet he was comfortable with her. Like, what he saw was what he got. He liked that. And liked that he wasn’t the least bit tempted to get to know her any better.
She also seemed completely unflappable.
“My kids,” he said, continuing toward her.
“Justin and Tabitha?” Her frown slowed his step. “They aren’t here.”
He stopped. “You’re sure?” They’d hidden from Natasha on Friday. But just for a little while.
Justin could be crafty. But he was only seven. And he had a very black-and-white, mind-the-rules Tabitha with him.
“Positive. I’ve done a final check of the space. We’re out of here in the next five minutes.”
Good. He needed his life back to normal. But...
“Well, thank you.” He smiled. And then, because he wanted to know how long he got to enjoy his freedom from invasion, he asked, “When will you and Natasha be back?”
“I’ll be here Thursday,” she said. “With the crew.”
Yes, that was what he’d meant. Just because the boss lady had been there first this past week didn’t mean she would be again.
“...I’m not sure when Natasha’s going to be here,” Angela was saying. “My guess would be Friday. She’ll want to check things over before Saturday’s show. I’ll ask her and give you a call.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I figured you’d want to know for whoever’s cleaning her cabin...” He didn’t like the quirk of Angela’s head, the way she was studying him.
“It’ll be done Wednesday,” he told her, backing up. His cleaning lady was handling it all for him. And he had to find his kids.
“Well, I’ll let you know when her plans—”
Shaking his head, he said, “Don’t worry about it. I have to find my kids. Have a good trip back.” And he was around the corner, out of her sight.
“Tabitha! Justin!” He jogged. He called. Checked the barns between the studio and the house, intending to head toward the stream by way of the bunkhouse.
“Justin, don’t!” Tabitha’s stern shriek stopped him as he passed the house.
“You know Daddy says you can’t put your dirty finger in the bowl before he cooks.”
They were in the kitchen?
He was inside before his daughter could make another attempt to corral her wayward brother.
Catching Justin in the act.
The boy jerked his hand back and would have splattered breakfast all over the ceramic tile floor except that Spencer, knowing his son well, was there to catch it.
“Go wash up,” he told his son.
“I already washed when I brushed...”
“And you had your finger in pancake batter. Go.” He didn’t raise his voice.
As soon as his son was out of the room, he gave Tabitha a very firm stare. “Where were you?”
She looked away. “I’m right here, Daddy.”
“I went upstairs looking for you.”
That brought her big brown eyes back to him. “We wanted Natasha to have pancakes. Justin says she’s a good cook, and our Sunday pancakes are the best.”
Sunday was always pancake day. Because the kids didn’t have school and he had the time to make them. Because it was a tradition left from his childhood. Because traditions were important.
Sometimes they were everything.
“You went to Natasha’s cabin?” he asked now.
“Yes.” Tabitha nodded. “But she wasn’t home.”
“She left last night.”
“She didn’t tell us ’bye.”
Yes, well, that was for the best. But he wasn’t going to have his kids’ feelings hurt.
“She’s not our friend, Tabitha. When other workers come to the ranch, they don’t tell you goodbye, either.”
“She is, Daddy.”
“Is what? A worker?”
Tabitha’s tangled hair flopped around her shoulders with each vehement shake of her head. “She’s my friend.”
“No, sweetie, she’s just someone who’s working here...”
The shake of her head stopped him. “She is.”
Tabitha was his reasonable child. “Honey, it’s—”
“I know, Daddy. She is. I know ’cause I asked her, and she said yes.”
“You asked if she was your friend?”
“I asked could we be friends.”
His day just shot to Hades. He had no idea how to handle this one.
Because he needed time to figure it out, he changed the subject. “So, you and Justin, you wanted to invite Natasha to breakfast,” he said, his gaze as calculating as he could make it while looking at the cutest thing he’d ever seen on earth.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you come to me about it?”
“You were a little mean to her, Daddy. She’s our friend. If you asked, she mighta’ told you no.”
He was the parent. Disciplining his child. So why did he feel like he’d just been chastised?
“You thought you two would just show up here with her? Without letting me know?”
“No.” Her face solemn, she shook her head again. “We were going to run back fast and tell you before she got here so that you could make enough. Or at least, Justin was going to while I walked with her.”
His little mite thought of everything.
And was going to pose far more of a threat to his peace of mind than her brother ever would.
As though they were done with their conversation, she pulled out her chair and scooted her little body up onto it, her chin still only inches from the table.
He’d been against getting rid of the booster seats, but both kids had insisted when they’d started school that they were too old for boosters.
Spencer spooned batter onto the griddle, realizing too late that he’d turned it off before he’d left the house. He turned it back on, figuring it was good they weren’t going to have a professional chef joining them that morning.
He waited until Justin returned. The boy picked up his glass of juice and took a drink before sitting down.
“So... Tabitha.” He included both of them in his glance. “Did you and your brother purposely keep quiet as you came downstairs this morning?”
She nodded.
“And you snuck out the side door so I wouldn’t hear you leave.” It was off the laundry room. And rarely used.
She nodded again.
“You snuck out behind my back.” He stated the crime in clear terms so they were all on the same page.
This time he received two very solemn nods in
reply.
“You know that means you will be punished.”
Tabitha’s eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them away. Justin sighed and looked down at the table.
“We were going to go four-wheeling and fishing today. And visit the horses. Instead, as soon as we get back from town, you will be confined to the yard until bedtime.”
“Why we goin’ into town?” Justin asked, while Tabitha’s lower lip trembled.
“To get a dog. You two aren’t going to be free to roam alone anymore. You’ve betrayed my trust twice in one weekend and...”
“A dog?” Justin’s grin just about split his face.
“A dog!” Tabitha’s squeal might have hurt his ears if he hadn’t loved the happiness it embodied so much.
“Yes, a dog,” he said sternly. A watchdog. To watch his kids.
“Yippee!” Justin jumped up so fast his milk sloshed over the top of his glass.
The boy threw his arms around Spencer’s hips. Tabitha’s were already there. His little girl looked up at him, melting him with those eyes.
“Thank you, Daddy. You know, I really wanted a dog.”
“I wanted one, too,” Justin said. “I always wanted one. Didn’t I, Daddy?”
Spencer hugged his kids. But before he could answer the question, he heard a sizzle from the griddle. Had to tend to the pancakes.
“We’re getting a watchdog,” he said. “An outside dog. To watch the two of you. Every minute of every day.”
This was not a present for them. It was for him.
The rest of the day was going to be a punishment, just as he’d determined.
Watchdog. Yard arrest. Hot dogs on the grill. And that was it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NATASHA WASN’T SURE what she was thinking when she approached the box left at her private entrance at the Palm Desert studio on Tuesday. She and about twenty other people had keys to that entrance. It was well used.
But only by people with keys.
The box, left at that particular door, was odd.
Looking over the top of it as she drew closer, she searched for an addressee. Or sign of where the box had come from.
Found neither.
It looked like a box for moving books.
Nudging it with her foot to see how heavy it was, she jumped as it seemed to move again without her help. She stepped back. Heard scratching. Looked behind her in the mostly vacant parking lot. Workaholic that she was, she was often the first one in in the morning.
She thought about calling Angela. Or waiting for one of the two full-time janitors to arrive—building janitors, not the crew she hired specifically for her show.
“Meeooww.”
The sound was faint. Tiny. But when she recognized it, she stepped up. Opened the folded closure of the box top and peered inside.
Four tiny, wide-eyed, motherless kittens stared up at her.
“Meeooow.”
* * *
“WHAT ARE YOU going to do with them?” Angela, mouth open, stared into the box in Natasha’s office later that morning. She’d been in a meeting with their accountant, handling paperwork for the week’s contestant travel vouchers that she would personally disperse, when Natasha had come in that morning.
“The three gray ones are already spoken for,” Natasha told her assistant, quite proud of herself. She named the three studio personnel who’d claimed them.
“What about this little black guy?”
“I’m told he’s a girl.”
Angela looked at her. Back at the cat. And then at Natasha again. “You aren’t keeping her.”
She wasn’t. Of course. But...
She’d been off for weeks. Off her game. Off her...something.
It had all started the previous Thanksgiving, when one of her contestants had brought her four-year-old with Down syndrome to the set. He’d been such a happy little guy...bringing something...more...when he’d stumbled up on stage, brushed off his hands and announced that he was fine.
Then, in the very next segment of shows, there’d been the contestant who’d been searching for the son she’d given up for adoption. The drive compelling her, it had topped everything...
Her mother and Stan had broken up.
But she’d helped birth a calf. Bringing an animal into the world. It had felt so great...
“Of course I’m not keeping it,” she said aloud when she noticed her assistant staring at her.
Dressed in her usual flamboyant leggings and short, blousy top, Angela bent to the box and came up with the black kitten.
“Cats are the one pet you can leave alone at home for long periods,” Angela said.
Natasha was pretty sure she’d found a home for the last kitten.
“She’s cute.” Angela’s smile as she lifted the little black girl to her face confirmed Natasha’s suspicions.
Her assistant, who, like her, lived alone, didn’t usually show the softer side that Natasha knew lay carefully protected deep inside her.
But...
“I’m taking her,” Natasha blurted.
She’d find another cat for her assistant. Buy it for her.
Standing, she approached the woman and kitten, reaching out to give the tiny head a pet. She could buy herself another cat, too.
But this one...she’d rescued it. Kind of like helping to birth a calf...
Grinning, Angela handed the kitten over. “I had that one figured out when I came in the door,” Angela said. “I just had to nudge you enough to get you up to speed.”
Angela knew her well.
Maybe too well.
* * *
“...AND THERE’S THE meeting with the studio executives this afternoon at four in the upstairs conference room.” Still holding the kitten—Natasha had decided she was maybe going to name her Ellie after the mother of the calf she’d helped birth—Angela sat in the chair across from Natasha’s desk, going over the day’s schedule with her.
Her tablet on her lap, Angela had also discussed various technical issues from the weekend, the previous day’s interview she’d had with a new janitorial service that would charge half the amount to travel to the ranch with them, and a conversation she’d overheard between cohosts of a studio-owned relationship advice call-in show—Love Moments. They’d been arguing, and the future of the show, according to Angela, didn’t look good.
“By the way.” Angela looked up from her tablet at Natasha. “How’d your dinner with Chandler Grey go the other night?”
“Fine.” She described the new restaurant they’d been to. Indian cuisine. “You know how much I love saffron,” she said.
“I meant Chandler, not the food.” Angela’s droll tone left Natasha in no doubt of her assistant’s intolerance for obvious subterfuge.
“Fine,” she said again, shrugging. Maybe Lily instead of Ellie. Though raven-black, the little girl looked like a Lily to her. “He just wanted to hear how the first week went, busing everyone, the taping, since it’s the first we’ve been out of the studio. If you remember, he was really encouraging when we first told him we were taking a show on the road.”
“He could have learned all about it with a phone call.”
“I guess. I think he was going to offer some of the studio’s equipment if we needed anything more. They do remote filming all the time.”
“Again, a phone call could have done that.”
“He’s not into me, Angela.”
“Of course he is.”
“He was circumspect in every way.”
“Did he walk you to your car?”
“We walked to our cars together. He didn’t so much as brush a hand against mine. And said good-night as he was walking away.”
Frowning, Angela cocked
her head. “He’s into you. I just think you should know that.”
Angela wasn’t teasing now. So...maybe there was some truth to her stage manager’s assessment. Angela’s quick mind, her ability to assess situations in seconds, was part of what made her invaluable to the show.
But whether she was right or not was irrelevant as far as Natasha’s feelings were concerned.
Because one thing was quite clear to her.
She most definitely was not into Chandler Grey.
Separated or not.
* * *
BY THE TIME he’d put his kids on the school bus Tuesday morning, Spencer was ready to ban the name Natasha from the ranch. It would be against the law to speak it. To write it. Even to think it.
He was coming up with a punishment for the kids in the event that they broke this law—ranging from no cookies for a week to having to make a list of every animal name on the farm, and then move on to people if necessary—when he realized that he was, perhaps, overreacting.
Still, the tension the name wrought within him was real. And for a valid reason.
His kids had talked of nothing but the television producer since she’d invaded their premises—their home—for dinner the previous Friday night.
It wasn’t good for them to get too attached. Because while she’d be spending a good bit of time on the ranch over the next five weeks—ample time for the children to begin to rely on her in their lives—she was going to be completely gone after that.
Natasha Stevens was a city girl. He’d seen his children through one city-girl abandonment, luckily with reasonable success. He wasn’t taking that chance again.
“Woof!” Heading up the drive on his way to meet Bryant in the cow barn—he had another pregnant cow ready to go—he turned, looking at the back door of the house—the sliding glass door that led to the deck. And inside to the crate pushed up to the window by Justin just before he left for school.
Because the day before, when left alone for hours, the dog inside had managed to get her snout through the kennel bars and chew a hole in the drywall.
The Cowboy's Twins Page 6
