“You don’t deal with children much, do you?”
“If you’d let me—”
“There’s no way a seven-year-old is going to figure out what constructive criticism is. Even Tabitha would make herself sick trying, and then burst into tears...”
“I don’t deal with children much, no,” Natasha said, surprised to feel a grin coming on. “Angela usually handles this end of things. But if you’d let me finish, you’d have heard me say that our kid judges never say negative things to the contestants. If they like what they eat, they say so. If they don’t, they say why only if they want to. Their feedback is presented in such a way that the child is only teaching the chef about what kids like and don’t like. They’re doing them a favor, not criticizing or being mean.
“They don’t even know whose dish they’re judging. They’re given their own plate with all four dishes in separate compartments, marked simply A, B, C, D. They have to indicate which ones they like, which ones they don’t like. And which two they like best. If they don’t want to speak beyond that, they don’t have to.
“Three choices about each dish. The contestants can see them eating. Can see the expressions on their faces as they taste the food. I might not spend a lot of time with kids, but I do remember being one...”
He was watching her lips, a peculiar light in his eye.
And then he smiled.
“What?” she asked, though she’d been smiling, too.
“You’ve saved my bacon.”
Now she frowned. “How’d I do that?”
“I had no idea how I was going to break it to my kids that I’d changed my mind. Now I don’t have to.”
Her negotiating skills had always been good.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SPENCER DREW THE line at a trial makeup run. Natasha had stressed that her technicians needed to get his lighting right. He figured if they were professionals, they’d adjust. He had work to do as soon as he finished in the temporary studio, and he was definitely not going anywhere without showering after having makeup on his face.
He stood at her podium. Read from the teleprompter. Found that apparatus kind of amazing—made of some nearly invisible acrylic, he could look through it, see crew members in the audience and yet also see the words he was supposed to say as though he wasn’t reading them.
For that day’s purposes, he didn’t have to read any actual lines. That would come later, after lighting and voice checks. Then they would make certain he knew what he was doing and could actually pull off the show.
Natasha was...impressive. With a firm voice that was somehow also kind, she was all business. Though she considered and took suggestions, there was no doubt that she was the boss and that everyone knew it.
There was also no doubt that her staff loved her.
And that she returned the affection.
On set, she glowed. Even when the stage lights were off. She exuded confidence—in front of the camera and in the audience, too.
She wasn’t just working. She was doing what she loved.
Made him antsy to return to his cattle. To brand and repair fences. To get on a horse and ride his ranch. He didn’t ranch just because he’d inherited the family business. He ranched because he loved it.
“She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?” Angela, whose low-cut top, short skirt and high boots didn’t attract his eye nearly as much as Natasha’s covered skin, pointed toward her boss.
“She’s good at what she does,” he said, waiting on the side of the stage for a technical problem with one of the cameras to be resolved. Felt odd to stand around while others worked.
Like he was somehow...less.
“You have a girlfriend?” Angela was watching her boss. But he felt the intensity of her question.
Was she hitting on him?
“No,” he said. Natasha was in conversation with her head camera operator. He thought of Jolene. Of the online dating profile he had yet to explore. “Maybe. Yes.”
He was pretty sure the show host wouldn’t be pleased about her assistant talking him up.
Angela’s chuckle brought his gaze back to her in time to see her looking between him and Natasha. “Which is it, cowboy? Yes or no?”
Detecting definite flirtation in her tone, he prepared to extricate himself politely, yet he didn’t feel any vibes coming off her toward him.
“It’s...complicated,” he told her. Why not just say yes? He might not have chosen the woman yet, but he was firmly on the marriage plan.
But until the woman had agreed to his plan, it seemed a bit presumptuous to spread the news.
“You committed to anyone?”
She hadn’t made eye contact. Or moved closer to him. None of the usual flirt tells.
“My kids.”
The stage manager opened her mouth as though about to say more, but Natasha called out to her, and she was off.
Leaving Spencer to watch the boss lady without anyone to notice or make anything of it.
* * *
NATASHA WAS SURPRISED, and maybe a tad bit disappointed, when Bryant’s wife, Betsy, brought the kids to the studio Friday afternoon for their appointment with her.
Part of her agreement with Spencer was that the kids be treated like employees. That they understood they were doing a job for which they would receive pay.
Coming up with a contract for them to sign had been Angela’s idea over lunch. She’d delivered the finished product to Natasha’s makeshift desk in what was normally some kind of tack room but had been cleaned out for her use.
She’d hoped to show it to Spencer—okay, hoped to please him with the seriousness with which she was taking this situation—but instead she showed it to Betsy, asking the younger woman for her approval first.
With the document only two lines long, in words both kids could read, there wasn’t much to approve. The point was in having them sign their names to their promise to do the job they were being paid to do.
“This is good,” Betsy said, with a quiet, well-groomed child on each side of her.
For the first time, Natasha doubted her plan to include the twins in her show. All of her other judges had agents—a prerequisite to doing the show. And contracts through them. They all had prior time in her studio, watching the show. “Do you kids want to do this?” she asked.
Neither of them had so much as said hi. Or smiled. Justin hadn’t fidgeted. They both looked at Betsy to answer her question.
Maybe she’d miscalculated. What did she really know about children, after all, except what she could remember about being one?
Kneeling down in the dirt, she met each one eye to eye.
“Do you want to be a judge on my show?”
“Heck yeah!” Justin put a fist up in the air, just missing Natasha’s nose.
“Tabitha?”
“I do want to judge,” the little girl said.
“It’s just...you don’t seem very happy being here. Not like you were before.” She included them both in her gaze.
Justin’s look in his sister’s direction, as though asking her what to do, caught at Natasha in a way she’d never have believed could happen.
The little boy might treat his sister like an irritating bug sometimes, but obviously there was a lot more to the pair’s relationship than she’d seen.
“Daddy said that when you work for someone, you can’t be a friend,” Tabitha said. Clearly. With a little-girl inflection on the very adult words.
Natasha looked up at Betsy, who shrugged, and then back to the kids. “So that’s what this is about? You not telling me hello? That’s why you don’t seem to be happy here?”
Justin’s nod was as exuberant as his air punch.
“I telled him about Bryant, though,” Tabitha said, puffing up with
importance. She looked at Betsy, grinned when the jeans-clad woman smiled at her, and then turned back to Natasha. “Bryant is Daddy’s worker and his best friend.”
Hiding a wide grin of her own, Natasha had to ask, “And what did your daddy say to that?”
Maybe it was wrong, putting his kids on the spot, encouraging what could be construed as disloyalty to him. And yet...
As he said, she was paying them to work for her. And their personalities were a huge part of why she’d hired them.
“He said, ‘That’s different. Good night, sleep tight.’” The solemn look on Tabitha’s face implanted itself on Natasha’s heart.
Betsy turned away, presumably to hide another smile. Natasha wasn’t feeling amused anymore. Why didn’t Spencer Longfellow want her to be friends with his children?
Why did that hurt her feelings?
“Well, if you’re both absolutely certain that you want to do this job, then please take a seat.” She indicated two folding chairs in front of her desk.
One miniature cowboy boot clunking against the leg of the card table serving as her desk, Justin took the seat closest to the door, leaving Tabitha, in jeans, a Western shirt and tennis shoes, to walk around him to the other seat, with Betsy standing behind them. Natasha took an identical chair on the other side of the table.
“Now.” She folded her hands, placed them in front of her and leaned forward. “First we’ll talk about the job. Then, if you still want to do it, I’ll have you each sign your official contract, and you’ll be workers, okay?”
They both nodded.
And she hired them.
* * *
NATASHA DEBATED, FRIDAY EVENING, whether or not she was going to stay alone in her cabin or act upon a very strong desire to seek out the rancher she was going to have to share friendly on-air chatter with the next morning.
Angela’s script had them trading some verging-on-sexy banter. She had them flirting. In a family viewer kind of way.
The cowboy and the television star. She got it. Was used to playing her part—the professional chef turned reality TV show host.
There was just nothing in any of it that explained why he didn’t want her around his kids. Had she made some horrible faux pas?
Ultimately, it was the fact that she was so bothered that propelled her toward the main compound—and the big house—just after eight. She’d waited until after dinner—telling herself she couldn’t possibly be disappointed she hadn’t been invited to dinner a second time since she hadn’t expected to be.
She waited until after the kids’ bedtime.
She put on her new cowboy boots—red again—because she needed practice walking in them. In clean skinny jeans from one of her favorite designers and a red button-down shirt, she pretended she was taking a casual stroll as she went looking around at some of the other cottages. Most were inhabited by her crew but vacant for the evening as they were in town again. She looked for lights in the distance beyond them, something to break up the darkness, found none.
She’d heard that Ellie and her calf had been moved back out to pasture. One for lactating cows and their young. That half a dozen other cows had given birth the past week. She’d heard about the pasture filled with cows Spencer had specifically chosen to mate with one of his prized bulls.
She’d heard that cows were in heat every twenty-four days or so. More like a human cycle than a dog’s.
She’d heard it all from Betsy. They’d walked together toward her cabin earlier that evening. Betsy had been coming from dropping the kids off at the big house.
The world was so silent, she could actually hear the breeze. Not a wind—she could hear that just fine at home—but a soft flutter of air that barely brushed her skin. As she walked closer to the house, the breeze was joined by what she thought was music. She couldn’t make out the song or where it was coming from, but as she drew closer, she made out the guitar. And the male voice.
Figuring she’d stumbled into the vicinity of a cowboy campfire someplace over by the bunkhouse, she slowed her step, enjoying the music.
She’d been to the best operas in New York. To every Broadway play of note, and off-Broadway shows, too. Her mother had bought them season tickets to the symphony for her thirteenth birthday.
She knew music. Loved it. Was often moved by it. Turned to it for solace. For company.
But she’d never been a country-music listener.
Close enough to hear the words now, she followed the story of a young couple who would see each other when the work was done. By the time the single crooner reached the last verse, she was standing still, listening as the male partner in that couple, now an old man, pleaded with his wife, who had just passed away, to wait for him...promising to be there as soon as his work was done.
Such simple words.
A simple tune.
And yet there she was, standing alone in the dark, with tears dripping down her cheeks.
* * *
SPENCER DIDN’T KNOW anyone was in the vicinity until he’d finished the song. One of his favorites. And the theme song for his marriage plan. He wanted that kind of forever. The kind where you and your partner were always there for each other.
And where you understood that a farmer had chores that would always need to be done.
The kind of relationship where there was also the understanding that loyalty and family were what mattered most in life.
The kind that honored affection and the pursuit of happiness more than the pursuit of wealth.
He could see Natasha in the distance. Used to the night sky, to his land and the vast California desert beyond it, he figured he could see much better than she could.
Not sure where she was going, and not wanting to draw her to his sanctuary—the old truck that had once belonged to his father and had sat for so long it had somehow become yard art—he held the guitar on his thigh with one arm draped over the top of the instrument.
He had more to work through, more lyrics to live as they slid by his lips, but they’d wait until he was alone.
Dinner had been nothing but talk of Natasha. Bath time, the same. Natasha this, Natasha that. He’d searched for ways to distract his children, to no avail.
Maybe he should have had Jolene over for dinner again. Had already put it on his calendar to issue an invitation to a woman for the following Friday night. Jolene or someone from online. Maybe he’d take the kids out to eat in town to meet her.
The television host—seeming to him like an invader from outer space—had changed course. Instead of the studio barn still far in the distance, she headed toward his house. She’d reach him first, at the far corner of the yard, sitting on the hood of his father’s old truck.
He could try to escape, to sneak around the side of the house before she’d seen him. He could sit very still and hope that, in the darkness, she didn’t notice him.
Figuring the second was the more mature option, he watched her approach. Only her outline was fully visible to him. The shape of her. The way she moved. All of it drew his eye. Fascinating him, like she was some otherworldly creature.
Her hair was down, long, curling around her shoulders before cascading down her back. Looking at it made his throat dry. So he stopped. Turned his gaze to the night sky. Searched for answers he’d never once discovered there.
But found peace in the constellations he could see so clearly. He knew every one of them, thanks to his father. Justin and Tabitha knew them, too. You could always find your way, the direction to home, if you knew where the Big Dipper was, his father had told him when he’d been no more than four. He’d never had cause to test the theory, but he’d passed it on to his kids just the same.
That was family. Tradition.
Kind of like Natasha’s show. Family secret recipes. The honoring of one of the most important
family traditions—the feeding of the family. Gathering for a meal.
“It was you,” she called.
He’d heard her getting closer. Just hoped that if he ignored her she’d move on past—thought maybe if he didn’t look at her, she wouldn’t see him.
Or, at least she’d have the grace to pretend she hadn’t.
But he’d known better. The second she’d turned toward his house, he’d known that she was seeking him out.
He just didn’t know why.
And half suspected he wanted it to be for something other than work.
They’d gone over everything they could possibly go over for the show the next day. From what Betsy had said, Tabitha was completely prepared for her short portion in the day.
His daughter had proven the truth of that by rehearsing all night. With Justin critiquing her.
“Play something else,” Natasha said, leaning her backside against the rusty bumper of the old truck. Her back to him, she crossed her arms, as though settling in for a concert.
Or a wait.
He strummed a few chords. Intending to end it there. He took a breath, readying to tell her he was done and heading in, to make some excuse, and caught a whiff of her. That seductive city-girl perfume.
He had no original tunes. Just his renditions of the tried and true. One came to mind. A song from the point of view of a woman, a cowgirl, watching as her man fell prey to the wiles of a city woman. She was watching from a distance as he charmed the other woman, noticing that she couldn’t do a two-step or shoot pool. The woman would never be able to do the things she could do—so, ultimately, he was never going to be happy. Driven by something deep inside him, Spencer began to strum the tune.
And then to sing it.
He had to put it out there. Had to make it known that she was all wrong for him.
So that he didn’t do something completely wrong and start liking her. He’d been down that road. Taken his kids with him.
His family wasn’t going to suffer another debilitating crash.
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