CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“YOU DISAPPROVE OF ME.” Natasha, leaning back against the grille of the truck, looked out into the night as Spencer’s song came to an end.
His choice of song—about a city girl not fitting into country life—had been deliberate.
“No.”
“You don’t like me.”
“I like you fine.”
“But there’s something wrong with me...”
It was cool if he didn’t want to know her any better, if he didn’t feel a curiosity about her equal to that she felt about him. But to think she wasn’t fit company for his children...
“Of course there’s nothing wrong with you.” He leaned on his guitar as he’d been doing when she’d approached. She could see him in her peripheral vision. And that was enough.
Spencer Longfellow emanated man. She was beginning to understand why the stereotypical cowboy character starred in so many marketing campaigns. If all cowboys were like him...
How he felt about her didn’t matter. Whether or not she saw Tabitha and Justin outside the studio didn’t matter, either. It wasn’t like their lives would ever cross again.
Unless the ranch became a permanent travel studio—one segment a year—based on new contract parameters requiring her to produce at least four segments a year, three of them off-site.
They’d already invested in building a studio on the ranch. If she could continue using it, she’d need to find only two more locations. Or maybe one more permanent and one traveling...
“Tabitha wants to meet Lily,” she said. Which would be difficult, considering that she wasn’t fit company for the child outside her role of boss.
“Your new kitten. Yes, I heard.”
“Your new puppy, Daisy Wolf, was out on the ranch with you this afternoon.”
“That’s right.”
“Justin was glad, because that meant he wasn’t being watched, and could he please have a turn up on the stage without anyone there like Tabitha had last week?”
“They went missing twice in a week.”
“Because of me, yes.”
“A dog will alert me to their whereabouts. And chase or fight off many of the dangers that could befall them. If she’s trained right, she’ll even pull them out of the creek if necessary.”
Someone should have made him father of the year. Seriously.
“I didn’t hear about Justin on the stage,” he said.
A fact that clearly bothered him.
“His time was brief.” She wasn’t going to say more. But wanted him to trust her with the twins. They were adorable. And seemed to get something good from her. “Turned out he wanted to see if the new wood was as slippery as it looked. He made one dash and home-base slide before he lost privileges.”
“That’s my boy.” His voice sounded like he was smiling.
“I handled the situation in an appropriate manner.”
“I have no doubt.”
“So why don’t you want me around them?” She turned to look at him then, examining his features in the night. Funny how her eyes adjusted to the darkness even without the help of city lights. It was almost as though she could see more out there, farther.
Spencer glanced at her, too. And then continued to hold her gaze. Assessing her?
Usually blessed with a pretty decent ability to read people, she couldn’t figure him out at all. Unfortunate.
“I don’t want them around you.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Not at all. I fully trust you to be with them, to keep them safe. I don’t want them to need you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They’re seven, Natasha. They throw their all into everything they do without thought of consequence or the future. You’re here on and off for six weeks and then you’ll be gone. Having you here is a great adventure for them. I don’t want them to get too attached and then be devastated when you leave and never come back.”
It was the “never come back” that got through to her. That, and the song he’d just sung. “Like your ex-wife.” Her softly offered words dropped loudly into the night.
“Yes.”
“Not every woman is like her.”
“City women aren’t made for ranch life.”
There was plenty she could say to that. Like...no one was “made” for just one thing. People changed and grew and evolved. But she got what he was saying. He had a point.
“I’m not made for ranch life,” she said, understanding so much. She’d never be content to live as he did, all day every day, or most days, on the ranch. She needed...more.
But this...interest...between them. It would never be more than something peripheral. Still...it could possibly be permanent. A friendship that formed and lasted a lifetime.
The idea pleased her.
A lot.
* * *
“I HAD THIS great-aunt growing up.”
Leaning on his guitar, Spencer had to hand it to the woman who, with two hands on the hood of the truck behind her, had boosted herself up to sit beside him.
He’d laid down the law about her and his kids—in essence gave her the kiss-off in general—and she was still happy to shoot the breeze with him.
It wasn’t a Friday night with his future wife. She wasn’t marriage material for him. These minutes were a waste in that he wasn’t spending them moving forward with his plans. But everyone needed time off now and then.
Natasha had said so that past week. During one of their phone conversations.
He’d insisted he took time off.
He was proving his point. That was all.
And she’d had a great-aunt...
“Your mom’s aunt, I’m assuming?” Since her father hadn’t played a part in her life.
“Yep. I never knew Mom’s dad, my grandfather. Aunt Grace was his younger sister who kept in touch with my grandma even after they were no longer technically family. I adored her.”
“Your grandma or your aunt?” She was talking about the aunt. He just liked messing with her.
“Both, actually,” she said, her tone genuinely affectionate. For a second there he envied the two older women who were probably both dead.
Until he realized that he was making no sense.
“Many of my favorite childhood memories are times when Aunt Grace was visiting.”
“She lived in Manhattan?”
“No.”
The old truck was so firmly embedded in the earth it had inhabited for decades that it didn’t actually move as she shook her head, but he felt as though it had.
“She lived in Florida,” she told him. “She’d come up a few times a year, weather permitting, to shop, see shows...and me. She’d take me shopping. I saw my first Broadway play with her. She slept in the other twin bed in my room, and we’d lie awake in the dark and tell secrets.”
He could tell by the tone of her voice that she was smiling. He smiled, too. “Sounds like a great set of memories.”
“They are. You have no idea how many times over the years I draw on them to lift me up. The first time I got dumped—” she turned to him “—I was thirteen and thought my world had ended...” With a shrug, she faced forward again.
Lost in wondering what kind of idiot had dumped her, he heard her say, “When I got passed over for a spot at a girls’ school I wanted to attend. The day my grandma died. The summer my best friend moved away. The night I had my car accident. I was nineteen and it was my fault...”
He realized she was listing bad times in her life...figured out, a little slow on the uptake, that she was talking about instances where the memories of her great-aunt had pulled her through. Still lost on her at thirteen and being dumped, he quickly tried to pick up
his pace.
Where had her car accident been? Had anyone—she—been hurt? How old had she been when her grandmother passed? He knew something about that kind of grief.
He’d barely started school when his father died.
What was her best friend’s name? How old had they been when she’d moved away? Did they stay in touch?
He and Bryant had been buddies for longer than they’d been alive apart...
“So... I think...that your kids are safe with me,” she told him. “I’m a city girl, yes. But I understand the value of loyalty and longevity.”
Everything about him froze. His body. His emotions. His thoughts. He was a statue, looking down on himself. Taking a time-out.
Just as quickly, and without warning, he was hit with a flood of...things that complicated his life. Messed with his plans. Played with what he knew to be true.
“I won’t leave them high and dry, Spencer.” It sounded like an avowal of love. A ballad.
He shook his head.
“As a matter of fact, I have a plan that could put that in writing...”
He studied her in the darkness, half thinking he’d just imagined those last words.
“I told you before, the other night on the phone, that I had another proposition, but you wanted to wait until we finished this first phase before you heard me out. The thing is...my situation has changed a bit, and I need to get a sense of whether or not you’d even be willing to consider my idea. I need to begin looking elsewhere immediately if you’re not interested.”
Business. She was talking business. Not marriage.
Or anything else remotely personal.
“I’m listening.” He said it to buy himself time until he could extricate himself from whatever hell he’d dropped into.
A hell that taunted him with whispers of heaven.
He listened as she told him about her station’s merger. About her need to host three-quarters of her segments off-site from the Palm Desert studio.
“Where will you live?” The first question out of his mouth made no sense in the context of the conversation.
He was still buying time, right?
“In my condo in Palm Desert,” she said. “My office will still be at the studio. It just means that for three of a season’s four six-week segments, my crew and I will be on the road...”
She continued to talk. He was glad to know Palm Desert would remain her home base. For the twins’ sake.
He could see potential for her to be true to her word where they were concerned.
And they were his only concern.
“...so you can see why it would be highly beneficial to me to have you as a permanent host,” she was saying when he fully tuned in again.
No. Wait. What?
“I’ve already invested in the studio. And it’s close enough to home to allow for easy midweek commuting. I’m willing to pass this savings from not having a long commute on to you,” she told him. And named a price—almost double what she’d paid him for her six-week invasion in his life.
His mind calculated it into the number of Wagyu cows he could purchase in one year. And the very few years it would take to grow a sizable enough herd to provide his heirs with financial security for generations.
“Then the twins would know, for sure, that I’ll be back.”
His heart rate increased. Uncomfortably. She was lovely.
He wanted her.
On his property. As a business associate.
And only for six weekends a year.
Once the agreement was in writing, he could focus on getting the rest of his life in order—on putting his marriage plan into motion—with no more distractions.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN SHINY BLACK skinny jeans, a black-and-white Western shirt with jeweled studs and white cowgirl boots, Natasha ran her fingers through her long auburn curls Saturday morning, taking one last look at herself in her makeshift dressing room.
Would Spencer like how she looked? She leaned in. She might be used to getting her own way. Obviously she was bossy. But she was also kind. And caring. Did that show in her eyes?
Hazel eyes gazed back at her. She knew the color well and had grown up hating its indecisiveness. They weren’t green. Or brown. And they didn’t show her much else, either.
“Natasha?” Angela had followed her makeup artist, Lori, out of the room. Natasha should have followed them.
“I’m coming,” she said, pressing her lips together to make certain that her lipstick was set. What did it matter how she looked to Spencer Longfellow?
He’d agreed to take a look at whatever business papers she had drawn up to solidify a yearly Longfellow Ranch segment of Family Secrets.
“Spencer’s asking for you.” Angela popped her head in the door, one of four, at the back of the barn they’d transformed. “He’s not saying so, but I think he’s nervous.”
“Where are the twins?” As long as Justin and Tabitha were happy, he’d be happy.
Besides, she wanted a word with them before she got too busy.
“Justin’s out front with Lionel, helping tape cords, just like you said.”
“And Lionel knows that he’s to keep the boy busy and then sit with him during the show?”
Their high school intern for the segment was a nice kid who was almost as energetic as Justin.
“Yep.”
“And Tabitha?” Natasha glanced around as she walked toward the front of the barn, looking for the little girl, for Spencer, but also noticing every other aspect of their operation: lights, staging, cameras, kitchens, the pantry where all shared ingredients were stored. She’d checked every kitchen herself early that morning. And the supply truck had just arrived and been unloaded, so she could personally ensure that all contestants’ ingredients matched the lists they’d submitted earlier in the week.
A couple of members of her staff smiled as she passed. Most were too busy to notice. Her people were hardworking. Focused.
And loyal, too. They were a family.
Her only family.
She loved them. They gave her the affection and respect due a matriarch.
“Tabitha’s in wardrobe,” Angela was saying. Spencer had insisted that the little girl wear one of her own dresses. Natasha had insisted that they’d find something for her in their stock.
Not because it was mandatory. Which she’d have told him if he’d asked. But he hadn’t. And she hadn’t said, because the day before, Tabitha had bounced in her chair when she’d heard she could choose her own “costume.”
“There you are.” Spencer came around the corner. Natasha nearly bumped into him. Reached out to steady herself by grabbing his arm.
And then held on too long.
She and Angela had made the decision to have the handsome rancher cohost his segment with her because they’d known he’d make viewers drool.
He wasn’t supposed to make her feel like doing so.
“Nice jeans,” she told him, stepping back to give him what she hoped was a professionally assessing look. He’d wanted to wear blue jeans—insisting that cowboys didn’t wear black jeans when they worked. Showed too much dirt and got too hot.
After she’d explained that he needed to be in fancier clothes for television, he’d agreed to purchase a pair of black jeans.
He looked like they’d been made on him.
His boots were black, too. And the black, white and red shirt—a masculine complement to hers—was the one Family Secrets had purchased for him. His chest left no spare fabric.
Tending to a question from their lighting crew, Angela moved out of earshot.
“I’m a rancher, not a television host.” Spencer’s delivery was a bit harsh. But she saw the uncertainty in those dark eyes.
&nbs
p; She hadn’t been able to find any hint of emotion in her own mirrored gaze...
“And that’s why you’ll be so appealing to our viewers,” she told him, smiling. Lori had applied the minimum of makeup, just as Natasha had specified. “You’re being paid to be yourself, Spencer. If I wanted a professional actor, I’d have hired one.”
His hooded glance, accompanied by a hint of a smile, sent tingles down her spine. Good ones.
“Are the contestants here?” His question gave no indication that he’d felt any frisson of his own. Or was aware that she had.
Call was still an hour away.
“Yes, they’re all in the green room.” The largest room the crew had constructed, it was on the other side of the barn and even had a linoleum floor.
“Natasha?” Angela called out to her and she had to rush off, but as she did so, she gave the cowboy’s hand a squeeze.
And felt him squeeze back.
* * *
HE NEEDN’T HAVE been concerned. There was no audience. The taping started and stopped as necessary for all kinds of adjustments—not one of them due to the rancher guest host.
Walking out with Natasha, standing with her at the podium, was a bit of a rush—in a temporary kind of way.
When she grabbed his hand, holding it as they walked off stage—something that had very definitely not been rehearsed—he almost missed a beat. Until he realized that she was just ad-libbing the part they were playing. Cooking show host having chemistry with rancher guest host.
A fact made more clear as she dropped his hand the second they were out of the camera’s view and rushed off without even a glance in his direction.
He was glad. The bit of a dip in adrenaline was due to the fact that he was off stage. Away from the lights, camera and action for a few moments.
He should have invited Jolene to the taping. The thought had never even occurred to him until that moment. Or maybe it would be a good first date if he liked the profile he read online. He’d get to it that weekend. Plenty of time to make plans before next week’s segment.
They had four minutes off stage before going back on to welcome the contestants to their kitchens. To introduce them with pre-scripted bios scrolling on the teleprompter.
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