The Cowboy's Twins

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Four minutes assuming there were no glitches. Some lighting changes were happening behind the scenes. For the final airing, he’d been told, commercial messages would be dubbed into the break.

  For Spencer’s part, his job was to stand and wait for Natasha to come back to his side and walk on stage with him. So he stood.

  And with so much time on his hands, he thought about, for the return journey, lacing his fingers through hers rather than the generic hand clasping she’d instigated on the way off.

  She was paying him for spice.

  And he was a man who always earned his keep.

  * * *

  NATASHA WAS MORE than sixty seconds late. Not a big deal considering they weren’t live. But every member of the crew present stared as she slipped into her place beside Spencer. Angela, who was calling the show, gave her a pointed look, a raised brow as though asking if everything was okay.

  Natasha turned away from the curious glance. “Tabitha’s with Lori,” she said hurriedly, putting her game face on as she waited for their cue. “She’s in show riding clothes, white leather, red blouse, white boots...” Like Natasha’s, the little girl had proudly pointed out, sticking the tiny boot out for inspection. “And in seventh heaven,” she added.

  Why wasn’t Angela calling them? Glancing over, she saw her assistant still watching her. She’d forgotten to give her nod, signifying that she was ready.

  Rectifying the situation, she said, “She’s absolutely adorable.”

  Angela gave them their cue, which would afford them time to get into place at their podium on stage before the contestants filed from the green room for introductions. Spencer linked his fingers with hers.

  She took that as a sign of his approval of her as a friend for his daughter.

  * * *

  ONCE THE CONTESTANTS were on stage, Spencer was to remain there with Natasha until the show’s end. If, during these taped segments, he needed to leave for any reason, there was a small gap in the set where he could do so—and then return the same way. Contestants could also leave the stage via the fake wall without disrupting filming.

  “So tell me, Spencer, how do you think this city girl did last week when you woke her in the middle of the night to birth a calf?”

  The words weren’t on the teleprompter. The look she gave him told him exactly what she was doing. Showing him that not all city girls were alike. Or something like that.

  His spine tightened up. He was not going to start wanting things he would never have. No, to the contrary, Spencer Longfellow lived his life grateful for his blessings. His kids. The ranch.

  But...he was a guy...on national television.

  “You surprised me,” he said, giving her a look that was more about physical attraction than cows—letting her wonder, if she chose to, what else he might be thinking.

  For their audience, of course.

  “So...” She grinned at the camera and then turned that look on him. “You’re admitting that a city girl can fit in on a ranch if she has a mind to.”

  The lights were making his blood too warm.

  They should have stuck to the script. He was going to put that forward as a condition of his continued cooperation. Maybe.

  While he didn’t like squirming, he kind of liked being playful, for once in his life, because it was all an act.

  “I’m admitting that your performance the other night was...pleasantly surprising.”

  Suddenly he wasn’t talking about cattle. It was the night before. And they were back on his old man’s truck. The way she’d talked to him, like they were equals, like she was talking to him simply because she enjoyed doing so...

  “And with that, we’re moving back to...”

  With complete professionalism, Natasha broke the moment. The cameras cut away. And they weren’t smiling at each other anymore.

  Most of the time, unless Natasha was parrying with him, his job was to appear avidly interested in the cooking going on in the eight kitchens, arranged in two sets of four, on either side of the stage. While a camera remained on him at all times, only small clips of that footage would be used as the final show aired that evening. So he watched the cooks. And waited for his next cue.

  Trying his best to ignore the woman standing so close he could smell flowers with every move she made.

  So he noticed when she turned off her mic.

  “What do you think?” Natasha asked, leaning toward him, her hand by her mouth, her gaze on the eight chefs trying to work their magic. To the camera, she could have been whispering about any one of the contestants.

  He wanted to appear macho. Nonchalant. He grinned. Turned of his mic. “I think it’s a hoot,” he told her. “I had no idea so many people did so much work for a one-hour show.”

  “You’ve seen only a glimpse of it,” she told him. Her glances were not for him. Or on him. Her smile didn’t fit the words, either. She had her TV face on all the way.

  He missed the woman who’d been sitting on his truck the night before, asking him to play a song for her.

  But knew that the woman before him, reality TV star and producer, professional chef Natasha Stevens, was the real her.

  “No one’s going to believe there’s something going on between us,” he told her—mostly for his own benefit.

  Dumb of him to think about her as a woman at all. She was his business partner. But as the show played on, as the mics went back on and he continued to trade lightly flirty banter with his cohost, he tried to think of her only with the respect and affection that came with the hope for financial remuneration.

  And nothing more.

  “What do you think of Chef Tammy?” Natasha was leaning in, her mic off again. His gaze traveled along the eight chefs before them. No name tags. Five were women ranging in age from twentysomething to sixtyish.

  He’d introduced all five of them, leaving the male contestants to Natasha. He’d read the women’s bios on camera for national television. He read. He hadn’t paid attention to who was who. “Which one is she?”

  Her grin could have been deprecatory. Or pleased. With that fake TV smile plastered on her lips, he couldn’t be sure she’d really grinned at all.

  “The blonde. Stage right, kitchen three.”

  Thankfully he was better at retaining directions than names. Tammy. The twentysomething. She was tall, leggy. Wore her jeans like a pro. Her big, glitzy belt buckle could have been merely an accessory, but he didn’t think so. It looked like the result of a national win.

  And he remembered. “Miss Rodeo Kentucky.”

  “Right.”

  He watched her dicing several different vegetables, one after the other, with perfect precision. “She seems to know what she’s doing.”

  Natasha had offered him the chance to watch the previous week’s taped interviews as a way to familiarize himself with the contestants. He’d found no point in the time suck. He didn’t need to know any of them. He just needed to be able to read from the teleprompter.

  “I was asking what you thought of her as a woman. She’s single. A cowgirl. Right up your alley.”

  So much about the statement offended him. She thought he needed a matchmaker? Like he couldn’t find a perfectly suitable woman on his own?

  It was completely unprofessional of her. She might have even violated some workplace sexual harassment law.

  Her mic back on, Natasha gave a softly spoken tutorial of reducing wine in a shallot sauce—describing the actions of the chef in stage left, kitchen two. Chef Michael, he heard her say.

  Was Natasha under the impression Spencer was developing an interest in her? Was that why she’d been trying to pair him up with the pageant queen? If he’d even remotely given her that impression, he needed to set things straight.

  “I was toying with the idea of som
e banter between the two of you,” Natasha said, still smiling toward the contestants, her mic off again. “Ranch owner and rodeo queen...”

  He glanced Tammy’s way.

  Natasha hadn’t been warning him off?

  Had he let on that he cared that she had been? Because he didn’t really care. About her or what she thought. At all.

  His life’s plan showed all signs of growing quite nicely.

  Giving her a quick glance, he was startled to find her watching him. He watched back. They hadn’t gone over this eventuality.

  She blinked. He felt like her lashes had brushed against his heart.

  “Whatever you think is best,” he said, panicking for a second that something was wrong with him. That the woman had some kind of powerful effect on him.

  She nodded. And moved immediately into a little rehearsed ditty distinguishing feed corn from sweet corn. He hadn’t even seen her take her mic live.

  Anything that might have transpired between them had clearly been his imagination. He was in full control. He reminded himself to look hunk-like for the camera. He really didn’t care whether or not Natasha Stevens found him attractive.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “...AND I HOPE very much that Daddy will not make me eat dinner because I am too full...” Tabitha’s big brown eyes, only slightly accented by stage makeup, were solemnly serious as her face covered Natasha’s television monitor.

  During the taping of Tabitha’s tasting, she’d asked the little girl what she wanted most in the world, an interview question she’d used many times to give her viewers a sense of connection with the young judges.

  She, Angela and Damon, her top video editor, were piecing together the day’s show in a makeshift sound room set up in the back corner of the Family Secrets barn on Longfellow Ranch. The quick turn from taping to on-air was something they had down to a science in their Palm Desert studio.

  And the aspect she’d worried about the most when they’d made the decision to take the show on location.

  It was now something they were going to have to get used to, to meet the contingencies of the new contract she’d signed Friday morning before heading to the ranch. Three-quarters of their shows would now be done this way if she was going to continue to have a firsthand part in the process.

  They would put the footage in their cloud, accessible by a crew in the Palm Desert studio who could produce the final show.

  She wasn’t ready to give up control of that process.

  The edits, the choices of what to include and what to delete from the show—that was the art of what they did. Those choices defined the entire viewing experience of the show. Defined the show itself.

  “I want this shot,” she said, sitting back for Damon to take note of the Tabitha frames she’d highlighted.

  Spencer and the kids had left a couple of hours ago. She’d seen them walk out together. And then she’d gone to work.

  Which was as it should be.

  As she wanted it to be.

  So why, when she left the barn studio that evening and saw a pickup pull into the lot, saw a woman get out and approach the big house, did she suddenly feel bereft?

  * * *

  HE’D HAD THE idea to invite Jolene to watch the show with them about halfway through the taping. Pretty much right after Natasha had asked him what he thought about Miss Rodeo Kentucky, if he recalled it right.

  So certain that it was the right course of action, he’d actually slipped off stage during the second half of the show, just long enough to make a call and put the plan into motion.

  That was him—the man who put plans into motion.

  Because what he didn’t do didn’t get done. It wasn’t like Spencer had anyone else to rely on to take care of his business.

  Or the kids’ business.

  Other than paid employees, that is. And they weren’t responsible for or involved in family affairs.

  Bryant and Betsy came close. But on holidays, they were with their own families.

  No, when it came to family, it was just him. Making a family for his children so they wouldn’t grow up to be thirty, almost all alone in the world.

  And while the evening could be deemed a success—Tabitha and Justin talked to Jolene when she spoke to them—he felt, as he tucked them into bed half an hour late so they could stay up and watch the show, that he’d somehow let them down.

  Or let someone down.

  Shaking off the unusual pessimism, he went back downstairs to play guitar with a woman who was never going to be more than a friend to him. She’d just told him so, in so many words. The spark wasn’t there. But she enjoyed her time with him. And would like to continue to see him.

  Sometimes the best marriages were ones between friends. Or so he hoped.

  If there were no false expectations, there would be no crushing disappointment, either.

  His plan would work. Maybe with Jolene. Maybe not. But it would work.

  Before he went to bed that night, he read the online profile that had been sent to him. He didn’t respond. But remained hopeful that there would be others.

  Just in case.

  * * *

  NATASHA LEFT THE ranch Saturday night. She’d packed clothes for Sunday. Had figured she’d see the kids in the morning, as both had mentioned that they’d gone looking for her before breakfast the week before.

  The white pickup truck in the drive Saturday night had changed her mind.

  Not that it bothered her. She just didn’t want to intrude.

  As Spencer had tried to tell her, his kids needed stability. Someone they could bond with, who would be around all of the time for them.

  She was the great-aunt. There for a minute and then gone.

  Still, as she worked all day Sunday and then started her week, she felt...incomplete. As though she’d left something important undone.

  She hadn’t. She knew that. And pressed forward. The times she thought about calling Spencer Longfellow, even going so far as to make up a business excuse to justify contacting him, she didn’t do so. Instead, she talked to Lily. When she was home with the kitten. And talked to Angela at work.

  About work. With a new year coming and two other off-site studios to create, she had more than enough to do. By Tuesday she and Angela had flights to six different cities in six different states scheduled for the month after the ranch segment finished.

  They were starting off in places with television studios that already had kitchens in place. New York. Nashville. Orlando. New Orleans. Chicago. And, interestingly enough, Anchorage, Alaska. A lot of local stations hosted cooking shows. Family Secrets would just have to expand sets from one kitchen to eight.

  Or...as they had at Longfellow Ranch, they could build their own set. But only if the space was one they could use for multiple years.

  Tuesday afternoon, she met with her accountant. And then her lawyers. She had paperwork drawn up for a four-year contract with Longfellow Ranch to the specifications she and Spencer had discussed. The contract she’d signed with the studio was for four years. It was good business to keep things simple.

  And Wednesday morning, when normally she would have been at the studio, she left Angela to manage Family Secrets business, got in her SUV and drove out to the ranch. If Spencer wasn’t there she could leave the contract for him—give him time to have it vetted by his own lawyers, then sign it and have it notarized, so she could take it back to the city with her that weekend.

  She could have mailed it. He could deliver it to her by return mail. But she wanted to look over the studio. She’d had it designed by an architectural firm that specialized in professional kitchens, but they’d cut corners, thinking that the space would be used for only six weeks. Most of the equipment was there on lease.

  If they were going to ma
ke the arrangement permanent, she’d need changes. And wanted a chance to look things over herself, in complete quiet, before engaging in the rounds of meetings that would need to take place before any work could begin.

  After the current segment, of course.

  But with the amount of time these things took, she couldn’t get started too soon.

  She thought about calling Spencer—several times—as she drove. Even picked up her phone when she reached the little town closest to his ranch.

  Instead, she found herself searching for a white pickup truck. With Longfellow Ranch mud on its tires.

  As if she’d ever be able to distinguish that.

  She didn’t need to see Spencer. If she called, he’d think he had to stop what he was doing and come find her.

  By their current agreement, she had rights to the studio barn at all times during the six weeks she’d rented it. She’d go straight there.

  And if she saw him, she saw him.

  If not, she’d leave the contract at the front door. Or maybe with Betsy...

  She could always mail it from town...

  Longfellow Ranch came into view before she’d made her final decision on what she’d do with the contract if she didn’t see Spencer. Turning in to the main drive, she felt confident that her normal work attire of pants, pumps and contoured blouse would attest to the fact that she wasn’t planning to spend time with a rancher on a ranch. That she was there as part of a regular workday.

  About to take the turn that would lead her directly down to the studio barn, rather than driving the long way that would first take her by the ranch house, she changed her mind at the last minute.

  Was that a town car at the main house? The vehicle was definitely black. And expensive-looking. Hoping there was nothing wrong, she drove slowly past. Thought about stopping in with the contract, but didn’t.

  If there was a problem at hand that she needed to know about, she or Angela would get a call.

  On their business line.

  She spent an hour at the studio, roaming around, getting the feel of the space, trying to focus and “flow,” before she admitted to herself that she was there to see Spencer. Just to get him to sign the contract.