When he stood, too, she tensed a bit. In a not altogether horrible way. Except that that in itself was horrible.
She was not going to like this guy. He was as different from her as night was from day. And had made his dislike of her quite clear.
When he wasn’t busy being sweet.
“I’ll walk you back” was all he said.
“I know the way. It’s fine.”
“It’s dark. And your people aren’t back yet. Because we turned that part of the yard over to you, it’s pretty much deserted until they return. I’ll just see you to your door.”
Because she was, as she’d just acknowledged to herself, completely out of her element, she accepted his offer rather than take a more normal course of action and assert her independence.
She could hear voices in the distance and see lights shining from the bunkhouse complex. He’d said that they had a kitchen over there—which the ranch hands were responsible for keeping stocked—and that, depending on the season, he employed up to fifteen men in addition to Bryant. He was still running hay while he built his cattle operation and needed men skilled in both business ventures.
He’d already answered any lay ranch questions she might have come up with on their walk in the dark.
When her hand brushed his, she sidestepped. And he noticed. Maybe he’d been more on target than she’d realized earlier. The silence was getting to her.
She was undersensitized.
“Can I ask a personal question?” It was better than stumbling in the dark.
“Yeah. I might not answer.”
“What happened to Justin and Tabitha’s mother?” None of them had mentioned her all day. Even over dinner. They’d laughed and told her about some of their other cookouts. Told her about a time when they’d been having a picnic at a lake on their property—Spencer had inserted that it was just a pond—and Justin, who’d been standing on the shore, had seen a fish and had tried to catch it with his bare hands. He’d fallen into the water instead. It had been only a couple of feet deep, but that was when they’d both had to start swimming lessons. Every day. Until they could each make it across the small lake on their own.
They’d taken several steps since she’d asked her question. He hadn’t responded. As he’d warned he might not.
Her door was in sight. He walked her to the stoop. Waited while she took out her key.
“She left,” he said when she’d opened her mouth to say good-night.
“What? Who?”
“Their mother. They were two. And don’t remember her.”
“She’s never been back? She doesn’t come to see them?”
“Nope.”
She wanted to know why. In the worst way, she wanted to know.
But he wasn’t her friend. Wasn’t even a friendly acquaintance.
So she didn’t ask.
* * *
THE RESTLESSNESS PURSUING Natasha as Spencer walked away might have caught up with her once she was alone inside the cabin, except that her phone rang.
“Do you have any idea how long this stretch is in the dark?” her assistant said in lieu of hello.
“The same sixty miles it is in the daytime, I expect,” she said, grinning. Angela had a cryptic way about her, an almost impenetrable independent shell, but she was as hardworking and loyal as they came.
She was also fabulous at her job.
“It’s really dark.”
“I know. I drove it myself a couple of weeks ago, going the opposite direction.”
“You could have warned me.”
“I believe I did.”
“Yeah, well, you could have made me listen...”
Sitting in the rocker by the unlit fireplace, Natasha relaxed. Really relaxed. This was her life.
Angela was her “people.”
“How were things at the hotel?” she asked, knowing that she and Angela could just as easily have had this conversation in the morning when they met at Natasha’s cabin for an early breakfast. She’d invited Angela to stay with her. Her stage manager had opted to take a smaller cabin by herself, closer to the crew.
“Good,” she said. “Great, really. All eight contestants were at the cocktail party, and everyone was pumped up for the road trip.” While most of their crew had just gone into the small local town half an hour from the ranch, Angela had driven into Palm Desert. While there, she’d stopped by the hotel that had a contract with Family Secrets for contestant accommodation.
“The bus is confirmed for a nine a.m. pickup, which will have everyone here by eleven. We can give them the abbreviated tour of the ranch and have them on stage inspecting their kitchens by noon. The bus will be bringing the catered lunch. We should be filming segments by twelve thirty and have them out of here no later than two, which will have them back to the hotel around four, giving them a full evening to enjoy Palm Desert.”
They’d made it a condition of the show that contestants’ flights back home had to be Sunday, not Saturday evening as sometimes happened when they filmed in the Palm Desert studio.
They talked a bit more about the logistics of the next day’s events. About the interviews Natasha planned to do that would be a bit different from every other show’s because she wanted to tie the unique ranch setting in to something personal for every contestant. Something to convince viewers to root for each one. That was her job. To draw in the viewers who continued, after five years of watching four five-week segments a year, to make the show such an unexpected success.
Mostly she was talking to keep Angela awake, to keep her company, while she made the seemingly endless trek back across the desert.
She was talking so she didn’t think about being a city girl. About a rancher who didn’t like city girls. About two little motherless kids who’d loved her chocolate chip cookies. About the glob of peanut butter she’d cleaned up off the floor of the stage, and the smears off the counter, when she’d done her final walk-through just before dinner that evening.
Her mind wandered through all of those thoughts, though, as Angela ran through lists they’d both been over already for the first official event in their very first show on the road. Angela listed which crew members would be staying behind at the ranch Saturday night to clean up and ready the set for the first competition the next week.
“You’ve got dinner with Chandler Grey tomorrow night,” her assistant reminded her when they’d exhausted the next day’s details.
She’d shockingly forgotten about the business meal back home in Palm Desert with one of their cable network’s executives.
Her mind appeared to have taken a long trek away from home, out here on the ranch.
“I’m looking forward to it,” she said with real enthusiasm. She’d been away only for a couple of days, but it seemed like weeks. She missed the city. Missed her condominium.
Missed her usual unflappable calm.
“I think he has the hots for you,” Angela was saying now.
“He’s married.”
“Separated. I hear his wife was unfaithful.”
She still wasn’t interested.
“You haven’t been on a date in months.” Angela was really digging deep for conversation now.
While her assistant wasn’t in a committed relationship, either, she went out several times a week. Mostly