Yes. It felt fine. Right.
His plan was good.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NATASHA WORKED UNTIL midnight Wednesday. Making up for time away that morning. And getting ahead, too. She was up at five and in the office by six the next day, too, so she could finish up business. Her bag was packed and in the car. Arrangements were made for Lily.
With everything done, there was no reason not to head back to the ranch Thursday evening rather than lose valuable work time on Friday traveling across the desert. Spencer should have a signed contract for her. And she had work to do to make the barn studio a more permanent working space.
They’d need flooring and a real stage, not the wood-veneered metal breakdown one they were currently using. And she wanted a proper office.
Spencer didn’t know she was coming. She didn’t report to him. And didn’t want to create an expectation that could be difficult to maintain. If she was going to lease the right to the studio on his property, she needed complete autonomy.
And yet, as she made her way to the ranch, she thought about him and his kids. The sunset over the mountains in the distance was glorious, bathing desert growth in shadows and color. Still, it didn’t hold her attention as it once might have.
Nor did thoughts of the various contestants in the ranch segment. Normally she got to know her contestants like friends.
This time they were like pegs in a cribbage board. Necessary to the play, but otherwise anonymous.
The fact might have bothered her if she had the mental faculties to focus on it. Instead, she thought about... Spencer and his kids.
Had he told them they had a grandma who wanted to meet them?
Did he see the good in that for them? Aside from the danger of losing them to her. But he wasn’t going to do that. He’d marry. The kids’ home life would be secure, well-rounded. And they could have a grandma to spoil them occasionally.
Would her mother have spoiled any kids Natasha might have had?
She couldn’t see it.
Maybe because she couldn’t see herself with kids.
Pulling onto the ranch just after dark, she debated taking the road straight to the studio. Not because she planned to work there that night. But because then she could take the back way to her cabin without shining her headlights directly on the main house, disturbing Spencer.
Or letting him know she was there?
Mostly she wanted to avoid the sight of the white pickup truck parked out front...
The thought shocked her. Why would she care about that truck? She was the one who’d suggested Spencer get married.
She just hadn’t thought...
Well, what had she thought?
When no ready answer presented itself, Natasha turned her SUV toward the main house. She was going to tackle this problem just as she did everything else in her path.
Head-on.
* * *
THE TRUCK WASN’T THERE. Lights were on in the front room. And in the back, too, from what she could tell through the big front window.
School-night bedtime was still half an hour away.
And there was no town car in the drive.
Not that she’d expected there would be. The kind of threat Claire Williamson posed would be months in the developing.
Spencer would be married long before then. Nothing was going to unravel for this little family.
Not that it was any of her concern.
She slowed as she neared the house. Kids lived there. Daisy Wolf was puppy enough to be unpredictable. And she didn’t want to hurt anyone.
Still yards away, she saw the front door open, and a child came barreling out. Justin. What gave him away was how he tripped over his foot.
Tabitha was only one step behind her brother. “Natasha!”
She heard the kids’ happy hollers even with her windows closed.
Spencer wouldn’t want her to hurt his kids’ feelings by driving on past, so she pulled to a stop. Rolled down her window. But then got out.
Someone had to stop Justin from hurling himself into the darkness. She caught him, feeling his arms around her neck, holding him tight so they didn’t fall, before setting him back down. Tabitha’s arms around her hips came out of nowhere. She held on to the girl to steady them both.
She held on longer because she wanted that hug more than she’d admit.
She wasn’t a hugger. Never had been. This was unsettling.
“I been practicing every night, haven’t I, Tabitha?” The boy was jumping up and down beside them even before Natasha let Tabitha go.
“Yes, and he is pretty good,” Tabitha said, grinning. “But he doesn’t like lots of stuff,” she said, her expression serious. And then not as she asked, “You want to dunk doughnuts? We’re dunking doughnuts with Daddy.”
Natasha looked up. Spencer was halfway across the yard. His back to the lights coming from the house left his face in complete shadow, so it was impossible to tell what kind of mood he was in.
Or how displeased he’d be with her impromptu addition to family snack time.
“Natasha wants to dunk doughnuts, Daddy!” Justin said, his voice about three octaves above normal.
“She didn’t say that yet, Justin. Do you want to dunk, Natasha?” Tabitha tugged on her hand.
“It’s up to your daddy,” she said, knowing that putting the onus on him wasn’t the way to endear herself. But she wasn’t going to disappoint these kids. They were just too cute.
And the light in her heart they left in their wake was proving impossible to resist.
“You dunk, you eat,” Spencer said, reaching them. He didn’t sound mad.
So she joined them.
* * *
SPENCER COULDN’T TELL what Natasha was thinking when she discovered that his doughnuts turned out to be little O’s of oat cereal. When the twins had been little, the O’s had been a lifesaver pretty much every day. In the truck on the way into town, on a high-chair tray while he cooked dinner, sitting in front of the television set watching football...
Now that they were “grown up,” as Tabitha put it, they needed grown-up O’s. She’d been trying to get him to buy sugared cereal when she’d made the announcement.
He’d come up with a distraction meant to be a onetime thing that had escalated into a family tradition. The first time, he’d had her dunk her plain oat O into a blob of jelly he’d had on a spoon. That had evolved to evenings of finding different things to dunk into. They had their favorites, which he’d occasionally put out on the table in little bowls. The three of them would dunk while they did their homework. Or colored. Or had family talks.
That night he’d given them bananas that he’d put in the blender with milk. Some chocolate syrup. And a bit of Betsy’s strawberry jam.
The kids fought over who got to sit next to their guest. She put herself at the end of the table and had them sit opposite each other. He sat in his usual seat at the other end.
“You can’t lick your fingers and put them back in the bowl,” Tabitha explained as she leaned over the bowls of dunking sauces. “See, you do it like this...” She demonstrated how she dunked her O and then dropped it into her mouth without letting her fingers touch her lips.
“I do it like this.” Justin, on his knees on the chair and with both elbows on the table, leaned forward and grabbed a piece of cereal. He dunked it, dropped it on his paper plate and then hooked it with a toothpick, putting it into his mouth.
Spencer locked his lips together. His kids, especially Justin, took offense when they thought he was laughing at them.
“Now you try,” Tabitha said, pushing hair out of her face with the back of her hand. He was going to have to get that mop under control. No one on the farm cared if her hair was a tangled mess by the end of
the day, but there was no way he was giving Claire that image to take to court.
For fifteen minutes, Natasha played along with the kids. She dunked. She ate. And when her fingers automatically touched her lips, Tabitha, who always watched, caught her and made her go wash her hands before she could dunk again.
Eventually they remembered that Spencer was there. And made him dunk, too. He was happy to comply.
Happy, period.
Happier than he’d been all week.
Funny what a little dunking doughnuts could do for a guy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NATASHA GOT UP to leave when Spencer announced that it was time for the kids to go to bed. She would have been out the door, except that he asked her to wait for him. So she cleaned up the table and washed the few dishes in the sink instead.
Her kitchen in the condo was elegant and stocked with tools befitting a professional chef. It had been a long time since she’d had her hands busy in an ordinary home kitchen.
“You didn’t have to do those,” Spencer said, coming into the kitchen just as she was drying her hands. “But thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled at him. He smiled back.
“Oh...” he said after a long moment, breaking eye contact. “I wanted to give you this.” Pulling an envelope out of his back pocket, he handed it to her. “I was going to mail it but then figured, with you being here over the weekend...”
So it was official? They were a permanent team? At least for the next four years?
The kids would be eleven then. She’d get to see them mature...
“Your lawyer found everything in order?” she asked in lieu of ripping open the envelope and seeing his signature right there next to hers—which was what her baser instincts were telling her to do.
“Just like you described.” He nodded. Crossed his arms. Dropped them. Shoved his hands in his back pockets. Pulled them back out. Hooked his thumbs into his front pockets. And left them there.
“Good.” She smiled again. He nodded. And she remembered something she’d wanted to point out to him.
“Once you get married and things are settled with the kids’ home life, this whole Claire Williamson deal could turn out to be a good thing.”
He pulled his head back. And she figured she could probably have used a bit of finesse in introducing the topic.
“How so?” he asked when she was beginning to think that they wouldn’t be discussing the issue any further.
Or that she’d said the wrong thing and would now have to fight her way back into his good graces so she could spend time with the kids that weekend.
Not that she’d have any extra time.
But maybe... Friday evening...
“It’s just...if anything ever happened to you...” Family was a much better option for orphaned kids than a foster-care system that could be forced to split them up.
“The ranch would be theirs,” he said, frowning.
“I know, but...if they’re young...”
What was she doing? Talking to him about his death as though it were imminent?
He looked at her again. His expression cleared, and he nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Although they would have their new mother...”
“Unless something happened to her, too.”
His grin was incredulous. “You’re a real grim reaper, aren’t you?”
With a stomach doing flip-flops, she defended herself. “A responsible parent is ready for any scenario,” she said. And then, without thinking, she added, “My mother told me who my guardian would be in the event that something happened to her so I’d be prepared...”
At the time it had been a friend of her mother’s from college. Later, when the woman had married and moved to Texas and they’d drifted apart, it had been another judge. A woman her mother was still friends with.
“How old were you?” Spencer’s glance was...inquisitive. As though he was seeing more than she was showing him.
“Eight.”
“And you were okay with that?”
“No. Not at first. I worried like crazy about not having family of my own. But I got over it, and then I was fine with it.”
Except that she’d still, on occasion, wished her mother would fall in love and get married.
She’d thought Stan was the one...
Was that why she’d been so upset when her mother had broken things off with him?
She dismissed the idea.
But could feel its lingering presence all the same.
“I was six when my father was killed.” His words pulled her out of herself and back to the Longfellow Ranch kitchen.
“What happened?” she asked, standing there in the middle of the kitchen, facing him. She wouldn’t have minded sitting down. But didn’t want to take a chance that if she moved, he’d see her to the door instead.
Or quit talking to her. Spencer Longfellow was one private dude.
“Crop dusting accident,” he said. And then turned around, leading the way out of the kitchen, through the living room, to the front door. “It’s dark out there at night,” he said, using his head to motion toward the front yard. “I’ll walk you out.”
She had no workable choice but to follow. Still, there was more she wanted from him. What, exactly, she wasn’t sure. She just didn’t want to leave yet.
“You’re right, you know,” he said as he waited for her at the bottom of the front porch steps and started slowly across the yard. “It will be good for the kids to know that they have family outside of me and their home here. Added security. It’s good for me to know that.”
Good. She was glad she’d been of help. She nodded. Took a few steps in her heels in the soft grass.
“Have you talked to your...prospective wife...since Claire was here?” She’d thought of little else the night before. Until she’d put her foot down and forbidden herself any more time spent on the topic.
“Jolene? She was here last night. For dinner.”
Natasha’s heel caught in the dirt. She stumbled. But before she could lose her balance, Spencer had a hold of her elbow. Kept his hand there as they continued the trek to her SUV. “How’d it go?” she asked.
“Okay.”
She stopped. Looked up at him. Noting that he still had a hold of her arm. “You can be really infuriating, you know that?”
“What?” he asked, frowning again. She thought. In the darkness, she couldn’t be sure. “What’d I do?”
“Okay,” she imitated him. “What’s okay?”
She felt as much as saw his shrug. “Okay’s okay,” he said.
“Did the twins have a good time?”
“They didn’t have a bad time.”
“Did she seem happy to be with them?”
It was really none of her business. But she’d do the same for one of her crew members, even though their personal lives were out of her realm of concern.
“Yeah. She really wants them to like her.”
Of course she did. If she wanted him. And what woman wouldn’t want the sexiest, most handsome cowboy in the state?
No, wait, that was Family Secrets speak. Still, the way Spencer filled out his jeans and his denim shirts, the way his hair covered the top of his brow and his eyes glowed with emotion...
Well, of course Jolene would want his kids to like her.
“Did you tell her about Claire?”
“No.”
Natasha wanted to be surprised. Instead, she felt kind of special, sharing something intimate with him.
“Did you tell the kids?” She’d been thinking about that all day. And hadn’t been able to make herself stop.
“Absolutely not. Not until I have a solid plan.”
“I meant about Claire.”
“So did I.”
But... “Are you sure she’ll give you enough time to...?”
“I told her to give me some time to think about it, and I’d see if we could work something out.”
They were standing in the dark. His hand on her arm. Their faces inches apart. She couldn’t really see into his eyes, but she was completely aware of the emotion emanating from him. Or between them.
As he told her far more than he had the morning before.
Because he was warming up to her? With the contract between them, would he finally start to trust her as a friend?
Why it mattered so much, she had no idea. It wasn’t like Natasha was hurting for friends. But...she’d been out of sorts lately.
It would pass. It always did.
* * *
“YOU LIED TO her to buy time,” Natasha was saying, a note of disappointment in her tone. Or at least, as he heard it.
“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t lie. I hurt feelings before I lie. Or keep my mouth shut. Not that I wouldn’t lie to protect my kids, if I had no other choice, but...” What in the hell was he doing? Saying?
He sounded like a rambling idiot.
He had to get her to her car. Let her get on up the road to the life...work...phone calls...whatever...waiting for her. But he couldn’t let her go thinking he was a liar.
“I always take time to process any big decision,” he told her. “And right away I see that it would be better for the kids if I could somehow manage some kind of agreement between Kaylee’s mother and myself, rather than have her take us to court where the kids would have to testify.”
There. Now he could walk her the rest of the way to her car. As soon as she indicated that she believed him.
“You’re a good man.” Her words were no more than a whisper on the wind.
“I like to think so.” Lord knew he worked hard to be.
And yet...in that second, he knew he was about not to be. And there was nothing he could, or would...
The Cowboy's Twins Page 14