Winter at Mustang Ridge Read online

  He winced. “Okay, then, it sounds a lot like being on a film crew.”

  Something must have come through in his voice, because she said, “Uh-oh. Did I hit a nerve? Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Just that something I thought was long-term didn’t turn out that way.” And, hey, look at that. He had a new candidate for understatement of the year.

  “Want to talk about googly eyes instead? Or maybe what disguises we should wear tomorrow to foil the Bingo Brigade?” Her tone conveyed sympathy as she offered him the easy way out.

  He surprised himself by not taking it. “Does this mean there’s no angsty filmmaker waiting for you back in Belize?”

  “The angsty ones don’t usually end up in reality TV. Or if they do, they don’t last long—you need a certain sense of humor to survive a group hot tub shoot—or for that matter, a one-on-one hot tub shoot. Which, depending on the one-plus-one, can be far worse than the group deals.” She paused. “Let’s just say it’s been a while since my last . . . well, whatever it was, and I’m not the sort of girl that a guy waits around for.” Her voice had gone more serious, as if she realized they were shifting gears a little.

  Keep it light, he reminded himself, and went with, “In other words, the guys you hang around with are idiots.”

  That got a laugh out of her. “Thanks for the compliment, but no, it’s not that. Some of them—most of them, really—are really cool. It’s more that everybody goes into things knowing it’s just for fun, gonna end, that sort of thing. Like a vacation fling. It’s better that way. Nobody gets hurt, nobody waits around, and nobody gets left behind.” She paused, voice going wicked. “Now, about those disguises we’re going to wear to dinner . . .”

  He chuckled. “I think we’re out of luck on the stealth-dating front—where Ruth is concerned, the cat’s already out of the bag, the horse is out of the barn, and the cows have come home.”

  “Sounds like roundup day here at the ranch.”

  “Except that we’ll be at the Steak Lounge. You still up for it?”

  “Drinks to dessert, Doc,” she vowed. “Drinks to dessert.”

  They talked for a few minutes more and then said their good-byes, lingering long enough that when Nick finally did hang up, he sat there for another couple of minutes, staring out the window and grinning like a fool. He hadn’t thought he was in the market, but it looked like he had found someone. And she was a heck of a someone. “Like she said, short-term, no harm, no foul,” he said to Cheesepuff. “I can do that.”

  The cat stood, stretched, and gave him a look of Really, dude? And then he did a one-eighty and sat on Nick’s sandwich.

  12

  Jenny spent Sunday morning finishing up the rough cuts on her mom’s video and getting started on the first of the Big Skye clips, and then rewarded herself with a trek up into the attic.

  The huge, wood-beamed space followed the peaked roof, angling down to crawl spaces on either side. Aside from a cleaning fit every decade or so, little had been done to keep the stuff under control for the past . . . well, Jenny didn’t have a clue beyond a really long time. Near the stairs, stacks of Tupperware tubs marked Kitchen had a couple of familiar pieces of bedroom furniture pushed up against them, where her mom had no doubt shoved them in her hurry to move on to bigger and better. Beyond that, Jenny worked her way past dusty layers of once-favorite toys, Archie Bunker furniture, and boxes labeled with things that had no doubt made sense at the time, like Spare pigs and Glow stuff. The old photos were about halfway back, stacked in boxes almost directly over Jenny’s bedroom. The two neat rows of three made it look like they were far more organized than they actually were, though—she had transferred the family archive from moldering shoeboxes to archival cases a few years ago, but hadn’t gotten any further in the filing department.

  She hefted the first two. “Well, gotta start somewhere!”

  Rex whuffed from off to one side, where he was sniffing around an old steamer trunk with a whole-body wiggle that suggested she shouldn’t look in there unless she was prepared to deal with whatever he was smelling.

  “Come on, buddy. Back downstairs.”

  His wheeled around. We’re going downstairs. Oh, boy!

  As he thundered ahead of her, tail going like a metronome, she could hardly believe he was the same dog she had lured with bratwurst up on the main road, or carried into the vet clinic. Had it only been a week? It seemed impossible, like too much had happened for so little time to have passed.

  He had already gained weight and a bloom in his coat, and his limp had smoothed out some. He knew when to be in the kitchen to mooch the best treats from Gran and when to sneak up onto the couch in the family room to score scritches from multiple people during TV time. And darned if it didn’t seem like he had been there forever.

  “All the way downstairs,” she said when Rex paused at her bedroom door. “We’ve got more work to do before we call it a day.” And in a few hours, it would be time to get ready for her date. Even thinking it put happy flutters in her stomach as she hit the first floor.

  Rex whuffed from the office. Hurry up!

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. It’s not like you offered to help carry this stuff, you know. In fact—” She missed a step at the sight of her mom sitting behind the big desk, ruffling Rex’s fur while the dog danced around like it had been days since he’d last seen her, rather than breakfast. “Hey, Mom. I thought you headed into town.”

  Rose looked up, face bright. “I hurried home.”

  “To see your video?”

  “That can wait. I’ve got something incredible to show you!”

  Biting back a snippy comment about having her hard work tossed on the back burner, Jenny set the boxes on the floor and took the visitor’s chair. “Okay, what’s up?”

  Rose pushed her laptop aside, clearing space in the middle of the desk, and then, with a flourish, produced a foam-core board. It was maybe two feet square, plastered with paint chips in shades of berry and flamingo, cutouts of ornate gold mirrors and fussy tufted pillows, and small squares of pink, gold, and white fabric, all spiraling around the central image of a glossy red, rabid-looking ceramic horse. The whole effect was one of a multimedia scrapbook gone very wrong, yet her eyes gleamed. “Don’t you just love it?”

  Gawd, no. “What is it?” Jenny asked carefully.

  “It’s an inspiration board,” her mother answered, and she might as well have added “duh.” The tone was definitely there. “Decorators use it as a springboard for discussions with their clients, so I thought it would be fun for us to have one for our project.”

  When had the office floor turned to quicksand? “Project?” Please don’t be talking about what I think you’re talking about.

  “Your bedroom, silly. We discussed this.”

  It was an effort to stay planted in the visitor’s chair. “Yes, we did. What part of ‘no, thanks’ did you not understand?”

  “Oh, you.” Rose tinkled a laugh and waved it off. “It’ll be fun!”

  Frustration kicked, though she tried to hold it in check. “What if I upgraded it to a ‘hell, no’?”

  “You’ll love it.” Her mom stroked the paint chips and fussy little fabrics, looking utterly besotted. “We’ll do the darker colors on the bed and keep the walls light since it’s such a small room. But if we put the striped cloth on the biggest wall and add the mirrors, we’ll get the illusion of more space.”

  “We aren’t doing anything of the sort.” It came out sharp, but that didn’t seem to matter. Jenny could’ve been talking to herself, for all the impression it made.

  Rex came around the desk and pressed against her leg, looking up with worried eyes. Everything okay?

  Not really, but scaring the dog wasn’t going to help. At this point, she didn’t know what would. Forcing her voice level, she said, “Look, Mom, I know you mean all this in the best possible way, but I need you to understand something: I like my room just the way it is. I like that it hasn’t changed since I
was fourteen, and that no matter what tent I’ve been living in, I always know what I’m coming home to.”

  “I . . . Hmm.” To Jenny’s relief, her mom actually seemed to hear her that time. She frowned down at the board, fingering the striped fabric. “I thought that you of all people would understand needing a project.”

  Ouch. Not much she could do to counter that when there were half-finished clips on her computer and dusty boxes at her feet. But at least it was something that made sense, maybe even a tiny, shifting piece of common ground. “Okay, I get that. But there’s got to be a better option, a bigger space you can work with.” She snapped her fingers. “How about you redecorate one of the cabins?”

  “They’re not heated.”

  “The bonus house, then.” The former bunkhouse had been relocated to the other side of the property, with its own driveway, eco-friendly solar panels, and a cistern. With Foster now living at the Double-Bar H, it was empty.

  “Krista hasn’t decided whether to offer it to an employee or use it as a private guest retreat. Until she makes that call, there’s no point in redecorating. And, besides, that’s too big a project for the middle of winter. I need something small, where I can make an impact.”

  “How about . . .” Come on, come on. There had to be something else.

  Rose reached out and touched Jenny’s balled fist. “Please, sweetie. I really want to do this for you. What’s more, I want to do it with you.”

  Right then, Jenny would’ve given almost anything to be back down south in the jungle, where she could occasionally tell the producers where to shove their ideas. She couldn’t do that to her mother, though. Especially not when she was pulling the I want some mom-daughter time card.

  The sigh felt like it came all the way up from her toes. “No pink,” she said firmly.

  Her mom’s eyebrows rose. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “If we’re going to do this, it’s going to be yellow and white, just like it is now.”

  “I . . .” Rose paused for a moment, trying to look disappointed. But the corners of her mouth curved in victory. “Yellow and white, with a few pops of color.”

  “We’ll discuss the pops later.” Jenny stood, looking at the clock on the wall. “I’ve got to go change for dinner.” She practically sprinted up the stairs with Rex galumphing after her, knowing full well that she was running away.

  There was no doubt that she had lost that round. But as she jumped in the shower, she announced, “Take a note, Rex. I hereby swear there’s no way I’m going to let that creepy-ass china horse watch me sleep!”

  • • •

  “You totally caved.” For some reason, Nick seemed charmed by her wimpitude. He leaned in across their table at the Steak Lodge, a romantic two-top directly beneath a wall-mounted bison she was pretty sure was animatronic. “Does this mean you’ve got a chicken coop armoire in your future, or maybe a bed shaped like a giant camera?”

  “No way. And I’m also not going to live with walls the color of a strawberry shake at Mickey D’s, or any ceramic animal that looks like it’s plotting my imminent demise.” She leaned in to meet him, though, liking the way his green button-down was open at the throat, giving her glimpses of his collarbones and smooth masculine skin. Lowering her voice, she said, almost in a whisper, “I’ll tell you a secret, though, if you promise it’ll stay between the two of us.”

  He made a show of crossing his heart. “Scout’s honor. And, yes, I was actually a Scout. Made it all the way to Eagle.”

  “You did? What was your final project?”

  “Organizing a low-cost spay and neuter program.”

  “Awww. Should’ve guessed. You really are one of the good ones, aren’t you?”

  “Flattery will get you most anywhere, except out of telling me your deep, dark secret.”

  “Ah.” She looked to the left and right, and then whispered, “You’re right. I totally caved. But I promised Krista I would do whatever it took to keep Mom out of Gran’s hair for the duration.”

  “That’s it? Lame. I totally could’ve guessed that. And what’s more, it sounds like your mom figured it out, too.”

  Jenny leaned back, sighing. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” She wasn’t even that put out about it, either—at least not right now. It was awfully hard to be upset about much of anything when she was sitting opposite a handsome, interesting guy whose eyes gleamed like that when he looked at her.

  There was a whirr and a click from overhead, and the buffalo came to mechanical life, batting its feathery eyelashes and cocking its huge furry head to look down at them. Mouth moving a little out of sync with the recording, it said, “Hey, there, pretty lady. You look like you could use a kiss.” The creature turned its head to fix Nick with a plastic-and-fur come on look. “What do you say, buddy?”

  He grinned across at her. “You heard the bison.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  They met halfway across the table in a kiss that was as thorough as it was gentle, yet more or less PG rated, earning scattered applause from the tables nearby. Jenny’s heart gave a giddy flip-flop, and she worked not to look like a total dewy-eyed sap when they parted.

  She cleared her throat. “That ought to give the Bingo Brigade something to talk about.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “It used to bug me how everybody was up in each other’s business here, and how a girl couldn’t do anything naughty without her mom finding out within the hour.”

  “Define naughty.”

  “You’ve got an imagination. Use it.” She chuckled, leaning back a little, though their hands remained linked on the tabletop. “I guess having spent a bunch of years living with even smaller groups made up of way nosier people has put things into perspective.”

  “Not to mention the whole Jungle Love thing. Talk about dating in a fishbowl.”

  She winced. “If you’re a fan of the show, we are so over.”

  “No worries. I caught a couple of episodes online, but it was strictly for research purposes.” At her raised eyebrow, he grinned. “It was kind of fun, thinking that the girl who took me parking down by the point might’ve filmed this scene or that one. As for the show itself? Not really my cup of tea.”

  “Mine neither, but Belize rocks.”

  The waitress appeared with their drinks, set out bar napkins for each of them, and deposited their beers. “Your meals will be out in a minute.”

  “Thanks,” Nick said. Then he studied the woman, eyes narrowing. “You didn’t happen to tip off the bison, did you? I’m guessing that particular program doesn’t run when there’s, say, a serious business meeting going on at this table.”

  Her lips curved. “Sometimes it does, just for our amusement. But, yeah, maybe I put in a good word for you.”

  He toasted her with his beer. “Appreciate it.”

  Jenny laughed as she moved off. “And here I thought the fix was already in.”

  “It would’ve been if I’d thought of it.” He raised his glass again, this time in her direction. “To a beautiful lady, talking taxidermy, and a night with no emergency calls.”

  “I’ll so toast to that.” They clinked and sipped.

  “So, tell me. What’s it really like, being behind the camera on a show like that?”

  Usually, she fobbed off questions of that sort with a breezy nonanswer and changed the subject. Now, though, she took a sip and thought about it. “Some days I look around and think ‘I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this.’ The country is flipping gorgeous, and when we get time off, we’ll group up and head off on side trips. One time, we followed an underground river through these cave systems you wouldn’t believe, filled with all these crazy stone formations and old Mayan carvings and stuff. Another time, we went to a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend’s village for a harvest festival. I don’t know the names of everything I ate, but it was incredible.” She smiled at the memories,
a little surprised by how far away they felt, like she was remembering a vacation rather than this being her hiatus and the other stuff belonging to her real life. “As for the work . . . it’s a mixed bag, really. Because of all the competitions, group dates and one-on-ones, there’s a whole lot less sitting and waiting than when you’re shooting a straight documentary, or even a less scripted reality show. But at the same time you’ve always got to be on the lookout for a catfight or other drama that’s going on outside the organized stuff.”

  Studying her over the rim of his glass, he said, “You enjoy it.”

  “I do. It started out as a fill-in gig while a friend waited on funding for a documentary. But the project fell through, so I stayed on another season while I looked for something more serious. By season three, I stopped looking.” She shrugged. “It suits me. I like the people and the locations, and even though the show follows roughly the same pattern each cycle, we bust our butts to come up with new settings and crazy things for the contestants to do. So it never gets too boring, you know?”

  She paused while the waitress set their meals in front of them. As they started on their steaks, he said, “What was your favorite shoot so far on the show?”

  “That depends. Are we talking about favorite setting, favorite activity, favorite blooper, or favorite ‘awww, that’s so sweet’ moment?” She wouldn’t have bet a nickel on most of the so-called couples that had developed during filming, but one or two of them had made her think there was a glimmer of hope.

  “I want to hear all of them,” he said promptly. “But bloopers first, of course.”

  “Of course.” Around bites of a perfect medium sirloin and loaded baked potato, she hit the highlights of the wardrobe malfunctions, awkward blunders and outright pranks she had filmed over the last few years, along with some of her favorite scenes and people.

  Most everything had found its way into the show or online, so it was fair game. She added her own take on things, though, and delighted in hearing his laugh roll across the busy restaurant. It was nicer than she would’ve thought to talk about the show with someone who wasn’t in the business, wasn’t angling for an audition or an introduction to one of the show’s singles. He just wanted to hear about it because it was important to her.