Finn had come to Fool’s Gold to force his brothers to return home. He’d believed the only place they belonged was in college or in South Salmon. He’d been wrong on all counts. Neither brother was coming home, and oddly enough, he was just fine with that.
DAKOTA ARRIVED at work the next morning with a burning need for coffee and a promise to herself that she would tell Finn about the baby before sundown. Or maybe by the end of the week.
She wasn’t trying to be a coward or even keep the information from him. It was just that she was so happy. She wanted to stay happy for a little longer. She wanted to have her fantasies about the future and pretend everything was going to work out fine. She wanted to imagine a house with a big tree in the yard and two children playing together and Finn beside her.
Because as much as she wanted this baby, she also wanted to be with that baby’s father. The big surprise wasn’t that she had fallen in love with him, it was that it had taken her so long to figure it out.
She walked toward the temporary production offices and was surprised to see large trucks pulled up in front of them. As she approached, she saw guys in T-shirts carrying boxes and furniture into the trucks. If she didn’t know better, she would say everyone was leaving.
She saw Karen, one of the production assistants, sitting at a table in the middle of the sidewalk.
“What’s going on?” Dakota asked as she approached. “Why are you working out here?”
Karen looked up at her. Her eyes were swollen and red, as if she’d been crying. “It’s over. The show’s canceled.” She sniffed. “We were shut down late last night. Geoff called me from the airport. He’s already back in L.A.”
“Canceled? How can they do that? We’re not even through this cycle. Who wins?”
“No one,” Karen told her flatly. “No one cares. The numbers suck. We started out okay but then plummeted in the third week. It’s a disaster.”
Dakota was having trouble taking in the information. “What happens to the contestants?”
“They go home.”
“What happens to you?”
Tears filled Karen’s eyes. “I work for Geoff. Right now that’s not a good thing. I have a lot of friends in the business and they’ll help me. I need to get work with another company or producer.” She sighed. “I have savings. This sort of thing happens all the time, so if you’re going to survive, you have to be prepared to deal with weeks of unemployment. But it’s not fun and I know people are wondering if I knew. I didn’t. But nobody gives a crap about that.”
“I’m sorry,” Dakota said, feeling awkward. She didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t understand how so much money could be put into a show and then the show simply canceled within a few short weeks.
“If you need a recommendation or if I can help in any way, please let me know,” Dakota told her.
“Thanks.” She glanced at her watch. “You’d better get into your office. If you have anything personal, I’d get it in the next five or ten minutes. Your part of the office is going to be dismantled by nine.”
“Okay. I will.” Dakota stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, but Karen returned her attention to her work and didn’t look up again.
As Dakota walked toward her small corner of the production office, she pulled out her cell phone and left a message for the mayor. She had a feeling that word had already spread all over town. She looked around at the cameras being loaded onto trucks and people getting in cars and driving away. The TV show had tried to take over the town. She had a feeling that in a matter of hours, it would seem as if it had never been there. Maybe that was just the nature of the business. It was all an illusion and nothing ever lasted.
BY NOON, Dakota was back in her old office, ready to tackle the curriculum planning for which she’d been hired. She’d had a quick meeting with Raoul Moreno and, as he put it, a game plan. She let him call her schedule a game plan for two reasons. First, because he was a former NFL quarterback and sports terms made him feel happy. Second, because he signed her paycheck.
Before his summer camp had been transformed into a temporary elementary school, his dream had been to open a facility for kids in middle school. The emphasis would be on math and science. They would come for three or four weeks at a time, have extensive study in either math or science and, in theory, return to their regular schools enthused about what they could accomplish. As the elementary school would need the camp for at least two years, they had ample time to develop their program.
Montana arrived at the office exactly at two. She had a leash in one hand and pushed the stroller with the other. Buddy, the intense and worried labradoodle, kept pace with the stroller. Every few seconds he looked at Hannah, as if making sure she was all right.
“I can’t decide if Buddy would make a good dad if he were human,” Montana said, “or if he would be on Prozac half the time.”