For Love Or Money

“That camera’s going to love you!” Corrine said.

“I’m too bony.” She had to go. And needed these few minutes. More than Corrine, her best friend since forever, probably knew.

“Good—you curled your hair,” Corrine was saying as she gave the long blond curls a fluff. “And that color looks good on your eyes. We chose well.”

They’d had a mani-pedi makeover session the day before.

“My clothes have no shape anymore.”

“You’re leggy and thin and there’s no hiding your shape up top. You’re star material.”

Janie laughed. Right. A girl who’d married, at nineteen, a guy she’d known for only six months, because she’d been so certain she’d found what would sustain her happiness for the rest of her life.

She had no formal training. No post–high school education.

And she couldn’t quite swallow the lump in her throat as she looked up at Corrine, who’d never forgotten her, or made her feel less, as she’d gone on to grad school and then passed the bar exam. “I need this so badly,” she said, blinking back tears. “If I win this, the money and prestige combined...added to a commercial packaging of my winning recipe... I could open my own catering business. It’s the answer to all of my prayers.”

“I know.” Corrine’s smile was...calm. Comforting. “Just be yourself, Janie. Life has a plan for you—you know that. Trust it to take care of you.”

Corrine was right. And speaking from experience. Even when it looked like Corrine and Joe—truly a couple meant to be together forever—had been on the verge of divorce, Corrine had trusted that all would be as it was meant to be. And now that they had found their way to a deeper, healthier marriage, with communication and utter honesty between them instead of walls, Corrine was even more of a pro in the trust department.

Janie, not so much.

“Be you,” Corrine said, giving her hand a squeeze as she stepped back from the car.

Be you. That was what Cor had said to her just before she’d walked down the aisle to marry Dillon. Be you. She’d said it to Corrine just a few short weeks later when her friend had moved from the apartment they’d shared into a dorm room because she’d no longer been able to afford the apartment on scholarship money.

“Be you,” Corrine had said when Janie had decided to have Dawson at the expense of her marriage. “Be you,” she’d whispered to her friend on Thanksgiving night when Corrine had called to tell her that she and Joe were getting back together.

Be you, she told herself as she pulled into the back lot of the small Palm Desert studio and parked her old station wagon next to all of the newer, fancier cars.

Be you. It was the only thing she knew how to do.

But wasn’t at all sure it would be even close to good enough.

* * *

“OKAY, YOU’VE GOT THIS. Just don’t forget to smile at the camera. Women get all gaga when you smile and Family Secrets has a lot of women judges.”

Backstage, in a private alcove she’d found for them, Kelsey was straightening the tie she’d insisted Burke wear for this pre-competition taping session.

As a sports medicine specialist, he favored collared polo shirts. But this was Kelsey’s deal and, so far, it had been a miracle worker.

In the two weeks since he’d won a spot as one of eight contestants on the show, Kelsey had been a different child.

He was lucky if she slept more than six hours a night. She’d brought home two major tests—both As. Was full of ideas every night when they got home, pulling out more and more of her mother’s recipes and making plans for packaging as he prepared one dish after another.

The grand prize included one of the winner’s recipes being commercially packaged and nationally distributed.

She’d held parties, inviting various friends over to taste his results. Making spreadsheets filled with opinions. Assessing. Analyzing.

Best of all, he’d seen her dancing in the kitchen again. Running through a routine.

And this morning he’d heard her singing in the shower.

“You’re going to win this, Daddy,” she reached up on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “I just know you are. We’re a family again, you and me and Mom. Just one more time. This is how we live without her. Keeping a piece of her alive.”

Claws squeezed his throat until drawing breath was painful. “Kels...” She was wise beyond her years. And...so fragile, too.

“Trust, Daddy,” she said, tears in her eyes as she lowered her heels to the floor and looked up at him. “Mom’s going to help you.”

“It doesn’t always work that way.”

“That’s what you said before the audition and look what happened.” Her expression dead serious, she waited with an expectant look on her sweet, tortured features.

He had to tell her that he might not win.

To make certain she understood that some things were out of their control. That maybe someone else had angels watching down on them, too.

And that sometimes, no matter how many angels you had, things didn’t happen as it seemed they should.

That he could let her down. Again.

Lil, the “entity” she wanted him to trust, was a case in point.

If everything had gone as it should, Lil would be standing there in the wings, getting ready to go on the show. Lil would be alive. In her daughter’s life.

Helping him raise her.

And neither of them would be worrying about a thirteen-year-old on the verge of clinical depression.

But...

“Okay.” He nodded. Gave her a big grin. “I’ll trust.”

She grinned then, too. Relief flooding into her expression. “Then everything will be fine. Just like at the audition. We’ll win.”

“Yes, ma’am, I believe we will,” he said as he heard all contestants being called to the green room.

“You promise,” Kelsey said as she turned to head out to her seat in the small, nearly empty studio auditorium.

“I promise.”

“You’ll trust.”

“Yes.”

As he turned to join the others whose dreams were going on the line that cool January Saturday, all Burke could see was those big blue eyes that compelled him to make promises he wasn’t sure he could keep.