Only Mine

He frowned. “I think I remember hearing about that. Didn’t you get busloads of guys coming in from all over?”

“Unfortunately. Most of the reports made us sound like a town of desperate spinsters, which isn’t true at all. A few weeks later, Hollywood came calling in the form of the reality show.”

She flipped through the stack of applications of those who had made it to final selection. When she saw Sasha Andersson’s picture, she winced. “Identical twins?” she asked.

“Yes, why?”

She pulled out Sasha’s application and passed it to Finn. “He’s adorable.” The head shot showed a happy, smiling, younger version of Finn. “If he has a personality more exciting than that of a shoe, he’s going to get on the show. What’s not to like? Plus, if there are two of them …” She set down the folder. “Let me put it another way. If you were the producer, would you want them on the show?”

Finn dropped the paper. The woman—Dakota—had a point. His brothers were charming, funny and young enough to believe they were immortal. Irresistible to someone looking to pull in ratings.

“I’m not going to let them ruin their lives,” he said flatly.

“The show is ten weeks of filming. College will still be there.” Her voice was gentle and hinted at compassion. Her dark gaze was steady. She was pretty enough—had he been looking for that kind of thing. All he cared about right now was getting his brothers back to college.

“You think they’ll want to go back after all this?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. Have you asked them?”

“No.” To date he’d only lectured and issued orders—both of which his brothers had ignored.

“Did they say why they wanted to be on this show?”

“Not specifically,” he admitted. But he had a theory or two about their thinking. They wanted to be out of Alaska and away from him. Plus, Sasha had been dreaming of fame for a long time.

“Have they done this sort of thing before? Run off against your wishes, given up on school?”

“No. That’s what I don’t get. They’re so close to being finished. Why couldn’t they suck it up for one more semester?” It was the responsible thing to do.

Until now, Sasha and Stephen hadn’t given him much grief. There’d been the usual driving too fast, a few parties with friends and plenty of girls. He’d sweated bullets waiting to hear one of his brothers had gotten a girl pregnant. But so far that hadn’t happened. Maybe his thousands of lectures about using birth control had gotten through. So them wanting to leave college for a reality show had stunned him. He’d always figured they would at least finish school.

“They sound like great kids,” Dakota said. “Maybe you should trust them.”

“Maybe I should tie them up and throw them in the back of a plane headed for Alaska.”

“You wouldn’t like jail.”

“They’d have to catch me first.” He stood again. “Thanks for your time.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help.”

“Me, too.”

She rose and circled the table so she was standing in front of him. “To repeat a cliché, if you love something, set it free.”

He stared into her dark eyes. They were an interesting contrast to her wavy blond hair. “If it comes back, it was meant to?” He managed a smile. “No, thanks. I fall into the ‘if it doesn’t, hunt it down and shoot it’ category.”

“Should I warn your brothers?”

“They already know.”

“Sometimes you have to let people mess up.”

“This is too important,” he told her. “It’s their future.”

“The key word being theirs, not yours. Whatever happens here isn’t unrecoverable.”

“You don’t know that.”

She looked as if she wanted to argue more. She wasn’t a yeller, and he appreciated that. Her points were well thought out. But there was no way she could change his mind on this. Come hell or high water, he was getting his brothers out of Fool’s Gold and back to college, where they belonged.

“Thanks for your time,” he told her.

“You’re welcome. I hope the three of you can come to terms.” One corner of her mouth twitched. “Please remember we have a very efficient police force in town. Chief Barns doesn’t take kindly to people breaking the law.”

“I appreciate the warning.”

Finn walked out of the small trailer. Filming or shooting or whatever they called it was due to start in two days. Which gave him less than forty-eight hours to come up with a plan to either convince his brothers to return to Alaska on their own or physically force them to do what he wanted.

“I OWE YOU,” Marsha Tilson said over lunch.

Dakota picked up a French fry. “Yes, you do. I’m a highly trained professional.”

“Something Geoff doesn’t appreciate?” Marsha, the town’s sixty-something mayor, asked, her blue eyes sparkling with amusement.

“He does not. I have a Ph.D.,” Dakota muttered. “I should make him call me doctor.”

“From what I know of Geoff, I’m not sure that would help.”

Dakota bit into her fry. She hated to admit it, but Mayor Marsha had a point. Geoff was the producer of the reality show that had invaded the town—True Love or Fool’s Gold. After randomly sorting twenty people into couples, the pairs would be sent on romantic dates, which would be filmed, edited and then shown on television with a one-week delay. America would vote off the couple least likely to make it.

At the end, the last couple standing would receive $250,000 to share and a free wedding, if they were really in love.

From what Dakota could tell, Geoff didn’t care about anything except getting good ratings. The fact that the town didn’t want the show around hadn’t bothered him at all. In the end, the mayor had agreed to cooperate on the condition that there be someone on his staff who was looking out for the interests of the good citizens of Fool’s Gold.

All that made sense to Dakota, though she still didn’t know why she’d gotten the job. She wasn’t a public relations specialist or even a city employee. She was a psychologist who specialized in childhood development. Unfortunately, her boss had offered her services, even agreeing to pay her salary while she worked with the production company. Dakota still wasn’t speaking to him.

She would have turned down the assignment, except Mayor Marsha had pleaded. Dakota had grown up here. When the Mayor needed a favor, the good citizens agreed. Until the production company had shown up, Dakota would have sworn she would happily do anything for her town. And, as she’d told Finn a couple of hours before, it was only for ten weeks. She could survive nearly anything that long.

“Have the contestants been picked?” Marsha asked.

“Yes, but they’re keeping it a secret until the big announcement.”

“Anyone we need to worry about?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve looked over the files and everyone seems fairly normal.” She thought about Finn. “We do have a family member who isn’t happy.” She explained about the twenty-one-year-old twins. “If they’re half as good-looking in person as they are in their pictures, they’re going to be on the show.”

“Do you think their brother will make trouble?”