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“Miss Doyle—”
    Lou bared her teeth in a smile that felt a
little feral. “Tanner.”
    “Could you help us handle the children? We’re
ready to shoot Dr. Doyle’s first fireside-confessional sequence and
they’re disrupting the crew.”
    Good.
    Lou smothered that unhelpful sentiment and
picked her way across the cables snaking through the kitchen
doorway. It was hard not to be irritated with all the people
intruding on their lives, poking around in their possessions and
turning everything upside down. Especially knowing all of this was
designed to package Jack as Mr. Perfect and take him away from
her.
    The crew members were absolutely angelic
toward Jack—fawning over him and constantly working to make sure he
was in a good head space . They seemed to enjoy the kids and
they weren’t precisely rude to Lou. They just didn’t seem to
understand what her purpose was—and everyone on set had to have a
purpose. And her house was now a set.
    The living room was cluttered by lights and
cameras, but she immediately spotted Jack at the center of it all,
perfectly lit and looking like a king in the armchair the producers
had put in front of the fireplace. Lou didn’t recognize the
throne-like chair, but she wasn’t surprised the show people had
deemed their furniture not sufficiently “home-like” and brought in
their own for the effect they were trying to create.
    It took her a bit longer to spot Emma and TJ
amid the crew people swarming behind the cameras. When she did see
them, Lou laughed out loud. Disruptive was putting it mildly. They
were riding the primary cameraman like a pony. He didn’t seem to
mind, but the redhead segment producer looked like she was one
“giddy-up” away from strangling them both. Or whacking them with
the tablet held clenched in her manicured hands.
    “Em. TJ,” she called them over, taking pity
on the tablet wielding redhead. “Come sit on the couch with me. We
can watch Daddy get interrogated.”
    “Yeah!” The kids immediately scrambled off
their pony and climbed over the nearest crew member to bounce up on
the couch. Lou plopped in between them and secured an arm around
each one to keep them from escaping. A metal light stand partially
blocked their view of their father, but otherwise they had the best
seats in the house. Emma burrowed into her side, settling in, as TJ
wriggled and bounced, too wired to sit still.
    The two of them had been remarkably receptive
to the idea of their father going on the show—or perhaps not so
remarkably since TJ had figured out almost immediately that
California was where Disneyland was and they could trade in their
father’s abandonment guilt for no less than three trips to the
Magic Kingdom when they flew out to visit him.
    They were treating the arrival of the crew
and the upheaval in their lives as a giant game—and why wouldn’t
they? They were kids. They couldn’t visualize what it was going to
be like without Jack in their day-to-day lives for eight weeks. Or
how this would drastically change their lives when he got back.
    Lou, however, had no trouble visualizing. She
couldn’t seem to stop.
    Miranda appeared, kneeling in front of the
three of them with a warm smile and her own tablet tucked against
her chest. “Lou, we really need Jack to be able to focus right now.
Do you think you could take these two little monsters—” She winked
at the kids, making Emma giggle. “—on an outing? Give us a few
hours—”
    “No, let them stay,” Jack requested from the
chair. All crew eyes turned to him and a little hush fell over the
room as the king made his proclamation. “I’ll be more relaxed if
they’re here.”
    Miranda glanced back and forth between Jack
and the kids, her smile never faltering—and Lou realized what a
good actress a reality television producer needed to be. Miranda
gave a little nod and broadened her smile. “Good point, Jack. We
want you as relaxed and natural as possible.” She turned back to
the kids,