For most of his life, Blake Walworth had been dead sure that this was an issue he would never have to deal with. Over the years he'd watched other men be faced with it and thanked his lucky stars that he would be one to avoid it. But life sometimes deals the cards off the bottom of the deck, and he knew it. As it had turned out he was just as happy as he could be with what had happened, although a year ago if he had been able to look at today he would have been flabbergasted at what he saw.

He'd never prepared for this, had never really thought much about the details -- a year ago he would have considered it impossible -- so it was taking some getting used to.

"Anything special you'd like for lunch?" he asked Jennifer as she followed him down the broad stairs in their big lakeside home on Point Drive on the edge of Spearfish Lake. "I've got the makings for a spinach salad and some fresh avocados."

He watched Jennifer shake her head; her beautiful long blonde hair was all pinned up and covered with a scarf. It was sort of a shame; he'd always been amazed at the beautiful way that it flowed off her head. She curled her lip with distaste. "Actually, I was thinking more in terms of SpaghettiOs and Doritos," she said complacently.

"All empty calories, salt and carbohydrates," he offered hopefully. For years he'd done virtually all the cooking and Jennifer ate it without complaint. She had little room for complaint; he was a gourmet cook and enjoyed doing it. But now . . . John had warned him that this was going to happen, but he hadn't quite believed him. Normal women perhaps, but Jennifer? "You do have your figure to be concerned with," he reminded her gently.

"What figure?" she snorted. "I look like a blimp."

Blake looked at her and smiled. It wasn't exactly the figure that he'd been used to for over fifteen years, but she looked just fine to him, just about eight months pregnant with her -- and his -- first child. It was still hard to look at her and believe it after all those years, but the reality of her swollen belly was hard to ignore. For so many years this incredible woman had been the closest friend he'd had, that he ever could imagine. He'd been satisfied with that beyond belief. Then, in quick succession, she'd become his lover, then his wife, and soon would be the mother of his child -- and he was even happier than he could have ever dreamed.

Of their circle of close friends in Spearfish Lake, John and Candice Archer had the most recent experience in child-bearing, although Cody, their youngest, was now eleven years old. Still, they were good to draw on for advice in this unexpected twist of events. John had warned him that Jennifer would have weird food cravings, and he'd been right -- but somehow Blake hadn't expected Jennifer's cravings to run to junk food. John had also warned him that toward the end Jennifer would get a nesting instinct and would want to clean everything. Again, he hadn't believed -- but now, they'd spent the morning cleaning the baby's room for the third or fifth time. That was even stranger -- for dog's years Blake or a maid had done even more of the cleaning than he had the cooking.

"Best looking blimp I ever saw," he smiled at the incredible woman that had come to share her life with him. "Besides, Gene says you're right about where you're supposed to be."

Even before the words were out of his mouth, he could see that she wasn't buying it. "In a month or six weeks. . ." she started, before the phone went off.

Saved by the bell Blake thought, going to answer it. One of the facts of their life was that Jennifer never answered the phone, either letting him do it or letting an answering machine screen the call first. Over the years it had saved a lot of problems. "Walworth's," he replied.

"Hello, Blake," a gruff-sounding voice on the phone said. "This is Frank Oldfield."

"Frank!" Blake replied expansively as he looked up at Jennifer. "How are things at Nashville-Murray?" It was a device to let her know who was on the phone -- it was a trick they'd used many times before -- and she gave her head a firm but silent shake, indicating that she didn't want to talk with the caller. He couldn't blame her, and it was just as well; Blake pretty well knew what Frank was calling about and what her answer would be; it wasn't the first time in the last year or so that they'd been around this block. Even so, it wasn't a good idea to just tell Frank to bug the hell off either.

"Oh, pretty good," Oldfield replied. "Hey Blake, I'd like to talk to Jenny."

"Look, Frank," Blake said. "She's asleep and I'm not going to wake her up. The baby was kicking the hell out of her all night, and I don't think she slept a wink. Looks like we're raising a drummer -- the kid even has a back beat."

"How's she doing, anyway?" Frank asked, a hint of concern in his voice.

"Actually, about as well as can be expected, for having her first baby at the age of 38," Blake replied. "We're trying to be mighty damn careful, but it looks like it's working out all right. Look, whatever you've got, why don't you tell me and let me run it past her when she's in a good mood?"

"I might as well," Oldfield grumped. Blake could hear the disappointment; after all he had been deflecting half-assed ideas away from Jennifer for years -- especially Nashville-Murray half-assed ideas -- and Oldfield obviously knew it. "You see Billboard this morning?"

"No," Blake said noncommittally, taking a chair and looking up at the ceiling. "It takes an extra day or two for it to get to us here."

"If you didn't live way the hell out in the sticks of the north woods, you might learn something," Oldfield snorted. "Saturday Night is on the chart this morning. Damn it, Blake, it could have been halfway up the chart if you'd let us have it."

If you would have let us record it at all, Blake thought, but was careful not to say. That was the whole point of the issue after all.

Jennifer had first signed with Nashville-Murray almost twenty years before, a kid barely out of high school, and had been with them ever since, until last summer. The first contract had stunk to high heaven. Even though she was virtually an overnight sensation with her first album right up at the top of the chart and eventually going platinum, too much of the money had somehow gone to Nashville-Murray, not to her. When the contract came up for renewal, Jennifer's agent at the time -- a real idiot -- had pressured her to just renew the contract. Blake suspected that there was a sizable kickback involved, but had never been able to prove it -- and a chain of circumstances, partly involving the fact that Blake was on the scene by then led to her canning her original agent and signing with a decent one. They'd been living in Los Angeles then, but Jennifer was not a city girl and she was thoroughly homesick. By then, she was about ready to tell Nashville-Murray and a lot of other people where to jam it.

It took a lot of arm-twisting and serious negotiations -- sometimes with him having to play the heavy in the deal. The resulting contract, while not perfect, was enough better that they were able to move back to her home in Spearfish Lake instead of having to play the media circus game in LA and Nashville. Blake back then had been her full-time bodyguard, a sometimes practice accompanist, and confidant, but she insisted on him coming along to at least help her get settled. That was more than a dozen years before, and in that time they'd gotten a lot closer.

In the new contract, the money issue had sorted itself out reasonably well -- a decent agent would have never let her sign a piece of shit contract like that first one -- but the real hang-up had proved to be rights. Towards the end of the contract, Jennifer, with Blake's help, had been writing some of her own music, but when that music was recorded, all the rights went to Nashville-Murray. Blake had objected very hard about that -- mostly because his own work was involved, one of the few times he'd ever had to draw the line with Jennifer. After lots of negotiation, Nashville-Murray caved in on the rights issue, but had insisted on some "creative control" provisions and required the music be recorded in their own studio, for which it later turned out they charged heavily.

Nashville-Murray's idea of "creative control" had proven to be virtually a veto on everything -- if they didn't like a song, the way it was recorded, or a host of other things, it wouldn't go on the album. After the first contract, it hadn't seemed all that bad, but as Jennifer and Blake matured as songwriters and performers it had become a major sticking point. As a result too many of the cuts on Jennifer's subsequent albums were still songs with rights held by Nashville-Murray.

By then, Jennifer and Blake had taken to recording their own music down in the basement, which now had a sound studio the equal of anything in Nashville, and better than anything Nashville-Murray had. They had written, recorded, and mixed to the point of mastering an immense library of original music, none of which had ever seen the light of day due to the Nashville-Murray veto. When they did come up with something Nashville-Murray liked, it still had to be re-recorded in Nashville-Murray's studios, with their union studio musicians who had their own way of doing things. Sometimes it took some serious arguing to get the resulting music even close to what they intended. Since Blake wasn't under contract to Nashville-Murray, he couldn't even back Jennifer up on music that they'd written and practiced to exactly what they wanted. It made negotiating what music would be on the album, and then cutting it into an awful hassle that took months, plus more months to work up to it and more yet to recover.

By the last contract renewal, both of them had been thoroughly sick of the process and were ready to quit. Jennifer's music had been a solid money maker for Nashville-Murray for years; but she was no longer a fresh young face, no longer could come up with a chart-buster on the strength of her name. Still, she had a large and steady fan base and a new album was sure to be profitable for everyone concerned. In desperation Nashville-Murray had offered a non-exclusive contract for two albums in four years -- which gave them the freedom to record and promote their music under their own label, Jenny Easton Productions, so long as they didn't release more albums on their own than they did for Nashville-Murray. The two subsequent Nashville-Murray albums -- Come Closer and Fencerow -- had, as expected, been solid money makers, but the first Jenny Easton Productions album, At Home with Jenny Easton had done better than either. That was at least partly due to one magnificent, heart-wrenching cut, Dawnwalker, which had been cut down in their basement with Myleigh Harris, a young college friend of their neighbors who played a very unconventional instrument: the Celtic harp. It was not anything that Nashville-Murray would have ever considered "Jenny Easton music."

Fencerow had been released almost two years ago, fulfilling the album requirements for Nashville-Murray, although the contract still had some time to run, not expiring until a few months earlier. The second Jenny Easton Productions album, Back Porch with Jenny Easton had been a solid seller, too, although it hadn't proven to have a hit like Dawnwalker. In both cases Blake and Jennifer had banked more money than they would have if they'd stayed with Nashville-Murray, and with much less heartache.

"Saturday Night is doing pretty well, then," Blake purred, without having to go over all the issues in his mind -- he'd lived them long enough. "Getting it on Great Performances didn't hurt."

"Public Broadcasting, my rosy red ass," Oldfield snorted. "I could have had it on Country Music Television, where it could have meant something."

"Hell," Blake replied, getting a little angry. Getting Saturday Night on Great Performances had been luck; Blake had known the right people and got to them at the right time. He was proud to have pulled it off; it had been a real long shot. "I could have had it on Country Music Television too, but Great Performances outbid them. Besides, there it got good exposure in a different market. It would have gotten lost on CMT."

"Country Music Television would have bid a hell of a lot more if I'd presented it to them," Oldfield grumped. "Damn it, Saturday Night is old-line Jenny if I ever heard it."

There were noticeable differences between the last Nashville-Murray albums and the first Jenny Easton Productions albums. The Nashville-Murray albums were "old line" country, without a lot of pop play. At Home and Back Porch were more pop oriented, more musically advanced, more sensitive -- not what Blake called the "cheatin', honky-tonkin' and drivin' pickups" albums that Nashville-Murray had demanded. So, even though the sales were solid, Jennifer and Blake had undergone a fair amount of sniping from Nashville-Murray over their "new wave" Jenny Easton Productions albums. This was more of it. Oldfield had better consider himself lucky I didn't let him talk to Jenny, he thought. She'd would have read him off and slammed the phone in his ear by now.

There had been good reasons to not cut the apron strings of Nashville-Murray; Nashville-Murray was a major player in country music, and much of the sales of At Home and Back Porch had come from fans from the country side of the business. But then, last spring while they were still trying rather fruitlessly to hammer out an agreement on the Nashville studio recordings, Jennifer discovered that she was pregnant. Not wanting to deal with this kind of stress -- and not sure they ever wanted to deal with the stress again, considering a new baby -- they'd walked out on the negotiations, let the contract expire and gave written notice that they didn't plan to renew.

Ever since, there had been a series of letters and calls from Nashville-Murray, up to the president of the company, Frank Oldfield, trying to get them to renew the contract. It had gotten a lot worse in the last month, with the release of Saturday Night. What rankled Oldfield was that Saturday Night wasn't "new wave" Jenny Easton -- it was, as he'd just told Blake, about as "old line" as you could get. It had been recorded in front of a live crowd in a country-style bar, contained about a third old country favorites with cheap rights, a third stuff from Jenny and Blake's library that had never been released before, and a third somewhat-newer Jenny Easton music that she and Blake also owned the rights to. There was nothing where Nashville-Murray held the rights. They were showing that they could do Nashville-Murray style Jenny Easton better than Nashville-Murray. No wonder Oldfield was grumpy, Blake thought.

"Of course it is," Blake said, jabbing the needle in a little. "Our plans are to alternate old line and new wave albums just like we've done the last few years."

"Then why the hell won't you talk with us at least on the old-line stuff?" Oldfield replied, half mad now.

"You know why," Blake said, getting tired of the discussion. He looked down, looking for Jennifer, but she was nowhere to be seen. "We've talked about it before, and Jennifer and I have talked about it all we need to. You want a piece of us, you're going to just have to cave on the studio issue and the creative control issue, and that's that."

"We can deal on that," Oldfield replied grumpily.

"I said cave, not deal," Blake replied firmly. "It's not anything for negotiation. Look, the Boreal String Band is getting a name of their own, and they're not under contract to you. They're under contract to us."

"I don't see why that should be an issue," the recording company CEO protested. "I mean, what's the big deal about them coming down here to record once in a while?"

"I've told you before, Frank," Blake replied, getting a little exasperated. "These guys aren't professional musicians. They have day jobs. Hell, one of them runs a company that has enough money to buy Nashville-Murray if he got pissed." That was stretching the truth a good deal, Blake thought, but what the hell. "They haven't got time to piss around in Nashville for a month or two at a crack. They just like playing music once in a while, they're damn good, and we work well with them."

"So, there's lots of studio musicians down here," Oldfield snorted.

"How many play jazz Celtic harp?" Blake laughed. "There's not one on every street corner down there." In fact, as far as Blake knew -- and he'd researched it -- in the whole country, there were only two playing even quasi-professionally. The other one wouldn't touch country music with a ten-foot pole -- he'd talked to her about it. Blake was getting tired of the discussion; it obviously wasn't going anywhere. "Look, Frank, we could talk this around all day, but it comes back to the bottom line, which is that if you'll tell me you'll cave on the studio and creative control issues, I'll talk it over with Jennifer. Anything less, I'm not going to bother her. Things have changed an awful lot with her in the last few months, and things just aren't going to be the way they used to be. Get used to it."

"Damn it, you know the union problem I've got," Oldfield protested. "I couldn't cave if I wanted to."

"Then that settles that," Blake said. "Good talking to you, Frank, and thanks for letting me know about Billboard. Catch you around some day." Before Oldfield could reply, Blake stuck his thumb on the phone's cutoff button. He held it there for a few seconds, looking around for Jennifer. Now what happened to her?

A slight buzzing from the kitchen and a crinkle of paper told him all he needed to know. He put the phone back on the hook, got up and headed for the kitchen just as the microwave dinged. Without comment he watched his wife take a bowl of SpaghettiOs out of the microwave with one hand while she held some Doritos in the other. "Same thing?" she asked around a mouthful of crunching Doritos.

"Same thing," Blake replied. "It ought to hold him for a week or so. You know, one of these days you're going to have to take your turn at telling him to go to hell."

"I suppose," she said, setting the SpaghettiOs on the counter and spooning some up with a Dorito. Blake's stomach just about turned at the sight, but he was wise enough to say nothing. It would pass, he thought, as she continued, "I'd just as soon put it off until after we have Jeremy."

"We can do that," he said. "It probably won't help, though. It may take years."

"Then it takes years," she said. "I really wouldn't mind having access to their distribution, but not with all that goes with it. I mean, it's not like we need the money."

Blake nodded. Really, they didn't need the money. In spite of the fact that it was a lousy contract, Jennifer had made out very well from her first contract with Nashville-Murray, and some films and other ventures. The more recent albums plus their series of Wonderful Winter World TV specials that had become an annual Christmas staple had also been profitable if not to platinum-album level. They lived relatively modestly compared to what it would have cost to live in Los Angeles at a level appropriate to her fame. A lot of their money had been invested in the market during the boom years of the nineties, and they'd managed to ride it sky-high. With the economy turning soft with a Republican about to go into the White House, they were backing away hard, even though there were still a few good opportunities out there.

The upshot was that Jenny Easton Productions -- Blake owned slightly less than half of the company -- had money enough that they'd had to do some real juggling to keep the tax man at bay the last few years. As a tax write-off, for several years they'd sponsored a pair of young dogsled racers from Spearfish Lake in the Iditarod, the 1100-mile dogsled race in Alaska. When that wasn't enough of a write-off, they'd picked up partial sponsorship of a struggling NASCAR team. The latter had been their way of replying to a Nashville-Murray complaint that Jenny was losing touch with her fans. What better way to prove that she was still a down-home country girl than to sponsor a Winston Cup driver by the name of Bubba Winslow?

"True," he agreed internally shaking his head at the sight of her gobbling the junk food. "While I was talking with Frank I came up with one idea that would get him off our case."

"Oh?" she looked up and smiled, holding a Dorito-ful of SpaghettiOs in midair. "What's that?"

Blake smiled. "I don't know how much Nashville-Murray stock is really out there on the market to buy without researching it, but we probably could do a little leveraging, buy up enough of the company to control it, and fire his ass."

"That'd do it," she grinned. "But we don't want to work as hard as it would take to run it ourselves. We'd just have to hire some joker like him to do all the work, so there we are back at square one."

"Figured that," Blake laughed. "But I would enjoy firing him, though."

"Oh, me too," Jennifer said brightly. "But, we're going to get a touch of how it feels from his side of the desk anyway. At least we can do it honestly."

"If she goes for it," Blake shrugged.

"Oh, I think she'll go for it," Jennifer smiled. "Under the circumstances, it's nothing but a good deal for her, and frankly, we owe it to her."

"What makes you think she'll go for it? She does look at the world a little differently than anyone else."

"Women's intuition," Jennifer snickered.

"I'm glad you have it," Blake shook his head. "It's taken me long enough to get an idea of what makes you tick. I doubt if I could ever figure out Myleigh."

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