The Girl from Summer Hill(7)

“Depends on if you like raging fury.”

He held up the muffin. “This is…mmmm! Anyway, that sounds out of character for Tate. He’s not like his screen image of the angry, brooding man. All I have to do is drive fast and a girl is happy. But what’s Tate to do to impress her? Smolder?”

“What does that mean?” Casey asked. “Wait. Don’t tell me. My friend used to say that Tate Landers only had to look at a woman and she’d start removing her clothes. I didn’t feel that. He looked at me like I was something he found on the bottom of his shoe.”

“That really doesn’t sound like Tate.”

Casey waved her hand. “Why are we talking about him? I loved that scene in your last movie where you grabbed the girl off the skimobile. I kept replaying it on DVD. What are you going to do next?”

“In September I start a movie about a spoiled, rich teenage boy who’s been kidnapped. I save him and along the way I make a man of him. So what part are you trying out for in the play?”

“None. I’m not an actress. I just cook.”

“This breakfast isn’t ‘just’ anything. Listen, with your talents, I could get you a job in L.A. at—”

“Thanks, but no. Not yet.” She was planning to say nothing more, but she couldn’t help a bit of a brag. “Ever hear of Christie’s in D.C.?” She knew he had, as she’d been told he’d visited, but she’d been too busy cooking to look.

“Yeah, of course. I’ve eaten there. That place was once great but it got to be a mess. You have anything to do with bringing it back to life?”

She didn’t reply, just gave a modest shrug. Her boss had hired her straight out of school and had dumped the whole job of restoring the big old once-great restaurant onto her young shoulders. “You can do it. I have faith in you” had been his answer for every catastrophic problem. And he always said it as he was running out the door.

“I am impressed.” Jack smiled the way he did at girls when the camera was on him.

Casey smiled back but thought that it wasn’t the same as seeing him on a big screen. He just seemed like a hungry man, handsome but not overly so. Maybe real life took away some of the magic of a celebrity.

Bending, she put utensils into a box. “Right now I want some time off. I need to think about where I’m going and what I want to do. That’s enough about me. Try these.” She handed him what looked like doughnut holes but were actually Italian bombolini. Inside was a pastry cream with a touch of orange liqueur.

“Heaven,” Jack said. “On second thought, forget the restaurant job. Move in with me and feed me every day.”

“Now, that’s a tempting offer,” Casey said. “Do I get sex with that?”

“Honey, feed me like this and you can have any body part of mine you want.”

They looked at each other and laughed because they knew in that age-old way that there would never be anything like that between them. He’d used his best smile on her and she’d felt nothing. As had he. They were destined to be friends and nothing more.





As Jack drove through the pretty little town of Summer Hill, he never took his eyes off the road and he obeyed all traffic signs. Casey didn’t know if she was glad or disappointed.

At the first stop sign, Jack said, “I played Bingley in high school. It’s what got me started in acting.”

He’d been sitting in a way that seemed to take over the driver’s seat, a kind of lazy, confident position she’d seen onscreen. But abruptly, he changed. He sat up straight, arms and legs close together, and quoted Mr. Bingley. “ ‘When I am in the country, I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town, it is pretty much the same. They have each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either.’ ”

“That’s really good,” Casey said in awe. “I’ve never been able to understand how actors can be someone else. What happens if you have to do a love scene with someone you detest?”

“Did you see Runaway 3?”

“Sure. Your girlfriend was trapped on a mountain and you parachuted in and let your plane crash. When that federal agent found you two in the cabin, the look you gave him was priceless. I was sure you were going to shoot him.”

“I hated that woman. She complained endlessly.”

“But you looked like you adored each other.”

“That’s why they call it acting. The nicest thing she said to me was that I drove recklessly just to mess up her hair.”

“But driving like a madman is what you do.”

“See? If you worked for me, you could have told her that and protected me.”