The illustrious name made Casey stay where she was. It seemed that he was on the phone.
“Right. Dench got an Oscar for nine minutes as a medieval queen, so there might be a statue for her. Got it. So who am I bedding in this one?” Tate paused. “You’re kidding….No, I’ve never seen her TV show and I’m sure it’s hilarious, but this girl is supposed to be smart and serious. Can she do tears?…All right, I’ll give her a try, but she’d better be worth it. And what’s this about Romania? I can’t go there….Yes, it has to do with the play I’m in here!” Tate gave a snort of derision. “No, I’m not wasted on a small-town stage, and, yeah, I have something good going on here. None of your business. I’ll be there next week and we can talk about what you have planned for me. I want to play out what’s going on here for as long as I can.” He laughed. “Yeah, there’s a female involved. I gotta go. That trainer they sent is a sadist. Call me if you hear anything.”
Casey turned back toward the path to her house, this time walking slowly. What in the world had she been thinking? Tate Landers lived in a completely different world than she did. He was surrounded by flashing lights and red carpets and the “statue.” An Oscar.
By the time Casey got home, she knew she had to make a decision. One thing for absolute, positive sure was that there was not, and never would be, a “relationship” between her and Tate Landers. Their worlds were too far apart. She was the cook; he was the star.
To him she was “something good going on here.” She was “a female.” Nameless.
Whereas she…She shut her eyes in memory. She had done the ultimate girl thing. After a happy afternoon of fabulous sex, she’d thought they were a couple. She winced when she remembered wondering how Tate would introduce her to someone. As his girlfriend?
In her kitchen, she sat down on a stool, picked up the cherry pitter, and began on the fruit. Her choice was whether to go on or to back away.
What would make her stop was the fear of being hurt. Again. She could imagine herself in a daze of romance. Lovemaking under the cherry trees. Laughing as they held hands and ran away from a ferocious peacock. Sex against a wall. Kissing while summer rain splashed on them.
Casey had to stop to catch her breath. Did she want to forgo that so she wouldn’t be hurt? Would she give up all that so that when he went back to his world of movie stars and gorgeous starlets whom he “bedded,” she would be saved from a few tears? Right now tears didn’t seem to weigh much when compared with sex under a cherry tree.
But maybe she should tell him that she would never again have sex with him. She could hear herself saying, “It was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened.”
Right. The best, most marvelous, wonderful, exquisite sex she’d ever imagined shouldn’t have happened? Was she crazy?
Of course, there was another choice. She could have a purely sexual friendship with Tate. If she knew it wasn’t going to last, she could enjoy it while it did. There’d be tears—hers, anyway—when he left, but a person tended to cry at the end of any great vacation.
What she didn’t want, and knew she wouldn’t be able to bear, was humiliation. She’d had enough of that from her last boyfriend. Not that Tate Landers would ever be an actual “boyfriend,” but she didn’t want outsiders to think that he had been. She liked Summer Hill, and she didn’t want to have the town whispering this coming winter about how she’d been used then dumped by a famous movie star. She couldn’t bear their looks of pity.
If she did continue with this summer fling, she wanted to keep it a secret. He was an actor, so he could carry that off. They’d work on the play during the day, keep their hands off each other in public, and at night when they were alone…Well, let happen what may.
“Hi,” Tate said from outside the door. “Want some company, or have you had enough of me today?”
“No, please come in, I’m just frying a couple of peacock legs. Want one?” Casey joked.
“My favorite.” He gave a groan of pain as he sat down on a stool.
“Was your workout bad?”
“Horrible. I have to learn to use a sword.”
She glanced over at him. “You don’t look like you’re suffering. You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”
He laughed. “Caught. But I wish Jack had been there. He texted me that they won’t get back until tomorrow.” He paused. “I know you haven’t lived in Summer Hill long, but how well do you know Gizzy?”
“Actually, not well at all. The first time I went somewhere with her, the siren for the volunteer fire department went off and she drove nearly a hundred miles an hour to get to the fire. She put on a big black coat, and ten minutes later I saw her sliding through a narrow window to search for people to rescue. She scared me.”
“But it didn’t frighten her.” Tate was staring down at his hands. “You don’t believe she thinks of Jack as just a source of…excitement, do you?”
“No, I don’t. I think she genuinely likes him.”
Tate nodded. “I hope so.” He looked at her. “Maybe tonight you and I…”
Casey knew what he was hinting at. Where were they going to spend the night? His place or hers? She knew that if he’d mentioned it while they were still in the well house, she would have said his. Or hers. Or by a campfire under the stars.
But now that she wasn’t pressed skin to skin with him, she could think more clearly—and she remembered things. There were Devlin’s words about Tate and secrecy, and the phone call she’d overheard. He wanted to “play things out” as long as he could.
Smiling, she said, “Would you mind if you and I kept our”—she couldn’t really call it a relationship—“intimacy secret? Until we see how things go?”
For a second his eyes flashed with something that she couldn’t read, but it was quickly gone and he smiled sweetly. “If the peacock doesn’t tell, I won’t. But Jack and Gizzy will guess.”
“I’m sure they will. And Olivia knows. But if possible I’d like to contain it within that group.”
He gave a nod. “You got it. Whatever you’re cooking, it smells great.”
“Quail with apricots from Ottolenghi’s latest cookbook. The man is a genius. Oh! I’m about to forget my news. Pour us some wine and I’ll tell you how close you and I came to being brother and sister.”
“That would have been a tragedy. How could it have happened?”
“Ace grew up to be my father.”
“Yeah? Tell me everything.”
She told him Olivia’s story of Letty and Ace and Uncle Freddy, but she didn’t tell what Olivia had said about her marriage. Nor did she tell him about her suspicions that Olivia and Kit may have known each other quite well in the past.
Maybe it wasn’t fair of her, but she felt that even though Tate owned the old plantation, he was an outsider. Maybe she wasn’t ready to give up the physical pleasures of their friendship, but she needed to do what she could to protect herself from the inevitable pain she was going to feel when he left.
Hours later, Casey had just stepped out of the shower and was drying off when her phone rang. It was Stacy. “Hello, traitor.”
“I knew you’d forgive me, and from what I hear, you did great with the props. And you had some serious excitement. Did the fabulous Tate Landers really hold you as you hung down a roof?”
“He did,” Casey said. “I want to hear every word of what you know about Kit. And tell me about Olivia Trumbull and her husband, and the son, Kevin. What do you know about his wife, Hildy?”
Like Gizzy, Stacy had grown up in Summer Hill. Her father was the mayor, and he prided himself on knowing everything about the private lives of the full-time residents. “I heard that Olivia’s husband had financial troubles and that she pulled him out, but not much more than that. As for Hildy, isn’t she ghastly? She runs half the committees at church. What have you heard?”
“The same thing. So how’s the new boyfriend?”
“Splendid. Divine. I am falling in love. What about you and Tate?”
&nbs
p; “Puh-lease,” Casey said. “He’s an actor. I never know what’s real and what’s not.”
“I’m glad to hear you can see that. I was worried about you having a second heartbreak so soon after your breakup, if he returns to L.A.”
“Why not? For three days I can eat masses of ice cream and chocolate and tell myself I deserve it.”
Stacy laughed. “You’ll want to do that after you see Nate and realize that I have landed the only perfect man on the planet. I feel sorry for all other women.”
“I bet he looks like a frog.”
Stacy sighed. “No, he is utterly beautiful. You should see him shirtless! He is the most gorgeous—”
As Casey listened to her half sister extol the virtues of the man in her life, she couldn’t help wishing she could reply in kind. She wished she could tell about her and Tate in the little red truck, and about the peacock, and about what happened in the well house. But she said nothing about any of it, not even their dinner together. Any of it would cause too many questions. “What does this guy do for a living?”
“That’s the oddest thing,” Stacy said. “I’m not sure. I know it has something to do with whatever Kit did before he retired, but I don’t know what that is.”
They stayed on the phone for another twenty minutes, but Casey didn’t reveal anything else about her and Tate. After she hung up and got into bed, she wished he were there beside her.
“You don’t think people are going to be suspicious when we both disappear for lunch?” Tate asked. They were in the well house, their own secret place, and they had just made love on the pillows of Letty and Ace. It had been nearly a week since they first made love. During that time, unless it was for the play, he and Casey had done their best to not look at each other. But the moment there was a break, they met in a predetermined place, usually in the well house.
“I think people see you as untouchable.” She ran her hand down his bare chest. “Still leaving tomorrow?”
He kissed her fingertips. “I have to. It shouldn’t be more than a couple of days. And while I’m gone, you guys can rehearse in the theater. You’ll be glad of that. No peacock screeching.”
What she didn’t want to say was how much she was going to miss him. She didn’t even want to say that to herself. “You’ll probably get asked to star in another big-deal movie and never return. Poor Josh will have to play Darcy.”
“Probably,” he said seriously.
In alarm, she looked up at him. When she saw that he was teasing, she put her head back down. “From what Stacy said, Kit’s nephew is a real beauty. Maybe he’ll come here and play Darcy.”
“For the first time, I’m glad there are no kissing scenes.” Laughing, they began to kiss, their bodies close together.
“We better go back.” Casey’s lips were against his.
“Definitely.” But they didn’t stop kissing.
Something hit the roof of the little building, making Casey jump. “What was that?”
“Him,” Tate said. Draped in front of the window was the tip of the peacock’s tail. “Guess he decided to try to fly.”
Casey was quickly getting dressed.
“We have a few more minutes.”
“I better go.”
Reluctantly, Tate sat upright. “I don’t understand why we have to sneak around. I feel like some teenager from the wrong side of the tracks and you’re the good girl who—”
She stopped buttoning her shirt to look at him. “Is that the plot of one of your movies?”
“I’m too old to play a teenager, but it’s a script I turned down.” He put his hand on her arm. “I want to take you out to dinner. I want to go to a movie together. I want us to sit on a park bench and eat ice cream.”
“You’d cause a riot wherever you went.”
He didn’t reply, just looked at her.
“Okay, so yes, you can disguise yourself quite well, but…” She couldn’t think how to finish that. Every day of the past week he’d asked her the same question, but she’d never come close to telling him the truth. What was she to say: “I want to protect myself from what I know you’re going to do to me”? She didn’t want to put those words into the open, because then there’d be a discussion about the future. In September he’d return to his own world and she’d stay where she was.
But hey, Jack had offered her a job cooking, so maybe Tate would too!
She didn’t smile at her own joke. She wanted to be sophisticated about this. She was having a summer affair with a beautiful man. That he was also kind, funny, thoughtful, and a truly great lover was just something good for her to look back on.
“Ready to leave in the morning?” Jack asked as he sat down in the lawn chair next to Tate. They were several feet away from the big gazebo so their talk wouldn’t disturb the players in their rehearsal. Casey and Gizzy were in costume and laughing over horrid Mr. Collins, who was being played by the ugly trainer from L.A.
“I’m not packed, if that’s what you’re asking,” Tate answered. “But then, I’m not taking anything with me.”
“I guess that means you’re planning to return.”
Tate looked at his friend to see if he was serious and saw that Jack’s eyes were laughing. “Yeah, I might come back. Not sure if Casey will care.”
“Whoa! Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know. I think it comes down to first-grade wisdom. I like her more than she likes me.”
“You’re talking about the secrecy thing, aren’t you?”
Tate shrugged. “I guess. She certainly doesn’t want anyone to know about us. How are you and Wild Woman doing?”
Jack let out a long sigh. “She sits in church like an angel dropped onto earth, then we go out and she walks along a cliff edge so steep my hair stands on end. I think I may be in love with her.”
“Does she like you or the movie star?”
“Me. I think. We don’t have a lot of in-depth talks about feelings—which is another reason I adore her. She’s never asked me what I’m thinking or feeling or even what my favorite color is. She’s like my best buddy in the most beautiful package ever created.”
“Good for you.”
“So out with it,” Jack said. “What’s eating you?”
“Something happened with Casey, but I don’t know what. Things were going great, then…she changed.”
Jack took a moment as he watched Gizzy on the stage. To his mind, she was so beautiful she might as well have a halo around her. When she smiled at him, it seemed that his insides grew soft. In bed, out of it, he wanted to be with her every minute. But it looked as if his friend wasn’t finding the same happiness. “Maybe the whole movie-star thing scares her off.”
“Casey? No way. She’s never seen me like that, and I’ve been careful that she doesn’t see that side of my life. I want her to see me as a man, not as a product of my job.”
“Good philosophy. Hope you can pull it off. By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you that I think I saw your ex-brother-in-law hiding in the bushes on days he’s not rehearsing.”
“Can’t be. I had the place fenced and I pay a couple of guys to ride around the perimeter.”
“And a couple of hours ago they found where the fence had been cut.”
Tate sounded alarmed. “Why didn’t they tell me that?”
“Because you tend to disappear for hours at a time. What was I supposed to tell them? To look for you in the blackberry bushes? And I didn’t tell security to search for the intruder because I knew he might be your ex-brother-in-law. The press wouldn’t be kind to a story of you and him in a fight.”
Tate was still staring at him. “You really think it’s Haines who’s been sneaking in?”
“The guard was sure it was him by the fence, and I’ve seen Haines in the bushes. So what’s he after?”
“Money,” Tate said. “He’ll do anything to get out of having to work to support himself. Damn! He wants to get to Nina. All he has to do is look tearful and say he miss
es Emmie and she softens.”
“Why is he breaking in now, before they get here? Maybe he’s taking photos of you and Casey and planning to sell them. How secure is that shed you two hide out in?”
Tate’s eyes were on the stage. “We can hear anyone approach. I don’t know what Haines is up to, but I do know that he’s seen Casey in private a few times.”
“She tell you that?”
“Yes,” Tate said, but he didn’t elaborate.
“Your snake of an ex-brother-in-law is sneaking around and seeing your girlfriend, she’s not giving you any details, and tomorrow you’re leaving. Didn’t you say that you might have to go with the director to the wilds of Romania to scout locations? They have cell service there?”
“Doubt it,” Tate said, frowning deeply.
Onstage, Kit called cut and said they’d take a thirty-minute break.
“Exactly where did you see him?” Tate asked.
Jack didn’t look around. “Behind me. To your left. After my last scene, I went over there and the bushes had been trampled down.”
“Do me a favor, will you?” Tate asked. “Take the girls somewhere. Get them ice cream, whatever. Tell them I had to…” He waved his hand. “Make up something.”
“Want me to run back to the house and get a sword?” Jack was trying to lighten the moment.
“For this, I want to use my bare knuckles.” With one last glance at Casey, who was laughing with her sister, Tate sauntered down the path toward the Big House. He wanted to look as though he had all the time in the world. Like he wasn’t upset or worried about anything.
As soon as he was out of sight of the stage, he doubled back. Thanks to days of exploring, he knew how to get through the tangle of old shrubs. Silently, Tate made his way to the place Jack said he thought he’d seen Haines. In the center of some tall shrubs was a circle of flattened weeds, and, through the bushes, there was a clear view of the makeshift stage.
What was Haines after this time? Tate wondered, remembering how much money he’d poured into the man. There’d been years of supporting him while he was married to Nina. Cars, clothes, booze. Just paying off his AmEx bill each month had been a killer. Nina, always the softhearted one, would sometimes quote her husband to Tate, saying that Devlin just needed a good acting job but that he couldn’t get one because he lived under the shadow of Tate’s great success.