The Girl From Summer Hill

  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.”

  “If I heard her being nasty, I would have put sweetened yogurt into her breakfast smoothie. The extra calories would get her back.”

  Laughing, Jack pulled into a big parking lot. Before them was a huge old two-story brick warehouse with about a hundred windows. There were a dozen vans outside, all of them with company names painted on the side: electrical, carpentry, heating/AC, plumbing, tile, and glass. It was early, but there was the sound of hammers and saws and men yelling orders.

  Casey got out and went to the back of the truck to start unloading. “Hey, Josh!” she yelled.

  A handsome young man in jeans and a T-shirt came over and kissed her cheek. He was tall, over six feet, and his shirt showed his muscular chest.

  “Could you give me a hand here?” Casey asked.

  “Nope,” Josh said. “Not unless I get the bribe you promised me.”

  Smiling, Casey opened the container of bombolini and held it out to him.

  As he took a couple, he glanced at Jack, who was standing to one side of the truck. “You look like that guy who—”

  “He is that guy,” Casey said. “Josh, meet Jack Worth, and Jack, this is Josh, my brother.”

  As the two men shook hands, Josh said, “I’m not really her brother. She’s a half sister of my sister—who is also my half sister.” He picked up a heavy cooler from the truck bed.

  “Interesting relationship.” Jack put a box on top of another cooler and picked them both up.

  Josh put down the cooler he was carrying, set a big casserole dish on top of it, and picked it up.

  Jack started to put his cooler down but Casey stepped between them. “Go, both of you. You can arm-wrestle later.”

  The two men started walking side by side toward the warehouse, but then Josh stepped forward and Jack went after him. By the time they got to the doorway they were nearly running.

  “Now there’s a bromance,” Casey muttered.

  “Do you need some help?”

  She turned to see an older woman, quite pretty, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was slim and looked fit.

  “I’d love some help, but I believe in men making themselves useful.” She turned to the vans, which were all open to reveal the tools and supplies inside; a few men were nearby. “I have food,” Casey said loudly, “and as soon as I can get it set up inside, the sooner you guys can eat it.”

  Within seconds, half a dozen men were at the truck, picking up containers and carrying them inside.

  The woman laughed. “I’m Olivia, and maybe I can help you set up.”

  “I’m Casey, and that would be great.” They started walking toward the open doors of the warehouse. “Did you drive in for the auditions?”

  “Oh, no,” Olivia said. “I was born and bred in Summer Hill. I came with my daughter-in-law, Hildy. She’s trying out for the part of Jane Bennet.”

  “That’s good,” Casey said. “I figured every female here would want to be Elizabeth.”

  “Hildy feels that her physical attributes predispose her to be Jane.”

  “What?” Casey asked, not understanding. “Oh, right, I see. Jane is very pretty. That’s nice for your daughter-in-law.” She glanced up at the warehouse. “I haven’t been here since Kit bought this place. Half the windows were broken and the inside was full of trash. Looks like it’s been cleaned up since then.”

  “Wait until you see the inside.”

  They went through a wide doorway toward all the noise of men and tools—and Casey gasped. The warehouse was in the final stages of renovation. It was a long, high-ceilinged space. A big stage was at one end, seats on raised tiers in the middle, and a closed-off area was for ticketing. What was especially startling was that a lot of one wall had been torn out and glass doors put in. Casey knew that when Kit bought it, the yard had been full of derelict pieces of machinery and some rather impressive weeds. That was all gone and in its place was a garden. As she watched, a crane lowered a twenty-foot-tall birch tree to two men who were guiding it into a big hole.

  “Wow” was all Casey could say.

  “Thank you,” came a deep voice that she knew well. “I take it you approve.”

  She held her cheek up to Kit’s kiss. He was tall and elegant, his thick gray hair like a lion’s mane. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I hear you had a bit of an adventure this morning,” he said. “It seems that the question is whether you saw or didn’t see.” His eyes weren’t on Casey.

  “Do you know Olivia?” she asked. “And I’m not telling what I saw, but just so you know, fairy godmothers do grant wishes.”

  Kit laughed, a rich, pleasant sound.

  But for all that he was laughing at Casey’s joke, he hadn’t taken his eyes off Olivia—who was studiously watching the men in the garden. Casey looked from one to the other. “Olivia is going to help me serve, and her daughter-in-law is here to audition for the role of Jane.”

  Kit dragged his eyes away from Olivia and consulted the clipboard he was holding. “And you
are auditioning for what part?”

  “None of them,” Olivia said firmly. “I’m just here to help my daughter-in-law if she needs me.”

  The tables had been set up near the big glass doors, the boxes and coolers beside them. Three men were standing nearby, waiting for food.

  “I better get busy.” Casey went to the tables, Olivia behind her.

  The two women worked well together, each seeming to know what the other wanted before it was done. Within minutes the big tables were covered with white paper, and breakfast items were set out. Kit had ordered dozens of pastries from the local bakery, so most of the food Casey had prepared could be saved for lunch.

  As they worked, the big warehouse began to fill up with people, all of them carrying copies of the script that Kit had written during the winter with the help of Casey and her half sister Stacy. He had complained about the difficulty of translating Pride and Prejudice into a script. “She left out important dialogue and now I have to make it up.” Since he was referring to the very perfect Jane Austen, Casey had groaned.

  “Look at this,” he said. “The pivotal scene of the book is paraphrased. She doesn’t tell what Darcy said when he proposed, just that he insulted Elizabeth. How? What exactly did he say? Didn’t this woman have an editor?”

  They had laughed over Kit’s complaints, but he got them back by making them read the lines aloud every time he rewrote them. They got to the point where they had memorized everyone’s lines.

  Smiling at the memory, Casey began filling mugs from the big urn, while Olivia opened more boxes of doughnuts. The tables were soon surrounded by workmen getting coffee and pastries—and they didn’t seem to want to leave. “At this rate someone will have to make another run to the bakery,” Casey said. “I think I’m jealous. What did they put into these that makes them so popular?”

  “It’s not the doughnuts, it’s the Lydias. And the girls are here for Wickham,” Olivia said. “Look.”

  A table had been set up by the exterior door, and names were being taken and badges handed out. All the Pride and Prejudice characters were represented, but Lydia was four to one. Many women had a badge saying LYDIA clipped to their shirts.

  “What in the world is going on? I thought there’d be a lot of competition for the lead roles.”

  Olivia nodded toward the stage. There in the center, talking to Kit, was a very handsome man. Dark-brown hair, broad shoulders, all of it encased in the red uniform worn by the officers in Meryton.

  “Another one!” Casey said under her breath.

  “Another one what?” Olivia asked.

  “Beautiful man. It’s my day for them. I’m beginning to feel like a magnet attracting bits of very pretty steel.”

  “Hey, Casey!” Josh called from atop some scaffolding. “You gonna try out for Lydia?”

  “No, but I think you should try out to be Wickham.”

  There was a collective gasp from half a dozen young women who gazed up at him with smiles and fluttering eyelashes.

  “I’ll get you for that.” Grinning, Josh returned to plastering the wall, his back to the girls.

  Eight of the Lydias hurried to Casey.

  “Do you think Josh will play—”

  “Will he audition with—”

  “Can he wear a uniform?”

  “Have no idea. Doubt it. Absolutely not,” Casey said. “Who wants an eight-hundred-calorie pastry?”

  All the girls backed away except for one. She too had LYDIA pinned to her top, but she didn’t look like the other girls, all of whom had on enough makeup to start a business. This girl was pretty and blonde, tall and thin, and she kept her head down as though she was too shy to meet Casey’s eyes. She took her doughnut and a mug of orange juice and went to the side of the room to sit down and read her copy of Pride and Prejudice.

  “What an extraordinarily pretty young woman,” Olivia said in such a way that Casey glanced at her. She was about to ask a question that might get Olivia to reveal something about herself, but Jack came to the table.

  “Where have you been?” Casey asked. “Hiding from the autograph seekers?”

  “Are you kidding?” he said. “All the prettiest girls are chasing the uniform.” He looked toward the stage, where the man in red was contemplating the girls sitting in the front row. It was a whole line of Lydias.

  “You poor guy,” Casey said, “but I’ll tell you a secret.” She leaned toward him. “I just saw Reverend Nolan’s van pull up.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She stepped behind him, put her hands on his shoulders, and turned him to face the exterior door. “Keep your eyes on that doorway and you’ll see what I mean.” She went back to the other side of the table.

  “I take it this means Gizzy Nolan is going to audition,” Olivia said. “Elizabeth or Jane?”

  “Sorry,” Casey said. “She’s going for Jane.”

  “Poor Hildy,” Olivia said.

  Jack was watching the doorway but nothing was happening. He was about to turn away when an incredibly pretty girl walked in. She paused a few steps in and looked around. The bright outdoor light was behind her and a breeze moved her long, thick hair. The shape of her was extraordinary, tall and slim but with a magnificent bosom. Small waist, curvy hips, and long, long legs. But her body was nothing compared to her beautiful face. She was like the princesses described in fairy tales: blonde hair, eyes like sapphires, full pink lips.

  Jack, used to seeing spectacularly beautiful young women, could only stare.

  “Darn!” Casey said loudly. “Gizzy didn’t wear any makeup today. When she does, she’s a knockout.”

  Turning, Jack looked at Casey in disbelief, then gave a little guffaw of laughter. “Is that local humor?”

  Casey smiled. “It is. If you want to meet her, I suggest you get over there fast or you’ll lose your place.”

  Three young workmen were putting down their hammers to go toward her. Jack covered the distance in just a few steps.

  Olivia frowned. “That guy’s a movie star. He’ll leave soon. Gizzy’s dad won’t like that.”

  “I have an ulterior motive. In high school, Jack played Mr. Bingley, and he doesn’t have a movie until the fall. If he could be enticed to stay here and be in our little local play, we’ll be sure to have sold-out performances. And since it’s all for charity…”

  Olivia smiled. “So you’re dangling Gizzy in front of him as bait?”

  “Oh, yeah. There always have to be sacrifices for the greater good.”

  Olivia laughed. “Somehow, I don’t think Gizzy is going to mind. But since you and Jack seem to get along so well, why don’t you dangle yourself?”

  “As much as I love Jack on the screen, seeing him in person isn’t the same. Actually, I was wondering who the guy onstage is. He’s not from around here. If I could act, I might try out for Lydia. Think I could pass for fifteen?”

  “I think you should try for Elizabeth. Who’s going to be Darcy?”

  Casey lowered her voice. “Josh doesn’t know it, but Kit plans to coerce him into playing the role.”

  “Josh has no idea what’s in store for him?”

  “None, but if I’ve learned anything since I’ve been in Summer Hill, it’s that Mr. Christopher ‘Kit’ Montgomery gets whatever he wants. The owner of this warehouse said he would absolutely, positively never sell this place.” Casey waved her hand. “You see what happened there. So anyway, if I played Elizabeth, I’d be pretending to fall in love with my brother. Yuck!”

  Olivia smiled. “I can see your problem. Too old for Lydia, Lizzy is out, and Jane…”

  “Will be given to Gizzy.” She nodded toward the doorway. Jack and Gizzy were talking, and they made a very good-looking couple. As tall as Gizzy was, Jack was taller still, and her very feminine good looks were balanced by his rough handsomeness.

  “I see you’ve done my work for me,” Kit said from behind them.

  Immediately, Casey understood what he meant. “You must know that
Jack doesn’t have a movie until September and you probably know he played Bingley in high school. Did…” She paused. “Did the other one tell you?”

  Kit’s eyes widened. “Are you referring to my cousin Tatton as ‘the other one’?”

  Casey shrugged. “Sounds like him to rat on his friends.”

  Kit made a sound of astonishment. “I thought he was the heartthrob of all women.”

  “Not this one,” Casey said. “You want something to eat? I have some of those orange crêpes you like.”

  “No time now, but please save some for me.” He was studying her in speculation, as though trying to figure something out.

  “So how are you going to get Jack to agree to be in the play?”

  “I’m going to wait until he comes to me and begs for the role.” He looked at Olivia, lowered his voice, and spoke directly to her. “It was Elizabeth, but now it’s to be Mrs. Bennet.” Turning, he walked away.

  “What was that about?” Casey saw that Olivia’s face was red.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Do you think I should go buy some more pastries? Or cupcakes for lunch?”

  “It’s too early to know if we’ll need them.” Casey was staring at her, but Olivia wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Did Kit mean he wants you to play Mrs. Bennet?”

  “I have no idea.” Olivia busied herself with rearranging food containers.

  Three men came to the table asking for coffee and more doughnuts. Their conversation was full of “not fair” and “who does he think he is?” and “he should go back to Hollywood where he belongs.” When they left, Casey and Olivia burst into giggles.

  Jack and Gizzy had moved out of the doorway but were still talking. When he caught Casey’s eye, he excused himself and came over to the table. “You have any more of those…” He trailed off as he glanced at Gizzy, then back again. “She’s smart and funny and as delicate as glass. I’ve never met anyone like her.”

  Casey glanced at Olivia, then back at him. “Look, Jack, we don’t know each other very well, but you’ll have to trust me on this: Gizzy is not made of glass.”