Emmie shook her finger at him. He had to!
With a sigh, Tate straightened the bed, used tissues to wipe bird droppings away, and put things back on the dresser. The pajamas he remembered so well were on the floor.
He stepped back as though they were poison.
Emmie motioned for him to pick them up.
Tate, his face serious, shook his head no. He pointed to them, then made a motion of cutting his own throat. If he touched those PJs, the woman who owned them would murder him.
Emmie tried to get her uncle to put the pajamas away, but no matter what she suggested, he wouldn’t do it.
As Tate went downstairs, he made motions that he was a hero—but then his stomach growled so loudly that Emmie heard it over the music. He rolled his eyes, showing that he was dizzy with hunger. In the kitchen, he looked at the pies on the side counter with true longing, then back at his niece, his eyes pleading.
She gave in and nodded. Yes, he had earned a slice of pie.
But Tate didn’t get a plate and a knife and cut himself a piece. He propped the phone up on the counter, then picked up a big cooking spoon. Grabbing the pie with the flower-like crust, he scooped out the entire center with the spoon. He ate with such gusto that he got dark-red juice all over the lower half of his face, pieces of berry lodging in his stubble.
As he chewed, he showed his ecstasy over the flavor with his eyes and smiles. He dropped down onto a stool and ate, enjoying every bite. Juice ran down his chin; berries fell onto his T-shirt. As he scratched his ear, he got pie filling in his hair. When there was only a shell left, he used both hands to break it apart and eat it, all while using his eyes to show how delicious it was.
Emmie was laughing very hard.
“What the hell are you doing?” came a woman’s angry voice. The damaged screen door slammed behind her.
Nina sat straight up in the tub, and Emmie yelled, “No!” Tate slipped his phone into the pocket of his T-shirt, camera pointed out, as he stood to face the woman in whose house he’d just trespassed. Miss Pajamas Lady. The woman who hated him. And right now she looked so angry he was almost afraid of her.
“Look what you did!” Casey said. “You ate an entire pie! The whole thing. Or did you just tear it up for the sport of it?”
Tate stepped away from her. “Ate it,” he said.
“Oh, really? From the look of you, you took a bath in it.”
Tate put his hand to his hair and pulled out a couple of blackberries. Sometimes he felt silly having such long hair, but his contracts called for it. No wig, no extensions, just lots of real hair.
“I guess you did all this because you think you can. You own the place, plus you’re a movie star, so you can walk into someone’s home and steal her food. Is that what was in your mind?”
When Tate backed into a stool, he sat down.
Casey glared at the ruffle-edged pie plate. It was an Emile Henri, and her mother had given it to her for her eighteenth birthday. Last night she’d put her favorite pie in it, but now it was nearly empty. Just a piece of crust clung to the bottom. “I promised Josh and Kit some of that pie, but now it’s gone.” She looked back at him as he sat there in silence, watching her. “This morning I felt really bad about what happened. I should have told you I was there as soon as I saw you strip naked. But I didn’t.”
Tate raised his eyebrows.
“I sat there and watched you and later I was prepared to lie about it. I was so afraid that you’d throw me out of my house that I planned to deny being where I was and seeing what I did.” Her motion included his entire body.
“But I can’t take this,” she said. “I have to have privacy.” She went to a far cabinet and opened an overhead door, but the two big plastic pie carriers were at the top. She stretched but couldn’t reach them.
Tate’s arm went over her head, pulled the containers out, and set them on the counter.
“Thanks,” she said, then corrected herself. “I mean, no thanks. I don’t need your help. Look at these things. They were made to hold six pies. Six! But now I have only five of them.”
Tate went back to sit on the stool.
Casey began putting the pies in the carriers and loudly snapping the clasps. “Okay, I will leave. Since you believe that ownership and your…what? Celebrityship—if that’s a word. No! Entitlement. That’s what it is. Your sense of entitlement allows you to shower on my back porch and wander in and eat what I’ve cooked for other people. Since I cannot live with that, I must leave. Where I’m going to find a house with a decent kitchen so I can cook for Jack, I don’t know.”
“Jack?” Tate asked.
“Yes.” She glared at him. “While you were wandering about the grounds in your birthday suit, Jack and I became friends.” She gave him a look of triumph.
Tate seemed surprised—and very interested.