The Girl From Summer Hill (Summer Hill 1)
“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.”
“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—”