The Girl From Summer Hill Read online

  He took a deep breath and stood up, but he stayed behind her.

  “Look, he’s just a bird and he’s probably lonely,” she said.

  “Actually, he’s so mean no one can stand to be around him.” Tentatively, Tate stepped around Casey and took her hand. “I think we better find the truck and get out of here.”

  But Casey didn’t move. Still holding Tate’s hand, she took a step forward, her other hand extended toward the bird. “I’m sure he’s a very nice guy. He just needs a little TLC.”

  The big bird suddenly put its magnificent tail up in a glorious circle—and pecked Casey’s hand hard.

  “Ow! That hurt!” There was blood on her hand. “I think—”

  Tate didn’t give her time to say any more because the peacock, its five-foot tail flashing in the sunlight, was going after Casey.

  With the expertise of having done it in many movies, Tate threw her over his shoulder and began to run, the peacock on his heels.

  Casey lifted her head enough to see the bird. “He’s gaining on us. Run faster!”

  “You sound like my last director.” He swerved around two tree stumps, brushed tree branches out of his face, and jumped over a fallen log.

  “I could walk, you know,” Casey said, but Tate ran a caressing hand over her curvy rear end, which was right by his ear. “Actually, I think my ankle is broken and I may never walk again.”

  Tate laughed. “Is he still charging us?”

  “Oh, yeah. You think that tail is up for you or me? You’re by far the prettier one.”

  Tate sat her down with a thunk on the seat of the little truck and kissed her quickly. “He wants you. You look and feel and taste like a girl.” He said it with such a leer that Casey came close to giggling.

  Tate started to run around the front, but the peacock pecked his ankle, so he climbed over Casey—with lots of hand–body contact—into the driver’s side, started the engine, and drove as fast as the vehicle could go.

  She was watching out the back. “You outran him.”

  He slowed down the truck, looked at Casey, and they burst into laughter.

  “Hello,” Olivia said.

  Casey was putting buckets and mixing bowls in the utility truck. After she and Tate got back, she’d asked to borrow the truck so she could try to find where fruit was growing. He’d warned her to watch out for the livestock, then they’d kissed goodbye, and he’d run to the Big House and the trainer.

  “Enjoying your day off?”

  The thought of just how much she’d been enjoying the day sent blood rushing to Casey’s face. “So far, it’s been one of the best days of my life. What about you?”

  Olivia smiled. “I take it you spent the morning with the master of the plantation.”

  “I did,” she said.

  “Judging by the new scratches on your forearms, I’d say that you were at the back of the property.”

  Casey looked at her in shock. “I forget that you grew up in Summer Hill. Did you spend a lot of time on Tattwell?”

  “In the summer of 1970, I was the housekeeper for Uncle Freddy. He wasn’t my uncle, but everyone called him that. What are you doing with all these containers?”

  “I’m going to search for food. Tate drove us around this morning and I saw several possibilities. It’s early in the season, but I think there are a few things I can preserve. You wouldn’t like to go with me, would you?”

  “I’d love to.”

  As they got into the little truck, Casey focused on Olivia. She wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe she’d been crying. “Everything okay at home?”

  “Fine,” Olivia said. “Did you check the cherry trees? A few of them used to bear fruit very early.”

  “Tell me where they are.”

  Olivia gave directions and Casey drove.

  “It’s changed so much since I was here,” Olivia said. “All of this used to be beautifully kept. Uncle Freddy gave jobs to so many people in Summer Hill—which is probably why he died broke.”

  There was a sadness in her voice that made Casey frown. Earlier, Casey had been so happy that she called her mother to tell her everything—well, maybe not all of it. Her mother had been delivering a baby, though, and couldn’t talk.

  But now Casey didn’t feel right talking about her happiness when Olivia looked so forlorn. And she had an idea that her daughter-in-law, Hildy, was behind it. Why in the world was Olivia living in the same house as that rude young woman? Maybe she could find out by starting at the beginning. “Were you madly in love with your late husband?”

  Olivia let out a loud laugh. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Oh,” Casey said.

  “Turn here. I shouldn’t have said that. I did come to love him, but when I married him I didn’t love him at all.”

  Before them were half a dozen cherry trees, some of them dead, all of them in desperate need of pruning. There wasn’t much fruit, but there was some. Casey turned off the engine. “I’ll get what I can while you tell me the story.”

  Olivia seemed to consider that for a moment. “All right,” she said as she got out of the truck.

  They walked through tall weeds and trees with broken branches, to one that was laden with ripe cherries. The sun was shining, and everything was glistening from the morning rain.

  “It was 1972, and emotionally I was in a very bad place. I had recently been told that I couldn’t have children.”

  Casey gave a gasp.

  “It’s okay,” Olivia said. “It was a long time ago.” She took a deep breath. “My Broadway career had failed and I was at home in Summer Hill, living with my parents. I loved them, but they were older and they hated any noise. You ever play the Rolling Stones at whisper level? It loses a lot.”

  Casey laughed.

  “I got a job as the bookkeeper at Trumbull Appliances. The owner was a man named Alan, and he was in a mess. For one thing, his wife had died in childbirth and left him with an infant son.”

  “Oh,” Casey said. “And there you were with baby lust.”

  “It was eating up my soul,” Olivia said. “My childless future made me want to lie down in the road and let trucks run over me. Anyway, there was Alan with this motherless baby and a thoroughly incompetent, lazy live-in housekeeper who pestered him all day with her complaints.”

  “Perfect for you to step in,” Casey said.

  “At the time I thought so. Besides Alan’s domestic problems, the store was failing. He’d inherited the place from his father, who had been a great salesman, but Alan took after his quiet-tempered mother. By the time I got there, he had only two employees and they did very little work.”

  Olivia began to fill a stainless mixing bowl with cherries.

  “For three whole months I stood back and watched as things fell apart, but then one day Alan was at his desk, eating a bologna sandwich and pulling strands of the housekeeper’s long dark hair out of it, when she brought the baby in. She handed him to Alan, said she had a headache, and left. He had a desk piled high with papers, the phone was ringing, and he looked like he was going to cry.”

  Olivia took a breath. “I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t ask permission, I just took over. I put the baby on his desk and changed him, all while telling Alan what to do. I’m afraid I was very bossy. ‘Answer the phone.’ ‘Tell them you can deliver it by Tuesday.’ ‘Call the newspaper to repeat last week’s ad, but say that this Saturday you’re having a one-day fifteen-percent-off-everything sale.’ ”

  “It sounds like you’d thought about it.” Casey put a full bucket of cherries in the truck.

  “I had. From the first day, I’d watched and thought about what I would do if the business were mine. Anyway, six months later Alan and I were married, and twenty-plus years after that we owned five appliance stores that did very well.”

  “And you came to love him?”

  “Yes, I did. But not…” She smiled. “Not in that way of young love, the kind where you rip each other’s clothes off at first sig