The Girl From Summer Hill Read online

  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