The Girl From Summer Hill Read online

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was wrong.”

  “Shhhh,” he said. “It’s all right.” He stroked her hair.

  “I thought you hated me.”

  “I could never do that.”

  She pulled away to look at him. “But you were so angry at me!”

  Tate gave a little laugh. “I was. I haven’t had a lot of women tell me no. It was a shock to me.” She put her head back down on his shoulder. “I’ve committed to this play and I have to honor that. But the second our performances are done, I’ll be going back to L.A.”

  “Oh. I see,” Casey said. “L.A. Want me to close up the house here for you?”

  “No. Don’t take my head off again, but I want you to go with me. But if you don’t like that idea, I will come here as often as I can.”

  Casey let out her breath. “You really meant what you said.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “Of course I did! What is it about Haines that makes perfectly sane women like you and Nina believe him?”

  She knew it was a rhetorical question, but she answered anyway. “Probably his faked displays of emotion. He says everything with tears and angst, like it’s coming from the very depths of his soul. You say, ‘Baby, my jet’s running. Wanna go with me?’ ”

  Tate laughed. “I think I’ve been in L.A. too long, because those words are guaranteed to get any other woman there.”

  Putting his hand under her chin, he tipped her face up to look at him. He was serious. “Acacia, I like you very much. I like the way you see through the outside of me to what’s underneath. I like that I can be myself with you, that you have no preconceived ideas of what I should be. I like your enthusiasm for life. I especially love our bodies together.”

  He took a breath. “I want you to go to L.A. with me to see if you can tolerate my odd life. I made up my mind about you at the first, maybe on that day when you yelled at me about the pie. I’ve had to wait for you to decide what you want.” He paused for a moment. “Will you go with me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I will.” Her head went back to his shoulder.

  “Good, but we have to keep it quiet. I’m afraid Haines will take his anger out on Emmie and Nina.”

  “Can’t something be done to stop him? Can’t lawyers help?”

  “What he does is immoral but not illegal. You can’t imprison a man for using words to ruin lives. Not even for lying constantly. It’s not illegal to give a pretty girl a gift and tell her it came from his grandmother.” Tate sighed. “Why is it that women fall for bad boys, then get angry when they turn out to be bad boys?”

  Casey listened more to his tone than to his words. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. He’s getting worse. He’s obsessed with the idea that I have ruined his life. I’m going to stop paying him soon, which means that he’s either going to have to get a job or figure out a way to get someone else to support him. I dread whatever he’s going to do.” Tate took a breath. “I don’t want to stir him up while Emmie and Nina are here. And you. What he did with that girl…”

  “Rachael Wells.”

  “Right. Her. That was defamation of character. When I get back to L.A., and Nina and Emmie are safe on the other side of the country, I’m going to get some legal advice. There has to be something I can do to stop this man’s vendetta against my family.”

  “Does he do this to all your girlfriends?”

  “No, but he knew I didn’t really like any of them.”

  For all the horror of what Tate was saying, she couldn’t stop her smile. She ran her leg between his thighs. “I’ll keep us a secret. In the last weeks, my acting ability has improved so much that now I’ll be able to make people believe that I can’t bear the sight of you.”

  Tate made a sound that was half laugh, half groan.

  She rolled on top of him, her face scrunched into a deep frown. “Are you saying I’m not a good actor?”

  “Jack said that yesterday you delivered your lines like you were a robot.”

  Casey’s eyes began to tear, but she blinked them away. “Oh,” she said sadly, and started to roll off him.

  He grabbed her to him and held her head on his chest. “I’m sorry! I’m sure you were—”

  Casey’s giggle was muffled by his chest.

  He pulled her head away and saw that she’d been teasing. “You brat!” He began kissing her neck.

  “Take it back about my acting.”

  “Or what?” His lips were moving downward on her chest.

  “I’ll serve you canned soup.”

  Tate lifted his head, put his hand to his heart, and gave a deep sigh. “ ‘You bruise me to my core. I cannot continue as I have been. Without you I am nothing. I must—’ ”

  She kissed him until he was silent, then broke away to look at him. “You said those lines better on film.” She kissed him again.

  “You saw one of my movies?” His eyes were alight. “Which one?”

  Casey laughed. “Shut up.”

  “ ‘Your wish is my desire. I live only—’ ”

  He was quoting his lines again. Still laughing, she kissed him again, only this time the kiss didn’t end.

  They made love slowly, enjoying each other, so very glad to be back together. They exchanged no words, just kisses and caresses.

  When they at last finished, it wasn’t with the passion they’d felt at first—that seeing-each-other-again fury—but with something deeper, something that came from inside and transcended mere bodies.

  They lay in silence, side by side, hands entwined, heads touching.

  “Dress rehearsal is today,” Tate whispered. “I look forward to seeing you in one of those low-cut—”

  Abruptly, Casey sat up. “Lunch! I forgot lunch!”

  “It’s okay. We’ll order in and—”

  Casey got out of bed. “Listen, City Boy! Bags of grease are not the same as what I cook. Get up, get dressed, go downstairs, and set a stockpot of water on to boil. I have to wash the sweat off.”

  “I don’t have any clothes up here. They’re outside and it’s now daylight, remember?”

  Casey was in the bathroom. “You walk around naked in front of a camera, so make do.”

  “I am sooooo glad you saw my movies,” Tate muttered.

  “I heard that!” she yelled from the shower.

  —

  Tate opened Casey’s closet door, saw nothing he could get into, then decided to go outside and get his own clothes.

  Because Casey was in the shower, she didn’t get to hear the comments that greeted a nude Tate when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Emmie giggled and hid her face; Nina handed him his sweatpants; Gizzy said, “Oh, my goodness!”; Jack said Tate needed to work on his pecs; Josh asked if he could train with them.

  It took Tate a few moments to recover as he slipped on his clothes. “I take it we’re making lunch.”

  “If you can spare the time,” Jack said in sarcasm.

  —

  Minutes later, when Casey ran down the stairs in a panic, she was confronted by what looked to be an army of people in her kitchen, all of them busy with food preparation. She wasn’t sure whether she was glad or horrified. As far as she knew, none of them knew how to cook, so what were they doing to her food?

  Tate put his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “You’re not alone now,” he said softly. “You have a family.”

  Casey started to smile up at him, but just then Nina dropped a container of chopped onions into a bowl of cake icing. “Oops,” she said. “Now I’ll have to pick them out.”

  Tate leaned down to Casey. “On the other hand, you’re not alone now. You have a family.”

  Laughing, Casey hurried forward to sort out the mess.

  Later, Nina was chopping peppers—far away from anything sweet—and she asked Josh how he was related to Casey.

  “Well,” Josh said as he moved to stand closer to Nina. Considering tha