Casey and Tate were sitting on an old quilt by a pretty rushing stream. Huge rocks glistened and the sun sparkled on the water. Over them was a dense canopy of trees. On the quilt was a feast of Casey’s cooking: jicama and citrus salad, olive tapenade, three kinds of bread, and a selection of cheeses.
Their backs against a wide boulder, they were munching on coconut-lime cookies and watching Jack and Gizzy argue. Casey and Tate were too far away to hear what was being said, but they could see them clearly.
“What’s that about?” Casey asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing. But my guess is disillusionment. You fall for a delicate flower, then she does what?”
“Beats him on a motorcycle,” Casey said. “Jumps out of a plane. Whatever. Men can’t take it.”
“Jack can. I have confidence in him.”
“Bet you another berry custard pie that he’ll leave her.”
“If by some freak chance you win, what do you get?”
She started to say, “Another shower show,” but didn’t. “The satisfaction of having won.”
Tate groaned. “What a cop-out. There must be something you want. Your own restaurant? Boyfriend back?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Not about the boyfriend but about my future. What about you? Anything you want that you don’t have?”
He stretched out on the quilt, his hands behind his head, all six feet plus of him lying beside her. “I want to be in a comedy or a mystery or a horror movie. I’ll take anything besides brooding hero.”
“But you’re so good at it,” Casey said. “Just today when you glowered at me, I felt like a princess in a tower.”
“Yeah?” When he looked at her, he saw she was teasing. “I’m going to get you for that. I—” His cellphone rang. “It’s probably my agent telling me I’m going to be in the next Wolverine movie….Nope. Better. It’s Emmie.” He touched the phone on. “Hi, sweetheart. Are you still making your mother crazy?”
He paused and listened. “Right now I’m lying on a quilt, watching Uncle Jack argue with a very pretty girl. I think he’s losing. Beside me is Casey. She made the pie I ate….Oh. Okay.” He handed the phone to her. “Emmie wants to talk to you.”
Puzzled, Casey took the phone. “Hello?” She listened. “Yes, I can make grilled cheese sandwiches. I grill the bread, then put the cheese on the toasted part and re-grill the whole thing. Makes it very crunchy….No, I never use the kind of whipped cream that comes in a can.” She handed the phone back to Tate.
“Does she pass?” Smiling, he nodded at Casey. “Emmie wants to know where you got the hey-diddle-diddle pajamas and would you please marry her uncle—that’s me—and cook for all of us?”
Casey blinked a few times. “My mom got them. I’ll ask her where, and no.”
Tate went back to the phone. “Yes to the cooking, but sorry, she won’t take me as part of the deal. Story of my life. When will you be here?” He paused. “Yes, I’m sure Casey can make a pie that tastes like an Oreo.” He looked at her and she nodded. “I hear your mom calling you….Yeah, me too. Lots. Do try to behave, but feel free to nag to get here sooner.” He laughed. “No, you can’t ride the peacock. Go on, now. Kiss your mom for me.” He turned off his phone and looked back at Casey. “You were telling me the plans for your life.”
“No, I wasn’t. You’ve told me very little about yourself. How did you get started in movies?”
He took a while to answer. “The official story is that I was discovered by a director when I was nine years old. That’s true but it’s also a lie.” He rolled over and stood up, his long body unfolding like a great cat. “Let’s walk, or we may see what we don’t want to.”
Jack and Gizzy had stopped arguing and were now kissing.
“Besides, my libido can’t stand the torture. You wouldn’t want to…” He wiggled his eyebrows to let her know what he was thinking.
Maybe it was his ability as an actor, but he seemed able to project images into her mind. Lazily making love on the quilt. Sharing a glass of wine. Her lips on his sun-warmed skin. His mouth caressing her. Her—
“Stop it!” Tate said in a low voice. “Your face gives everything away and I can’t take it. You’re too desirable. The day is too warm, the air too fragrant, and I’ve had too much wine.”
Casey looked away from him.
“Come on,” he said. “I saw a path nearby.” He held out his hand, but before Casey could take it, he drew back. “Better not risk it. With our mutual thoughts, if we touch we might start a forest fire. How would we explain that arson to the fire marshal?”
What he said was so ridiculous that she laughed. “Okay, no touching, no anything but what friends do. Lead and I will follow you.”
Tate put his hand on his heart. “To a man, those are the sexiest words a woman can say.”
“How about this? Stop the melodramatic acting and go! Jack and Gizzy seem like they might start on the peanut butter.”
Tate began walking down the path. “Just so you know, the bad-acting hit was a good turnoff, but mentioning the peanut butter is enticing. Makes me think of you in those PJs with absolutely nothing on under them. Did your mother really give them to you? What was she thinking?”
“That I’m still a little girl who likes fairy tales. I thought you were going to tell me how you became an actor.”
They’d come to a shallow stream that they were going to have to wade across. “You ever see the movie Dirty Dancing?”
“A hundred times. Do you do the lift? Even I saw the movie where Ryan Gosling—”
Tate gasped. “Don’t put a dagger in my heart with my competition’s name.”
“You’re better-looking than he is,” she said seriously.
“You’ve made my day. So how about it?” He was pointing to a big tree that had fallen across the stream.
She knew what he meant: the scene in Dirty Dancing when Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey balance on the log while he talks about how he came to be a dancer. “Nope,” Casey said. “I’m not Gizzy. I don’t do logs. How about if we—”
Tate took her hand, but no electricity shot between them, just warmth and encouragement.
“How do you do that? Turn emotions on and off?”
“I have no idea. Some kind of control, I guess.” He started toward the log, but when Casey didn’t move, he put her hand to his lips. His voice dropped to a low growl. “The scent of you runs through my body. It delights me, excites me, drives me mad with desire. To touch you, caress you, to…” His voice was a whisper. “To kiss you, I would give my all.”
Casey was staring at him, unable to move or to speak.
He dropped her hand. “The log? Wanna try it?”
She had to shake her head to clear it. “Did you make that up?”
“Nah. Lines from one of my movies. It’s either more of that or you walk across the log with me.”
“Tree!” she said, and pushed past him. “Give me a boost, and watch what you do with your hands.”
He lifted her up so she was facing him. He did watch his hands—as they ran down her body. In the next second he was on the log with her.
Casey tried to hide it, but she really was afraid of the height, the narrow roundness of the tree, and maybe a little scared of Tate Landers. If he’d kept on with his hand-kissing and his words, she might have fallen into his arms. She tended to take lovemaking seriously, but it seemed to be a game to him. He could turn the seduction—the electricity between them—off and on at will.
Tate held both her hands as she stepped backward on the log. No matter what else she felt about him, she trusted him to not let her fall.
“We needed the money,” he said. “My dad died when I was four and Nina was just a baby.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It was a long time ago. I grew up seeing my mom struggle to pay the bills and raise us. I wanted to help, but how could I? I was only a kid.” They were in the middle of the log, and he let go of one of her hands.
“We were living in California, and a kid at school said his mom was taking him to try out for a role in a movie.”
“And you went too and got the job, which means that you were born talented.”
“Just the opposite. My mom took me to the audition and it was a cattle call, with over three hundred kids. Most of them were eliminated before the director saw them.”
“He only wanted pretty boys?”
Tate gave a half smile. “Physical appearance has a great deal to do with how you’re cast.”
“A diplomatic answer. But I guess you were the cutest child there.”
“I was certainly the most scared kid. But not by the audition. That morning my mother had one of her asthma attacks. It was so bad I thought she was going to die.”
“Oh,” Casey said. “I really am sorry.”
“Thanks. Anyway, that day I was pretty gloomy. The director put all the kids who were possibilities on a stage. He wanted to see if we could follow directions, so he told us that we weren’t to laugh no matter what we saw. He then paraded people past us. They did pratfalls, funny dances, made faces, et cetera. One by one, the kids were eliminated.”
“But not you.”
“No. I was so worried about my mother that nothing on earth could make me smile. After a while there were only three boys left and the director told us to cry. One kid couldn’t do it, one faked it, but I…”
“You cried for real.”
“Oh, yes. The director joked that I was either a great actor or one seriously unhappy kid. He said, ‘Okay, so let’s see which one it is.’ He told me to smile. I don’t know if it was fate or what, but just then my mother walked in and gave me a thumbs-up. She had recovered from her attack.”
“And you smiled.”
“With all the joy I felt. The director said, ‘You’re hired. And it’s my guess that we have a star in the making.’ ” Tate stopped talking and looked at her.
“That’s a wonderful story.”
“Think so? To my mind, I got the job on false pretenses. I had no idea how to act, so I had to learn. For years I used my emotions about my mother to portray whatever the director asked for. But eventually I learned to cry, laugh, whatever, without having to tear out my guts to do it. That wasn’t easy.”
“What about the smoldering that I’ve heard about?”
“That is a natural talent. Want me to show you?” He was leading her backward, toward the end of the log.
“No thanks.”
“My loss.”
“Tell me, do you come on to all women as you’re doing to me?”
“No.” His face turned serious. “The truth is that since I was a teenager I’ve just stood still and women have come to me. Being the predator is a new experience.” He smiled at her in a very sweet way. “As much as I hate to say it, we better go back. Jack wanted to go over lines for tomorrow.”
“Don’t mention the play! If I hadn’t been so angry at you, I wouldn’t be stuck doing something I’m no good at.”
Tate jumped down off the log and held up his hands to her. He caught her by the waist and swung her down. “Ha! The way you shot Mean Girl barbs at me shows you have a lot of talent. And don’t kid yourself about Kit. I think he meant for you to have the role from the beginning.”
“I don’t think so. Last winter Stacy and I helped him write the script, and we talked about who could play the parts. Neither Stacy nor I was ever considered as an actor.”
They were walking back to the picnic area, Casey in front.
“Stacy again!” Tate said. “She and my sister became friends.”
“I know. I used to hear them on the phone. We knew Nina was related to Kit and that she was overseeing the decorating of the house, but we didn’t know her family used to own the place. You bought it back because…”
“Mom loved Tattwell so much. When she was a kid, she spent summers there with her family. She and a little boy were inseparable. They used to shower on the back porch of the house Mom’s family stayed in.”
“I guess that’s my house,” Casey said. “So you wanted to do that too?”
“I did.” They had reached the picnic area. Gizzy was sitting on the quilt, her back against the boulder, and Jack was stretched out, his head on her lap. She had a copy of Kit’s script of Pride and Prejudice in her hands.
Jack turned to them. “Here they are. You two look too happy. Lizzy and Darcy are supposed to hate each other.”
“No,” Tate said. “She hates me but I love her. Most true-to-life role I ever had.” He sat down on the quilt and picked up a bottle of water. “Is there any lemonade left?”
“No,” Jack said, “but I found some beer in the bottom of a cooler. Casey, it wasn’t nice to hide that.”
“There’s a difference between hiding and saving. If you’d drunk it with lunch, you wouldn’t have it now. Did you find the green-chili crackers? No? I’ll get them.” She opened a plastic container that she’d hidden under some empty ones. “Did you two settle your argument?”
Gizzy smiled, but Jack grimaced. “I lost,” he said. “Completely and totally lost. So which scene are we doing first?”
“The opening one?” Casey sat down near Tate.
“No,” Tate said, “we have to do ours out of order. Jack and I will have to go back to L.A. for a few days, probably next week, so we’ll miss some rehearsals. He needs to reshoot some scenes and I have to be fitted for armor.”
“Really?” Gizzy said. “What’s the movie?”
“It doesn’t have a name yet,” Tate said. “The final script isn’t done and there’s a big argument about the title. I’m playing an Elizabethan knight who comes forward in time, meets a pretty lady in distress, and we fall in love. Then I go back to my time and she follows me, but I don’t remember her, so we have to fall in love a second time.”
“Who’s the lead actress?” Casey asked.
“No idea. So what scene should we rehearse first?”
Gizzy looked at the script. “At Netherfield, when Darcy is writing to his sister. I’ll be Miss Bingley, who is mad about Darcy. Casey, you have to quit smiling at Tate and look at him as though you can’t stand him.”
“I’ll try,” Casey said. Her lips weren’t smiling, but her eyes were.
Tate picked up one of the scripts and found the scene. “Jack, do you have the number of that blonde we met at Marty’s party? I thought I’d suggest her as the lead for my next movie. I need to do something to make the sex scenes enjoyable.” With a smile, he looked back at Casey.
She knew what he was doing and she wanted to say that his words had no effect on her, but damn it, they did! “Okay, you got it. I am in Darcy-is-a-jerk mode.”
Jack stayed seated while the other three got up. Since she had helped write them, Casey knew the lines, and Tate demonstrated his ability to quickly learn them. For a while, Gizzy held the script, but Jack took it from her.
Gizzy was good. She batted her lashes at Tate so convincingly that Casey was astonished. The realism of Gizzy’s performance spurred Casey so that by the time she delivered her line to Darcy that she’d never heard of so many accomplished women, there was venom in her voice.
At the end, Jack and Gizzy applauded and Casey took a bow. She glanced at Tate, who seemed to be gazing at her in speculation.
He picked up a copy of the script, flipped through it, and handed it to Casey. “Let’s do this scene.”
“But this is where Mr. Collins proposes to Lizzy,” Casey said. “Who will play him? Jack?”
“I am wounded,” Jack said. “I can play a loser but ol’ Landers can’t?”
Tate stepped to the edge of the stream and to Casey’s astonishment, he poured handfuls of cold water over his head. He ran his hands over his long hair to slick it down, then his body slumped. When he turned back to them, the handsome hero was gone. In his place was a sleazy man who had a bent back and eyes that moved around a lot. He looked Casey up and down in such a lecherous way that she stepped back from him.
He gave her a creepy little smile and began telling how his patroness, the condescending Lady Catherine de Bourgh, said he must marry so he had chosen Lizzy. “ ‘I will overlook your lack of dowry and I will make no demands on your father. And my further concession is that after we are married I will not remind you that your station in life is much inferior to mine.’ ”
“My what?” Casey’s upper lip curled into a sneer.
“Psst! ‘You are too hasty, sir,’ ” Gizzy quoted.
Casey knew she was in a play, but she couldn’t make herself remember that the odious creature in front of her was a man she was beginning to like. Her delivery of the refusal to marry him showed her revulsion. When he said he knew she didn’t mean her words, she told him again, this time in a tone that was unmistakable.
Tate’s eyes turned cold and seemed to glitter with animosity. He told her that her lack of income, as well as her failure to be a great beauty as her sister was, would ensure that she would never get another offer of marriage from any man.
His words about her sister’s beauty and her lack of proposals hit too close to home. It was as though he was throwing what she’d told him about her personal life back in her face. “Why, you—” She was too angry to be able to think of a clever putdown.
Tate stood up to his full height, picked up her hand, and kissed it.
“Did you get that?” Jack whispered to Gizzy.
She looked down at the video on her cellphone. “I did.”