The Girl from Summer Hill (22 page)

They didn't make it to the well house. Olivia suddenly remembered that she had things to do and couldn't go, but Casey wondered if the problem was some memory of the little building.

She drove to the front gate, where Olivia's car was parked, and let her out, then went back to the guesthouse to take care of the fruit and start dinner. But all she could think of was that she was dying to tell Tate what she'd learned.

It seemed that she may have stumbled on a mystery. What—if anything—had happened between Kit and Olivia during the summer of 1970? Some great love affair that ended badly? If so, who dumped whom? From the way Olivia's lower jaw went rigid at the mention of Kit, Casey felt sure he'd left her. For the woman who became the mother of his son? Was the breakup caused by Olivia's infertility?

At that thought, Casey's heart clenched. Her mother, an OB/GYN, had talked to her about baby lust. “When it attacks a woman, she will move heaven and earth to satisfy it.”

“Like you did with me,” Casey would say, then she'd again be told the story of her conception.

Her mother said she'd thought that someday she'd meet a man and they'd marry and have babies. “I thought it would all just sort of happen, but on my fortieth birthday, it hit me that if I wanted it, I had to
make
it happen.”

“Baby lust,” Casey would say. Her mom had chosen a donor from a catalog: six two, blond, blue-eyed, studying to be a doctor. It wasn't until Casey was an adult that she'd found out the information in the catalog was a stretch of the truth. Yes, Kyle Chapman was a beautiful, healthy young man, who did become a doctor. But at the time he'd made the donation that would become Casey, he was cooking in a food truck that he drove around New York City.

When she'd told her mother that, they laughed. “It was meant to be,” they said, meaning Casey's love of cooking.

Dr. Kyle's other children had inherited other traits. He'd spent a year riding a motorcycle in a metal sphere in a tiny circus. For six months he'd worked with a fabric manufacturer. The sisters had all agreed that Gizzy and Stacy had talents and temperaments that appeared to come from those traits of Dr. Kyle.

Casey looked at the buckets full of cherries. She should get started on them. But in the next second she was running out the door. Maybe her father had adventurously gone from job to job and country to country for so many years before starting med school because of Letty, Tate's mother.

At the Big House, she walked along the back path toward the garage at the far end. Her mind was bubbling with all she had to tell Tate. His mother and her father had been best friends!

Casey had read the online bio of her father, that his mother died when he was five and he'd been raised by his dad. When Kyle—aka Ace—was eighteen, he'd left home and for years had gone from one job to another, never staying anywhere very long. But then there'd been an accident and he'd saved a man's life. The next day he went back to school and eventually became a doctor.

When Casey had read the story, it sounded romantic, but now the reality of it was hitting her. A little boy who'd lost his mother when he was only five. Forever after that he must have feared that something awful was about to happen to him. And no wonder he acted up by being naughty.

She wondered if all that had been behind why her father had run away from home when he was eighteen. But then, as the child of a doctor, Casey knew the pressure to follow in her mother's footsteps. If she so much as glanced at a stethoscope, someone would remark that it was obvious Casey was going to grow up to be a doctor. When she said she didn't want to be one, people laughed at her. It was almost as though she
had
to become a doctor.

Oh, yes, she well knew the pressure to follow parents into a medical career. Had her dad felt it so strongly that he'd escaped, at least temporarily?

And then there was Olivia. She'd been there that summer with the children.

Casey had a vision of her and Tate sitting down with Olivia and Dr. Kyle and hearing about Tate's mother. There'd be funny stories and information gathered. Casey and Tate had found the well house where the kids played, but what about other places? She imagined exploring the attic with Tate. They'd play Caruso records on the old Victrola—then they'd make love on the floor.

As she got to the garage, she heard Tate's voice. Damn! He was still with his trainer. Poor guy. They'd been at it for hours.

She leaned back against the building. Should she interrupt them or wait until later to tell Tate? If she met the trainer, how would Tate introduce her? As his girlfriend? That thought made her smile.

“Meryl Streep wants to play my mother?” she heard Tate say.

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.