Down Home Carolina Christmas
Pamela Browning

For Lynne and David and Sheila and Tony, whose

friendship I value and who have made life since

Hurricane Jeanne a whole lot more fun than it

would have been without them.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter One

It would be right at the time that Odella Hatcher stopped by to complain about her windshield-wiper blade that a handsome movie star showed up at Carrie Smith’s garage driving a red Ferrari.

As the car approached through the shimmer of late-August heat, Carrie glanced up, then did a quick double take. She’d never seen a Ferrari in Yewville, South Carolina, population 5,000.

“I mean, the right wiper scrapes on the windshield,” Mrs. Hatcher said, oblivious to the slinky red car idling nearby. “It didn’t used to do that.”

Carrie kept an eye on the Ferrari as she lifted the wiper blade of Mrs. Hatcher’s Lincoln and flicked experimentally at the loose rubber with a forefinger. She couldn’t discern any scratches on the glass, but Mrs. Hatcher was not about to give up.

“Listen to me, Carolina Rose Smith. I didn’t believe that wiper blade required changing last week when you cleaned my windshield,” she said with righteous indignation. “I wouldn’t have okayed it if you hadn’t said it was necessary. Look at those scratches. Here. And here.”

Carrie still didn’t see any scratches. What she could see, however, was Mr. Luke Mason of Hollywood, California, sliding out of his car, big as life. At one time she might have been surprised to spot a movie star in Yewville. But now that those Hollywood people had been swarming all over the place for weeks, getting ready to film a movie about the life of Yewville’s own local stock-car legend, Yancey Goforth, it would take much more than a movie star to faze her.

Covertly keeping tabs on the man out of the corner of her eye, Carrie proceeded to clean Mrs. Hatcher’s windshield. As she pushed the rubber part of the wiper back into its groove, Carrie said, “There now, Mrs. Hatcher. Let me run some water over the window and you can try it.”

Now Luke Mason was whistling through his teeth and bending to inspect the Ferrari’s right front tire. Carrie, pointedly ignoring him, turned on the hose and flooded the Lincoln’s windshield, waiting patiently while the blades wiped it clean.

“It’s not scraping anymore, is it?” Carrie asked solicitously.

“Maybe not,” Mrs. Hatcher conceded. She still seemed annoyed, but that was not unusual. Her husband, Vernon Hatcher, of the spotless white suits and big smelly cigars, was the county school superintendent and bestowed upon his wife a certain amount of clout, with which she delighted in clobbering people.

“You just let me know if it gives you any more trouble, hear?” Carrie said. But her mind wasn’t on Odella Hatcher. She was more interested in the famous trademark scar on Luke Mason’s left cheek, indented so it resembled a dimple. And the streaky brown hair falling carelessly over his forehead. And the piercing blue eyes that shimmered in their depths like Pine Hollow Lake on a sultry summer day.

At the same time, Luke Mason was treating Carrie to a long sweeping glance that took in her high heels and the swirly skirt of the dress she’d donned for worshipping purposes before church this morning. But right now she had to deal with her cranky customer, never mind that Carrie wasn’t even on duty today. Smitty’s Garage was closed on Sundays, always had been ever since her grandfather, the original Smitty, opened the doors back in 1953.

Luke Mason sauntered into the garage through the open door. Rats, Carrie thought in exasperation. I’ve got chicken to fry at home, Memaw Frances and Dixie Lee and Voncille and Skeeter’s family coming for dinner, and I don’t want some movie star wandering around in there.

Mrs. Hatcher had grown even more querulous. “Aren’t you going to wipe the windshield off, Carrie? With the squeegee and all? And polish it again?”

“Sure,” Carrie said, gritting her teeth. She sudsed the windshield, while Mrs. Hatcher picked the remaining chips of pink polish off her acrylic thumbnail. For his part, Luke Mason leaned against the door to her office, folded his arms over his chest and whistled softly to himself.

Let him whistle, Carrie thought with annoyance. She deliberately bent over so he’d get a better view of what he seemed so interested in, though a movie star who had been named World’s Sexiest Man by People should have had his fill of ogling and a whole lot of other things back in Hollywood, California.

“Thanks, Carrie,” Mrs. Hatcher called out. She squinted through her bifocals at the man standing in the doorway of the station. “Say, isn’t that Luke Mason? The movie star? Who is going to film that movie Dangerous right here in Yewville?”

“I’m afraid so,” Carrie said with considerable irony.

“Oh, my goodness, it is him. My daughter would dearly love his autograph.” Mrs. Hatcher tumbled out of her car, her tight yellow curls quivering with excitement. “Mr. Mason? Mr. Mason!” To his credit, Luke Mason didn’t recoil when Mrs. Hatcher demanded that he sign her church program, and he even handed it back to her with a flourish and a smile.

“‘To Tammy, I’m sure you’re as charming and beautiful as your mother.’ Oh, Mr. Mason, you’re every bit as nice as the National Enquirer said you were.”

“Nicer,” Luke Mason muttered, a flare of amusement in his eyes. But Carrie wasn’t sure Mrs. Hatcher had heard him. Carrie herself had never considered that movie stars might have a sense of humor, not to mention irony.

Happier than Carrie had ever seen her, Mrs. Hatcher fluttered her hand out the open window as her Lincoln lurched onto Palmetto Street.

Carrie dried her hands on a paper towel from the dispenser on the pillar and marched into the garage, where, by now, Luke Mason was standing in front of her desk, eyeing that old calendar with the picture of Marilyn Monroe. Carrie’s grandfather had hung it on the wall in 1955, and for sentimental reasons she’d never removed it.

“Sir, we’re not open on Sundays,” Carrie said politely, determined to treat Luke Mason just like anybody else. She wasn’t about to go gaga over any of these movie folks who were intruding all over the place, occupying counter stools at the Eat Right Café, setting up scaffolding so nobody could walk on the sidewalks and throwing outrageous sums of money around.

He favored her with a friendly smile. “Oh, I thought—” Luke Mason aimed a confused glance at Mrs. Hatcher’s car as it rounded the corner at Palmetto and Main. “The air in my tires should be checked,” he said, sounding resigned and apologetic. “Is there another gas station open in town?”

“Not that I know of,” Carrie said briskly as she retrieved the recipe for cheese potatoes from the copy machine, where she’d left it yesterday. It was the whole reason for her stopping by after church.

“I usually carry a tire gauge with me, but it’s gone missing,” he said apologetically.

“I’ve got one right here,” she said, scooping it off the desk and handing it over smartly.

When Mr. Movie Star regained his equilibrium and snapped his mouth closed after dropping his jaw nearly to his ankles, she smiled sweetly. “Air pump’s over there,” she said, gesturing in its general direction.

“Thanks,” he said doubtfully, and though she’d certainly like to get her hands on the Ferrari’s engine even for so lowly a job as an oil change, she wasn’t about to fall all over herself for the honor of pumping its tires full of air.

Luke Mason was halfway to the Ferrari before he swiveled back toward his. “Is the owner here?” he asked. “Smitty?” That’s what the sign over the door said: Smitty’s.

“That was my daddy. I’m Carrie Smith, and I inherited the station after he died.” Her grandfather had been the first Smitty, her father the second. No one had tried to call Carrie “Smitty” yet, and she hoped no one ever would. She liked her given name just fine.

“Oh,” said Luke Mason, clearly surprised. “Sorry if I ruffled your feathers.”

“No offense. It happens a lot. Now, I’ve got things to do, so you go right ahead. You can put the tire gauge on my desk when you’re finished with it.” With that, she pivoted and headed for the restrooms around the corner, her high heels clicking on the concrete apron surrounding the building.

One thing Carrie hated was a dirty restroom, and she kept the ones at Smitty’s sparkling clean. When she had finished with both the men’s and the women’s, she hurried back inside the garage, expecting Luke to have gone. Instead he angled down tying his shoelace, affording Carrie a better view of a derriere that had been plastered all over the Internet a few months ago.

Like almost everyone else in Yewville, Carrie had gawked at the pictures of Luke wearing nothing but a thong. The photos, purloined from some photographer who’d snapped them before Luke Mason became a star, had been zapped from computer to computer by every red-blooded Net-connected woman in town after they’d learned he was going to film a movie there. Well, Luke Mason had looked pretty good without much in the way of clothes, but Carrie, studying him from under her eyelashes, decided he looked even better with. In her opinion, men had no business revealing so much skin.

“I put the tire gauge on your desk,” Luke said as he straightened.

“Fine. Anything else I can help you with?” The Ferrari appeared in great shape; it was the two-seat F430 Spider convertible. Carrie happened to know that this particular model had a 4.3-liter V-8 engine that kicked out a whopping 490 horsepower, making it one of the few nonturbo or supercharged engines to produce more than a hundred horsepower per liter. The car was polished to a high luster, and Carrie wondered if Luke Mason had driven it all the way to Yewville from California. Or did he ship his car wherever he went so that it was ready and waiting for him when he stepped off his private jet? His plane was parked at the tiny Yewville airport, where no hangar was big enough to accommodate it.

Luke jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I noticed the Marilyn Monroe calendar over your desk. It must be one of the first ones ever made.”

“It’s a family memento, more or less.”

“I was thinking,” he said, scuffing his foot for all the world like some of the local yokels when they stopped by to jaw with Hub, her other mechanic, on slow summer afternoons. “My producer might like to stop by your station sometime. We could use a garage like this in the movie.”

Carrie narrowed her eyes at him and drew herself up to her full height of five feet five inches. “For what?” she asked skeptically.

“We’re going to shoot scenes in a garage setting. This place is perfect.”

“Hasn’t the movie company made all its arrangements by now? They’ve been around for months.”

“The scouts originally decided to build the set of a garage in the abandoned Pease Roller Bearing building, but the deal fell through. Now we’re eager to locate a garage as true to the era as possible. We want a place with local color.” He smiled engagingly, quirking one eyebrow in the way that had made him famous, and she felt a flush of heat building upward from her midsection. That was a surprise; she was too young to be having hot flashes.

In case her physical response was a sign that she was about to be bamboozled by the fabled Luke Mason charm, Carrie shook her head to clear it. “I am well aware of how Whip Productions is paying Bennett Seegers an outrageous sum to use his barbershop for one week in order to film you getting a haircut,” she retorted. “But I am flat-out uninterested in renting Smitty’s Garage. It was never meant to be a dad-blamed movie set.”

He gawked at her as if she’d grown two heads. “I was only offering you a business opportunity,” he said. “Whip Productions has funneled a lot of dollars into this depressed economy, and some of that money could be yours.” She detected the beginnings of a small smile tugging at the edges of his mouth.

Huh. Luke Mason might as well know that she didn’t see things his way. “Well,” she said, “the local textile mill closed, and I expect you’ve already figured out that’s why the economy went south. The stupid politicians and their stupid NAFTA treaty did that to us.”

“Which is why filming Dangerous here is such a good idea. Our people rent places to live, and they patronize local businesses. They buy gas, too, as I’m sure you realize. I pushed for filming in Yewville because I wanted the money to go somewhere it’s needed.”

Moviemaking as philanthropy was a new notion, but not one to which Carrie accorded much credence. “That’s real nice, Mr. Mason, but not everyone in town is going to kowtow to a bunch of strangers who think money can buy anything and everything,” she said.

He seemed taken aback, and she plunged ahead, warming to her subject. “Why, with my own eyes I saw one of your people fork over a fistful of hundred-dollar bills for a car that’s been rusting in a field for ten years and has no engine. And Glenda at the Curly Q Salon told my sister that she’s getting twenty thousand because you’re going to move all her beautifying equipment to a warehouse and bring in old-fashioned hair dryers and pink sinks. Pink sinks! I never heard of such claptrap.”

Luke had the good grace to look abashed after this long speech. “Miss—what did you say your name was?”

“Carolina Rose Smith, and I deeply resent a bunch of left coast people taking over my town. Including the courthouse. You are planning to film at the courthouse, aren’t you?”

He rallied smartly. “I believe so, for the wedding scene. Yancey Goforth got married in a simple civil ceremony because he had a big race coming up that week.”

“It’s not necessary to tell me about Yancey Goforth, who was one of my granddaddy’s best friends. And while I’m at it, your costar, Tiffany Zill, does not look anything like his wife. Mary-Lutie Goforth was short and plump and had a sweet face, not all planes and angles like Ms. Zill’s, with which I am familiar because her picture is regularly plastered over every tabloid at the Piggly Wiggly.”

Luke Mason seemed stunned at her tirade. “I guess you’ve wanted to get those things off your chest for a long time,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and regarding her with a rueful grin.

That whacked the wind out of her sails, all right. “I guess I have,” Carrie admitted unwillingly.

“Maybe I should explain a bit about how we work,” he said, continuing in a reasoning tone. “I don’t resemble Yancey Goforth. In fact, he was much handsomer than I am. Still, I like to think that I’ll bring my own talent to bear on the role.”

Did he really mean that about not being as good-looking as Yancey? The admission was a bit of humility that was totally unexpected.

Luke fished a few coins out of his pocket. He wore snug-fitting jeans, and his thigh muscles rippled under the denim. He stepped up to the Coca-Cola machine and dropped in a series of quarters. Two Cokes slid to the bottom with a clunk, and Luke handed her one.

“I don’t…” she began, staring down at it.

“Of course you do,” he said smoothly as he popped the top off his Coke with the opener attached to the machine. After a moment, Carrie opened her bottle, too. She sipped, studying Luke Mason. Somewhat to her amazement, he wasn’t wearing a gold chain necklace like every other male who lived in California, if you were to believe those TV shows where they told you everything you never wanted to know about celebrities.

“This is the best Coca-Cola I’ve had in ages,” he said consideringly. “It’s hard to find the old-time six-ounce glass bottle anymore. Vending-machine Coke usually comes in cans.”

This at least was something Carrie knew about. “Granddaddy put that machine in. It’s one of the few left in the state. The price has gone up since the old days, though. I remember when a Coke used to cost a quarter.” She couldn’t have explained her chattiness, couldn’t have said why she was running on about soda pop as if it was the most important topic in the world.

“I remember those days, too,” he said with a grin.

Carrie reined in her motor mouth and contemplated how to bring up the topic of his leaving. She didn’t want to say that she was supposed to be cooking a big dinner for her family right now because it would be rude not to invite him once she’d mentioned it.

“So you’ve been in Yewville for about a week?” she ventured politely when the silence began to grow awkward.

“Eight days,” he told her. “Getting acclimated and soaking up the atmosphere that produced Yancey Goforth back in the 1950s.”

“And what’s your impression of our little town?”

“I like it,” he replied, surprising her. Most strangers found Yewville quaint at best and boring at worst. Yewville didn’t have a movie theater. No store in town had an elevator. Cell phones didn’t always work here, and the water tasted funny.

“What do you like about it?” Carrie asked with interest, warming to him a tad more.

“People are friendly. I feel welcome.”

Well, duh. As her sister, Dixie, might say, who wouldn’t welcome a hunky movie star to a small town where the local National Guard unit had shipped out to the Middle East and the other eligible guys were hopeless losers. But, “Southerners are famous for hospitality,” Carrie said primly.

“And rightly so.” He paused as a wistfulness passed over his features. “I grew up in a town not much bigger than this in New Hampshire. My parents still live there, but it’s been almost a year since I’ve seen my folks,” he said, and she detected a hint of sadness in his tone.

“What a shame,” Carrie murmured, truly sorry for him. She couldn’t imagine a life that kept her from being with her family.

For a moment, a pensiveness flitted across his face, and she sensed that it hid an underground pain. “I don’t have brothers or sisters,” he said, “and my parents don’t like California much. Over the years we’ve lost a good bit of family feeling, even though we talk on the phone a lot. I’d like to fly my folks down here while I’m on location, but I can’t get them to commit to a date.” By the time he wound up his last sentence, he’d already masked the emotions that had surfaced so briefly.

Abstractedly, confounded at the way Luke Mason had confided in her, she lifted the wide wooden lid off the glass jar on her desk and removed a package of salted peanuts.

“Want some?” she offered him, figuring that he’d refuse, but he said, “Okay.”

Wordlessly she slid the package over to Luke. He reached for his pocket, but she shook her head. “No need to pay. It’s on the house.” It was the least she could do, taking into account that he seemed to lead a deprived life. No family, no sense of home, maybe nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon than fill his car’s tires with air.

She dumped the peanuts in her Coke, which fizzed slightly. The top of the package was the perfect size to fit over the mouth of the bottle.

“Strange local custom?” Luke asked.

“Don’t they do this in California? Try it. Go on.”

He shrugged and smiled. “If you insist,” he said. “Are you supposed to fish the peanuts out or what?”

Carrie was amused. “Drink the Coke, and the peanuts roll into your mouth when you upend the bottle.” She wondered how some people could be so ignorant, no matter where they were from.

“Stop grinning like that. I’m here to learn.” He upended the bottle, munched the peanuts and nodded slowly. “Pretty good,” he conceded.

When she didn’t say anything, he said, “Ms. Smith—”

“You can call me Carrie,” she interrupted. “Everyone else does.”

“Carrie, maybe you don’t realize how much money Whip Productions will pay you to use your garage for filming. We’re talking, say, twenty thousand dollars or so.”

So he was back to that again. Twenty thousand dollars was all well and good, but if her regular customers couldn’t buy gas from her, couldn’t count on her for a fast lube, they might transfer their business to the new Quik-Stop out on the bypass, where they could stock up on milk and bread delivered fresh twice a week from Columbia. And why would she want to go temporarily out of business, leaving her loyal customers to scramble for decent auto care? They deserved better than that.

“It’s a lot of money, but I still say no,” Carrie said, displaying considerable stubbornness.

“Here,” Luke said, pulling a business card out of his shirt pocket. “I’m usually not active on the production side of the business, but you can call this number if you change your mind.”

Carrie glanced curiously at the address.

“That’s Whip Larson’s headquarters in the old office building at the seed farm,” he said. “He’s the producer of Dangerous, and I’m sure he’d like to hear from you.”

“I don’t believe I’ll be phoning him, Mr. Mason.”

Luke shrugged. “If you’re Carrie, then I’m Luke. And I guess it’s up to you whether you take us up on the offer.” He smiled, which made his dimple flash, and drained the rest of his Coke.

Luke Mason didn’t say he ought to be going now, like any of the people she knew would have done. He didn’t thank her for teaching him the joys of peanuts in Coke, and most important, he didn’t say to have a nice day. He merely favored her with an appreciative up-and-down glance, walked over to the Ferrari and slid gracefully behind the steering wheel. He switched the engine on and revved it a few times to show off, after which he did his best to accelerate from zero to sixty in nine seconds, which in his car was doable.

As the Ferrari disappeared in a cloud of dust, Carrie shrugged and smiled ruefully to herself. Yankees, she thought. They really don’t understand how to be polite. But Luke Mason, for all his shortcomings, sure had a great car.

And an unexpectedly captivating personality. Not that this meant anything to Carrie Smith. Not that it ever could.

Chapter Two

After leaving Smitty’s, Luke Mason drove straight to the house he was renting, a sprawling white-columned mansion that was too big for him by far. Whip Larson was sauntering moodily around the side yard, hands in the pockets of his slacks and a bored expression on his face as he contemplated the zinnias in the flower bed, which were shriveling from the heat.

Luke got out of the Ferrari. “Whip,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing much. As usual in this town. Want to head out to Dolly’s Truck Stop?”

Dolly’s was a dive on one of the back roads to Florence, the nearest city. The boisterous patrons there generally offered a dose of comic relief, but it wasn’t something he’d enjoy right now. “Not in the mood,” Luke said. He was still caught up in the pleasure of meeting Carrie Smith, a woman more beautiful than he’d ever expected to find here.

“I’m buying the beer, and I’ll throw in a pizza,” Whip said. He was short and stout, and he dyed his hair orange. The producer of Dangerous, he was also Luke’s best friend. Fortunately they’d never let their business relationship interfere with their personal one.

“I’d rather stay here,” Luke said. “Relax and chill out for a while.”

Whip shrugged affably. “That’ll work. I was tired of sitting around watching TV, and I figured you might be, too.”

“I went out for a ride,” Luke said. “Kind of bored, you know?”

Whip nodded morosely. Luke unlocked the door and led the way through the cavernous and murky interior of the house, which was furnished in fragile antiques and dusty velvet draperies. Needless to say, the decor wasn’t much to Luke’s taste. Back in California, he lived in Malibu, where he enjoyed a wide-angle view of the ocean. He felt closed in here, confined.

They stopped at the bar off the living room, cadged a couple of beers from the refrigerator and made themselves as comfortable as they could on the wrought-iron benches that occupied the walled brick terrace. Fish in the koi pond swam to the edge, eyeing them curiously and no doubt anticipating a handout. Luke had been feeding them bread crusts every evening.

“So, Whip, are we still going to start filming after Labor Day and finish before Christmas?” Luke asked.

“I hope so, as long as your costar behaves herself.”

“Tiffany will be okay,” Luke said, though he was far from sure of that. He’d worked with Tiffany Zill before and knew her to be emotionally frail, though she was a decent actress when she had a good director. At the moment, he wasn’t interested in discussing his female lead. He’d rather think about Carrie Smith’s wide blue eyes, the slim line of her throat, the high curve of her breasts shifting beneath that thin summery cotton bodice.

“We’ve still got a few problems to iron out on this job,” Whip said, propping his feet up on a nearby chair. “I worry about it.”

“Fill me in,” Luke said. With a good bit of his own money tied up in the movie, he was interested in all aspects of production.

“I’m still bummed out that we can’t build sets in the old roller-bearing factory,” Whip said. “I’m planning to ride over first thing in the morning to check on an old garage in Mullins. It has the requisite battered gas pumps and tires with no tread stacked out back.” He pulled a photo out of his shirt pocket and passed it to Luke. “Check this out.”

Luke studied the picture, which showed a garage a lot like Smitty’s, though he was willing to bet it wouldn’t have a proprietor as comely as Carrie. “Where the hell is Mullins?” he asked, passing the picture back.

“Halfway to the coast,” Whip said. “About an hour away from Yewville.”

“There’s a local garage that might do,” Luke said carefully. “I met the owner today.”

“You mean that place downtown? Smitty’s?”

“That’s the one.”

“It’s still a working garage. This place in Mullins is old. Abandoned. We could get it for practically nothing.”

“Since when did money matter?”

“Since Fleur Padgett decided to hire a whole bunch of locals for the racetrack scenes. She says it will make the movie more authentic.” Fleur was the casting director for Dangerous and known for her excesses.

“Yancey Goforth used to hang out at Smitty’s. I met the owner today, and she—”

“She?” Whip said, narrowing his eyes. “Smitty is a she?”

“Her name is Carolina Rose Smith.” Speaking her name called to mind those shapely legs, the soothing cadence of her softly accented voice. She was a charmer, that Carrie Smith.

“I’ve already committed to vetting the Mullins place,” Whip said.

Luke shifted uncomfortably and decided on another tack. “I could really get into those garage scenes if we film in a place Yancey Goforth probably visited many times. You know what I mean, dig down deeper into his character.” Luke wasn’t sure if this was true or not, but it was a decent argument, and besides, he suddenly realized, he wanted to see Carrie again. He thought about the deft movement of her long narrow hands as she’d poured peanuts into her Coke and the lilt in her voice when she’d asked him what he thought of her hometown. She’d pronounced Coca-Cola Co-Cola. A lot of people did that around here, but from her, the colloquial abbreviation seemed perfect.

“Would you like to go with me to Mullins?” Whip asked hopefully. “I’d appreciate your input.”

“No, Whip. I’m going to do some hanging out with the locals this week, try to absorb Yancey’s background, get a handle on how he thought, lived, loved.”

“I can respect that. I understand as well as you do that Dangerous is your big break. You’re ideal for the role of Yancey Goforth, and everyone else is just fluff.”

“Fluff?”

“What I’m saying is that a lot depends on you.”

“We’re working with a great script, a fine cast, a fantastic director.” Luke had found the script himself, pitched it to Whip and lobbied for Tiffany as his costar. He heartily approved of the director, whose successes at the box office were legend in the business. “And don’t forget that Southern is in,” he added.

Whip nodded in agreement. “‘Southern’ is stupendous, packs in the audiences. And it doesn’t hurt that Tiff has the best unfake boobs in Hollywood.”

“Let’s not get hung up on sex appeal,” Luke said sharply. “Tiffany can act.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m just saying—well, you know what I’m saying.”

Luke certainly did. He had been listening to Whip’s overblown views for months, and a little of that went a long way. At the moment, Luke found it much more enjoyable to think about Carrie Smith and how glad he was that he’d kept the conversation perking along today until she dropped her prickly facade.

Whip appeared ready to launch into another oration, which Luke didn’t want to hear. “Ready for another beer?” he asked as he stood up to head for the house, which seemed like the perfect place to marshal his thoughts into a more orderly procession.

“And some chips if you have them,” Whip called after him.

Rummaging for snacks in the ample pantry, Luke wondered what Carolina Rose Smith did on Sunday afternoons. And with whom. And if there was the slightest chance that he might be able to insert himself, if ever so briefly, into her life.

A FEW DAYS AFTER Luke showed up at Smitty’s, Carrie and her younger sister, Dixie Lee, were digging into banana splits at the Eat Right Café as they discussed the most important events in their lives, which they did several times a month. From outside came the racket of hammers and saws as the movie people went about their work of transforming simple Yewville into a Hollywood movie set.

“I’m telling you, Carrie, you should sell the home place and move into the Livingston Apartments. We have a swimming pool and everything.” Dixie took a huge bite of banana and chocolate sauce, rolling it around on her tongue appreciatively.

“‘Everything’ includes people slamming doors at all hours and stumbling over garbage cans in the hall. I’ll stay put, thanks.”

“I can’t understand why you’re so attached to that big house,” Dixie said. “When Mert left, you had a chance to get out. I don’t know why you didn’t.” Mert was Carrie’s former boyfriend. He was a mobile-home installer.

“The home place is precisely why I downgraded Mert to a long-distance relationship. You can’t seriously believe I’d have been better off in a double-wide with him, not to mention that it was located way upstate in Spartanburg,” Carrie said.

“Mert misses you. Everyone says so.”

“Well, I don’t miss him. Plus, I love the home place.”

Dixie shrugged at the preposterousness of this assertion. “It’s not like we grew up in that house, and it’s a hundred years old. You’ll have to do something about that sagging porch one of these days, and you said yourself the roof is on borrowed time. The place is a maintenance nightmare.”

“Our father was reared on that farm,” Carrie reminded her, annoyance creeping into her tone.

“Daddy rented out his tobacco allotment after Miss Alma died and brought up us kids in town.” Miss Alma had been their father’s first wife, who had died young, and their mother, Jo Ellyn, hadn’t much cared for country living, preferring the brick ranch house in town where they’d grown up.

“I wouldn’t be able to plant a garden at the Livingston Apartments,” Carrie mentioned for about the nineteenth time.

“What good is a garden?” Dixie sniffed. “All those nasty mealy worms and slugs chomping on the fruits of your labor, and besides, it’s a lot of work. Why don’t you take the real-estate course like I did? We could turn Smitty’s Garage into a real-estate office. There’s plenty of room for two firms in Yewville now that they’re going to develop all that property out by the lake.” Dixie rarely missed an opportunity to goad Carrie with a reminder that she’d recently passed the real-estate exam.

“I enjoy gardening,” Carrie said stubbornly, hoping Dixie would let the conversation drop. Carrie found solace in the quiet peaceful vistas of cotton and soybean fields stretching toward the horizon, and mockingbirds tuning up outside her bedroom window in the morning, and the long walk up the alley of pecan trees to the mailbox on the highway.

Dixie pushed the last bit of pineapple around in the syrup in the bottom of her dish. “So what is your opinion of Luke Mason?” she asked in a welcome change of subject.

Carrie shrugged. “Nothing special. I figure he puts on his pants one leg at a time, like any other man.”

Dixie favored her with a wicked grin. “I’d like to see how he takes his pants off,” she said.

“Dixie!”

“It’s what every woman in town is thinking.”

“Not me,” Carrie said, not quite truthfully.

“You’re an aberration,” Dixie pointed out. She paused, with an air of relishing what she was about to say next. “I read in the Yewville Messenger that Whip Productions is having a casting call Monday afternoon, and I’m going,” she said.

The Yewville Messenger was the local newspaper, usually abbreviated to the Mess. Most articles in the Mess touted nothing more earthshaking than the largest cucumber grown that summer or four-year-old winners of the Tiny Miss Yewville Pageant.

“You have a job, Dixie, and you’ve started a new profession. It’s ridiculous to go to that casting call, if you ask me. How will you get off work if they choose you?”

“Mayzelle will cover for me at the office. All I do is answer phones, anyway.” Mayzelle was the broker’s wife and had excess time on her hands now that both their sons were off at Clemson University. “Besides,” Dixie said, “I’ve always fancied becoming a movie star.” She struck a pose. “How’s this? Am I competition for Hilary Swank? Or maybe Jennifer Lopez? On the red carpet at the Academy Awards?”

“Stop it, Dixie. People are staring.”

“They’re looking at you, not me. You have a big grease smear on your right cheek.”

Carrie located a reflective surface on the side of the stainless-steel napkin holder and swiped at the grease with a balled-up napkin.

“Listen, Carrie, why don’t you go to the casting call with me. Joyanne and I are going to keep each other company, and there’s no reason you can’t ride along.”

“No, thanks,” Carrie said. “I’m supposed to do a tune-up that morning. Plus, I’m trying to find a home for a stray dog that’s been hanging around the station.”

“It seems like you just placed the last one. Honestly, dogs must have put the word out—head for Smitty’s if you need a home.”

“This pup is majorly adorable, and I was hoping the Calphus boys could keep her, but their mom said no. Hub’s named her Shasta. She likes to sleep right near where he’s working during the daytime.”

“Naming an animal is the first step toward keeping her, I’ve heard.”

“Hub’s got two pit bulls and I’m owned by a house rabbit. Say, Dixie, take Shasta home today. Trial basis. She’s very sweet.”

“To my little apartment? Ten dollars a month pet rent? No, ma’am.” After a moment, Dixie resumed her previous line of persuasion. “We were talking about the casting call. It could be exciting to rub elbows with Hollywood folks. We might meet interesting guys besides.”

Carrie narrowed her eyes. “Why, Dixie Lee Smith! Is that the real reason you’re going? Desperately seeking men?” Dixie had been known to bemoan the fact that guys were scarce these days.

“Well, let’s face it. I’m pushing thirty. If middle age starts at forty-five, I’m two-thirds of the way there, with no husband in sight. You should be worried about this, too. Especially since you said goodbye to Mert over six months ago.”

“Forty-five is the new thirty-five. It’s hardly middle-aged,” Carrie said, though she remained pensive for a moment. She was thirty-one, which was fine with her. The trouble was that girls tended to marry young in Yewville and have children early. It made late bloomers like her seem backward.

“Back to the casting call,” Dixie said. “Joyanne and I made a pact to try out together.”

“At least Joyanne was Miss Yewville and Soybean Festival Queen, not to mention she’s played parts in community theater since she was yay high. She’ll be a natural.”

“Also they’re paying $104.50 a day.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“Joyanne heard it from somebody at the lake last week. Still not interested?” Dixie aimed a sly smile across the table.

“I’ve already turned down twenty thousand dollars from those movie people for the use of Smitty’s. I guess I can do without their $104.50.”

Dixie’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “You turned down twenty thousand dollars?”

“Sure did, and from Luke Mason himself,” Carrie replied calmly. She stirred her sweet iced tea and watched the lemon slice bob around amid the crushed ice, taking pleasure in Dixie’s rare speechlessness. She did not add that she’d spotted Luke’s car idling past the garage a couple of times as if he’d been looking for someone. She’d stayed inside where she belonged, though she certainly was intrigued. Maybe she’d made more of an impression on him than she’d thought.

“You’re a fool, Carrie Rose Smith,” Dixie said with great conviction.

“I don’t want those people swarming all over my garage. They’ve already overrun the town.” A change of subject was long overdue. “By the way,” she told Dixie, “Tiffany Zill’s chauffeur brought her limousine into the station for gas this morning. I don’t even care to tell you how much it cost to fill it up.”

“I saw the limo, all right. It occupied the whole business district when it stopped at the traffic light. I bet it has a hot tub in it. Peek inside next time you’re pumping gas.”

“That galloping gas guzzler could hide the whole peachoid inside and I wouldn’t care,” Carrie said, smiling at Dixie’s unabashed curiosity. The peachoid was Yewville’s famous water tower, which the town leaders, mindful of peach farming’s role in area history, had painted to resemble a peach. Unfortunately it much more resembled someone’s very large fanny, which made it the most photographed feature in Yewville. People traveling north and south along I-95 went out of their way to snap pictures of it.

“Have you seen her yet?” Dixie asked.

“Who?”

“Tiffany Zill. I wonder if she looks as good in person as Luke Mason does. I bet she wears Gucci and Pucci and has her hair colored by a stylist named Raoul.”

“Like I care,” Carrie said as she slid out of the booth. “I’ve got to run, Dixie. I’ll call you tonight.” She slapped a couple of quarters down on the counter for the waitress and hurried out into the humid afternoon.

Across the street at the bank, workmen were completing a facade that included a painted-on clock. Carpenters next door at the insurance office were removing a door; the new red one stood nearby. To Carrie, it seemed as if the movie people were fashioning Yewville to resemble a Norman Rockwell painting gone South.

“Painted-on clocks,” Carrie muttered. “New window boxes. Knowing these movie people, they’ll probably plant polyester geraniums in them.” Her suspicions were correct. On the way past the Southern Confectionery Kitchen, where she customarily bought frozen bananas and, for New Year’s celebrations, bottle rockets, she almost stumbled over two large cardboard cartons labeled Geraniums—Faux Silk.

“Faux silk,” Carrie said under her breath. “Fake, fake, fake. Isn’t anything real anymore?” Well, Yewville used to be real before they started gussying it up. Carrie had no patience with such things.

Shaking her head, Carrie walked back to Smitty’s, where nothing was illusion, where what you saw was definitely what you got. Including, presently, a real dog with real fleas.

Chapter Three

During the next week, Luke Mason did his best to initiate another encounter with the delightful Carrie Smith, but she never seemed to be at work. He began dropping by Smitty’s to refill his gas tank every time the gauge hit the three-quarters mark. Unfortunately the only person who was even around was the lanky mechanic who emerged from the nether regions of the garage and offered in an offhand way to pump fuel. Luke always declined. He figured that if he took his time filling the tank, that would give the elusive Ms. Smith a chance to show up.

“Where’s Carrie?” he asked the mechanic one day.

“Oh, she’s gone off somewhere with her sister,” said the man, whose name, Hub, was embroidered over the pocket of his coveralls. “You want me to tell her you’re looking for her?”

“No, that’s not necessary,” Luke said, but, of course, Hub stared at him until he drove away.

Luke didn’t understand his fascination with the woman. She hadn’t been particularly bowled over by him. Maybe the thing he liked about her was that she didn’t fawn over him as women tended to do. Carrie Rose Smith treated him as if he were any other man in the world. This in itself was refreshing, but it didn’t explain why he’d begun to have dreams about kissing her.

In one of them, they were making out in his Ferrari, cramped and uncomfortable but undeniably passionate. In another, they were in some dark, unspecified place, their bodies tangled amid rumpled sheets, and he was—

Better not to think about that, maybe. That one had ended up being X-rated because he’d done quite a lot more than kiss Carrie, and he wondered if in real life her lips were as soft as they had been in the dream. Softer, maybe. And willing.

Considering that he was trying his darnedest to get into the role of Yancey Goforth, he didn’t need the distraction of daydreaming about making love to her. Or kissing her.

But if he ever got the chance, he would make sure it was a kiss that Carrie Smith never forgot. Since he hadn’t managed to further their acquaintance, though, the likelihood was slim to none that he’d ever get to play out his dreams in reality.

He had an idea that Carrie would like kissing him. Women usually did.

“I MUST BE AN IDIOT to let Hub do that tune-up for me this morning. I don’t belong here,” Carrie said as she and Dixie Lee waited with the rest of the crowd in the hot sun at the seed-company parking lot. A thickset man with an orange ponytail was striding purposefully here and there, conferring at times over his clipboard with a train of harried assistants.

“There’s Joyanne,” Dixie said suddenly. She jumped and waved. “Hey, Joyanne!”

Their friend shouldered her way through the crowd. “Isn’t this exciting?” she declared, bouncing with enthusiasm. She was a tall brunette with naturally curly hair, ridiculously high cheekbones and long, long legs. Carrie figured Joyanne Morrissey had the best chance of anyone of being chosen to work as an extra in a movie.

“I don’t know about exciting, but it’s certainly hot,” Carrie said, fanning herself with her hand for all the good it did, which wasn’t much.

“Hush, Carrie, we’re not letting you throw cold water on our parade, especially since it’s the only one in town,” Dixie said self-righteously.

“I hope all three of us get jobs. It’ll be fun being in a movie,” Joyanne said buoyantly.

“Luke Mason just stuck his head out of that trailer over there,” Dixie said, standing on tiptoe to crane her head above the crowd.

“Hot as it is today, he should have stayed inside so the sun wouldn’t cook his brain,” Carrie muttered.

“Carrie, I’m warning you. No more of that.” Dixie thumped her on the arm for emphasis.

The man with the orange ponytail jumped up on a loading platform. “All right, all right,” he said. “Let’s get started here.” He had to shout to make himself heard.

Everyone ceased talking except for Little Jessie Wanless, who was bouncing her baton off the ground and catching it while chattering a mile a minute to no one in particular. But her mother, Big Jessie, proprietor of the Wanless School of Dance and Baton, shushed her and confiscated the baton. Since she had nothing left to do with her hands, Little Jessie folded her arms over her flat chest and stuck out her chin—always a bad sign.

“I’m Whip Larson,” the man on the platform shouted. “I’m the producer of Dangerous.”

Because he was the person whose business card Luke Mason had handed her, Carrie studied Whip. He wore white pants that were decidedly California, loafers with no socks and a silk shirt printed with geometric designs. His tan must have been poured straight out of a bottle. In spite of the California sheen, he didn’t seem like such a bad person. Carrie pegged him as sincere, and that was saying something. So far, her impression of the movie people was that most of them were phonies.

Whip went on talking. “The casting director, Fleur Padgett, and her assistants will be moving through the crowd. We’ll call you aside if we’re interested in you.”

Three chic young women wearing all-black outfits distributed cards to various members of the waiting group. Dixie got a card, and so did Joyanne. Hoping to avoid the same fate, Carrie slipped behind a refreshment stand, where two guys in T-shirts displaying the production company’s logo were distributing cold bottles of water, presumably to ward off heatstroke. An awning projected a few feet beyond the stand, and Carrie intended to shelter in its shade for a few moments before continuing to her car. Unfortunately someone else had the same idea.

“Well, hello,” said the man. His velvet voice unexpectedly made her knees go weak, or maybe it was the heat that caused her to feel a bit faint at the moment.

“Luke Mason,” she breathed, taking a step backward. Today he sported a gray baseball cap and at least a two days’ beard stubble, which should have put her off but didn’t. “What are you doing here?”

“Scouting,” he said. “Trying to blend in with the locals so I can scope out how they walk, how they talk. Plus the disguise fools any stray paparazzi who might turn up to make my life miserable. How about you?” His eyes sparkled with mirth, presumably brought about by her discomfort at meeting up with him again.

Luke’s movies generally consisted of snappy dialogue, an attractive cast and a couple of improbable car chases. She’d never considered that preparing for such a role involved research. “I only came to keep my sister and our friend company,” she said.

“Admit it. You were curious.” His eyes held a devilish glint. He rested one booted foot on a handy tree stump and gazed at her. Her pulse sped up, and she told it to simmer down. Not that it paid any attention.

“I am not interested in anything about movies, least of all what goes on at a casting call,” she said indignantly.

“I’d pegged you for a woman who is never less than honest.”

That stopped her short. Honesty was a trait on which she prided herself.

“So,” he said, leaning over her. “Why are you here?” He was so close she could smell the faint soapy scent of his skin.

“All right, I’ll level. It’s curiosity, just as you said.” She swallowed past a throat that had suddenly gone dry.

“That’s better,” he said approvingly.

She forced herself to pick out all the things that struck her as peculiar about him, as not quite fitting in.

“Your hat’s not right,” she blurted.

“What’s wrong with it?” He sounded mystified.

She reached across the space between them and pulled it lower over his brow. “That’s better, except no one around here wears a Dodgers cap—it’d be the Atlanta Braves. But most of the local guys favor hats with tractor logos.”

“Oh. My mistake.”

“Someone said they saw your head poke out of that trailer over there. Beats me how they’d recognize you.” She slapped at a yellow jacket; it buzzed off.

“Wasn’t me coming out of the trailer. Could’ve been Rick Phillips, my body double. He isn’t growing a beard and he looks a lot like me. Especially in the nude.”

Carrie gawked at him. “You’re going to play nude scenes in this movie?”

“There’s one. It takes place on Yancey and Mary-Lutie’s wedding night.”

The intimacy of anybody’s wedding night was the last thing she wanted to discuss with Luke Mason. Anyway, who knew what really happened on their wedding night but the couple themselves? She frowned. “Don’t tell me any more. I don’t care to hear about it.”

“Thing is, the movie audience won’t know if it’s really me in the buff or Rick.” Luke laughed ruefully.

“I’ve got to go,” she said.

He seemed cocky and all too sure of himself. “Too bad. I’m enjoying the scenery.”

There was no scenery at the old seed-farm headquarters other than flat dusty fields stretching to the horizon. None but her.

She edged away from Luke Mason, wary of falling under his spell. She’d better get out of here, go back to work, anything.

The awning struts from the refreshment stand barred her escape. Luke stepped closer, moving deliberately. His eyes never left hers, and she felt a definite tug as well as something else—a yearning, a knowledge of something important happening between them. A cricket chirred in the nearby shrubbery, and the voices on the other side of the refreshment stand receded to background noise. Luke’s eyes searched hers for—what?

Without realizing it, she had backed into the hot metal shell of the refreshment stand, which felt unpleasantly warm against her back. She tensed, his self-confidence undermining her own.

“I stopped by the garage a few times,” he said, studying her reaction and apparently heartened by what he saw. “You were never there.”

She clasped her nervous fingers behind her back. “I have things to do,” she said. “Errands. Stuff like that.”

“Mmm,” he said. “That’s what I figured. Am I supposed to make an appointment?”

“If you want something done to your car, yes,” she said.

“And if I want something done to me?” He was laughing at her, amusement bubbling up from the depths of his eyes.

“Depends,” she said. “On what it is.” She could have died once she’d said it, knowing full well that it sounded like a come-on.

“You could check my air filter. Or inflate something.” He grinned at her.

“I, um, “she said, resisting at the same time that she realized it was pointless.

“Or we could,” he murmured as he moved closer still, “do this.” He curved an arm around her waist, and she felt her will dissolve. She had turned completely to a puddle of mush bounded by quivering nerve endings, all of which were yearning toward Luke Mason’s two-day growth of beard. She knew she could tell him to stop and he would. She could panic, even scream, but in her present state, neither occurred to her. All she did was stare, mesmerized as his hand cupped her chin ever so lightly and his lips descended to hers.

She smelled the sweat on his skin, the heat upon the rough cotton of his shirt. He didn’t so much kiss as taste her, inhaling her breath, nibbling for a moment at her bottom lip and finishing up with a long delectable teasing incursion into her mouth. The worst thing was that it wasn’t enough. She wanted more, lots more, but the last thing she would do was admit it to him.

After this swoon-making exercise in provocation, he moved aside. Their surroundings, which seemed to have faded away, sharpened into focus. Her arms and legs came back into being, though her brain was still wandering in the ether somewhere. Luke was smiling, somewhat sadly, she thought.

“Be on your way, Carrie,” he said softly. “If you don’t, you may find out that Yancey Goforth wasn’t the only guy who was dangerous.” He grazed a knuckle against her cheek and stepped backward, abandoning her to her comfort zone, which was much less comfortable than it had been, say, oh, ten minutes ago.

Instead of inventing a bit of repartee as she knew she should, Carrie could not think of one thing to say. Tried unsuccessfully to reconnect with her brain, which was still winding in from outer space. Made an effort to recapture her breath.

Darting one desperate glance back over her shoulder at Luke, she whirled around the corner of the stand, only to run smack into one of those women passing out cards. They bumped heads, and Carrie reeled backward with stars of the uncomfortable kind bouncing off the backs of her eyeballs.

“You’re definitely a possibility,” the woman said chattily. “Here you go, and don’t forget to include your phone number.” She pressed a card into Carrie’s hand.

“Take this back,” Carrie said, fending her off with a flap of her hand. “I don’t want to be in the movie.”

“Nonsense, go talk to Fleur. You’d be perfect for the Miss Liberty 500 scene. Go on,” said the assistant.

“Carrie? Carrie Rose Smith!” Joyanne called over the heads of the milling crowd, and Whip Larson, who happened to be passing by, halted in his tracks. He flicked his gaze over Carrie’s figure.

“You’re Carrie Smith?” he asked. “Of Smitty’s Garage?”

The last thing she expected was for Whip to grab her arm, but that was what he did. “Well, Ms. Smith,” he said heartily, “I’d like to talk to you. Luke Mason tells me that your garage is perfect for some scenes.”

So Luke had been talking up Smitty’s to this guy? Great. That was all she needed.

Carrie wrested her arm away. She’d had about all she could take of this movie business for today, plus she was pitched off balance by Luke Mason’s late but totally great kiss. She fought for composure and eyed Whip warily, pulling around her the shreds of whatever dignity she had left.

“My garage is not for sale. Nor am I,” she said as she lowered her head and began to walk rapidly toward her car, not paying attention to outraged squawks from Dixie and Joyanne, now most vociferously entreating her to stay.

Undeterred, Whip loped after her as she angled a shortcut through a patch of Queen Anne’s lace, which kept catching at the legs of her jeans.

“Baby, listen to me. This is your chance to earn a lot of money.” He was pushing her, as Hollywood types all seemed wont to do. She figured that her only recourse was to come back at him Southern style.

“Fiddle-dee-dee,” she said in a mock Scarlett O’Hara accent, raising one eyebrow for emphasis. “It makes no never mind to me.”

Whip, perspiration dripping down his forehead, tipped his head back and laughed, sending a bunch of sweat droplets flying. “Hey, you’re pretty good,” he said with a new kind of respect. “You sounded just like her.”

“I’m Southern born and bred,” Carrie retorted, not without pride. “But my daddy didn’t raise any fools.”

Whip was quick to barge in front of her and block her way as she clicked the remote to open the door of her SUV. “That’s why I can’t believe you’re throwing away this opportunity,” he said seriously.

“What would convince you—pepper spray?” To be on the safe side, she carried it in her purse.

“Pepper spray?”

“To get you off my case. If you don’t mind, I’d like to access my vehicle.” She dodged around Whip, opened the door of the SUV and climbed in. While she backed out of the parking place, he stared after her in perplexity.

Carrie sped up when she reached the highway. These people were crazy! If she hadn’t been so pure tee aggravated by the whole situation, she’d have laughed all the way back to Smitty’s.

One thing she didn’t want to laugh about, however, was her supercharged response to Luke Mason. What was that about? she wondered. What was really going on, the two of them alone behind that refreshment stand, kissing like a couple of teenagers slipping around behind everyone’s back?

On the other hand, maybe she didn’t really want to know.

AFTER LEAVING the seed farm, Carrie went home, changed into coveralls and reported to the garage. Just before closing time, Dixie and Joyanne showed up.

“We got parts!” Dixie yelled as she ejected from her blue Mustang and she and Joyanne ran inside.

“We’re going to be beauty contestants! Dixie and I get to wear swimsuits like they wore in the fifties—they’re these awful one-piece rubbery rib crushers with zippers up the back—and our job is to ride in convertibles in the parade.” This last line was delivered with considerable glee.

“Congratulations,” Carrie said dryly as they came inside. She opened the spreadsheet program on her laptop computer, planning on trying to figure out why she was low on cash this month.

“Carrie?” Hub said, poking his lean, sharp-chinned face in the door. “Did you order some of them oil filters I was asking you about? Hi, Dixie. Hi, Joyanne. What’s new?”

“We got parts in Dangerous!” Dixie announced gleefully, all but jumping up and down. “Isn’t that exciting?”

“It sure is,” Hub said slowly. “I heard Little Jessie got her a part, too. Teena called and told me about it.” Teena was Hub’s pretty, curly-haired wife, and she taught baton lessons part-time at Big Jessie’s studio.

Carrie checked her invoices. “Those oil filters should be on the delivery truck tomorrow,” she told Hub.

“Great. See you later, Dixie. You, too, Joyanne.” Hub disappeared around the corner.

“Carrie, you can come watch them film the scenes,” Joyanne said to Carrie.

“That would be the scenes at the racetrack?” The local speedway had been built by Yancey Goforth and a bunch of local businessmen after he struck it rich with endorsements for motor oil and tires.

“Sure, they’re going to need lots of people for the crowd shots,” Dixie said. “So you can still be in the movie if you want. Though if I were you, I’d have tried out like Joyanne and I did. You could have been a beauty contestant, too.”

“Fat chance,” Carrie scoffed as a matter of course. Luke Mason’s kiss still weighed heavily on her mind, but she intended to keep that secret to herself. With considerable guilt, of course, because its entertainment value to Dixie and Joyanne was not to be underestimated, and she hated to deprive them of such a fascinating tidbit.

Joyanne was into wild speculation about the possibilities being opened to her. “Wouldn’t it be great if we get asked to go to Hollywood and be in more movies?” she asked. “Get famous? I can see it now—my name, Joyanne Morrissey, on a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!”

Dixie, fortunately, was more realistic. “After the movie, I’ll go back to answering phones at Yewville Real Estate until I start listing and selling on my own. I’d say that’s a sight more dependable than an acting career.”

Joyanne shrugged. “Who cares? Life is an adventure, and if I were offered a part, no matter how insignificant, I’d take it. It would be a whole lot better than counting other people’s money at the Bank of Yewville for the rest of my life.”

Carrie couldn’t concentrate on her spreadsheet with Dixie and Joyanne nattering on, so she gave up attempting to work. Idly she typed the URL for Luke Mason’s online fan club into her search engine and loaded the pictures that titillated Dixie and Joyanne. In them Luke wore a red G-string and smiled provocatively into the camera. She experienced that smile up close now, and the pictures didn’t half do him justice.

“Carrie? Did you hear what I said?” Dixie asked.

Guiltily she exited the Web site and glanced up. “Say again?”

“I asked you if Joyanne and I should pick up a barrel of hot wings,” Dixie repeated patiently. “I made potato salad last night.”

Carrie sighed. “Sure, why not. You can come out to the home place for supper.”

“Dixie and I will get the chicken while you close up.” Joyanne would have been extremely interested if she’d known that Carrie had just been checking out those pictures of Luke. Chattering excitedly about their parts in the movie, Dixie and Joyanne left as Carrie’s cousin Voncille pulled up to the gas pumps.

“Hey, Voncille,” Carrie called. She shut down her computer and hurried outside.

“Hey, Carrie.” Voncille wore baggy bib overalls. Her thick red braids were so long that they dragged in the dishwater, of which there was much since her dishwasher had broken five years ago. Her husband, Skeeter, insisted that he’d get around to fixing it any day now, but somehow he never did, and with four children, there were plenty of dishes to wash.

“Don’t bother, Carrie. I’ll fill the tank myself.” Voncille unscrewed the gas cap on her battered minivan.

“When are the movie people going to start filming here at your station?” Voncille asked, her gaze never wavering from the rapidly escalating numbers on the pump.

“They’re not.” Carrie began to wash the minivan’s windshield.

Her cousin raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Aren’t they going to pay you over twenty thousand dollars?” she asked.

“Now, where on earth did you hear that?” Carrie asked, though she knew well enough how easily such information—true or not—spread in a small town like Yewville.

“Maybe Skeeter picked up the news somewhere.”

“Well, it’s not true.”

“Carrie, hon, I’d take the money from the movie company if I were you. If your daddy were alive, that’s what he’d tell you to do. Maybe find you a rich husband while you’re at it. Go on that Caribbean cruise with Glenda. That’s what she’s going to do with her money.”

“My father always advised us kids to learn skills that would enable us to take care of ourselves,” Carrie said mildly. That was why she’d completed the auto mechanic’s course at Florence Tech and why Dixie had enrolled in the administrative assistant program.

“It wouldn’t hurt to marry well,” Voncille said with a wink. “Lord knows I didn’t.” Skeeter had learned to hang drywall not long after losing his job at the mill, but he tended to get laid off a lot.

“Thanks for the advice,” Carrie told her, forcing a smile.

After Voncille peeled away from the pump, Carrie went back inside the station. As Hub scooted himself out from under the car where he was working, the dog trotted over, and Carrie absently scratched her behind one ear. Shasta grinned, pink tongue lolling in a sweet comical expression. She was white with black spots, one of which was arranged fetchingly over one eye.

“You’re a cutie, you know it?” Carrie murmured to the dog, who immediately rolled over on her back and waved all four paws in the air. “You’re a real comedian.”

“You’re getting attached to that animal,” Hub said, standing and wiping his hands on a rag. He bestowed a snaggletoothed smile on the dog. “Why, if there was any way on God’s green earth that those two ornery pit bulls of mine would accept her, I’d carry this dog home so fast lightning wouldn’t catch me. And by the way,” he continued as Carrie turned toward the door, “I heard that conversation with your cousin Voncille. Don’t pay her no mind.” His homely face was earnest.

“I get right annoyed when people tell me to find a rich husband. It’s not like there are scads of them hanging around on every corner,” Carrie replied with considerable ruefulness. Except for Luke Mason, maybe. But a kiss wasn’t exactly a proposal of marriage. Nor should it be, since she was determined to pretend it never happened.

“Maybe you’ll get lucky,” Hub said, treating her to a comical waggle of his eyebrows as she gathered her things. “You might land yourself a Hollywood tycoon while the movie people are in town.”

“Stick to fixing cars, Hub,” Carrie told him. “You’re a lot better at that than fortune-telling.”

They were both laughing as she drove away.

Chapter Four

Luke shifted uncomfortably on the lumpy couch in the office of the old seed farm, doing his best to convince Whip of the unsuitability of the Mullins garage for filming.

“It’s too far away,” Luke argued. “I don’t want to be running back and forth from here to there.”

“Neither do I, but what’s the big attraction of Smitty’s? The owner is dead set against renting to us.” Whip eyed him impatiently.

Luke had wanted to smile at Carrie’s feistiness in threatening poor Whip with pepper spray, but he’d managed to subdue his mirth when Whip told him about it. “Well,” he said, determined to choose his words carefully, “the set designers wouldn’t have to work too hard to make Smitty’s look authentic. There’s an old Coke machine from the fifties. A two-bay garage. A Marilyn Monroe calendar hanging over the desk.”

“Marilyn Monroe?” Luke had finally captured Whip’s attention.

Unsure why Whip had picked up on this particular, Luke took his time answering. “Right. The real Norma Jean, circa 1955.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Whip heaved himself out of the swivel chair. “What do you say we ride over to Smitty’s right now to follow up with Carrie Smith? The two of us together can wear her down.”

Luke’s spirits brightened. “Why this change of heart?”

Whip jangled his car keys. “Did you know I collect Marilyn Monroe memorabilia?”

“Actually I didn’t,” Luke said, wondering at this turn of good luck.

“Not that I think dealing with Ms. Smith will be easy,” Whip said.

“Of course not,” Luke agreed as he followed Whip to the parking lot.

With Whip at the wheel of the company van, they headed into the center of town, where renovations were continuing apace. As Whip turned sharply in to Smitty’s, they both spotted a dog drinking out of a blue plastic dishpan on the side of the building near the restroom doors. A bell sounded faintly from inside the garage as the van ran over the rubber signal beside the pumps, but as usual when Luke stopped by, there was no sign of Carrie Smith. This time, however, the doors to the garage bays were closed, as was the one leading to Carrie’s office, and there was no sign of Hub.

“Well, that’s a hell of a note,” Whip said after a cursory glance around. “The place is deserted.” He drove slowly past the building before backing up so they could see inside. “Could I get a view of the calendar if I peeked in the window?”

“Probably not. It’s hung over Carrie Smith’s desk, which is around a corner.”

“All right, we’ve ridden all the way over here for nothing. I say we go to Dolly’s and drown my curiosity,” Whip proposed.

“Wait a minute,” Luke said, his attention distracted by the dog meandering alongside the number two gas pump. “That dog over there looks as if it might be gagging on something.” The animal in question, hardly more than a pup, flopped down in the dust between the gas pumps and lowered its head to its paws. It gazed at them with eyes that were enormously dark and soulful.

“It looks fine to me,” Whip said with considerable lack of sympathy.

Luke jumped out of the van. “Maybe it’s just hungry or scared.”

“Oh, sure. That dog’s terrified. Observe how it’s lying there wagging its tail in sheer fright.”

Luke knelt and held his hand out so the dog could sniff it. “Come on,” he coaxed. “You’re going to let me pet you, aren’t you?” This produced a tentative lick of his fingers.

Whip was getting antsy. He called out the window, “Luke, stay away from that dog. She might have rabies or something.”

Luke paid no attention. The animal wasn’t exactly what you’d term peppy, but then, neither was anything else in Yewville.

“Luke! Hey, man, come on.” Whip revved the engine a couple of times to emphasize the urgency of his request.

Luke ignored him. The dog was drooling, probably just water she hadn’t swallowed. She flopped over on her back, squirming in ecstasy when Luke scratched her stomach. If this was Carrie Smith’s dog, shame on her for leaving such a winsome animal here to get run over or worse.

The dog licked Luke’s hand when he stopped petting her, and he couldn’t resist those big liquid-brown eyes. Beguiled by her friendliness, Luke made a quick decision.

“C’mon, girl,” he said.

“What are you doing?” Whip yelled.

“I’m taking the dog with us,” Luke answered. At his call, the dog stood up and obediently trotted after him.

“You don’t even know that dog. And you sure can’t keep him at that rental house where you’re staying.”

“This is a her, not a him, and I’ll bring her back here after she’s had a square meal.” There wasn’t any food around, just the dishpan filled with water. Personally, he’d put the dog’s owner in jail for neglecting the animal, even though said owner was blond and had a beautiful set of legs, not to mention considerable other assets. But no matter how gorgeous she was, Carrie shouldn’t go off and leave a dog to fend for itself.

“The people who own your house specified no pets,” Whip reminded him with the defeated attitude of someone who understood that he was slinging weak shots in a losing battle.

“No one has to find out I’ve had an overnight guest,” Luke said, opening the sliding door of the van and placing his hands on both sides of the dog’s rump to shove her in.

“She’s probably got fleas,” Whip retorted. “If I have to pay to fumigate that house, I’m going to be mad as hell.”

“I don’t see a single flea,” Luke said.

“You don’t necessarily see fleas. You feel their bites eventually,” Whip explained with great patience. The dog hopped up on the backseat of the van and faced front, as Luke got in and buckled his seat belt.

“That’s it, girl, settle down,” Luke said unnecessarily, refusing to comment on the flea situation, if there was one.

“She smells,” Whip complained.

“She’s a dog, Whip. That’s the way dogs are supposed to smell.”

Whip threw the van into gear and wheeled onto Palmetto Street. “We were going to stop for a beer. Now, don’t walk up to the bartender at Dolly’s with that dog. ‘Have you ever heard the story about the talking dog?’ you’ll say. And he’ll say—”

“Oh, can it, Whip,” Luke said in disgust. “This is a fine animal we’ve got here. She’s much too smart to talk, aren’t you, girl? Talking only gets people in trouble. Anyway, we can swing by my house and you can drop both of us off.”

“Yeah, Luke, whatever,” was Whip’s gruff reply.

Luke patted the dog on the head. “Hey, Whip,” he said, an idea forming in his head. “How about if we draw up a contract and I hand it to Carrie Smith personally when I bring the dog back tomorrow? With her name on it and everything?”

“Not a bad idea,” Whip allowed. “Once she sees the offer in writing, that could change her mind, due partly, of course, to your movie-star charm, Luke.” He shot Luke a calculating grin.

“My so-called charm and a couple of dollars won’t even buy me a latte at the Eat Right Café,” Luke scoffed good-naturedly.

“They have latte?” Whip asked on a note of hope.

“Doubtful,” Luke said. And even though he was angry with Carrie about leaving the dog wandering around alone, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to stay that way for long.

A FEW DAYS after the casting call, Carrie had barely started to pick tomatoes and peppers in her garden, when the phone rang inside the house. She let it ring. Family and friends knew to call back or stop by Smitty’s if they were phoning about anything important.

She lifted the basket of vegetables and hurried to the back gate of the white picket fence, heavy with Carolina jasmine. On the other side of the fence was the house, a big rambling white Victorian with a deep porch hugging the front and sides. In the back, a screened porch jutted past a yew hedge, ending just short of a sundial on one side of the path, a birdbath on the other.

Carrie was grateful to whoever designed the home place back in the early 1900s; the porch overhang kept out the hot summer sun, and tall windows admitted a fresh breeze. Seventeen-foot-high ceilings coaxed hot air up above the inhabitants, who at present totaled only two—Carrie and her resident rabbit.

After setting the baskets on the big table where her great-grandmother had served meals to farmworkers long ago, she wiped her sweaty forehead with one arm. She’d have to hurry if she wanted to get to the garage at her usual time and set these vegetables out to sell. They brought in a few extra dollars from customers, and every cent counted these days.

The kitchen phone rang again, and this time she answered on the first ring.

“This is Mike Calphus,” said the young voice on the other end.

“Oh, Mike,” Carrie replied, wondering what was up. Mike was just ten, and she felt a worrisome niggle of alarm at the sound of his voice.

“Carrie, Shasta wasn’t at the garage this morning. Do you know where she is?”

“Why, no, Mike.”

“Me and Jamie, we looked all over. Hub wasn’t there yet.” Mike sounded as though he might cry.

The Calphus boys had become mightily attached to Shasta in the short time that she’d been hanging around. They’d been stopping by in the mornings on their way to baseball practice to give her treats and play catch with her out back of the garage.

“Oh, Mike, I’m sorry. Tell you what, we’ll hunt for Shasta as soon as I get there, I promise.”

“Mom went to work, and Grandma doesn’t drive, but if you ride us around the neighborhood and we holler out the windows, maybe Shasta will come.” Mike still sounded perilously near tears.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes or so,” Carrie said. She hung up in dismay. Last weekend, the boys had carried the dog home with them, but Ginger Calphus, a single mother, had put her foot down and refused to keep her. The boys’ grandmother, who lived next door, had too many other responsibilities to take on a dog, and despite Carrie’s best efforts, no one else had offered a home.

Killer, Carrie’s lop-eared rabbit, so named because of his aggression toward almost everyone but her, hopped into the kitchen and wiggled his nose hopefully. “If it weren’t for you,” she told him sternly, “Shasta would live with me.” Carrie had developed a true affection for the pup, but Killer would not have much chance of survival if the two ever found themselves in the same room together, even though the rabbit owed his name to a deadly hind-leg kick.

Leaving Killer happily chomping on a newly harvested lettuce leaf, Carrie headed for town. She called ahead on her cell phone to inform Hub that he’d be doing the brake job and drove straight to the Calphus house. Ginger Calphus had been a classmate of Carrie’s and lived next door to the house where she’d grown up. This simplified child-care arrangements for Ginger, who had been divorced for a couple of years and worked at the bank with Joyanne. Ginger’s parents, Edna Earle and Fred Hindershot, kept an eye on her two boys during the day, and Carrie stopped to ask Edna Earle if it was okay for Mike and Jamie to come with her to look for the dog.

“Sure, go ahead. They do love that dog, but Ginger’s devoted to those cats of hers and can’t consider adopting another animal. I’d give Shasta a home myself, but Fred says I don’t need a pet, considering that I’m busy enough taking care of Mike and Jamie and him, too.” Fred had retired on disability and could barely get around anymore.

“I know, Edna Earle. I always figured that I’d find the perfect person to adopt Shasta if I let her hang around long enough. She’s a sweet little old thing.”

“Well, maybe she’ll turn up.” Edna Earle called into the house, “Mike! Jamie! Carrie is here. Y’all come on out.”

The boys erupted from the house, and Carrie held the SUV door open for them as they swarmed in.

“Can we drive down Begonia Street? Sometimes Shasta goes down there to drink from the creek,” Jamie said, sounding worried.

“Of course we can,” Carrie assured him. “Then we’ll check Memorial Park and make sure she isn’t having a good old time chasing ducks around the pond.”

They drove slowly down Begonia, waving to Mrs. McGrath, who was kneeling in the dirt, deadheading her marigolds. On the corner of Cedar Lane they stopped to talk to Jason Plummer, a high-school athlete who was jogging around the block. He hadn’t seen Shasta, but he promised to notify Carrie if he did.

Finally, after driving up and down every street in Yewville calling the dog’s name, Carrie gave up.

“Maybe Shasta found a real home,” Mike suggested.

“Yeah,” Jamie said mournfully. “With her own yard and everything. But how are we going to play catch with her if we don’t know where she lives?”

Carrie had her own private concern, namely that the dog had wandered out to the bypass and met with a gruesome fate that she’d rather not discover while in the company of two small boys.

“Tell you what,” she said. “Let’s get some ice cream.” She hoped she didn’t sound as forlorn to the boys as she did to herself.

“I’d rather find Shasta,” Mike said, showing a hint of stubbornness, but Carrie convinced him to accompany them inside the Eat Right, anyway. They all sat down in a booth, where the boys ordered rocky-road ice-cream cones and Carrie asked for a dish of chocolate and strawberry. The ice cream distracted them from thinking about their failure to turn up any evidence of the missing dog.

Kathy Lou Watts, the waitress behind the counter, was in a cheerful mood. “I hear Luke Mason stopped by your gas station a couple of Sundays ago,” she said chattily.

“He did,” Carrie answered. She watched helplessly as ice cream dripped onto Jamie’s spotless blue T-shirt.

“Is he as handsome as he is on the screen?” Kathy Lou asked.

“Handsomer,” Carrie answered without really thinking about it. “Imagine! Luke Mason himself was right here in the Eat Right this morning. The girls on the early shift said he ate eggs and bacon for breakfast, just like any ordinary person. And link sausage. He must really like sausage ’cause he asked for three orders to take out.” Kathy Lou scrubbed energetically at a stain on the counter with one corner of a damp dish towel.

“I suppose just about everybody around here will get a gander at Luke Mason before they’re through filming that blamed movie,” Carrie said.

“I heard that the casting director is going to interview local people for minor speaking parts,” Kathy Lou told her.

“Is that so?” Carrie asked with little interest. Kathy Lou talked nonstop; how she could run on.

Kathy Lou stopped scrubbing and leaned toward Carrie confidentially. “My niece is going to try to get herself a part. Wouldn’t that be something? Mikaila Parker from Yewville, South Carolina, in an honest-to-goodness Hollywood movie?”

“Mmm,” Carrie said absently, wondering if she should close the station and haul Hub with her out to the bypass after she dropped the boys off at their grandparents’ house. She and Hub could call Shasta; they could whistle. Maybe they’d even find her alive and well, thumping her tail in someone else’s dust.

Kathy Lou was still talking. “You get paid by the day. For being in the movie, I mean. If they pick you, that is. Big Jessie is going to take Little Jessie for an interview so she can sing “Tomorrow” from that play. Annie. Little Jessie already got her a part in the parade twirling her baton, but Big Jessie says she’s got more talent than that.”

“Um, yes, indeed,” Carrie murmured, though the specter of Little Jessie decked out as Little Orphan Annie and twirling her baton while singing an off-key rendition of “Tomorrow” tended to curdle the ice cream in her stomach.

“You should aim for a speaking part, Carrie. You and Dixie. Either one of you girls is pretty enough to be a movie star. And Dixie’s already been chosen to be a beauty contestant, I hear.”

“She can get off work at the real-estate office to be in the movie, but I have a garage to run. Jamie, hurry up and finish your cone. Your grandma is going to worry about what happened to us.”

“Like I’m worried what happened to Shasta,” Jamie said disconsolately. He kicked his heels against the bottom of his seat.

“I wonder where that dog’s gone. Dog gone. Doggone, Jamie, get it?” Mike said.

This ended the morning on a slightly cheerful note. The boys wiped their hands obediently with the damp napkin that Carrie dipped in her water glass and uncomplainingly left their seats when she said it was time to leave.

“Bye, Carrie,” Kathy Lou called after them.

“Bye,” Carrie called back.

Carrie shepherded the boys out of the restaurant. She certainly didn’t want a speaking part in the movie. But she sure would have liked to know where Shasta had disappeared to.

LATER THE SAME AFTERNOON, Carrie was setting her vegetables out on the table in front of the station, when she spotted the Ferrari coming down the street, convertible top down. The car didn’t really register at first. She was sick at heart because there was still no sign of Shasta. Out on the bypass, she and Hub had explored every cul-de-sac, but they had seen no sign of the pup. At least they hadn’t found her dead on the side of the road.

The Ferrari’s turn signal was blinking, and the car slowed in front of the station. Carrie rushed through her task, meaning to go inside. Luke Mason could pump his own gas. She didn’t want to be involved in any discussion about what had happened out behind the refreshment stand the other day, nor did she think it would be a good idea to engage in more kissing. The trouble was that she wanted to. But she wasn’t going to give in to unwieldy desires. She had her principles.

She started inside, telling herself that it wasn’t the man who was the big attraction, only his car. She sneaked a peek at the Ferrari out of the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t believe it when there was Shasta, sitting on the front seat big as you please.

“Shasta!” she cried, so glad to see the dog that she wanted to hug her. While Luke Mason gazed at her from behind his sunglasses, she hurried over. It was Shasta, all right, no mistake about that. No mistake about Luke, either. “What are you doing with this dog?” she demanded as he got out of his car in a leisurely manner. He wasn’t smiling, so maybe he’d had the same second thoughts as she had about that kiss.

“I’m bringing the dog back. How could you leave her outside after you closed for the day? Something could have happened to her.” He sounded angry.

She glared at him. “She’s not my dog. I feed her and give her water, and I’m trying to find her a good home. I don’t suppose you’d be interested,” she suggested pointedly.

At that, Luke backed off a bit. “I can’t have a dog, but I can certainly provide temporary quarters when an animal is being mistreated,” he said self-righteously.

“Shasta is not mistreated. She’s homeless, that’s all. Has she been with you all night? I’ve searched everywhere for her.” She figured she had at least as much right to be angry as Luke Mason.

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