“I think I’ll meet you there.” As Jack went up the stairs to his bedroom, he was chuckling. “Not tempted, huh?”
“Hi,” Jack said from outside Casey’s door.
She was putting food into boxes and coolers as she prepared to take it to the old warehouse where the stage was being built. Unfortunately, she was using so much force that she almost broke a Pyrex dish.
“Hello,” Jack said louder as he knocked on the doorframe.
Casey jumped. “Sorry, I— Oh. You.” Her eyes were wide.
“May I come in?”
“Of course, but it’s a mess in here.”
“When a place smells as good as this one does, it’s beautiful to me.”
“I have to—” she began, but stopped. Jack Worth, her absolute favorite movie star, was standing in her kitchen. Her first thought was how odd it was to see this man life-size. He looked good, but he also looked human, normal. And right now she recognized what she was so good at dealing with: a hungry person. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Please,” he said.
Minutes later, Jack was seated on the far side of the island and before him was a feast. Casey had opened every container and dished out some of each to him. She warmed up the sweet-potato hash and fried fresh eggs to put on top.
“This is great.” He was eating a maple-walnut muffin and looking around the kitchen at the rows of jars of home-canned jams, their tops covered with red-and-white gingham. On a side wall hung skillets from four inches wide to one that could feed a crowd. Three tall, narrow bookcases were between the big doors to the outside and they were packed with cookbooks, binders, and card boxes. By the big stainless-steel stove were shelves packed with bottles of oil of different colors, most of them with herbs and peppers inside. “I mean it, every inch of this place is great.”
Casey smiled, pleased by his compliment. If she’d been told she was going to meet Jack Worth, she would have said she’d instantly turn into a fangirl. But as she watched him eat, she realized she felt the same way she did with her brother. “Excuse me, but I need to pack things.”
“Go ahead,” Jack said. “How are you transporting all of this?”
“I have to call my brother to come with his truck.”
“Tate has a big pickup in his garage. I can get it and give you a ride.”
She blinked at him. To ride with Jack Worth? All his stunts with cars flying through the air seemed to run through her mind.
“I promise I’ll keep all four wheels on the ground.”
“Then I’d rather go with someone else,” she said solemnly.
Jack laughed. “Okay, next time I’ll take the Jeep and we’ll find some
rough roads.”
“You’re on.” She put a squash casserole into the cooler. “But you’d better not tell…him, the owner, who’s in the truck or he might not let you use it.”
“Bad first meeting, huh?” Jack bit into an apple muffin that had a salted-caramel top.
“Depends on if you like raging fury.”
He held up the muffin. “This is…mmmm! Anyway, that sounds out of character for Tate. He’s not like his screen image of the angry, brooding man. All I have to do is drive fast and a girl is happy. But what’s Tate to do to impress her? Smolder?”
“What does that mean?” Casey asked. “Wait. Don’t tell me. My friend used to say that Tate Landers only had to look at a woman and she’d start removing her clothes. I didn’t feel that. He looked at me like I was something he found on the bottom of his shoe.”
“That really doesn’t sound like Tate.”
Casey waved her hand. “Why are we talking about him? I loved that scene in your last movie where you grabbed the girl off the skimobile. I kept replaying it on DVD. What are you going to do next?”
“In September I start a movie about a spoiled, rich teenage boy who’s been kidnapped. I save him and along the way I make a man of him. So what part are you trying out for in the play?”
“None. I’m not an actress. I just cook.”