“You’re sure?” Jack asked Tate. “No doubts about her? None at all?” They were in the back of the car and being driven from the airport to Tattwell.
“Absolutely,” Tate said. “I’m tired of the life I live. It’s too empty for me.”
“That’s not a problem. It’s just who you choose to share it with. You’ve known this girl for a very short time.” Jack was tapping out a message on his phone.
“And who are you texting?”
Jack laughed. “The girl I’ve known only a very short time.” He put his phone back in his pocket. “It’s been twenty-four hours since I heard from her. What about you? You get through to Casey?”
“I sent her forty-one texts and emails while I was away, but she never replied. I was pretty worried, but this morning I got a notice that none of them had been sent. I had to go into settings and say, yes, I do want to send all those messages. They all went out at once.”
“And?”
“Nothing, but if Casey was in the kitchen she might not have heard the phone.” He smiled. “She’ll be surprised at the deluge.”
“I think something is wrong,” Jack said. “Gizzy answered everything I sent her, but I’ve heard nothing in the last day.”
Tate didn’t say anything. The photo of Gizzy kissing the fireman still bothered him. Jack had dismissed it, but Tate hadn’t. He’d wondered what was in Gizzy’s mind. Sometimes it seemed that the only thing she cared about in Jack was his ability to keep up with her wild escapades. Walking along the cliffs, tiptoeing across the roofs, climbing trees. She wanted to do all of that—and maybe not much else. For his taste, Gizzy was too remote, too cool, too reserved. How could someone know what she was thinking or feeling?
She was the opposite of Casey, Tate thought, with her temper and her demands to be treated well. He always knew where he stood with her.
While he’d been gone, he’d thought of nothing but her and what they had together. He’d missed her horribly. Her jokes, her laughter, her eagerness to participate in life, had all become part of him.
Until he went away, it hadn’t hit him how much she really meant to him.
In his weeks in Summer Hill, he’d nearly forgotten how the outside world saw him. He was met at the L.A. airport by a couple of fawning studio reps. “May I carry that for you, Mr. Landers?” “Are you comfortable, Mr. Landers?” “If you need anything, Mr. Landers, just tell me and I’ll get it for you.” The last was said by a pretty girl with a lot of eyelash-batting.
Over the years he’d grown so used to such treatment that he’d come to pay little attention to it. But his time in Summer Hill had been like being at home with Nina and Emmie, with people who saw him as a person, not as a commodity that had to be pampered because it sold well.
Every minute he was away, he’d wished that Casey were with him. Or that he had her to go home to. At night, alone in his hotel room in faraway Romania, he thought about their time together. Their life.
Food and sex, he thought. Casey had given him the best of both. The best food he’d ever eaten and the greatest sex he’d ever had. He’d said that about the food to Nina on the phone just before he flew to Romania.
“Sounds like love,” she said. “You don’t really believe that the hamburgers you and Emmie grill in the backyard are the best in the whole wide world, do you? They’re great because you and my daughter put so much love in them. I bet you like sex with Casey too.”
“That’s not something I will discuss with my sister.”
“When I first knew Devlin and thought I was madly in love with him, the sex was so good that I’d cry. But after I found out what he was really like, I was repulsed by his touch. The only thing that had changed was love.”
“You should go on one of those women’s talk shows and tell that.”
“I don’t have to since every woman who’s ever lived knows it. It’s only men who are dumb.”
Tate laughed. “That sounds like something Casey would say. And do not give me some platitude about that. Damn! They’re here to pick me up. Will you and Emmie come to Tattwell when I get back?”
“Your niece says she needs two more of the eight pink suitcases you bought her, but yes, we’ll be there five minutes after you land. Call me as soon as you’re back.”
“I will. I promise. I love you both. Bye.”
All the time he’d been away, he’d thought about Casey and their possible life together. He went over everything in his mind. Where they’d live. If Casey didn’t like his house, he’d sell it and they’d buy something cozy. With a great kitchen, of course.
If she wanted to continue catering or open her own restaurant, whatever she wanted, he’d help her do it.
The bad part would be his life. Cameras and red carpets and women saying lewd things to him would take getting used to. Over the years, he’d grown nearly immune to it all. But how would Casey react to a hundred cameras in her face and being asked what it was like to go to bed with Tate Landers?
He’d have to protect her. That was going to take some work, but he’d do it!
By the time he got on the plane to return to the U.S., he was full of resolutions—and joy. This was what he wanted, and there was a way to work it out. A