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
