The Girl from Summer Hill by Jude Deveraux Page A

House.
    “I’m sorry this is such a simple meal, but the auditions ran late.” Casey was standing outside the entryway. “Plus, I have a dinner guest coming soon, so I didn’t have much time to prepare.” She held out a big basket to him.
    He took it and opened the door wider. He was grateful for his own acting experience because he was able to keep smiling. Tate had returned to the house looking like he wanted to murder someone—and it was a toss-up between his ex-brother-in-law and Casey. All Jack had been able to get out of him was that Haines was going to play Wickham and Casey was his champion. Jack wanted to hear everything that had happened.
    But when he asked Casey to come in, she backed away, her hands raised in horror. “No thanks. I have to get ready for dinner, and besides, it’s been a very long day.”
    “Mind if I walk you back?”
    “Please do,” she said.
    He put the basket down and they walked toward the guesthouse. “I heard that you auditioned for the role of Elizabeth Bennet.”
    “Not really,” she said. “I mean, I did sort of.”
    “What did Kit say about it?”
    Casey stopped walking. “Sorry, but…Men! The audition was a fiasco. I got really angry and was embarrassed by what happened, but people cheered and—” She waved her hand. “Kit loved it. He was ecstatic. I was still in the dressing room when he came in and told me I was going to be Elizabeth. Then he left. Just like that! He made an autocratic decree about me, and added—like it meant nothing—that the movie star was probably going to play Darcy. Then Kit just walked away like it was a done deal. I ran after him and told him I’d sooner cook with aluminum pans, let my knives get dull, whatever, than be in a play with Tate Landers. I said— Oh.” She looked at Jack. “Sorry again. I know he’s your friend, but he makes me furious. But then, if you spend a lot of time around him, I’m sure you’re used to women saying that.”
    “No, actually,” Jack said, “you’re the first.”
    They were at the guesthouse. “I suspect the women were too dazzled by his good looks to notice what he’s really like. If he were ugly, women wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”
    “Isn’t that always true?”
    “So now you’re saying that all women are superficial and are attracted only by a man’s pecs and abs?”
    Jack raised his eyebrows in a way that made Casey laugh in spite of herself. “Okay. You have a point,” she said. “Come in and I’ll make you a drink. How about some twelve-year-old Scotch on the rocks?”
    “Sounds great.” He sat down on the same stool as he had before and she poured him a drink. While he sipped it, he watched her move about the kitchen as she put things away. “Are you going to take the role?”
    “I’m no actress. All the passion I put into the lines came from my anger at Tate Landers.” She turned to Jack. “Do you know what he was doing in my bedroom?”
    “I have no idea.” He wasn’t being entirely truthful.
    She dropped two stainless bowls into a drawer, making a clatter. “I think he undressed, because his shirt was hanging off the porch roof. All day I was dreading what I’d find up there when I got home.”
    “And?” Jack asked.
    “My pajamas were on the floor, and everything on my dresser had been rearranged. It’s as though he went through all my things.” She looked at Jack. “There was a peacock feather sticking out from under the bed. Bright green with an eye on it. Finding that in my bedroom was really creepy! Tomorrow Josh is going to put some dead bolts on my doors, and I’ll have to close all the windows and lock them.”
    Jack was frowning. “None of this sounds like Tate.”
    “I guess we can never see the truth about our friends.” She went back to cleaning.
    “Casey,” Jack said tentatively, “I think I should say something about Devlin Haines.”
    It didn’t take much to know what he was going to say. “Do you know the man