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Chapter Four
The ride to town wasdeadly quiet aside from an old live album by Neil Young.
Tony was subdued, his nose in a thick script, the whole way into Rockmount. He now wore reading glasses. Small round ones with dark frames that looked wickedly attractive on him. Our gazes touched once or twice on the ride, his darting back to his script while mine would fly to the road—where they belonged.
“This is the town green,” I said, pulling up behind a yellow sawhorse that Teddy had placed in the middle of Main Street to divert the traffic away from the shoot. “You’re shooting here for a week, then it’s off to a local wedding barn and then out to the tree farm. Not sure what comes after that, but this is where you need to be today.”
He closed his script, his glasses riding low on his lovely nose, and smiled at the madness outside in the cold.
“It looks like something from a painting,” he commented, and yeah, he was right, it did look like a Thomas Kincaide oil. A huge blinking tree stood off to the side of our little World War II memorial fountain. Stalls had been erected to mimic a Christmas celebration with strolling carolers and a rolling hot peanut vender. “Guess I had better get to makeup and wardrobe. I’ll get a ride home tonight. Oh, and I’ll cook something. I’m pretty good at cooking now.”
I arched a brow. That was news to me, but then again, he could have taken a master chef class and I wouldn’t have known. Hell, he could have a degree in quantum mechanics for all I knew. I had avoided all news about him like the plague. A little puff of warmth, like someone blowing on a fire about to go out, flared up in my chest at his use of the word home for my place. It was...well, it was making me think of domestic things that could have been but now were never going to be.
“I’m not sure—”
“Don’t be stubborn,” he said while tucking his glasses into the interior front pocket of his puffy coat. “I enjoy cooking and you enjoy eating. I’ll run through the grocery store after we wrap. Now go pump up those beefy biceps.”
“Mfph,” I replied as someone with bright blue hair and a lanyard tugged open the passenger door and whisked Tony off to the makeup trailer. I watched him go, jogging along with the young miss who had fetched him, his ass not looking saggy at all in his well-fitted jeans. My cock decided to plump up a bit. “Enough of that. His ass is off-limits. I told you that forty times last night.”
Dicks do not listen well, though. And much like cats, dicks have minds of their own.
***
Iworked out hard.
They say if you feel the burn hard enough, it drives out lust.
Not true.
My shoulders ached still at lunchtime when I came back from a call out at Lockheed farm that had come in this morning. Seemed some kids with nothing to do—a problem in rural towns all over America—had stolen the cash from Mabel Lockheed’s egg stand at the end of her long driveway. I’d warned her numerous times to not leave her egg money out there overnight, but she was elderly and had forgotten. I slipped her a tenner to replace her loss, and she gifted me a dozen fresh brown eggs for my kindness.
So now I was looking for Tony solely to tell him I had eggs and not to buy any. There was no other reason. After I relayed the egg news, I went to the elementary school to talk to the kids about stranger dangers. Town was bustling. The diners were packed tight, but I managed to find Tony seated at a round table in the corner talking to a tall man with a thick mustache and no hair. When the bells over the door jingled, everyone glanced up. Seeing it was me, most nodded and then went back to their food and lunch chat. When Tony saw it was me, he waved like a lunatic. The smell of deep fryer grease made my gut rumble. I motioned to Annie, the waitress for the back section, to take my coffee to Tony’s table. She nodded in reply before placing a plate of gravy fries in front of Marcus Langford, a clerk at the courthouse.
“Hey, imagine running into you here,” Tony said as I neared the table. “Stillman, this is Roquefort Malls, the casting director. Roquefort, this is Stillman King, the sheriff in these here parts.” Tony’s western accent was damn good, silly in this instance as we were east as east could be, but still damn good. “Roquefort was just saying that he would love to cast some of the locals as extras in the movie. I suggested you for a walk-on role as a local lawman.” My eyes flared. “It’s just a bit part with me. You’d pull me over, get out of your car, walk toward me all sexy coppish, and then warn me to watch for crossing pigs...or was it cows? Well, it was livestock. Then I say I will and drive off. What do you think?”
“Uhm, well, I’m not sure—”
“Here you are!” The mayor in all his mayorly glory arrived bright as a new penny. “Oh, hello, Stillman! Did Tony get you to agree to be an extra? It’s so exciting! Everyone in town is doing it. I have a role where I get to deliver a ten-line speech in the background as Tony and Sasha have a meet cute. I’m so thrilled you’re in on this! What civic pride you have! Annie, can you please place my BLT next to the director as he and I have important business to discuss? Hello, Dylan. Nice to see you! How are the kids?” Bradley blew in and then out like a handshaking hurricane.
