Sister’s smile brightened. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. Sissy will be delighted too.”
“Where is Sissy?”
“She’s helping set up the food tables outside. I know your schedule said things would be starting early today and we wanted to be ready.”
From all the activity up and down the hall already this morning, she knew her crew was up and judging from the empty lobby, most likely outside and ready to get started. What she hadn’t counted on was stepping outside the door and finding half the town showing up for the shoot as well.
“Oh, this is so exciting!” the tall redheaded sister squealed with way too much enthusiasm for this hour of the morning. “We have more coffee and lemonade and sweet tea…”
Valerie tried really hard not to shudder at the thought of all that sweetness. In the south, sweet tea wasn’t just iced tea with a little sugar, it was more like sugar with a little tea.
Eileen stood beside the redheaded sister. Once Val had realized getting a food truck of any kind to come out to the isolated location would be next to impossible, Eileen Farraday had been one of the first to volunteer to keep the food and drinks flowing. So many residents were thrilled with the whole project that the town had arranged for enough food to feed a Hollywood movie crew rather than a small sizzle reel crew. Of course, she hadn’t considered they would be feeding the crew and the audience.
A donut clenched between his teeth, a cameraman walked past her to the morning shoot. One by one other crew members followed, setting up equipment to check light and sound.
“Is there a hot sheet?” one of the team asked.
Valerie shook her head and pointed to the one side of the old emporium. “I want a camera here.” Her finger turned to the upper corner of the interior. “And here.” She turned. “We’re going to mostly run it and gun it.”
“Do I want to know what that means?” Eileen mumbled quietly.
Val bit back a laugh. “This won’t be scripted so we’re just going to have as many cameras as possible shooting whatever construction action there is and hope that we get something worth turning into a TV show.”
“Where’s the peach cobbler?” The woman with a braid that hung all the way down her back, Ruth maybe, frowned at the table in front of her.
“I put it on the…corner.” Eileen stepped away from her table and walking to the food spread, stopped only a few feet away. “I know I put it there.”
“Maybe someone on the crew took it.” Sister frowned.
Valerie lowered her gaze. “The whole thing?”
“We’re ready,” one of the camera men called out from the emporium doorway.
“Have to run, ladies.” Val needed to give the cameramen a list of shots she was hoping to get.
By lunchtime they’d captured several great candid moments but nothing quite fit the vision in her head. Except maybe for Morgan with a tool belt on his hips. Who knew worn leather, and with a measuring tape clipped to the side, could look so good. His brothers didn’t look half bad either. Even if Neil didn’t normally swing a hammer but instead his tool of choice was a pencil, the man would have the female fans drooling nonetheless.
“Oh, hell.” Neil stepped back and a lifted board snapped heavily into place. “We’re going to have to watch our step. At least some of these floorboards have broken free.”
The camera zoomed in as he pushed on the edge of the board with his booted foot and the opposite end flipped up and then down again. Maybe if one of those floorboards had whacked a brother in the butt that would have made for interesting footage. This was proving harder than she’d anticipated. Who knew renovations could be so boring.
“Hey, fellas?” Maybe she could come up with anything to spark some interest in this otherwise boring project. Looking at one of the cameramen, she ran her thumb across her neck, signaling them to stop their taping. She started across the shop with no idea what to do or say, but with any luck, once she got in the thick of things she was hoping some brilliant and slightly different twist would occur to her. “What if we try…”
The words were barely out of her mouth when her balance abandoned ship and she flailed like a gasping fish tossed on an old dock. As the wooden floorboard she’d stepped on fell out from under her, her arms continued circling around and a thought flashed through her mind—too bad she’d ordered the cameras to stop rolling. If there was one thing people enjoyed watching, it was slapstick. And her crashing on her well-padded derriere would have been fabulous footage.
“Hey!” Like an eagle swooping in to steal its floundering prey, strong arms curled around her and scooped her against a rock solid wall of man. “Are you okay?”
Pressed against Morgan, she could feel his heart thumping under her splayed fingertips and wasn’t sure whose rapid beat was faster. “Fine. Uh, thank you.”
“You need to watch your step on a construction site. Can’t take anything for granted.”
She nodded her head and resisted the urge to tighten her arms around his neck.
“Great shot.” One of the cameramen came running up beside her. “You were right. The extra cameras on the run it and gun it paid off.”
It took her a few moments to realize what the man was talking about. Kicking her feet, she pushed away from Morgan until he released his hold and easing her down, she found her footing. “You filmed my falling?”
“Two cameras got the carpenter coming to the rescue. You can thank us for not shutting down later.” The sandy haired cameraman stared pointedly at her, then turned and walked away.
At least she hadn’t been in heels and a dress or she might have really made a fool of herself. Casually brushing the dust and embarrassment away, she pressed on with the day. They had a long way to go still.
Back to work, Valerie’s gaze drifted from the beautiful shiplap walls to the growing pile of planks on the floor. “Do you really have to remove all those boards?”
“This is the twenty-first century. We know a thing or two more about insulation now. We’ll add some two by sixes, install the insulation, and replace the shiplap. Nobody will ever know what happened, and no one will freeze in the dead of winter.”
“This is Texas. How cold could it get?”
Morgan smiled. “This is West Texas. And very cold.”
“Don’t get too carried away. This is only a sizzle. If it doesn’t get picked up for a pilot, we won’t be able to fix up what you’ve dismantled.” She glanced briefly at the bare wall. This had better be the best darn sizzle reel she’d ever produced, because if it didn’t get picked up, she was just plain out of ideas.
Every single minute of the day Morgan asked himself how did he let himself get talked into this. Every minute except the one where Valerie folded into his arms and against his chest. Neil and Ryan were both getting into the strutting peacock thing, but Morgan was thinking it would be nice to go back and do a slow motion replay of the part where he scooped her into his arms—and keep her there. Then again, reality never turned out as well as the dream. Which is why he reminded himself it was safer not to dream at all.
“What are you stewing over?” Neil spun his hammer the way an old gunslinger might twirl a revolver, then slipped it into the tool loop.
“You’ve been watching too many westerns.” Ryan shook his head.
Neil shrugged. “Don’t you feel it?”
“Feel it?” Morgan asked.
“You know. The vibe.”
“The vibe?” Ryan repeated.
“What? Did you two have parrot soup for lunch or something? The old west vibe, the feeling that we’re living over a hundred years ago.” Neil glanced at the one camera still rolling and pulled the pocket knife from his pouch, then lowered his voice. “I can see where that camera could begin to feel like being under a microscope.”
Morgan shook his head. That’s what he’d been saying from the first time the words reality television were spoken in conjunction with Three Corners and his brothers. Pocket knife in hand, he joined his br
other splitting open the rolls of insulation. Normally they would do work in sections, remove the boards first, then install insulation, then recover the walls. In this case they agreed they would work in small sections so that things were not in disarray when the work had to stop.
“I’ve always wondered why insulation is pink.” Hands on her hips, Valerie looked at the unrolled sheets of insulation. “Personally, I prefer purple.”
She reached for the insulation and Morgan snatched hold of her wrist. “Careful. You have to wear gloves to handle it. Fiberglass is seriously itchy.”
“Poison ivy itchy,” Neil added.
“Here.” Morgan pulled his spare gloves out of a bucket. “You want to help?”
“Sure.” She smiled. “Why not?”
“Paper side faces out.”
“Out. Got it.” She grabbed hold of a piece, looked up, and to his surprise, tucked the bottom edge in between the new studs and pressed it into place from the bottom up. At one point the pink fluff was draped over her head and down her back as she straightened, pushing it into place. Her arms stretched up high, the top edge flopped over her hands and she pushed onto her tiptoes. “I need longer arms.”
“Let me help,” three voices tumbled over each other as each brother made a short leap to help. Neil accidentally hip checked Ryan. Ryan spun out of the way and bumped into Morgan, and before he could catch his balance, he fell into Valerie. The four of them toppled over, bringing the long swaths of insulation with them.
Valerie didn’t even try to hide her giggles as she clawed her way out from under the massive pink fuzzy strip. “I don’t think it’s supposed to work this way.”
Sitting on his rear, Ryan chuckled and shook his head. “Nope.”
Morgan agreed. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen it done quite this way before.”
“Maybe,” Neil’s eyes twinkled under raised brows, “you shouldn’t help.”
“Let me.” Morgan lifted the remainder of the strip of insulation away and tucked it all the way into the wall.
From across the way, one of the cameramen slowly approached with a slight limp. “You okay, Ted? You seem to be favoring one foot.”
“Just a bit. Tripped over a rogue footstool.”
Val tipped her head sideways. “Rogue?”
The cameraman shrugged a shoulder and aimed his thumb at one of the other production people. “Mike thought rearranging the furniture in the middle of the night was an entertaining past time.”
“I heard that.” Mike’s voice boomed from outside the doorway. “And I told you, the stepstool was not in the middle of the floor when I went to bed last night. You probably just weren’t watching where you were walking.”
“Rather hard to see your way to the bathroom without any light. All I know is someone, or something, moved the stepstool and my little toe still stings.”
“There you go, talking things going bump in the night again.”
The cameraman took a step back and held his free hand up. “Just reporting the facts. And the fact is, my little toe hurts like the dickens.”
Val waved her fingers at the two men. “Just don’t let the sisters hear you or we’ll never get this shot finished.”
“The sisters?” Morgan repeated. “What do they have to do with any of this?”
“They think the place is haunted. Poppycock. I say we forget about stepstools and grab a snack.”
Ryan unsnapped his belt. “Works for me. There’s a whoopee pie out there with my name on it.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what that is.” Neil lay his belt down on the counter beside Ryan’s.
“You need to come to town more often.” Morgan followed his brother’s lead. “Toni makes them. It’s a New England staple. Basically cream filled chocolate cake cookies.”
“Did someone say chocolate cake?” Val looked from one brother to the other. “I have a weakness for anything chocolate.”
“Then you should taste her Boston Cream pie. “I’ve never had anything like it.”
Val grinned up at him. “That I’ve had. Great snack shack at Logan Airport. I could have eaten my way through the place.”
“I wonder what’ll be for dinner?” Neck stretched, Ryan searched ahead to the food tables.
“Do you ever stop eating?” Morgan asked his brother. Lunch had been a delicious brisket with the traditional cole slaw and potato salad sides. As expected, there was enough to feed an army. “How can you even consider dinner after the lunch we had?”
“What can I say?” Ryan shrugged then flashed a toothy grin. “I’m a growing boy.”
One by one, his brothers slid their requisite cowboy hat onto their heads. Val followed suit, doing the same with the hat Toni had given her. In only a few days, she’d really grown into the part. From the top of her Stetson right down to the tips of her cowboy boots. Side by side with his brothers, Morgan had come to at least one conclusion: Valerie Moore may not know it, but she was meant to be in cattle country West Texas.
Chapter Ten
“These last few days have been such a trip, watching how Hollywood really works.” Joanna Farraday placed a barbecued rib on her plate. “This has been seriously beyond fun.”
The last day of shooting for the sizzle reel was now finished, and the town surprised Valerie and the crew with a wrap party. Everyone was so excited; she didn’t have the heart to tell them that Hollywood didn’t throw parties for sizzle reels. Besides, she was starting to understand it was more than just acres and acres of cattle that made Texas so famous for its barbecue. If the stuff tasted half as good as it smelled, the food was going to be out of this world.
“Fun’s one word for it.” One of the Dallas crew standing in line shook his head. “I for one am glad to be heading home tonight.”
Val glanced down at her watch. “At this hour?” The drive to Dallas would take the better part of a day.
Another crew member behind her shook his head. “Don’t mind him. Ted’s never had a curious soul.”
“Curious?” Ted dropped a spoonful of potato salad on his dish. “Try creepy.”
“Creepy?” Valerie repeated.
“A few odd things happen and Ted’s all freaked out.”
“A few?” Ted turned to his crewmate. “Your walls weren’t talking to you all night.”
“I keep telling you,” his buddy rolled his eyes, “they were just weird dreams. I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Dreams my…” he quickly glanced at the two women staring at him and cleared his throat, “dreams my foot.”
“What are all the serious faces for?” Morgan joined the line. “Y’all are supposed to be having a good time.”
“This is just the start.” Eileen strolled up, grinning. She had on an ankle length gingham skirt and plain white cotton top. Valerie didn’t remember ever seeing the woman in anything but the standard rancher’s uniform: blue jeans and boots. Eileen lifted her chin across the road toward the old saloon. “We ladies have been spit and polishing the place all day. The real fun starts after everyone eats.”
Not till this moment had Valerie realized all the folks coming and going from the saloon. Some folks from the line ahead of her were carrying their full plates inside the old building, a few men were carrying cases inside, and others were coming out empty-handed, but all moving with purpose to a large truck she hadn’t noticed before.
“Just the same,” Ted smiled at Eileen, “I’ll be getting on the road after dinner, but thank you very much for your hospitality. It’s been an…interesting gig.”
Brows curved into a deep V, Eileen watched the man walk over to the saloon before turning to Valerie. “Something going on I should know about?”
His buddy grabbed a napkin and blew out a sigh. “Ted just spooks easy. So what if someone filled the sugar bowl with salt. Mistakes like that happen all the time.”
“When was this?” Eileen’s frown remained firmly in place.
“Yesterday.” He shrugged. “Poor sisters were all a flu
tter. Neither could explain how it happened since no one fessed up to touching the sugar bowls. Ted was already spooked by the moving furniture and voices in the walls.”
Eileen looked from him to Val and back. “I didn’t hear anything about that.”
“It’s a first for me too.” Valerie shrugged. “I suppose we’re lucky Ted didn’t hear women screaming for help or we might have lost ourselves one cameraman and wound up running behind schedule.” She didn’t even want to think about how much more that would add to the cost of this little venture.
“What do you mean, moving furniture?” Eileen asked.
The other crewman reached for a biscuit. “It started the first night. Ted’s a tall guy so he didn’t need the stepstool to climb into bed. He moved it out of the way to the foot of the bed and settled in for the night. Well, the next morning he tripped over the dumb thing as it was back to where it had been set originally. I figure he just forgot he didn’t move it, but he keeps insisting if Mike the crew prankster didn’t move it, then it reappeared all by itself.”
Eileen kept her gaze on him. When he continued loading his plate, she prompted him, “You said started?”
“Yep. Following day, after work finished up, he went upstairs and all the furniture in his room had been flipped around. This time he figured the sisters were just keeping busy redecorating. This morning when he thanked the two women for moving the bed away from the window, he discovered they’d had nothing to do with it. That on top of yesterday’s incident with the sugar bowl and the salt, and the voices he insisted weren’t dreams, he’s convinced the place is haunted.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous.” Eileen hefted one fist on her hip. “Anybody else agree with him?”
The crewmen hesitated before shrugging casually. “The possibility occurred to a few of us. But there’s always an explanation. My guess is someone on the crew knew Ted was spooked by forgetting about the footstool and they decided to play a practical joke on him. I’m sure eventually someone will fess up about rearranging his room. And no offense meant to either sister, but they seemed kind of flustered on more than one occasion. It’s also not hard to see somebody pouring salt into the sugar bowl and not remembering.” His plate piled high with just about everything the townsfolk had brought for the potluck celebration, the crewman dipped his head. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Morgan Page 9
