Down Home Carolina Christmas

by Pamela Browning

  He stared at it for a long moment, then raised his eyes to hers. “This isn’t enough money.”

  “It’s what I charge for an oil change.”

  “You could get a lot more. This is a Ferrari,” he said.

  She regarded him levelly. “I know what kind of car it is. I charge what I charge, not what I think you’ll pay.”

  He shook his head, then removed his wallet from his back pocket. “That’s a good deal. Thanks. And thanks for doing it on such short notice,” he said as he handed over the money. She opened the till and slid the money in, ready to close up for the night.

  Luke leaned on the counter, looking studly, though she wished he’d shave. “Say, is there anything to do around here at night?” he asked in a way that she might have considered offhanded if Luke hadn’t been doing the asking.

  “This is about as exciting as it gets.” She slammed the cash drawer shut.

  A few seconds ticked by while she rummaged in her desk drawer for her car keys, then, “Want to go to Dolly’s with me?” Luke offered out of the blue.

  Carrie’s jaw dropped. The invitation was the last thing she’d expected. “Dolly’s?” she repeated when she regained the power of speech.

  “Lots of us go there to shoot pool.”

  This was funny, really. She averted her eyes, unable to meet his. “If I were you, I wouldn’t be inviting any of the town girls to go there. It’s not the kind of place where you’d take a lady.” She could have gone on to say that Dolly’s had a sordid reputation, but she figured she might as well leave it at that. People around here understood that the roadhouse was the local gambling den, and even though the sheriff raided the place at calculated intervals, none of the women who frequented the bar and a certain run-down motel half a mile away ever seemed to get arrested.

  “Don’t they have really good hamburgers?” Luke asked hopefully.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Carrie told him, secretly amused at his ignorance. She expected that during Luke’s stay in Yewville, he’d find out a lot of things that everyone just knew, the same way they knew that peanuts tasted good in Coke, for instance.

  As Luke finished up the last of his drink, she slung the strap of her computer case over her shoulder. “Time for me to lock up and get home,” she said in a falsely cheery tone, congratulating herself for having navigated a treacherous course without losing her air of disinterest.

  Luke aimed a resigned grin in her direction. “Thanks for the conversation.” He sounded reluctant, and she again considered his invitation to go to Dolly’s. Dixie would find this hilarious, but Carrie didn’t plan to tell her about it. Carrie had detected a hint of loneliness in Luke’s tone and manner, and that wasn’t something to take lightly. She’d been lonely herself a few times and didn’t like to be reminded of it.

  She flicked off the office lights, and Luke followed her outside. The breeze stirred her hair, reminding her of other nights and other men, none of whom she cared to remember. Some things were best not thought about, especially when they hadn’t ended well.

  Luke waited as she locked the garage door from the outside with the dead-bolt key. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to do something?” he said. “Maybe drive over to Florence?”

  With a jolt, Carrie realized that Luke Mason, World’s Sexiest Man, was asking her out. True, he’d invited her to go to Dolly’s earlier, but that didn’t count since the roadhouse wasn’t even a remote possibility. His suggestion that they head for Florence was one to be taken seriously, though, since that was the spirit in which he’d offered it.

  She drew a deep breath. “Sorry, I have to be here at work early in the morning,” she said.

  His face fell. “Okay,” was all he said.

  Feeling subdued and somehow depressed way out of proportion to the situation, she got into her SUV, and he opened the door of the Ferrari. As she drove away, the Ferrari disappeared into the distance, its distinctive taillights fading into the night.

  A movie star asked me for a date! Carrie mused as she headed toward home. What if I’d said yes? What if I’d gone out with him?

  But she had turned him down flat, and she felt awful about it. Sad that she’d caused the flare of pain in his eyes. Wait till she told Dixie and Joyanne!

  And yet she knew she wouldn’t tell anyone about refusing a date with Luke Mason, not even her sister. Especially not her sister.

  It was one thing to relate stories about someone you didn’t know, someone whose life was considered fair game by scores of tabloids and fanzines around the world. But it was entirely another—despicable, really—to gossip or gloat about a man who was, despite her reluctance, becoming someone she’d like to know better.

  Chapter Six

  By the third hot week in September, the leaves of the sycamores were brown-edged and curling in the dust of a monthlong drought. The lack of rain was to Carrie’s advantage, considering the sorry state of her roof, but that aside, she wished for a good downpour on behalf of her garden.

  Foolish, she knew; the last thing she needed was more leaks. What she could really use was enough money to repair the roof, but she’d shillied and shallied so long that Dixie had out-and-out lost her patience and was barely speaking to her. Because she didn’t want to submit herself to more of her sister’s badgering about taking the movie company’s offer, Carrie had even considered skipping Yewville’s biggest celebration, the Chicken Bog Slog.

  This annual event brought a welcome surfeit of visitors to Yewville and alleviated the problem of sluggish sales for local merchants after Labor Day. The influx of visitors always created a traffic jam on Palmetto Street and a glut of sunbathers at the Pine Hollow Lake beach, which remained open for swimming until the first of October. This year the narrow white strand was packed with prone bodies catching the last rays of the season.

  Chicken bog was a local specialty stew featuring big hunks of chicken and lots of soupy rice cooked together in a pot with celery and, occasionally, sausage. Long lines had queued all day at the serving tables where the bog was being ladled onto plastic plates, and a band played bluegrass music at the far end of the beach. A softball game was in progress on the diamond behind the parking lot.

  Carrie sat at a picnic table in the shade with Dixie and their friends, all of them drying off after a swim. Kids were racing from the pier to the raft anchored offshore, their efforts accompanied by lots of shouting. Farther out, water-skiers were showing off.

  “Looka there,” said Hoyt Granthum, hefting a beer can and swilling most of its contents before resuming his sentence. “That woman skiing on the other side of the lake is way too thin if you ask me.”

  “No, she’s skinny,” said Bubba Andrews, squinting through his sunglasses.

  “What’s the difference?” Dixie asked.

  “A skinny person, you can see bones knobbing under the skin,” Joyanne contributed.

  “Then there’s emaciated,” Hoyt said. “That’s like those models we see on TV.”

  “No way is she emaciated,” Bubba rejoined. “Notice those luscious—”

  “Bubba!” Joyanne warned. “Don’t get too personal.”

  “Pumpkins on the tailgate of that pickup truck over there,” Bubba continued smoothly. “Anybody else want one? Get a head start on Halloween?”

  “Me,” said Dixie. “I’m going to bake a big batch of pumpkin bread and freeze it. Let’s go buy a couple, Bubba.”

  As Dixie and Bubba walked away, Carrie eyed two extra chicken-bog dinner tickets in the middle of the table, pressed on her by a grateful customer. “Anybody hungry for another dinner? Before the bog’s all gone?”

  “Back to that babe on water skis, I’d say she’s skinny,” Hoyt opined, scarcely able to take his eyes off the woman, who wore a bright-pink bikini.

  “How about thinny?” Joyanne suggested brightly. “That pretty well covers it.”

  “Her bikini top barely covers anything,” Carrie pointed out, then eyed the skier more closely. “I do believe that is no
ne other than Ms. Tiffany Zill, star of the silver screen,” she said.

  “Yeah? For real?” Hoyt sat back down again.

  “I thought I saw her bodyguard watching the softball game,” affirmed Dixie, lugging a big pumpkin over to the table.

  “Hot damn,” Bubba said. He set his own pumpkin down on the bench and pushed his cap back.

  Carrie leaned forward, the better to observe. The towboat was zooming closer to shore, and Tiffany was wobbling on her skis.

  “The guy running the boat has weird orange hair,” Hoyt said. “Must be one ’a them movie folks.”

  “It’s Whip Larson, the producer,” Joyanne said excitedly. “Ooooh, maybe I’ll get to talk to him.”

  “Who’s the spotter?” asked Bubba.

  “It’s certainly not the bodyguard,” Dixie said. “You recognize him, Joyanne?”

  “No,” Joyanne said, reaching for her lipstick. She was not the type to chat up a Hollywood producer while wearing insufficient makeup.

  Carrie knew who the spotter was: Luke Mason, unmistakable to her even though he’d grown more of a beard. He’d eschewed his Dodgers baseball cap for a dark green one from John Deere, and he sported a long gray ponytail, which protruded from the hole in the back. Fake ponytail, of course. He couldn’t have grown a hank of gray hair in the few days since she’d seen him last.

  “What are they doing?” Bubba asked with a frown as the boat veered sharply.

  “Getting themselves in trouble,” Carrie said, rising and kicking off her flip-flops. There was a sandbar in an illogical location, and Tiffany Zill’s towboat was headed straight for it.

  “Carrie!” Dixie called in alarm. Carrie was sure that Dixie’s concern was not for her but for the skier, who seemed to have popped a strap from the top of her swimsuit and was clutching at it, which qualified as disconcertingly odd behavior in a woman who had appeared topless in at least two movies.

  Carrie hit the water a millisecond after Tiffany tangled herself in the tow rope and let out a holler. The engine quit as the boat ran aground, but by that time, Carrie was already swimming swiftly toward the deep water where Tiffany was struggling to stay afloat.

  By the time she reached Tiffany, the actress was going under for the second time. She’d not only managed to snarl herself in the rope, but her bikini top was floating away in the backwash, and Luke Mason, with his annoying knack for showing up where he wasn’t wanted, had jumped out of the boat and was thrashing toward them, churning up an inordinate amount of water.

  Carrie dived below the surface and yanked at the rope encircling Tiffany’s ankles. It wouldn’t budge, and as Carrie pushed upward and gulped more air, a wild-eyed Tiffany went under. Carrie dived again and felt around until she found the heavy wooden beam that had snagged the rope. She tugged at the coils, but they stuck tight. She surfaced again, gulped a lungful of air and went down once more. This time she worked methodically at the rope, her lungs feeling as if they were going to burst. Beside her, Tiffany flailed the water into a muddy whirlpool, and Carrie hoped she wouldn’t get the notion to grab her and pull her under.

  Finally, just before Carrie needed another breath of air, the rope looped and loosened. Carrie gave it a hearty yank, and it disengaged and floated toward the bottom of the lake.

  As Carrie came up gasping, Tiffany did, too. Reminding herself not to lose control, since two terrified people would do neither of them any good, Carrie inserted a reasonable distance between them. At least now that Tiffany’s legs were free of the rope, she was treading water.

  “Relax,” Carrie cautioned Tiffany. “Let me help you.”

  Fortunately Tiffany had the good sense to go limp. Carrie swam behind her to institute the Red Cross–approved carry position, after which she began to kick powerfully toward the rim of white sand about twenty feet away.

  Once they both established a footing in waist-deep water, Carrie let go. Tiffany stood on her own, arms crossed across her bare chest.

  Carrie peeled off her wet T-shirt and held it out for the topless Tiffany. “Here, put this on,” she said.

  Tiffany, her expression one of gratitude, managed to wriggle into the shirt as Luke arrived.

  “Tiff, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Tiffany said, her breathing easing slightly. “I barely swallowed any water thanks to—and what’s your name? I’m so grateful. I wouldn’t have been able to free myself from the rope without your help.”

  “I’m Carrie Smith,” Carrie told her. “I lifeguarded on this beach during the summers when I was in high school.”

  “You knew exactly what to do,” Tiffany marveled. “You’re a one-woman rescue squad.”

  “Tiffany? Are you all right?” Whip called. He’d managed to start the boat’s engine and was maneuvering closer, his expression one of concern.

  “Thanks to Carrie Smith,” Tiffany said warmly. She draped an arm around Carrie’s shoulders. “I would have drowned if it hadn’t been for her.”

  “Carrie Smith,” Whip repeated, studying her as the boat drifted closer. “We meet again.”

  Carrie nodded, eager to swim back to shore where her friends were congregated.

  Luke was boosting Tiffany into the boat. “Climb in,” he said to Carrie. “We’ll give you a ride to the dock.”

  “I can swim,” she said. But it was too late. Luke was already propelling her toward the boat’s ladder, and before she knew it she was climbing up and in. He followed and sat beside her. Tiffany was bent over, clutching her stomach.

  “What’s wrong?” Carrie asked.

  “Just—just a cramp. I felt dizzy for a moment.”

  “Maybe we’d better have a doctor check her out,” Whip said to Luke.

  “I’m just hungry,” Tiffany said. “I skipped breakfast and lunch.”

  “Well, why’d you do that?” Whip asked impatiently.

  Tiffany sat up straight. “My diet, Whip,” she said softly. “My contract. I’ve gained five pounds this week.”

  “Oops,” Whip said. “Not good.” He grabbed an oar and pushed off the sandbar.

  “I know.” Tiffany sighed and smiled wanly.

  Carrie felt sorry for her and was worried about the pallor of Tiffany’s skin, in spite of her tan. “Why don’t you stop by our table. We’ve got a couple of extra chicken-bog dinner tickets. You’re welcome to them, and maybe you’d feel better after eating something.” It was a reluctant invitation, but there was something pitiful about a woman who was the envy of most of the men in the civilized world, yet had to go hungry in order, apparently, to keep her job. Plus, Hoyt and Bubba would go crazy at the appearance of Tiffany Zill at their table. Carrie grinned at the thought.

  “Well,” Tiffany said consideringly. “I don’t know.”

  For a moment, Carrie had the fleeting impression she’d overstepped her bounds. But courtesy and hospitality were ingrained in her nature; offering extra meal tickets to a stranger seemed the natural thing to do.

  “Go ahead, Tiff,” Luke said, easing Carrie’s mind on that account. “I’ll come with you.”

  A glance passed between Luke and Whip, and Carrie was unsure how to interpret its meaning, though she gathered that it had something to do with Tiffany. When they reached the dock, Luke helped Tiffany, then Carrie, out of the boat. A knot of people had gathered to ogle Tiffany Zill and her companions. Tiffany appeared self-conscious about Carrie’s wet T-shirt, which clung exposingly to her breasts, and she plucked it away.

  “I’ll have to get my sweatshirt out of the van,” she told Luke. “Otherwise my picture will show up in some tabloid with a lurid headline—Tiffany Zill Loses Wet T-shirt Contest.”

  “Maybe you’d win,” said Luke. “That should be worth some points somewhere.”

  “Not with Peyton Kirk,” Tiffany said with great certainty.

  Carrie’s ears were registering all of this, but she felt out of her element. A wet T-shirt contest would offend the sensibilities of a lot of people in Yewville and therefore would never h
appen, and, anyway, who was Peyton Kirk? She wished she’d read some of those tabloid articles.

  The people gathered at the end of the dock pressed closer as they approached.

  “Why, it’s Tiffany Zill!” exclaimed one of the women.

  “Who’s that with her?” asked another.

  “It’s Luke Mason.”

  Tiffany’s pretty forehead knotted in consternation as she hung back, obviously reluctant to engage with any of them.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll handle this,” Luke told Tiffany in an undertone, and in an instant, his expression became one of approachability. Tiffany, meanwhile, managed to hang back so that Carrie’s body shielded her from most of the fans.

  “I’m Luke Mason,” he said to the people as they approached. “I’m glad to meet you.” He removed the hat with the fake ponytail attached.

  That was all it took to deflect attention from Tiffany. “Sign me an autograph, Mr. Mason?” asked a kid who might be one of Joyanne’s cousins from Bishopville, though Carrie couldn’t be sure.

  A ripple of exclamation ran through the crowd. “It’s Luke Mason! It really is!”

  “I never saw him with a beard before. I wonder if he’s going to wear the beard in the movie.”

  “Yancey Goforth was clean-shaven,” someone else said.

  “Take all the photos you want,” Luke offered magnanimously as someone snapped his picture.

  Carrie shielded Tiffany from view as they angled through a stand of trees to the parking lot. While Tiffany was in the Whip Productions company van slipping into her dry shirt, Carrie observed idly as down by the dock Luke Mason graciously fielded questions.

  In a few moments, Tiffany stepped out of the van, then slammed the door behind her. “Wow,” she said. “That feels much better. I’ll take your T-shirt home and make sure it gets washed.” She’d changed into a pair of shorts, which made her look more or less like anyone else at the Chicken Bog Slog. She linked her arm through Carrie’s. “And now, Carrie Smith, to whom I am forever grateful for saving my life, how about introducing me to this local delicacy called chicken blog?”