Down Home Carolina Christmas

by Pamela Browning

  “Your house is beautiful,” he said, following her reluctantly down the porch stairs. “All that gingerbread trim, and you’ve made it so homey.”

  “My great-grandfather built it,” Carrie said. It helped to talk of mundane things, to anchor herself in reality when she felt so completely overwhelmed with the incongruity of going somewhere with Luke Mason.

  “You’ve done a good job keeping it up,” Luke replied, and with difficulty, Carrie realized that he was still talking about the house.

  Luke moved ahead of Carrie so he could open the car door. While he went around to the driver’s side, Dixie and Joyanne gave her a big thumbs-up from the window, but Carrie turned her head the other way and pointedly refused to acknowledge them.

  Instead she concentrated on the car as Luke switched on the ignition and continued through the circular driveway toward the highway. The Ferrari’s engine reminded her of nothing so much as a cat purring, and how an engine that produced the power of 490 horses could do it with so little noise fascinated her. The tan leather upholstery was creamy and soft, and all she had to do was sit back as Luke put the car through its paces.

  The Allentown highway where she lived never had much traffic, and Luke accelerated the car up to sixty, nudged it past seventy. The farms and field sped by in a blur.

  “A Ferrari will go from zero to sixty in less than four seconds,” Luke said, keeping his eyes on the road. “You probably already know that, of course.”

  “Yes, and it’ll top out at nearly two hundred.”

  He slid her an appreciative glance. “Check this steering,” he said. He slowed, whipped the car into a driveway leading to the fertilizer plant, circled the parking lot and accelerated. Centrifugal force pushed her closer to him, and she righted herself, only to be slammed against the door. She laughed. This was fun.

  The Ferrari didn’t have a clutch, so it wasn’t necessary for Luke to remove his foot from the accelerator when shifting to a higher gear, and Carrie observed the process with interest. He shifted gears by manipulating levers on both sides of the steering wheel.

  “Here’s another neat thing,” Luke said, downshifting using the left paddle, and the car responded with a satisfying backfire.

  “Sounds like a Formula 1 car,” Carrie commented.

  “I’ve had lessons with a professional driver. We took this car for laps on a racetrack in California and had it up to 130 on the longest straightaway.”

  “Impressive.”

  “It’s a thrill for me to own such an automobile,” he said, though it was clear that he wasn’t bragging.

  “A Ferrari’s a fine car, all right. None better. Better than an Aston Martin as far as I’m concerned, or a Lamborghini.”

  “In your professional opinion,” he added, seeming to weigh her words.

  “For whatever it’s worth,” she said, but he shot her an appreciative grin.

  Carrie surreptitiously glanced at Luke from beneath her lashes. He had a strong jaw, and it had been a mistake to cover it up with a beard. Just so she wouldn’t be wasting the glance, she noted the nonchalant way he rested his hand on the steering wheel, the whiteness of the stiff shirt collar against his tan. It struck her that she was riding in a car with the World’s Sexiest Man, sitting so close that she could smell the faint spicy scent of his aftershave. Swallowing hard, she forced her eyes front again, wishing he was someone ordinary. If he were not a movie star, would she still be attracted to him? Unhinged by the sound of his voice? Unsettled every time he looked at her?

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  As they slowed to a stop where the highway intersected with the four-lane to Florence, they passed Mrs. McGrath getting out of her car at her sister’s house. Carrie waved. The two women stared openmouthed as the car rounded the corner.

  “Do you know them?” Luke asked.

  Carrie strived for equilibrium, which wasn’t easy considering the giddy state of her brain right now. “Dottie McGrath is one of my grandmother’s best friends.”

  “And that’s a problem?”

  “Those two will be on the phone tonight calling all their friends so they can tell them about me riding around with you.”

  “Is there something wrong with that?” Luke asked, raising one eyebrow in the way that had made him famous.

  “Not because you’re a movie star but because you’re an outsider,” she told him truthfully.

  He laughed at that. “You’re joking, right?”

  “People around here tend to be suspicious of those who didn’t grow up in the area,” she said, though she recalled the ease with which Luke had mingled with the adoring fans at the lake today. “On the other hand, everyone knows Luke Mason from movies, TV and the tabloids. You might not seem so much of a stranger because of that.”

  Luke became more serious. “People only think they know me,” he corrected. “Did you ever consider that maybe I’m not the person I’m made out to be?”

  “Like you’re the creation of your press agent?” she asked, feeling her way along in unfamiliar territory.

  “Partly. Some people start to believe the hype about them, but not me. I’ve tried to ground myself in reality so that I’m the same Luke Mason I always was, not whoever I played in my last movie or what I read about myself in the fan magazines.”

  Carrie was accustomed to a world where not only did you know who you were, but everyone knew everyone else. Around Yewville, you knew a person’s name, who his grandparents were and the places he’d been last night. You knew where this person went to church, if he voted Democrat or Republican and what he liked to watch on television. You remembered what he looked like in third grade. You’d probably been his babysitter or mowed his grass. With all this information, it was not difficult to sum up a person’s character. For the first time she considered that in Hollywood, you wouldn’t know all those things about anyone. You’d have to start from scratch with each person you met, figuring out what made him or her tick.

  She felt a rush of compassion for Luke Mason along with an unexpected understanding of what it must be to live the way he did. To be who he was.

  “Tell me more about yourself, Luke,” she said softly. “About your family. Where you grew up.”

  “Well,” he said. “It’s just Mom and Dad and me, and I grew up in Garrett Falls, New Hampshire. I had a sister, but she died young. A drunk ran a stop sign and hit her when she was riding her bike.”

  This, then, was the hidden tragedy in Luke’s life, no doubt responsible for the sadness she’d sensed buried beneath the surface.

  “I am so sorry, Luke,” she said.

  Luke kept his eyes on the road. “I was right behind Sherry on my own bike and saw the whole thing. She was only ten.” His expression remained grim for a moment, but he recovered. “I think of my sister every day. It could have been me, not her, and we were racing home for lunch on a warm, bright sunshiny fall day. I always won, but this time I gave her a head start because she was four years younger and had never beat me. And then she had an accident. I believed it was my fault for a long time.”

  Considering that Luke’s past had been the subject of a great deal of publicity and attention, Carrie was surprised that she’d never heard about this pivotal incident before, and she said so.

  He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “It’s not a part of my life that I like to share with most people. The facts could be twisted into all sorts of headlines—Luke Mason—Did He Kill His Own Sister? Or The Secret Tragedy in Luke Mason’s Life. You get the idea.”

  She studied his expression, mindful of the loss that he clearly felt even now. “Why did you tell me?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  He spared her a glance before accelerating into the curve in the road. “You said you wanted to know the real me, but that’s impossible unless you understand how the loss of my little sister shaped my life.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say, so she kept quiet. Luke went on talking.

  “I’ve heard that traumatic events can
bring a family closer together, but Mom, Dad and I didn’t do a good job of shoring each other up during the mourning period. We foundered separately, my mother finding solace in alcohol and my father becoming distant and remote. As for me, I left as soon as I could.”

  By this time, everything Carrie understood about Luke Mason was altered, and she realized that she could no longer hide behind a screen of disinterest. She was beginning to feel a sense of intimacy brought about by the sharing of his confidences and her proximity to him in the car. She sensed that speaking of his early life was a catharsis for him. She let him go on, wanting to learn as much about him as she possibly could.

  “At least my parents didn’t blame me for what happened. By the time I left for college, Mom had her problem pretty well under control. Dad—well, at first he had his hands full with Mom, and he didn’t really pay all that much attention to me when I was a teenager. Now we live so far apart that it’s hard to spend time together, and my parents don’t like the West Coast. They prefer the small town where I grew up, but it gets so cold. Last year Mom slipped on an icy curb and broke a bone in her foot. I worry that it will happen again. And even if I convinced them to move to California, they’d be alone much of the time. I’m away a lot.”

  He fell silent, and Carrie gazed pensively out the window. The four-lane highway sped past—Yewville’s famous peachoid water tower, the Quik-Stop, a livestock auction. She had taken for granted that if people had a lot of money, problems melted away.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to render you speechless with my life story,” he said after a few minutes’ quiet. “How about you? Who are you, Carolina Rose? Are you the serious woman who runs a business or the church lady who loves to wear lightweight floaty dresses, or are you the person who likes to speak her mind when something rubs her the wrong way?”

  “Sounds like you know almost everything already.”

  “There’s bound to be a lot more to learn.” He slanted a grin in her direction.

  She drew a deep breath. “I was born right here in Yewville at the A.B. Dixon Memorial Hospital, named after a great-uncle of mine who was the only doctor in town for many years. I went to school at Florence Tech, where I learned auto mechanics.”

  “Tell me how that came about.”

  “When I was a kid, I refused to play with my Fisher-Price toys and Barbies. I had more fun dismantling all the clocks in the house until we didn’t have any that worked anymore. Mama finally sent me down to Smitty’s, where I hung out with Daddy and Granddaddy every available minute.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t shuttle you right back home to Barbie,” Luke said with a grin.

  “By that time, Barbie and Ken had given up on me and taken up residence in my sister’s room. Daddy and Granddaddy both figured that my interest in the garage was a phase I was going through, but when I had to decide what to do after high school, I studied a list of possible careers and didn’t want to pursue any of them. I like the smell of gasoline and new rubber tires, and I don’t mind getting greasy or dirty. When I told Granddaddy about my plans to join him and Daddy at the garage, he gave a big guffaw and said, ‘Well, child, now tell me what you really want to be. A nurse? How about a teacher? You’re great with kids.’

  “I explained all over again why I didn’t want to nurse or teach school, and when he understood how serious I was, Daddy backed me up. Next thing I knew I was enrolled in an auto mechanics course. Daddy left me the garage, and it’s a great little business. Hub keeps offering to buy it from me when I find out what I’m going to be when I grow up, but like I told him, this is it. He thinks I’m crazy.”

  “It helps to have a passion for what you do,” Luke said thoughtfully. “I knew from the time I was a kid putting on magic shows in the backyard with my sister that I wanted to be a performer.”

  They had reached the outskirts of the city, but Carrie wasn’t in a hurry to get to the restaurant. “You must have been awfully young when you made that decision,” she said.

  “I was about ten years old. I studied theater in college, got my big break when an agent spotted me in a play on campus. He sprang for a plane ticket to California, and I started auditioning. I’ve never looked back.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Carrie said.

  “It wasn’t,” Luke replied. “I’ve left out the bad parts, like living in a grungy apartment with rats. And then there was the time a roommate of mine disappeared with my stereo, all my CDs and my clothes.”

  “Did you ever get your things back?”

  “I filed a police report, but the officers told me that they’d probably never catch the guy. I ran into him years later panhandling in San Francisco. He was wearing a T-shirt of mine with the name of a New Hampshire wilderness outfitter written across the front. He’d grown a beard and was about fifteen pounds thinner than when I knew him. I dropped a few bills in his hand and never let on that I recognized him.”

  “I would have at least asked about the things he stole. If I were you, I mean.”

  “He was in far worse shape than I was. It didn’t hurt me to be generous.”

  Carrie regarded Luke with new respect. It took a big person to do a kindness for a person who had wronged him.

  Luke braked the car in front of the restaurant at the same time as Tiffany Zill’s limo. Tiffany emerged, accompanied by a retinue. Carrie caught a glimpse of the inside of the limousine and spotted pale gray upholstery and a TV, but no hot tub. Dixie would be interested in that.

  Tiffany, attired in a slim black dress and wearing an engagement ring with a diamond the size of a goose egg, appropriated Carrie’s arm and pulled her aside. She had an air of intrigue, of conspiracy, and at first, Carrie couldn’t figure out why.

  Then Tiffany whispered in her ear, “I’m so glad about you and Luke,” she said with barely concealed glee.

  “Pardon me?” Carrie said politely.

  “Usually on location, Luke gets in that car of his and takes off for parts unknown when we have a break. Thanks to you, he’ll probably stick around this time. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.”

  “What?” Carrie was flabbergasted.

  “I must say that I couldn’t be more pleased that you two are having a little romance.”

  “Tiffany, there’s no romance.” Carrie was astonished right down to the tips of her toes.

  “I told you, I’m all for it. You’re helping me out because I need Luke nearby or I won’t be able to concentrate on this part. He inspires me, and by keeping him occupied, you’re helping me, too.”

  Usually Carrie liked to help people, but this was bizarre. Tiffany seemed to think that the whole world existed to take care of her.

  Tiffany went right on talking, oblivious to Carrie’s dismay. “You can tell me, Carrie. I’m not going to squeal to the Enquirer or anybody else. Now, let’s go inside. You absolutely must tell me what’s going on between the two of you!”

  Chapter Eight

  “You’ve got the wrong idea,” Carrie told Tiffany in bewilderment as she was drawn into an alcove inside the restaurant. Tiffany’s people stood by the hostess stand, and Luke and Whip huddled nearby, having what appeared to be a business conversation.

  Tiffany could hardly contain her curiosity. “Luke told me you were running late this evening so I shouldn’t bother to pick you up in the limo. He’d drop by your house and get you, he said. Well, Luke Mason generally stays away from women on location, so I figured out that he really likes you. So bring me up to date, okay?” Tiffany leaned closer, all ears.

  “I wasn’t running late. He told me you were!” Carrie said after she regained her powers of speech.

  Tiffany stared, then laughed. “I was right on time. Luke is a shrewd operator when he wants to be.”

  “I guess so,” Carrie said, casting a doubtful look toward Luke. He caught her eye and winked, whereupon the observant Tiffany smiled.

  “Luke’s a nice guy,” Tiffany said. “Don’t get hurt, that’s all.”

  Carrie
was still digesting this advice when the perky young hostess breezed by. “Your table is ready,” she said, so their group followed and was seated at the best table in the house, the one with a view of the atrium garden and partially screened from other patrons by a waterfall. Carrie, still numb from her conversation with Tiffany, glanced around with interest, dazzled by the fine china, the candlelight and the pianist playing classical music.

  Luke sat down across from her, and she avoided his eyes. Whip ordered wine, an unfamiliar foreign label. The bottle was delivered to their table by a sommelier, who abandoned his arrogance when he recognized Luke and Tiffany. After they both signed an autograph for his wife, Luke asked the waiter to bring multiple appetizers. Carrie made herself ignore Luke, but it wasn’t easy. She was self-conscious about her table manners and secretly blessed her mother, who had always insisted that she and Dixie understood about silverware placement and what wine went with what.

  Carrie found that she liked the escargots, which arrived curled up into little hollows on the plate and smelling all garlicky, but as she chewed and swallowed, it crossed her mind that she was now eating snails very much like the ones she was always exterminating from her garden. The artichoke was actually more appetizing, even if it was more difficult to eat.

  Tiffany’s business assistant, Ali something-or-other, was notable for skin tanned into leather and streaky hair fastened in a knot at her nape. She appeared to have a thing for Whip, gazing at him unblinkingly throughout the meal. Tiffany’s gofer was a pale little guppy of a girl named Becky Goldsmith, who scarcely spoke except to place her order, and then it was in a murmur inaudible to everyone else. Carrie attempted to draw her out, and managed to extricate the information that Becky was a recent college graduate with a major in film and that this was her first real job. The girl seemed intimidated by the big names at the table and was even too shy to carry on a conversation with Carrie, who finally gave up.

  In desperation, Carrie turned to Tiffany’s bodyguard, the big bull-necked guy named Ham, but he didn’t speak to anyone, only ate huge quantities of shrimp cocktail and ordered not just one steak for himself but two, which made up for Tiffany, who reluctantly insisted, under Whip’s watchful eye, on ordering only a Cobb salad.