“No. Tell me about the cobbler. Tell me how you make it.”

“Cobbler?” She laughed again and Don crouched down, looking up at her. “Well… I would have made pie. Pie, in this area, is much more popular. But pie takes a good hour longer than cobbler and so—” Every time she said ‘pie’—the word more Southern than the others—a pulse jumped in Cole’s dick.

“Look at me now. Follow me when I move.” Don stepped toward Cole, and her eyes went that way, a breath of time stalling when her eyes met his, before they were back on Don, and she was speaking again.

“—so I pulled out what I had in the fridge. Cobbler is pretty basic.” She blushed, and he heard a soft exhale on Don’s part. “It’s really just apples, which I had. Honeycrisp or Granny Smith are the best, but these are Pippin apples. So… uh… apples, sugar, lemon juice, uh… butter, of course, and flour, cinnamon, some ground nutmeg and vanilla extract. I’d already done that prep, I was going to put apples on our pancakes in the morning.” Every word out of her mouth was freakin’ silk, and Cole would have bet a thousand bucks, right then, that even Ben had a hard on. Forget The Fortune Bottle. This woman could have a career in food porn.

Don stood on a chair and motioned her closer. “I need to see some fire in you, Summer. Can you get angry for me? Give me some edge, some attitude?” Her mouth parted, and Cole stilled, watching, waiting for the moment that she turned her head to him. But she didn’t. She just looked up at him, and Cole tensed when he heard her speak. “Why do you need to know what goes into my apple cobbler, Mr. Waschoniz? Is my homemade dessert too good for you?” She pulled at his shirt, and the director stumbled off the chair, his eyes on her, her face strong and words quick, each vowel a stab out at Don. Even Cole, standing three safe feet away, felt violated. “Don’t come into my house and insult my cooking. Not if you want to walk out of here with both testicles and that pretty California smile intact. I will poison your tea and—”

“Okay, okay.” Don laughed, stepping back, a little unsteady on his feet, his hand reaching back and grabbing the rocking chair for support. “You can do scary. I get it.”

Summer laughed, and the tension on the porch lifted, carried off by a chorus of crickets and frog calls. Cole turned his head and listened. If it was a clip, he’d tell the sound director to turn down the audio, would tell him that nature’s soundtrack wasn’t that loud. But here, on the ground, it was. Incredible.

“Hey City Boy,” Summer called out, her hand holding open the door, the other two men already inside. “You coming?”

He looked at her, and she looked at him and there was a moment of truce.

CHAPTER 37

“I didn’t believe it, thought you were on freaking tilt, but damn, she’s perfect.” Don Waschoniz crowed from the back seat, his hands hammering the back of Cole’s seat with enthusiasm.

Cole shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, not perfect.”

“Are you kidding me? God fucking squeezed Ida Pinkerton out of a test tube and into that girl’s mother. Or sorry, mama.” He laughed like a hyena and pounded the seat again, Cole’s shoulders lifting from the impact. “Fucking perfect!”

In a town like Quincy, a blind man could have a sense of direction. Cole turned right and then, two miles later, left. Pulled into the empty lot of the airport, pleased with himself, and parked. Before them, the jet sat, fat and expensive, on the tired runway. Beside it, in worn coveralls, a man excitedly waved.

“What’s that guy’s name?” Cole looked at Ben, pointing to the man.

“Wallace. Summer calls him Wally. He actually owns the airport.”

“Good to know,” Cole said dubiously, looking at the man.

“This is actually one of the filming locations. We negotiated two weeks where he’ll close down the strip entirely.”

“Unless we need to use it. For actual flights.” It was a verification, but the blanched look on Ben’s face was worrisome.

“Right. Of course,” the man managed.

“Verify it,” Cole said to Ben, and the car lightened as Don got out. He rolled down the window and shook Don’s hand when it was extended. “See you in two weeks.”

“I’ll get casting and legal on the contracts. Start the PR department on Summer. Tell her to hold on tight, her life is about to change in a big way.”

“I told her we’d pay five hundred thousand.”

Don laughed. “Really? What’d her agent think about?”

Cole scoffed. “Come on, man. We’re lucky she’s not asking for payment in cornhusks. There’s no agent. Tell legal we can be aggressive with the contract.”

“Hey, as long as you’re the one going over it with her.” Don patted the hood of the car and stepped back.

“Fly safe.” Cole waved and watched Don walk toward the plane. He shifted the car into drive and turned to Ben. “Okay. Let’s go get some sleep.”

CHAPTER 38

I sat on the floor, my mouth pressed against the window’s trim, my eyes just above the sill, and watched Ben’s car pull down the drive, its headlights filtered through acres of cotton. It was a child’s pose, and I half expected Mama to flip on the overhead light and catch me. It was funny how that always happened. You behaved for ten years in an empty room, and then, the minute you reached for trouble, someone came in and saw.

I wasn’t doing anything wrong—wasn’t causing trouble—but I didn’t want Mama, or anyone else, in that moment, to see me. I wanted a breath of quiet, to watch the men drive away and have a moment to reflect.

I thought I did well. It was hard to know what they had wanted. I’d read the book; I knew what Ida Pinkerton was like, but America’s impression of a strong Southern woman often differed from reality. And I wasn’t sure which version, truth or fiction, was stamped in the minds of Cole and the director. Cole. Funny how I was already thinking of him as that. For so long, he’d been Cole Masten—the last name part of the first—the entire package one surrounded in my mind by glitter and stars. I hadn’t dropped his last name due to familiarity; he and I were still strangers, despite our few conversations. I dropped his name, when I sat and thought about it, because the glitter was gone, the stars were faded. The image I had of COLE MASTEN was gone. It was, from my spot against the window, disappointing.

Ben’s car turned left, picking up speed, and if it’d been day, I’d have seen the plume of dirt road dust rising up behind it. But in the dark night, all I saw were faint beams of red and white, fading into specks, then into nothing.

I would not be my mother.

I would leave this town. I didn’t know where I’d go, or what I’d do—but it would be somewhere other than this.

I closed my eyes and pulled my knees up to my chest. I looked at the empty plates stacked on the counter, bits of cobbler drying on their surface. I saw an abandoned glass of tea, its condensation leaving a ring on the wood that Mama would flip a biscuit over. I thought about the stack of dirty dishes that I had piled into an empty laundry basket and stuck in my closet. All things I should have stood up, right then, and attended to.

But I didn’t. I hugged my knees to my chest and enjoyed this one, terrifying moment that might have just changed my life.