CHAPTER THREE
Two days later, the production company put me on a red-eye from LA to Atlanta. Marina had pouted big-time when she’d realized she couldn’t come with me, but I’d promised to call her often and fill her in on the details.
My plane was supposed to land around six in the morning, and Lauren’s assistant, Karen, was scheduled to pick me up on the curb at six thirty. Instead, my plane had mechanical issues that delayed our takeoff, and Karen picked up my two bags and me at seven thirty.
She gave me a strained glance when I got in the car. “Lauren’s going to be pissed.”
“She can’t be angry over something that was out of your control,” I said, fastening the seat belt as she punched the gas pedal and tore away from the curb.
“She’s not going to be angry with me.” Her sympathetic look told me all I needed to know.
“I presume we’ll start filming soon after we get to Sweet Briar,” I said, leaning my head back on the seat. I’d barely gotten any sleep on the plane.
“Everyone will be ready and waiting . . . in about an hour.” It would take two to get there.
“I didn’t purposely sabotage the armrest on row twelve,” I said. “I can’t help it if it took them so long to get the part.”
“Lauren won’t care.”
Karen didn’t say another word for an hour other than to refuse to go through a Starbucks drive-through for a much-needed cup of caffeine.
The lack of sleep, paired with the movement of the car, soon had me dozing. The next thing I knew, Karen was pulling into a parallel parking space in downtown Sweet Briar.
“We’re here,” she said. “Isn’t it quaint?”
I sat up, and a mixture of relief and anxiety washed through me. I’d lived in this town until my mother moved us out to LA when I was fourteen. It was funny that a lot of people born and raised in Sweet Briar were desperate to escape. I’d spent six years of my youth desperate to come back, but no amount of begging had swayed my mother. She’d insisted I was ridiculous to want to give up a very lucrative contract at a major kids’ network to return to a backward southern Alabama town that everyone else was dying to escape from. What she really meant was she didn’t want to give up my seven-figure income. How ironic that she’d run straight back home about two minutes after stealing most of my money.
What was I going to do if I saw her while I was here?
The chances of running into her were pretty high. Sweet Briar had a population of 2,731, as of the most recent census. Then again, last I’d heard, my mother had built a huge house out on Highway 10, halfway between Sweet Briar and the Alabama/Georgia state line. Maybe she wouldn’t come into town.
Who was I kidding? The moment she heard there were cameras in the vicinity, she’d be looking for the spotlight.
I got out of the car and breathed in the air. It smelled different here—fresh and clean—bringing on my nostalgia full force. It was the middle of April, and the tulip trees along Main Street were covered in pink blossoms. I sucked in a deep breath trying to put a name to the scent, only coming up with one:
Home.
I quickly stuffed that notion away. I suspected my return would be met with cool disdain. I wasn’t welcome here. Not by the people who truly mattered.
But if I could deal with Lauren, I could enjoy the two weeks I was here. I would let myself imagine a life different from the one my mother had forced upon me.
“Come on,” Karen said, gasping as she checked her phone. “Lauren’s furious.”
Great. But pissed or not, Lauren wasn’t going to rush my reacclimation. It was like jumping into a pool of freezing water. I was still trying to work up the courage.
Downtown consisted of one-and-a-half blocks of shops and restaurants, and Karen had parked at about the halfway mark, giving us a wide view of both ends. I stood next to the open car door, trying to steady my nerves as I studied the storefronts. Not much had changed. There were several new places—a coffee shop, a yoga/fitness studio, and a nice-looking restaurant, but everything else was the same—the beauty shop, barbershop, a vintage-goods store, a clothing store, a small pizza place, a café, and a pharmacy. The chamber of commerce had an office on the corner in what used to be the bank years ago, but it was the retail space sandwiched between the yoga studio and the pizza place that caught my attention or, more accurately, the sign over the space . . .
DARLING INVESTIGATIONS
She’d named it after that stupid nickname the press had given me a decade ago.
Oh, hell no.
Lauren might be furious, but she was about to face my own fury. I slammed the car door shut and marched up the sidewalk to demand she change the name.
“Summer!” Karen called after me. “Wait!”
There was a small crowd of people out front, and it sounded like they were in a shouting match with a police officer who stood with his back to me. There was something to be said for the view. His broad shoulders stretched the fabric of his black uniform shirt, and his pants hung on his backside in a way that made me reconsider my usual apathy about men’s butts. His dark-brown hair was trimmed close to his head, and he was tall enough that he towered over some of the women in the small group carrying signs that read THE SUN SHINES WHEN SUMMER’S HOME and WELCOME BACK TO SWEET BRIAR, AMERICA’S DARLING!
“We have every right to be here!” a woman shouted, raising her sign. A Lab-mix dog sat at her feet, and each time she lifted up her sign, she yanked his leash tight. “And just because you don’t want them here doesn’t mean you can make us leave!”
“That’s right!” another woman yelled. “It’s our God-given right to assemble.”
“You’re blocking the sidewalk, Sonya,” the officer said with strained patience. “You can assemble, but Hugo’s pissed because people can’t get around you to the barbershop.”
Sonya’s righteous anger faded some. “Oh.”
He made a sideways motion with his hand. “Now if you’d just clear a path for the passersby, you would make my life a hell of a lot easier.”
His voice was familiar, and horror washed through me when I realized why. It just figured that the first person I’d run into was my old boyfriend.
This was not how I wanted him to see me again . . . in yoga pants and a T-shirt stained with coffee from when the plane had hit a pocket of turbulence. My hair wasn’t so bad, but I wasn’t sure my breath was ready to be up close and personal. Not that we would be getting up close and personal, of course.
The women had noticed I was standing to the side. Letting out squeals of excitement, they rushed at me, signs raised like they were going into battle. Luke spun around to face me, surprise filling his eyes, and the women pushed him toward me in their eagerness to greet me.
The dog had burst forward in excitement the second his owner joined the surge, and he ran around our legs, wrapping the leash line around them and pulling us closer together.
I started to lose balance and fall forward—straight into Luke’s broad chest. He was losing balance too, and it became painfully evident we were going to crash into the brick building. Wrapping his arms around me and pulling me closer, he twisted and slammed into the wall, taking the brunt of the impact on his right shoulder and side. He’d gripped me tightly enough that I only crashed into the muscles on his arms.
I stared up at him in disbelief, unable to breathe.
In all the ways I’d imagined seeing him again, this particular scenario had never come to mind.
I would have recognized him anywhere . . . same dark-brown hair, same dark-brown eyes. He seemed taller now. His shoulders were broader, his arms thicker. He’d had a commanding presence when we were teens, but now he demanded attention, and damned if I didn’t comply.
“You okay?” he asked, concern in his eyes.
“Yeah,” I said, caught up in nostalgia.
Luke Montgomery had been my first love. My only love. I’d known losing him would hurt, but I hadn’t expected it to hurt for so long. Seeing him face-to-face, it was impossible not to think about those lazy summer nights wrapped up in his arms, staring into those eyes . . .
My body responded to him the way it always had—a combination of comfort and passion I’d never found with anyone else. The way he was holding me close suggested he felt the same way.
“I heard you were still in Sweet Briar,” I said softly.
But then a slight hardness crept into his eyes, layered with something even worse: disappointment. “I always told you I wanted to become a cop and stay in Sweet Briar.”
A sad smile lifted my lips. “Sometimes we say things when we’re kids . . . but then reality sets in.”
“That’s you, Summer, not me. When I say something, I mean it.”
There was nothing I could say to that. I’d been young and naive and stupid. Maybe I deserved his contempt.
“Summer!” the women shouted, shoving papers and pens in my face. “Will you sign this for us?”
I’d completely tuned out the fact we’d been surrounded by a mob of about ten women, but they’d all watched our reintroduction with keen interest, as if my life had already become an episode of reality TV.
“How about I get untangled first,” Luke said, trying to bend down to unwrap us. “Fredericka. This is your doin’! Take care of it.”
Fredericka was still gawking at us, but she finally had the sense to make her dog stop running around, and between her and the other women, they worked us free from the leash line.
“Jesus Christ, Tony!” Lauren shouted from the doorway of the office. “Are you seriously telling me you didn’t get a single minute of that on film?”
I could see her through a gap in the women, along with a glimpse of a man holding a camera.
“Ladies!” Lauren shouted like a PE teacher in a dodgeball game gone awry. “While I’m sure Summer is eager to see you all again, I really need her to get to work.” She waved her hands in a shooing motion. “Go on, now. Go on.”
The women sent her scathing looks, but they didn’t seem to hold Lauren’s bitchiness against me as they dispersed.
“Stay strong, Summer!” one woman said.
“Welcome home, Summer!” another woman shouted.
I thanked them as they wandered off.
Fredericka left with a wave after getting the last of the dog leash free, and as soon as Luke was no longer forcibly attached to me, he took off down the street. He didn’t once look back.
I wasn’t going to think about him either. Right.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Lauren said, jostling me out of the shock of the encounter. “Let’s get to work.” Then she disappeared into the office.
I started to follow her but stopped to look in the window, hating myself a little for thinking it was cute. The outside had a vintage feel with its wood frame, glass door and windows, and the pale-green canopy hanging over the entire fifteen-foot length of the setup. But it was the inside that really caught my attention.
Sure, there were a few crew members gathered around, but the open room they stood in looked classy, not like the nightmare setup of an old film-noir PI office I’d feared. I had to say that Lauren had gotten one part right, or rather her set crew had. This would have been something I picked out myself. The lower walls were painted a sage green, and the top was a pale yellow. There was the map of Bixley County on the wall as well as our business license. The door was on the left side of the building, the same side that had a hallway leading to the back. A wide two-drawer legal file cabinet was along the left wall, beneath several pieces of artwork.
There were two desks in the remaining fifteen-by-twelve-foot space. The desks were covered with the typical objects you’d find in a working office. Each desk had a laptop, a short stack of manila folders, and a phone. The desk parallel to the wall on the right had a lamp and pencil cup filled with assorted writing utensils. The second desk was closer to the door and faced the windows. The only noticeable difference was that it held a small vase with daisies. Two chairs were arranged between the desks, which I presumed were for my clients.
Who was the other desk for?
But the DARLING INVESTIGATIONS painted on the window reminded me of my initial reaction.
Karen grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the door. “Come on!”
A bell on the door clanged when she opened it, and all eyes rose to us. A couple of the crew guys looked amused.
Lauren came bustling down the hall. “Well, look who bothered to show up.”
I could have offered some snotty retort, but I decided to focus on the important issues. “Darling Investigations?” I asked. “Really?”
She lifted her eyebrows as though that one gesture was enough to communicate an entire paragraph of explanation. I had to admit—it kind of was.
“I’m trying to rise above my past, Lauren.”
“Sorry, chica,” she said, turning back to the screen. “America’s Darling—Darling Investigations works. Besides, your past is attached to you like stink on a June bug. The sooner you accept it and make the most of it, the better off you’ll be.” She looked over her shoulder at the small group behind her. “That’s how you say it, right? Stink on a June bug?”
One of them nodded.
She grinned. “God, I love the South. So many little sayings to exploit.” Lauren pushed out a sigh. “Summer, I realize we never discussed wardrobe. I figured it was self-explanatory.”
Out of instinct, I glanced down at my stained T-shirt that said I WAKE UP LOOKING LIKE THIS and dark-gray yoga pants. “This is what I flew in.”
“Could have fooled me. You look like you came by wagon train.”
A few of the crew members chuckled behind her.
I was fuming. “I had no idea I needed to follow a dress code before I was scheduled to show up on set. I planned on getting dressed here. I literally got off a plane, got in a car, and then drove two hours to get here.”
“Okay,” Lauren said in a mock-patient tone. “What do you plan to wear?”
This had been an hours-long discussion with Marina. What does a PI wear? We ultimately decided on jeans and T-shirts, low-key business attire, and both casual dresses and dresses for church. “Jeans and a T-shirt.”
“Make it low-cut and we’re good.”
“Excuse me?”
She was clearly frustrated with me now. “Summer, what do you want? One minute you’re pissed that I’ve named the place after your very recognizable nickname; the next you’re pissed that I suggest you dress like you’re not a teenager anymore.” She flung a hand up. “Hell, most teenagers dress more provocatively than you do.”
“Do you want me to throw on a bustier?” Jeez. I’d considered posing nude, and here I was pitching a fit over a low-cut shirt. Obviously, I never would have gone through with it.
Excitement filled her eyes, replaced by a scowl when she realized I didn’t mean it. She walked over to me, and I had to repress the urge to take a step back. “For some reason, you seem to be struggling with this very simple concept, so let me explain it to you,” she said in slow, carefully punctuated words. “Isabella Holmes is all grown up, sweetheart. She’s sexy and confident and ready to kick ass and take names.” She pointed down the hall. “Can you do that?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows again. Based on her forehead mobility, she hadn’t had any recent Botox injections.
“No,” I said, straightening my back. I tried to meet her eyes without looking up, but they only reached her shoulders.
The crew tensed.
“No?” she asked in disbelief.
“No. I am not Isabella Holmes. I’m Summer Butler, dammit, not a character from a teen show.”
Her face started to turn red.
“But if you want a sexy version of me,” I said in a tight voice, “that’s what you’re going to get.”
“I better see at least four inches of skin on your chest from the base of your neck to the top of your shirt.”
I was tempted to keep arguing, especially since I was starting to have major buyer’s remorse, but to what end? Instead, I decided to ignore my growing mortification that this exchange had taken place in front of the entire crew and focus on what needed to be done. “I need to get my suitcases so I can change.”
Karen brought in my luggage, and I dug out a pair of jeans and a plain teal scoop-neck T-shirt. I put back on the athletic shoes I’d worn on the plane. I washed my face and applied a light layer of makeup with a hint of blush and low-key eyeshadow, then ran a brush though my hair.
Karen was waiting outside the bathroom door, staring at her phone. Her gaze jerked up, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We have to get you fitted with a mike, but Lauren says you should come out for the team meeting. Chuck can hook you up while she talks.”
“Okay.”
She took my stack of clothes and the makeup bag from my hands, then gestured for me to head back into the office.
Lauren, standing regally at the front door, waved her hand at the first desk. “Summer, I take it you remember your assistant.”
I turned to face the platinum-blonde woman who had a to-go coffee cup in her hand. Excitement filled her big blue eyes as she set the cup down on the desk.
I gasped. “Dixie?” I hadn’t seen her since she was thirteen, but I would have recognized her anywhere. She was the spitting image of her mother.
My cousin was wearing a pair of denim shorts and a white eyelet three-quarter-sleeve shirt with a deep V that showed off the generous cleavage that had obviously come from her mother’s genetics and not from our side of the family. Cowboy boots finished the ensemble. Her long hair hung past her shoulders in loose waves. Dixie was beyond cute, and the way Lauren smiled—like a shark who’d found some tasty new bait—set me on edge.
“Summer!” she exclaimed as she pulled me into a hug.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. And while I was thrilled to see her, it was hard to ignore the very real possibility that Lauren intended on exploiting Dixie’s past and my family drama. “How’s my favorite cousin?”
She leaned back and grinned, her entire face lighting up with happiness. “I’m gonna tell Teddy you said that.”
I laughed. “Somehow I doubt he’ll mind.”
She laughed too. “You’re right. He’s the same ol’ Teddy.”
“You’re my assistant?” I asked, hugging her again.
“Yeah, after Ms. Chapman came out to the farm to talk to Meemaw, she asked me if I was looking for a job. And oh, my word! I’m all official. Look at this, Summer!” She picked up a small plaque from the first desk and held it up. “This has my name on it!”
Sure enough, it read DIXIE BUTLER, PERSONAL ASSISTANT.
“That’s not her name,” I said, shooting a glare at Lauren.
Lauren looked down her nose at me. “We’re selling her as your cousin. Would you rather we call you Summer Baumgartner?”
Cringing, I turned to Dixie. My mother had changed my name years ago, and while I didn’t necessarily want to bring that into the spotlight, I didn’t want Dixie to feel coerced into changing hers. “You don’t mind that they’ve changed your name?”
She lifted her shoulder into an ambivalent shrug. “I can live with it.”
One of the men walked over to me with a black box and a small microphone attached to a wire. “I’m Chuck, and I’m going to get you miked up.”
A few people had regrouped outside the window, gawking. Dixie kept waving at some of them, and I was sure I recognized a few as well. I figured Lauren might pitch a fit, but she didn’t seem to mind.
I stood next to my desk as Chuck clipped the box to the back waistband of my jeans, then ran the mike up the back of my shirt and clipped it to my neckline.
While he hooked me up, I leaned over my desk and lifted the flap of the top folder in the stack at the corner, revealing several blank pages of copy paper. Props. But next to them was a little wire container filled with pale-yellow business cards with DARLING INVESTIGATIONS at the top and my name and a phone number I didn’t recognize at the bottom. I picked up a handful and stuck them in my jeans pocket.
“If we could get started . . . ,” Lauren said in a snide tone. “We’re on a tight schedule, and we need to leave to meet with your first clients in a few minutes.”
I wondered how they’d managed to find clients in less than three days.
“We have nine hours to get everything in,” she continued. “Your first case is a missing person.”
“A missing person?” I asked as an arrow of fear shot through me. I was so not qualified for something like that. “Shouldn’t we start with something smaller?”
Lauren put her hand on her hip and gave me a scathing look. “This is our big case for the season, so we need to get started on it right away.”
“What do you mean big case?”
Her jaw clenched. Apparently asking the simplest of questions was akin to being needy or disagreeable. “We’ll have one big, overarching mystery that you’ll be investigating over the entire six episodes, and then each episode will feature a smaller case to fill out the twenty-two minutes.” She took a breath. “You’ll be interviewing Gretchen McBride this morning. Her brother, Otto Olson, is the person who’s gone missing.”
“Otto?” Dixie waved a hand in dismissal. “I know him. He goes on drunken sprees and then turns up a couple of days later.”
“He’s been gone nearly a week.”
Dixie’s mouth pursed. “That is longer than usual. So what are we doin’? Lookin’ for him?”
“That’s the plan,” Lauren said. “We’ll film at the McBrides’, then we’ll break for lunch at noon.” She turned to me. “Summer, your truck is out front, and you and Dixie will ride together. Bill, one of the cameramen, will film you driving to their house.”
“My truck?”
“Your grandmother had an old truck she said we could use.”
I gave Dixie a questioning look.
Her smiled faded a few megawatts. “Pawpaw’s.”
Meemaw still had Pawpaw’s truck . . . and now I would be using it. It felt like a blow right to my solar plexus. “That old truck still runs?”
“It was actually in good shape, according to your cousin Teddy. We put some cameras on it.”
I nearly protested, but I had agreed to this whole venture. This was a reality show, which meant there were probably cameras everywhere. “Where else do you have cameras?” I glanced up at the ceiling. “In here?”
Lauren’s mouth turned down. “There are some up here, but I doubt we’ll ever need them.” She spread her hands wide. “Let’s get going.”
I already had a feeling I was going to regret this.