He frowned. “No. I am a perfectly normal person who has a very fine set of locks and a security system, thank you. That door has a basic lock.”
He was awfully cute when he was irritated with her. “Good, then I can break in, and you don’t have to worry about your windows. All I need is something to use as a pick and a torque wrench, and Harry’s tools are in the back. This truck is the gift that keeps giving.”
“You can break into a house?”
There was the deputy voice. Yes, she could suddenly see him pulling over a poor unsuspecting driver who did not realize she was going twenty miles over the speed limit because she was trying to get into character for a very important scene. He had the stare thing down, too. She wished it made him less attractive.
“I can pick a simple lock,” she replied. “I’ve worked on film sets most of my life, and I’ve learned a few things along the way.”
“Most of your life? How old are you?”
Ah, he, like so many others, was blinded by her youthful charm. “I’m twenty-five. I’ve been in the business for twenty years.”
Those baby blues of his widened in obvious surprise. “You’ve been working since you were five? What did you do at five?”
“You know how in TV shows and movies there are child characters? Well, as good as some actors are, most adults can’t play five-year-olds. Oh, you’ll find a ton of thirty-year-olds pretending to be high school kids, but they haven’t figured out how to take those prepubescent roles yet.” They would if they could. She knew some actors who thought they could play a frog better than an actual frog. “So I, as a five-year-old, was brought in for not only my talent but my authenticity. I could temper-tantrum at will and throw sass around all day long.”
“You’re an actress?”
He asked the question like he was truly surprised. She wasn’t wearing her glam makeup or anything, but she’d thought she looked kind of cute. “You don’t have to sound so shocked. I know I’m not, like, some bombshell, but not all actors are stunning.”
Though most of them were. She’d been a cute kid and was attractive, but she wasn’t sure she was Hollywood attractive. It was precisely why her mom was worried she wasn’t making a faster transition. She’d started to gently discuss plastic surgery.
“You’re gorgeous.” He grimaced like he hadn’t meant to say that. “I mean, you’re certainly pretty enough, but you don’t act the way I thought you would. Everyone’s talking about the film crew coming in, and we’re all pretty sure the fancy Hollywood people won’t like it here. I know the mayor thinks we’ll make tons of money. I was surprised when I heard the crew was going to use local restaurants for some of their catering. I thought they would bring their own.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Seriously?”
He shrugged. “We don’t have a lot of kale down here.”
It was good to know people were the same everywhere. People who’d rarely been out of the city would think people who lived in Papillon were rubes, and the country folk here would think anyone in the city was a snob. “I hope you’ve prepared, because soon you’re going to have about a thousand people to feed, and please, please tell me you have enough beer in this town.”
“The mayor’s working with the local businesses. I’ve heard they’re going to be making a lot of salads and sandwiches and soup for the lunches. But I would think they should go heavy on the salads,” Major said. “I would hate to see our restaurants get hurt because they don’t make the right food.”
“Is the food good?”
“It’s excellent, but it’s Cajun food. And it’s Southern food. I think someone was talking about setting up a crawfish boil, but I don’t know how that will go.”
“Just make sure you have a lot of food. Look, some of the actors will bring their own chefs. My mother is also my manager, and she’ll bring a ton of protein shakes and cleanses with her, but the crew will eat anything you put in front of them. It’s part of the joy of the job. Tell the restaurants to make what they love and share it with us. I used to work on this show and we filmed in Burbank ninety-nine percent of the time, but we got to go to Austin to film two episodes, and for the two weeks we were there, it was all barbecue and Tex-Mex. And if those caterers had tried to slip in a kale day, everything would have shut down.”
He chuckled. “Well, that’s good to know. I hope it’s going to be good for the town. Take the next right and I’m the second house from the end.”