Down Home Carolina Christmas. Pamela Browning

      “What would convince you—pepper spray?” To be on the safe side, she carried it in her purse.

      “Pepper spray?”

      “To get you off my case. If you don’t mind, I’d like to access my vehicle.” She dodged around Whip, opened the door of the SUV and climbed in. While she backed out of the parking place, he stared after her in perplexity.

      Carrie sped up when she reached the highway. These people were crazy! If she hadn’t been so pure tee aggravated by the whole situation, she’d have laughed all the way back to Smitty’s.

      One thing she didn’t want to laugh about, however, was her supercharged response to Luke Mason. What was that about? she wondered. What was really going on, the two of them alone behind that refreshment stand, kissing like a couple of teenagers slipping around behind everyone’s back?

      On the other hand, maybe she didn’t really want to know.

      AFTER LEAVING the seed farm, Carrie went home, changed into coveralls and reported to the garage. Just before closing time, Dixie and Joyanne showed up.

      “We got parts!” Dixie yelled as she ejected from her blue Mustang and she and Joyanne ran inside.

      “We’re going to be beauty contestants! Dixie and I get to wear swimsuits like they wore in the fifties—they’re these awful one-piece rubbery rib crushers with zippers up the back—and our job is to ride in convertibles in the parade.” This last line was delivered with considerable glee.

      “Congratulations,” Carrie said dryly as they came inside. She opened the spreadsheet program on her laptop computer, planning on trying to figure out why she was low on cash this month.

      “Carrie?” Hub said, poking his lean, sharp-chinned face in the door. “Did you order some of them oil filters I was asking you about? Hi, Dixie. Hi, Joyanne. What’s new?”

      “We got parts in Dangerous!” Dixie announced gleefully, all but jumping up and down. “Isn’t that exciting?”

      “It sure is,” Hub said slowly. “I heard Little Jessie got her a part, too. Teena called and told me about it.” Teena was Hub’s pretty, curly-haired wife, and she taught baton lessons part-time at Big Jessie’s studio.

      Carrie checked her invoices. “Those oil filters should be on the delivery truck tomorrow,” she told Hub.

      “Great. See you later, Dixie. You, too, Joyanne.” Hub disappeared around the corner.

      “Carrie, you can come watch them film the scenes,” Joyanne said to Carrie.

      “That would be the scenes at the racetrack?” The local speedway had been built by Yancey Goforth and a bunch of local businessmen after he struck it rich with endorsements for motor oil and tires.

      “Sure, they’re going to need lots of people for the crowd shots,” Dixie said. “So you can still be in the movie if you want. Though if I were you, I’d have tried out like Joyanne and I did. You could have been a beauty contestant, too.”

      “Fat chance,” Carrie scoffed as a matter of course. Luke Mason’s kiss still weighed heavily on her mind, but she intended to keep that secret to herself. With considerable guilt, of course, because its entertainment value to Dixie and Joyanne was not to be underestimated, and she hated to deprive them of such a fascinating tidbit.

      Joyanne was into wild speculation about the possibilities being opened to her. “Wouldn’t it be great if we get asked to go to Hollywood and be in more movies?” she asked. “Get famous? I can see it now—my name, Joyanne Morrissey, on a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!”

      Dixie, fortunately, was more realistic. “After the movie, I’ll go back to answering phones at Yewville Real Estate until I start listing and selling on my own. I’d say that’s a sight more dependable than an acting career.”

      Joyanne shrugged. “Who cares? Life is an adventure, and if I were offered a part, no matter how insignificant, I’d take it. It would be a whole lot better than counting other people’s money at the Bank of Yewville for the rest of my life.”

      Carrie couldn’t concentrate on her spreadsheet with Dixie and Joyanne nattering on, so she gave up attempting to work. Idly she typed the URL for Luke Mason’s online fan club into her search engine and loaded the pictures that titillated Dixie and Joyanne. In them Luke wore a red G-string and smiled provocatively into the camera. She experienced that smile up close now, and the pictures didn’t half do him justice.

      “Carrie? Did you hear what I said?” Dixie asked.

      Guiltily she exited the Web site and glanced up. “Say again?”

      “I asked you if Joyanne and I should pick up a barrel of hot wings,” Dixie repeated patiently. “I made potato salad last night.”

      Carrie sighed. “Sure, why not. You can come out to the home place for supper.”

      “Dixie and I will get the chicken while you close up.” Joyanne would have been extremely interested if she’d known that Carrie had just been checking out those pictures of Luke. Chattering excitedly about their parts in the movie, Dixie and Joyanne left as Carrie’s cousin Voncille pulled up to the gas pumps.

      “Hey, Voncille,” Carrie called. She shut down her computer and hurried outside.

      “Hey, Carrie.” Voncille wore baggy bib overalls. Her thick red braids were so long that they dragged in the dishwater, of which there was much since her dishwasher had broken five years ago. Her husband, Skeeter, insisted that he’d get around to fixing it any day now, but somehow he never did, and with four children, there were plenty of dishes to wash.

      “Don’t bother, Carrie. I’ll fill the tank myself.” Voncille unscrewed the gas cap on her battered minivan.

      “When are the movie people going to start filming here at your station?” Voncille asked, her gaze never wavering from the rapidly escalating numbers on the pump.

      “They’re not.” Carrie began to wash the minivan’s windshield.

      Her cousin raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Aren’t they going to pay you over twenty thousand dollars?” she asked.

      “Now, where on earth did you hear that?” Carrie asked, though she knew well enough how easily such information—true or not—spread in a small town like Yewville.

      “Maybe Skeeter picked up the news somewhere.”

      “Well, it’s not true.”

      “Carrie, hon, I’d take the money from the movie company if I were you. If your daddy were alive, that’s what he’d tell you to do. Maybe find you a rich husband while you’re at it. Go on that Caribbean cruise with Glenda. That’s what she’s going to do with her money.”

      “My father always advised us kids to learn skills that would enable us to take care of ourselves,” Carrie said mildly. That was why she’d completed the auto mechanic’s course at Florence Tech and why Dixie had enrolled in the administrative assistant program.

      “It wouldn’t hurt to marry well,” Voncille said with a wink. “Lord knows I didn’t.” Skeeter had learned to hang drywall not long after losing his job at the mill, but he tended to get laid off a lot.

      “Thanks for the advice,” Carrie told her, forcing a smile.

      After Voncille peeled away from the pump, Carrie went back inside the station. As Hub scooted himself out from under the car where he was working, the dog trotted over, and Carrie absently scratched her behind one ear. Shasta grinned, pink tongue lolling in a sweet comical expression. She was white with black spots, one of which was arranged fetchingly over one eye.

      “You’re a cutie, you know it?” Carrie murmured to the dog, who immediately rolled over on her back and waved all four paws in the air. “You’re a real comedian.”

      “You’re getting