Marry Me at Christmas (Fool's Gold #19)(45)

While he took care of that, she added flour to the mixture in the bowl. When all the flour was incorporated, she dropped it onto the counter and began kneading.

“When that timer goes off, I’ll need you to take out the first batch of cookies and put in the second,” she told him.

“Just say when.”

“You’re very agreeable.”

“I don’t have a problem being your sous chef. Home-cooked meals are a treat.”

Based on the frozen dinners in his freezer and the take-out containers in his refrigerator, she knew he wasn’t lying.

“You could have a chef or something,” she said.

He put the cookie jar on the counter. “Not my style. I’m not the staff type.”

That was true. She would guess most stars at his level had a personal assistant, but he didn’t. She knew his manager and her people took care of some things, but the rest he did himself.

“In the summer I barbecue a lot,” he said as he sat in a stool at the island. “I grill a mean steak.”

“You’re such a guy.”

He winked. “I am.”

“My dad and brother both love to barbecue, too. But put them in front of a stove and they’re lost. Which makes no sense to me. A gas stove still has fire.”

“But it’s indoors. Not the same at all.”

“Uh-huh. Why do I know that’s a trick to keep women cooking for you?”

“Never.”

“Right.”

She put the kneaded dough into an oiled bowl, then covered it with a clean dishcloth. She set it near the upper oven vents where it would stay warm while it rose.

“Your mom didn’t teach Robbie to cook?” he asked as she washed her hands.

“Apparently not. Or if she did, it didn’t take.” Madeline looked at the timer, then picked up hot pads. The timer dinged. She took out the first pan of cookies and put in the second, then reset the timer.

“I wasn’t around when Robbie was a kid. By the time I was aware of the world around me, he was off to college. So it was like being an only child. It would have been nice to have him closer to my age.”

“I know what you mean. Ginger’s nearly eight years younger than me.”

“You took care of her.”

He shrugged. “I complained a lot, but I knew my dad was already scrambling to take care of everything.”

“He never remarried?”

“No. Some of it was he said he couldn’t find anyone as great as my mom and some was probably because he had two kids and no free time.”

“Did that make you more responsible than you wanted to be?” she asked, thinking his fussing over his sister probably wasn’t new. She would bet he’d been there for Ginger since she was born.

“Don’t make me into a saint,” he told her. “I got into plenty of trouble in school.”

“Like?”

“The usual stuff. Cutting class, being rowdy with my friends.” He smiled at the memories. “I got cut from the junior varsity football team for tardies. I’m sure the plan was that I would be devastated and change my ways. But I found I liked hanging with my friends more than I liked playing.”

Madeline grinned at him. “You do know we have retired NFL players in town. Don’t let them hear you say that. They’ll never recover.”

“Yeah, I have my doubts about how much they’d care.”

“So you’d survive if they didn’t love your movies.”

“I would.”

She leaned against the counter. “How did you get started in movies?” she asked. “Did you audition a lot?”

He looked at her quizzically for a second, then held up both hands. “You didn’t look? Online? You didn’t use Google to look me up?” He lowered his arms. “I want to ask why, which is ridiculous. You’re normal. I like that.”

“Was I supposed to check you out online?” She’d thought about it, but somehow, after meeting him, it had felt as if doing that were an invasion of his privacy.

“No. You were supposed to do exactly what you did.” He rested his elbows on the counter and leaned toward her. “After my dad died, money was tight. I left college to take care of Ginger. I worked a couple of jobs to pay the bills. One of them was cleaning pools. A guy I worked for was a producer. We talked a few times and he offered me a chance to be in one of his movies.”

“That was nice of him.”

“It was. The pay was better than I was making at my other job.” Jonny grinned. “He made me promise I would keep cleaning his pool, even after I was a movie star, which was supposed to be a joke. Anyway, I showed up at the studio. I had one line, which I delivered. Trust me, acting isn’t rocket science. I had to stick around because they wanted to change the set or something. There was a call saying the guy who was supposed to be the sidekick broke his leg skiing.”

Madeline winced. “That can’t be good for anyone.”

“It wasn’t. Everyone was pissed. They wanted to keep doing the scene, so they asked me to stand in for him. Just read the lines so the star could have someone to talk to. I knew nothing about the business, but I figured it meant an extra couple of hours not cleaning pools, so I agreed. The next thing I knew, they were having me read more scenes. Two days later, I was hired as the replacement.”