“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.”
“And the rest is history?”
Jonny grinned. “Pretty much.”
“Did you keep cleaning your friend’s pool?”
“For a year. Then he cut me loose.”
Madeline liked that he’d kept his word. She wondered how many other people, in his position, would have blown off the promise.
“Do you like acting?”
“It beats a real job.” His humor faded. “I know what I do is about entertaining people. It’s not saving lives or changing the world, but that’s not an excuse to phone it in. I want to do my best. To be at work on time, knowing my lines. I want to be in shape and have whatever fighting skills I’m going to need for the current project.”
“You take pride in your work.”
“Yeah. Too hokey?”
She shook her head because saying “Exactly right” could complicate things. The pretty face had been appealing enough, she thought wryly. The actual man was even more of a temptation. A problem she didn’t need and wasn’t sure how to handle.
“Do you film all over the world?” she asked.
“On some movies. It’s always strange to go into a foreign country and yet be a part of the movie. We bring in nearly everything. It’s like a strange movie-set community.”
“Do you get a chance to see the sights?”
“Sometimes. It depends on what we’re filming and how big my role is. There have been movies where there’s a subplot that doesn’t include me and others where I’m in every scene.”