Page 26 of 40 and (So Over) Fixing It
“No, Evan, it’s fine. Just hold him off long enough for me to get down there, okay?” Murmurs came through the cell as she passed Carter on the way to the fridge. “I told you it’s fine. I’ll figure things out. Okay. See you in a few.”
JD frowned from the sink where he was elbow-deep in suds. “Everything okay.”
Lily retrieved a bottle of water from the fridge. “Dwayne Prescott is demanding to see me ‘right this damn minute.’” Her sigh seemed to come from her toes. “You know how he is—every minute, the sky is falling and it’s my fault.”
JD grunted his opinion of that. “Thank God he’s not running for city council again. Come January he’ll be out of your hair.”
“That day can’t come soon enough.” Lily added the water to her already full arms as she joined JD at the sink. “But right now he is in my hair, and I need to get to the office asap. Can you run to pick Erin up? She ran back to the house to help Scott with something and now her truck won’t start. I would go, but…”
The mention of Erin sent a frisson of awareness down Carter’s spine that he tried hard to ignore, just like he’d been trying to ignore the remembered feel of her mouth since last night. Unfortunately he hadn’t succeeded, even in his dreams. He hadn’t woken up with a hard-on like that in a very long time.
Not that he was thinking about it now, in the middle of the kitchen with Lily and JD and his son right there. Definitely not.
JD rinsed his hands. “I’ve got a conference call in fifteen minutes that I can’t miss.” He grabbed a towel to dry off. “Hey, maybe Carter and Thad can go pick her up. Thad might enjoy seeing the animals at the farm.”
Carter gave his best friend a dirty look. Oh, he knew it was logical for him to go, but JD knew as well as he did that having him and Erin in such close proximity was putting a match to flame.
Well maybe JD didn’t know as well as Carter did, since he didn’t know about the kiss last night. Nobody knew about the kiss last night except for him. In fact, he wishedhedidn’t know about the kiss last night.
Denial’s not doing you any good, my man.
He ran a heavy hand over his forehead.
Still, he wasn’t going to offer. He should avoid being around Erin as much as possible.
“Yay,” Thad said, jumping up from the table. “I’ll go get my shoes back on.”
Carter squeezed his eyes shut. Great.
Opening his eyes, he couldn’t hold back a, “Guess that decides that.”
He’d hoped the fact that the words were said against the rim of his abruptly raised coffee cup might hide them, but JD’s chuckle said otherwise. “Yes, I believe it does.” JD’s glee made the urge to punch him rise up, causing Carter’s fingers to twitch, especially when JD moved toward the cabinets. “Here, take that coffee to go.”
And that’s how he found himself on the road heading east out of Black Wolf’s Bluff, directions to Erin’s house on the seat beside him. Lily had insisted on giving him written instructions, claiming the GPS was unreliable the farther out you got from town. JD’s final dig as he walked out the door was still ringing in his ears:
“Don’t let Willard see you or he’ll get jealous.”
Lily had given her fiancé a startled look before laughing her way out the door. Carter just wanted to know who the hell Willard was. Erin’s boyfriend? Did she have a boyfriend? No one had said she did, but then he remembered the man next to her at the Carousel the other night and a surge of something uncomfortably like jealousy rose into his throat. Not that there was any need to be jealous—it was one kiss, that was all. It hadn’t meant anything more than impulse. Frustration run amok.
So why are your knuckles turning white from your death grip on the steering wheel?
Narrowing his eyes at the voice in his head, he consciously relaxed his grip and forced his focus to the road curving back and forth before him. They’d followed Main Street through town and out the opposite side, where the road twisted and turned through the foothills in a way that thankfully demanded his attention. He passed the instructions back to Thad, allowing his son to decipher Lily’s writing and direct their path, a task Thad gave all due attention.
Almost half an hour later they topped a rise to discover a vast meadow spread out before them. The flat plain was nestled between two ridges topped with a color kaleidoscope of fall trees. The road dropped into the valley and curved around the southern edge, where Carter passed a turnoff to a farm dominated by a large white house on a rise surrounded by various outbuildings. CARDINAL FARMS, the sign over the driveway said. The next drive they passed led to a massive red barn surrounded by horses, goats, a couple of cows, some geese, and even a donkey.
The third turnoff was Erin’s house, a quaint cottage with a couple of outbuildings and a fence that divided her yard from the barnyard. Carter admired the neatness of her home, though he’d expected nothing less from the sassy general contractor. She had order and control written all over her. Except last night. After he’d kissed her, she’d been flush with desire, her eyes soft and hazy—until reality had returned, for both of them.
Yeah, he definitely needed to stop thinking about that.
He stopped the SUV a few feet from the porch and turned it off. Just as he reached for the door handle, a blue streak rounded the far corner of the house and zoomed toward them. It took a moment for his brain to register what his eyes were actually seeing: a massive peacock, his feathers spread wide like the biggest fan Carter had ever seen, speeding across the yard.
Thad unhooked himself from his seat belt in the back and got up to poke his head between the front seats. “Look at that, Dad! A peacock!”
“A very big peacock,” Carter agreed. Massive, in fact. He’d known the birds were big, but somehow knowing had not prepared him for the confrontation of the enormous animal charging toward his vehicle.
The bird ran right up to the front of the SUV, his head easily as high as the hood, and stared with beady eyes at the two of them through the windshield. Somehow Carter got the impression they were being assessed as a threat. The thought was confirmed when the animal stalked its way around to the passenger side of the vehicle and began to peck at the window.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
