Page 18 of 40 and (So Over) Fixing It
Although he’d had women tell him otherwise.
Shutting off the thought of women, he knelt to straighten the front of Thad’s button-down shirt. “You clean up really nice.”
“Thanks!” He pulled on his ears, flashing Carter that smile with the gap on the side. “Even cleaned behind them.”
“Good man.”
He herded Thad back inside, out of the chill air.
“Was that Mom on the phone?”
Carter led the way toward the front door and their coats. “No, it was Gavin.”
“Oh.” Thad nodded as if it was perfectly sensible that Gavin would be bossing his dad around.
To head off any more of that discussion, he held out Thad’s coat for his son to push his arms into. “Did you want to talk to your mom?” He tried to be certain Thad could reach out to Rachel anytime he wanted or needed to. They’d discussed getting him his own phone, but neither Carter nor Rachel wanted to allow the world that kind of access to their son at such a young age.
“Sure!”
“Ready to go?” JD asked. He and Lily descended the stairs, looking like the perfect couple in their semi-formal dress. It struck Carter all over again how perfect Lily was for his friend. Just seeing the happiness on JD’s face, the relaxing of the lines around his eyes and mouth that focusing too much on work and not enough on enjoying life had put there, confirmed everything Carter had hoped for when JD had told his friends he and Lily were becoming serious.
“We are.” Carter pulled his phone back out of his pocket and used it to gesture Thad toward the door. “Let’s get in the car and you can talk to Rachel on our way into town, okay?”
“Okay.” Thad pulled the massive front door open with a loud grunt that had the adults laughing, and hurried outside. Sometimes Carter wished he had a tenth of his son’s infinite energy.
“That boy could beat us to town if he just kept running,” JD said, proving his thoughts were following the same line as Carter’s.
“He’s like the Energizer Bunny,” Lily agreed, grinning.
“We should hurry or he’ll have started the car and left us behind before we get outside,” Carter joked.
The three adults headed for the door. As Lily stepped through, Carter gave JD’s elbow a tug. “Uh, can I ask a favor?”
JD hesitated on his way out. “Of course.”
“Can I get Erin’s phone number from you?”
A grin split JD’s face. “Of course.”
Carter gave him a warning look. “Not a word, man.”
JD held his hands out, giving the—totally false, Carter knew—impression he would back off. “I didn’t say anything.” But then he moved through the door, and a whistle drifted back behind him.
Carter rolled his eyes. He was never gonna live this down, was he?
ChapterEight
As Erin waited at the podium for her turn to be seated at a table, she smoothed the green sheath of her dress over her hips. She hadn’t eaten at the Carousel often, but she knew the upper crust of Black Wolf’s Bluff did and she’d pulled out her absolute best for tonight’s meeting. Not that she was here for pleasure—she wasn’t—but opportunities like this didn’t come along often.
A calloused hand cupped her elbow, and she turned to see that her foreman, Wyatt Brown, had arrived. “Hey.” A glance behind him didn’t reveal the familiar face she was looking for. “Where’s Allie?”
Wyatt grimaced. “When I mentioned wanting seafood, she turned green and decided she might ought to stay home.”
“Aw.” Erin’s heart squeezed with a combination of sympathy and envy. “Morning sickness isn’t sticking to morning, I take it.”
“Doc says it’s normal, but…” He shrugged, a look of worried confusion on his face that Erin recognized from working with so many men.
“He’s right; it’s normal. Doc would tell you if it was anything to be concerned about.” Their local GP still did a little bit of everything, including delivering babies, and at close to seventy Erin reckoned he’d seen everything by now. He also wasn’t too proud to send his patients to a bigger city for a specialist if they needed it.
