by Lauren Layne
Carter sighed. “Sorry, man. I don’t have any details. You probably know more than I do about what Felicity’s been up to.”
“College in California, married a Hollywood director, or producer, or something, who’s like fifteen years older than her, right after graduation. She’s been in LA ever since, got divorced a few months back.”
“Okay, that’s about exactly as much as I know,” Carter admitted.
“For real?” Jakey asked, still skeptical. “You guys were like a TV couple. How have you not talked for ten years? At the very least you could have had one of your minions keep tabs on her.”
“Yes, because that’s what the MLB is all about. Tracking their players’ high school girlfriends. And a TV couple? I thought we were a Taylor Swift song.”
“You know what I mean. You were the It Couple, and then you were both gone.”
“She was headed to California, me to the pros. Didn’t work out, as high school relationships usually don’t,” Carter said, keeping his tone light, but also trying to insert a case-closed finality into the statement.
“Fine. At least tell me if the rumors about you and that supermodel being engaged were true. Becky will kill me if I don’t bring something home.”
“Which supermodel?” There had been a few.
“You know.” Jakey made an elongated motion. “The one with the legs.”
“They’ve all got legs.”
“Exactly how many supermodels have you slept with that you don’t know which one I’m talking about?” Jakey asked.
Carter shrugged, and Jakey whistled. “Damn. Impressive. But man, shouldn’t you at least know if you were engaged to one of them?”
“Definitely never engaged. Or close to it,” Carter clarified quickly. He was no monk, but neither had he had a relationship in recent memory that had lasted more than a few months. Not because he was a player who liked to bounce from one woman to the next, but because having a relationship in the spotlight was hard. Having a long-distance relationship in the spotlight was harder. He’d never met someone who seemed to care about him enough to make it through the hard parts. Had never met someone he cared about enough to fight for. Even Felicity . . .
“All right, all right, all right,” Jakey said. “But what about—”
“My God,” Carter said with a laugh, more amused than annoyed. “You’re almost as bad as Olive.”
Jakey blinked. “Olive. Olive Dunn? What’s she got to do with anything?”
“I had the ill fortune of renting the house next door to hers. I’ve never met someone quite so . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t, because there were really no words to describe his old lab partner.
“That’s Olive for you. A handful, but the good kind of handful.” Jakey winced. “That came out sexual. If Becky’s behind me, just shoot me now and end my misery.”
Carter smiled and gave a quick glance over his friend’s shoulder. “Nope, all clear—”
He broke off, because standing behind him was a woman, but not Jakey’s wife.
Jakey noted Carter’s expression and glanced over his shoulder as well, his face breaking out in a wide grin. “Speak of the devil. Hey, Liv.” Jakey pecked Olive’s cheek, not having to lean down to do so because of her taller-than-average height.
“Hello, boys.” She draped an arm over Jakey’s shoulder, then helped herself to some of his beer. “What’s this about me being a handful?”
“A good handful,” Jakey said, flashing her a grin. “Did you hear that part?”
“I did.” She ruffled his hair before turning to Carter. “What about you, Baseball? Do you think I’m a good handful?”
Carter was startled to realize that it took some serious willpower not to lower his gaze to her breasts right then. He resisted, barely, but he had a good memory from the day before, and could recall that grown-up Olive Dunn in her tight jeans and plain white T-shirt would make a very nice handful indeed.
The moment passed in an instant as Olive tapped the twentysomething man to Carter’s right on the shoulder and gave him a friendly smile. “Hey, Paul. Scooch on down a seat, would you?”
To Carter’s bemusement, the guy gave Olive a happy, slightly adoring smile, and moved his whisky, burger, and butt down a seat, simply because she’d asked. “Happy to, Olive.”
Carter noticed that Paul was less successful than he’d been in avoiding looking at her breasts.
She plopped onto the stool on Carter’s other side and waved her hand to get the bartender’s attention. “Hey, Erika. Can I get whatever beer these boys are drinking, and some chicken nachos? Oh, and since I’ll be splitting the bill with Mr. Multimillions here, let’s add extra guac. And not”—Olive held up her finger for emphasis—“that tiny little cup the size of a melon ball they try to charge me three bucks for. Tell Joel I want proper extra guac!”
“Yes, sir!” Erika said, pairing a patient eye roll with a smile that made Carter think she was well used to Olive’s way of handling things.
“Hey look, your team!” Olive said, pointing at the TV as she reached out and stole a sip of Carter’s beer, same as she had with Jakey’s. “Do you want me to tell them to turn it off? I can make them, you know.”
He believed her. He also noted that it was the second time in two days that Olive Dunn—a woman he barely knew—had tried to protect him.
“Nah,” he said as easily as he could. “It’s fine.”
Olive reached out to pat his cast gently. “Are you sure? I could blindfold you. I think I have a bandanna out in Bingo. Actually, I know I do. A couple of them!”
“Why do you—never mind,” he finished, since getting inside Olive’s head was not something he had the energy for, now or ever. “I’ll pass on the blindfold.”
“Fine. Then Jakey and I will talk at you to distract you.”
Jakey seemed all too happy to comply with Olive’s plan, and as the two chatted more at him than with him, Carter was a little surprised to realize that watching baseball with friends in his hometown was sort of nice. Even if he wasn’t playing.
Chapter Six
Sunday, August 9
“Cait, if you apologize one more time, you’re going to have to be on bed rest for a whole other reason,” Olive said, miming bashing her friend’s knees while making a popping noise, then moving to adjust the pillows behind her pregnant friend’s back.
The onetime student council president, volunteer for just about everything, and career meddler in all things Haven had acquiesced to her bed rest orders just about as well as Olive herself would have: not well. Not well at all.
Despite the fact that they hadn’t been close in high school, Olive had come to think of Caitlyn and her friend Kelly Blakely as her soul sisters. They were all loyal, straight-talking, and not the least bit hesitant about interfering in matters that needed interfering.
“I know, I’m sorr—not sorry,” Caitlyn corrected herself, when Olive gave her a warning look. “It’s just that I really hate leaving you to do all the planning on your own. I tried to explain to the dimwit doctor that as cochair of the reunion I couldn’t be on bed rest, but she was a real pain in the—”
“Nope,” Olive interrupted. “We’re listening to the doc on this one. When the cervix talks, we ladies must listen. ’Tis biology’s idea of hilarity. Hey, did you know my uterus is just a little bit—wonky? Twisted? Shoot, what was the word that Dr. Khalid used? Janky? No, that doesn’t seem right . . .”
“Annnnnndd that’s my cue to drop these off and make a very fast getaway, preferably toward some experimental memory procedure that will let me forget I’ve heard any of this,” Carter said from the doorway, looking like he wanted to make good on his threat to flee the room. Or the continent.
“Hey! My famous brother is here. What did you bring me today?” Caitlyn said, making grabby hands toward the bag he held in his right arm.
Olive already knew what he’d brought her. It was the same generic bag that Josefin’s P
atisserie used when their flighty salesclerk forgot to order more of their usual pink-branded bags, with their logo printed on the side.
Caitlyn opened the bag, pulled out a pink box, and proved Olive right. “Macarons!”
Carter shrugged. “I remember when Aunt Joyce and Uncle Vick went to Paris over Christmas and brought you back a box. You liked those gross cookies even better than you liked the Chanel wallet you insisted you ‘wanted more than anything.’”
“True, true. I was going through a Francophile phase,” she said to Olive. “I wore a beret and everything. It was terrible.”
“It was,” Carter agreed. “She also took up cigarettes as part of her cause and got grounded for life.”
“It was two cigarettes. More like one and a half, because they were so nasty. Even still, yes, I was grounded for life. But hey! At least the French cookies are still good,” Caitlyn said, extending the box to Olive. “Try one.”
They are not good, Carter mouthed to Olive.
Olive looked down at the rainbow-colored cookies that, while admittedly very pretty, did not call out to her the way a hearty brownie would. “I usually stick with the éclairs when I go into Josefin’s. And actually, I more often find myself going for the M&M cookies at Willa’s. Or basically, anything chocolate.”
“There,” Caitlyn said, pointing to a brown one. “Chocolate. Eat, and be changed.”
Olive fished it out of the box and bit into half.
“Well?” Caitlyn demanded.
Olive swallowed. “I’m torn between being scared of your pregnancy hormones and admitting that this is just sort of . . . okay.”
Caitlyn gasped, grabbed the remaining half of the cookie out of Olive’s hand, and stuffed it in her own mouth. “I cannot believe that you’re taking his side. But you guys ganging up on me does rather nicely set up the reason why I summoned you here today.”
“Oh, is that what you call this text? A summoning?” Carter asked, pulling his cell out of his back pocket. “Because if you read the actual words, it sounds more like a death threat.”
“And Mom said I was the dramatic one growing up,” Caitlyn retorted, biting into a pink cookie. “I guess I just got it out of my system earlier, and now it’s your turn. Anyway. I’ve brought you both to my makeshift infirmary slash bed prison to discuss a mutual need.”
“Oh God,” Carter said.
Olive had to admit, she shared his apprehension. She was all about solving problems—she just liked to be the one creating the solution, not being assigned to it.
“You,” Caitlyn said, pointing at her twin, “have nothing to do but pine for your missing ex-girlfriend and let your cracked bone heal for the next several weeks. And you”—she pivoted her pointer finger to Olive—“have an entire high school reunion to plan, and your extremely capable partner has just been laid up by an unborn angel.” Caitlyn rested her hand on her stomach.
“If it’s coming out of you, I’d say we’re fifty-fifty on angel or the other thing,” Carter said.
“Hush. The point is, I can’t do much to help Olive other than the stupid crap like stuffing envelopes, which leaves her without a cochair.”
“If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, I will take those cookies away,” Carter said.
“And I will make good on my kneecapping threat,” Olive added.
“Damn.” Carter gave Olive an appraising look. “That’s dark.”
Olive shrugged.
“I’m being practical!” Caitlyn protested. “Olive needs a cochair. Carter needs an activity.”
Carter scowled. “I’m not a restless five-year-old boy on a rainy day.”
“Well, then stop sulking like one and be agreeable,” Caitlyn said. “Olive needs help.”
“Actually, I really don’t. I’m used to doing things by myself,” Olive said, truthfully. She liked Carter way more than she would have expected to, and he was certainly easy on the eyes, but she was fairly sure he’d only get in her way. “In fact, I like doing things by myself, and I’m good at it.”
“Uh-huh.” Caitlyn folded her hands atop her massive belly. “And how did those posters to put up around town turn out? The ones with the glitter that we found on YouTube?”
Carter’s head snapped up. “Green glitter?”
Olive held up a hand and gave him a warning glance. “Not a word. Not one single word.”
“So that’s what that was about,” he said with a slow smile. “Our school colors are green and black.”
“Oh really, are they?” she snapped. “As the lone chair of this year’s Haven High reunion, I wasn’t aware of our school colors.”
Her snippy tone only made his eyes light more gleefully, and she immediately took back her thoughts about him being tolerable. The man was insufferable.
“Come on, Olive,” Caitlyn said, nudging her friend’s arm with a pale blue cookie before eating it. “We don’t have the food figured out. We haven’t found anyone to sponsor the open bar, or any bar. We don’t know the decor; we don’t even know the theme—”
“What?” Carter made an exaggerated gasp, laying his palm over his chest. “No theme, you say? Should the show even go on?”
Carter’s grin widened in direct inverse of Olive’s eyes, which narrowed to slits at his insulting sarcasm.
“You’re so right,” Olive said to Carter in a perfectly pleasant tone. “All the things we undertake here in Haven are so silly and simple. Nothing like playing the exact same game nearly every single day for . . . a decade? That must be an absolute brain buster!” She used her hand to mime an exploding motion near her temple, complete with sound effects. Mind blown.
This time, it was Carter’s eyes that narrowed. “Played a lot of baseball, have ya?”
Olive shrugged. How hard can it be?
Carter smiled, and this time it was slow and lethal. “How about a deal, Olive? I’ll be your minion on all things high school reunion, if you learn how to play baseball. Let’s say five sessions. At the end, we’ll have a frank discussion over who has it easier.”
“Oh, you do have Haven High’s softball game against Rhinebeck in a couple weeks!” Caitlyn chimed in. “We always lose.”
Olive gave her friend a death look, and the usually indomitable Caitlyn flinched and mouthed, Sorry.
Carter lifted a single eyebrow in challenge, a solid villain move that Olive had always respected and never been able to master.
“All right, you’ve got a deal.” She rounded the foot of Caitlyn’s bed to shake on it.
Olive never issued or accepted a challenge she wasn’t confident she could crush. But when Carter’s large hand closed over hers, she had an uncomfortable, irrational flicker of foreboding that in this game, there would be no winners.
Chapter Seven
Tuesday, August 11
While most of her friends in college had been obsessing about the freshman fifteen and frantically wiping dressing off the bits of kale in their salads, Olive had taken a different course of action and decided that since she was never going to be tiny, she might as well be strong.
She’d even enlisted the help of the quarterback of her university’s football team to teach her the weight machines in the fitness center. Randal Wade had later told her he’d been so startled by the bold request that he’d said yes without thinking.
It had worked out better than either had imagined. They’d become fast, if unlikely, friends, and kept in touch over the years, even after he’d gone pro. She’d been at his wedding, and his wife’s engagement shower.
And Olive still put Randal’s workout lessons from all those years ago to good use. She went to the gym at least four times a week and, even on her off days, made a point to lunge her way from the sofa to the fridge rather than simply walk.
On the days she did go to the gym, she dragged herself to the elliptical on a regular basis, in the name of heart health, but for her, the weights were where it was at. Olive loved the burn, loved the gains, the power. In addition to cho
osing strong over small in college, in recent years she’d decided to embrace defined quads over a thigh gap.
An early riser by necessity, if not by nature (such was the life of a schoolteacher who liked to work out in the morning), Olive typically had the gym mostly to herself in the hours after it first opened. She took advantage of the solitude to take a photo of said quads to send to Randal, which would be inappropriate except she included his wife, too, though Olive was pretty sure Serena knew regardless that she wasn’t a threat.
Especially considering she hadn’t shaved her legs in—she looked closer at the photo—a while. The peach fuzz was definitely visible in the photo. Oh well. She hit “Send.”
“Sexting so early in the morning?”
Olive jumped, surprised at the unexpected interruption. And unwanted company.
She wrinkled her nose and gave Carter an irritated once-over. “What are you doing here?”
Since the sleek black sweatpants, black performance tee, and red training shoes made it pretty obvious, instead of answering, he came toward where she sat on the bench and pulled her cell phone out of her hands.
“Hey!” She tried to snatch it back, but he’d already pulled the phone out of reach and was staring at the screen in disbelief.
“You’re sexting Randal Wade? The Randal Wade?”
“I’m not sexting anyone,” she said, standing, then snatching her phone back and locking it.
“But that’s a different Randal, right? Not the starting quarterback for the Bears?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said with a smug smile.
“Holy shit, it is that Randal,” he said in disbelief. “How the hell did you pull that off? Did you interfere in his life, too?”
“Yeah, because that’s what I do. Stalk pro athletes.”
He nodded. “That’s good to hear. Very good to hear. Acceptance and acknowledging the problem is a very strong first step, Olive.”
She made a shooing nose. “Go away. I’ve got reps to do.”
