by Lauren Layne
“What the hell kind of men are you hanging out with? Where are you getting your information?”
“Magazines. TV. Personal experience.”
He sat forward and turned his head toward where she remained seated on the gym floor. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“It’s not like a whole thing,” she said, sounding more flustered than he’d ever heard her. “I just mean that my longest relationship was a year, was tepid at best, and though I think the men I’ve dated like me well enough, I feel like that’s all it’s ever been. Like. Just reliable, clamp-on-the-shoulder, good ol’ Olive.”
He frowned. She was worthy of a hell of a lot better than that. “A lot of relationships start in friendship. Maybe they’d have grown to more than like.”
She shrugged disinterestedly. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s me. A couple years ago I had two back-to-back relationships where the guys left me for someone else. One fell for his coworker. The other got back together with his ex-girlfriend.”
Olive paired that last bit of information with a telling look in his direction, but Carter ignored it, not even remotely interested in talking about Felicity right now. He wanted to know more about Olive, and this was a piece of the puzzle he hadn’t had before.
“These other women. Were they . . . dainty?” he guessed.
“The secretary was a size zero. I know because I met her twice, and she mentioned it. Twice. As for the other one’s ex, yeah, she was basically pocket-sized. I mean, I don’t have a problem with petite women. They can’t help their size any more than I can help mine. It’s just they seem to have that elusive quality that makes people—men—want to take care of them. Men love that shit.”
“Do we?” he murmured, thinking it over.
“Sure,” she said, pushing to her feet and then coming to plop beside him, her thigh pressed against his with an easy, platonic comfortability that both pleased and annoyed him. Pleased, because he felt the same level of comfort around her. Annoyed, because he was thinking about what this woman looked like naked a little more every day, and as far as he could tell, she viewed him as a brother.
“I’m sure it’s not a conscious thing,” Olive said, oblivious to his sexual thoughts as ever. “It’s just biology. The way lions are mostly matriarchal and yet it’s generally the male lions, with their stockier builds, that protect their pride from intruders. Or the way—”
“Hold up there, Biology Teacher,” he said, interrupting. “I’m sure you’re right about the animal kingdom, but give us human males a little credit. I’d like to think we’ve evolved beyond guarding the group—”
“Pride. Or pack, if we’re talking about wolves, or—”
“But,” he interrupted, gently but decisively speaking over her, because it was important that she hear this. “Real men—human men—don’t necessarily want a little lady to protect.”
“No?” she asked, sounding curious, and a bit amused. “What do you want?”
Carter opened his mouth to respond, fully prepared to put her in her place, to tell her she was wrong about men. About him. About herself.
No words came out. Did he even have a clue what he wanted?
And if he did know, was it even his to take?
Olive gave his knee a friendly pat as she stood. “Yeah. I thought so.”
Chapter Fourteen
Thursday, August 20
“Yup. Saturday, two o’clock. I’ve had it on my calendar, and . . . Oh. Oh, wow, okay, that’s . . . Yep, I’ll be there. I can’t wait. See you then.” Olive hung up the phone, then promptly pressed her forehead against the cool metal of her refrigerator with a long moan.
She had just made peace with her conscience over calling in “sick” for the Saturday softball game. She’d never in her entire career faked being sick to miss a school day, but for a “for fun” softball game? Olive had her faux cough perfected.
Now, however, the stakes had been raised. Sadly, not to new microscopes for her class. That would be a little too good to be true. But still, it was something. Principal Mullins had just called to tell her that the MVP of Saturday’s game would get to attend the Leadership for Educators conference in NYC in the fall. Normally teacher conferences were in the category of “a necessary evil,” but this was the conference. The number was capped at a couple hundred, so tickets were hard to come by. And instead of a middling hotel in the middle of nowhere, this was at a fancy hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
An all-expenses-paid three-day weekend in the city at a conference she could actually learn something from?
Crap. She was going to have to learn a little something about softball.
Luckily, she knew just the guy to help her.
Not so luckily, she may or may not have thrown a baseball through the kitchen window of his rental house yesterday.
Whoops.
Carter had been good-natured about it, but unsurprisingly, he hadn’t exactly dashed to schedule their next baseball session, which meant . . .
Olive went to the window and used two fingers to peek between her mini-blinds to make sure Carter’s truck was in the driveway. She had a little groveling to do.
Olive was already on her front porch when she halted, realizing it was barely seven in the morning, and that if she were going to ask the guy a favor, the least she could do was brush her teeth. And maybe do something about her tired purple bathrobe and frog slippers. Olive found them to be comfy and charming, but Carter was no doubt more accustomed to seeing women in silk and stockings. She owned neither, but by God, she could and would at least brush her hair.
Olive trudged upstairs and stuck her toothbrush in her mouth as she surveyed her closet, wishing she had one of those baseball-style tees with the colored sleeves. Maybe if she looked the part of a baseball player, he’d be more likely to take another chance on her.
Instead, she settled for her favorite workout outfit—a hot pink sports bra, black muscle tank, and short shorts that she thought did nice things to show off her toned legs. Carter had said once that he liked her legs, and a woman with Olive’s distinct lack of typical feminine charm had to leverage her assets however she could.
She drew the line at wearing makeup, though she did wash her face and pull her hair into an intentionally messy bun. She practiced a smile in the mirror, the sort of demure smile that she imagined made Felicity look freaking darling.
Olive, on the other hand, looked constipated.
She sighed and decided Carter was either going to help her or he wouldn’t. Feminine wiles would have nothing to do with it.
Olive pulled on her bright orange gym shoes, which complemented her outfit not in the least but made her happy, and trotted said shoes across both of their freshly mowed lawns, thanks to Carter, and up the steps to his front door.
She knocked only once, the barest nod toward politeness before trying the door handle, since they’d sort of skipped the get to know each other phase of being neighbors and gone straight to space invasion. At least as far as Olive was concerned.
The faint smell of coffee hit her nostrils—coffee that, if she wasn’t mistaken, was more expensive and more delicious than hers. She followed the scent.
“Carter?” she called, walking into his kitchen. She didn’t find the man, but she did find a coffeepot and, lifting the silver carafe, discovered it full. “Too much for one person,” she said aloud to the empty room. “I’ll help you with this.”
She pulled down a boring white mug—the kind people put into rental homes—from the cupboard and poured herself a cup, then helped herself to a splash of milk from his fridge. Olive took a sip and gave a slow sigh of pleasure. As expected, his coffee was better than hers.
Olive glanced at the duct tape and plastic currently covering the broken window, and winced. She’d called Kenny Leaverson, Haven’s go-to glass guy, on Carter’s behalf after the incident yesterday, but he wasn’t able to make it out until this afternoon.
On second thought, maybe she should ask her favor away from the
scene of the crime.
“Yo. Carter,” she called again, wandering into the hallway, mug still in hand. “Where did you get this magic coffee? And will I have to cash out my 403(b) to be able to afford some?”
The only response was a faint crashing sound from upstairs. She lifted her eyebrows. The thud wasn’t quite big enough to be panic inducing, but it was definitely the sound of someone having a bad morning.
“Carter?” She rested one hand on the banister, hesitating for only a second.
Who was she kidding? She’d been dying to see upstairs since he’d moved in.
“I’m coming up,” she said, making her way up the carpeted staircase. “If you’ve got lady company, now’s the time for her to throw on one of your shirts that will no doubt inexplicably dwarf her, making her look all flustered and delicate.”
“Go away,” came the sharp bark.
She smiled. Ooh! Grumpy Carter was the best.
Olive followed the sound of the irritable command into the bedroom at the end of the hall, taking in the unmade king bed with a floral bedspread that there was no chance he’d picked out himself.
No sign of Carter.
She heard a muffled oath, followed it into the adjoining master bathroom, and stopped short. “Oh my.”
A can of shave cream was on the tiled floor, likely the source of the crash she’d heard, but that wasn’t the cause of her exclamation. Her oh my was inspired by a much more worthy cause: Carter Ramsey shirtless.
Correction: Carter Ramsey shirtless and angry.
Without the navy towel knotted at his waist, it’d be Carter Ramsey naked and angry.
“Did you not hear the ‘go away’?” he asked, giving her the briefest of glances in the mirror.
She ignored this and set her coffee mug on the counter. “You need some help?”
“No,” he snapped.
She ignored this, too, as she stepped closer, because the man obviously needed another hand. Two of them. And hers were the only ones nearby, so he didn’t exactly have a lot of options.
Carter turned toward her, probably to roar at her to get out of his bathroom, but she reached out and, taking both his shoulders in her hands, turned him the other way so she could see his back.
“What the hell did you do here?” she asked in bemusement, taking in the tangled-up sling, which was bunched, twisted, and pulled uncomfortably taut against his shoulder blades. Instead of creating a comfortable rest for his injured arm, the sling now pinned his cast awkwardly against his chest.
“I hate this thing,” he muttered under his breath.
“Can’t say that I blame you,” she said, reaching out and experimentally pulling on the twisted material.
Her fingertips brushed the skin of his back, and he went completely still, glancing over to meet her gaze in the mirror.
They stared at each other in the glass for a long moment, and her mouth was almost entirely dry as she forced herself to swallow, the sound audible in the steamy bathroom.
His skin was still warm from his shower, and just slightly damp, either from the shower as well, or from sweat—he looked to have been wrestling with this thing for a while—and she was suddenly aware of how . . . intimate the moment was.
And how very wifely, or at least girlfriendy, her presumption to help him had been.
“I thought you were supposed to be coordinated,” she said, trying to find their usual banter-filled equilibrium.
“It’s a pain in the ass to put on myself,” he said with a sigh. “And when my skin’s wet, it becomes downright impossible.”
“Why didn’t you wait for your skin to dry?” she asked, tugging at the sling again, trying to find a way to create some slack.
“Well damn, Olive. Brilliant idea. Really useful hindsight advice in my current predicament. Quick, get the time machine!”
“Sarcasm’s not going to detangle you.”
“Neither are you, apparently. What are you doing back there?”
She plucked at a particularly taut part of the strap and let it snap back against his skin sharply. “Do you want help or not?”
“Is that what you call this? Help?”
“Impossible man,” she muttered. “I’m just going to have to unfasten the whole thing. Where’s the buckle?”
“Cutting into my jugular and strangling me,” he groused. “But it’s all slick from my shaving cream, and the damn thing slips every time I try to unbuckle it.”
Carter turned around to face her.
Olive blinked. And stared. If seeing his naked back had been intimate, coming face-to-face with his bare chest added a borderline erotic charge to the moment. He seemed to feel it, too, because for once, neither had a single smart-ass comment.
Olive cleared her throat. “I’ll just . . .” Her hands reached tentatively toward the buckle, which was indeed inexplicably pressed against his throat. Her hands hesitated for a moment, before reaching out once more. “I’ll just see if I can unbuckle this.”
She carefully avoided his eyes as her fingers worked to first flatten the twisted strap; then using two hands because the damn thing was slippery, she squeezed both ends of the buckle until it released with a quiet snap.
Carter exhaled in relief, his breath minty fresh against her face, and before she could rethink the wisdom of it, Olive lifted her gaze to his.
If her breath had hitched before, now it straight up caught in her throat, and she felt a little light-headed at his nearness. For the first time, she fully understood the big deal about Carter Ramsey. He was always attractive, objectively, but up close, with no one around, there was a magnetism about him that even she, practical, implacable Olive Dunn, couldn’t deny. There was a strength about him that she wanted to lean on, a kindness about him that she wanted to cling to, and a raw masculinity that had her fingers itching to reach for the knot of the towel at his waist.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and for a horrible second, Olive wondered if she’d said it all aloud, and he was thanking her for the gross amount of flattering thoughts she’d just had. Then he reached up, tugging the loosened sling from around his neck and pulling it free of his torso, and she realized he’d just been referring to her help with his sling.
“Shouldn’t you put on a shirt before the sling?” she asked curiously.
“I was hot,” he muttered. “I’m allowed to walk around shirtless in my own home in summer.”
“Sure, sure. Benefit of being a guy, I suppose,” Olive said distractedly, peering more closely at the tattoo on his left arm that she was seeing fully for the first time. She’d assumed that when she saw the entire thing up close, she’d know what it was, but it just looked like an abstract pattern.
“What am I looking at here?” she asked, reaching out and tracing a finger along one of the lines, starting at his shoulder and ending just above his elbow.
Carter stilled and made a sort of hissing noise that had her snatching her hand back.
“Sorry. Is it . . . sensitive?”
“Yes, though not in the way you think,” he said, irritably. “And the ink’s just that—ink.”
“But why’d you choose it?”
“I didn’t,” he said with a sheepish smile. “I was twenty-one, all the other guys on the team were doing it, but unlike them, I didn’t have a motivational quote, or cross, or girl’s name I wanted commemorated forever, so I just picked a random pattern from the binder and went with it.”
“What about Felicity’s name?” she asked, unable to stop herself. “Did you consider that?”
Carter’s gaze locked on hers and held for a long moment. “No. I did not.”
Olive felt an uncomfortable sense of relief, and instead focused on the tattoo, though without touching this time. “It’s weirdly sort of . . . hot.”
“Why weirdly?”
She shrugged. “Honestly? If you would have asked me five minutes ago, I’d have said I don’t really get tattoos. But I can see how some ladyfolk would see otherwise.”
&n
bsp; “Some ladyfolk,” he said with a small smile. “But not you?”
She tapped her temple. “Too smart to fall for the likes of you.”
Too aware that you’d break my heart.
“Ah,” Carter said softly.
For a long moment they stood in the humid bathroom, though strangely the steam seemed to be coming more from them than the aftermath of his shower.
Finally Carter gave a quick shake of his head.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked, tossing the sling onto the counter and extending the elbow of his injured arm gently, but repeatedly, stretching the joint.
“Oh, I—” Why had she come over here, again? His near nakedness made it hard to think.
“That’s my mug. Are you drinking my coffee?” he asked, nodding toward the mug. Before she could answer, he picked it up and took a long swallow. Then another. “Yup,” he answered the question for himself.
“It’s really good,” she said. “Like really good.”
He grinned. “I know. I like nice things and can afford them.”
Olive rolled her eyes, a quick response on the tip of her tongue until she realized she was still standing unnecessarily close to him.
She was about to step back in embarrassment when it dawned on her that he hadn’t moved away, either. Now that he was free of the tangled sling, there was no reason for them to be standing in the cramped bathroom, much less face-to-face with only a few inches between them, and yet neither had made any effort to move away.
Granted, he had less room to move than she did, with only the toilet and shower behind him, but he could have, if he wanted to. And he didn’t.
The realization was . . . intriguing.
“So?” he said, leaning his hip against the counter as he took another sip of coffee, and continued to look down at her.
“So, what?”
His eyebrows lifted as he gestured in a wide circle with the coffee mug. “What are you doing in my house—uninvited?”
“Saving your ass, apparently,” she said, reaching up and snagging the coffee mug, taking a sip of her own. “And you’re welcome.”
