Forever Hunted

by Kathleen Brooks

  “Can’t you take it to the crime lab and DNA it or something?” Aniyah asked. DeAndre had succeeded in drawing her off the topic of what else he knew.

  “I tried. But half the town is filled with spies and top clearance military personnel. I can’t walk up and snag a piece of hair from their head and they not know what it’s for. And when I ran the DNA through the computers, I got nothing. No match or no near match to any criminals. Nothing. It’s like they don’t exist,” DeAndre said, sounding frustrated.

  “I guess I could accidentally feel everyone’s butt to see who has no panty lines,” Aniyah said. Reagan’s face flamed as Carter rubbed his hand over her panty-free ass. She felt his body silently shaking with laughter behind her and elbowed him in the stomach, which only made him shake more.

  “I don’t think that would go over well, baby.”

  “At least give me a hint on who is pregnant so I can place a bet at the café. I have had my eye on this cute gun—gun print lingerie,” Aniyah said, although it sounded more like a question.

  “No way. And besides, I already placed my bet. You’re not the only one saving up for something. Come on, let’s see who’s at the party and who isn’t. Maybe we can get some clues as to who these panties belong to.”

  Carter squeezed her hand and pointed to the back of the garden. Reagan nodded as they tiptoed out of their hiding spot to the back of the garden. Reagan followed Carter as he jogged around the huge house and slid to a stop at a side window that was open to the warm night air. “Here, I’ll boost you into the library and then you can say you were using the bathroom. I’ll walk back to the party while you’re inside.”

  Carter brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her with a smile still on his lips. “You could be pregnant, you know. Maybe we should take a test,” he teased.

  Reagan rolled her eyes as she cuddled against him. When he touched her, her whole body relaxed, and she found for the first time the idea of being married and pregnant not so scary. Not when it was Carter with her. “You know that it’s not me. I take extra precaution. But I do wonder who it is.”

  “We can debate it tonight. My place or yours?” Carter asked.

  “After my dad hunted me down at Layne’s house the other day, I think it’s best to meet at my house. He doesn’t think I would be brave enough to bring someone to the farm.” Reagan was joking, but Carter didn’t laugh. She kissed him quickly on the cheek and pretended not to notice. He had said he wasn’t going to wait forever for her to get over her fear of her father, and the look he gave her now was telling her time was running out. She needed to find a way to confront her father once and for all so she and Carter could be happy together. No matter how she tried to pawn off their relationship as the two of them having fun, it was much more than that. It was way more. She wanted him in her life forever. She didn’t want to watch Nikki, the Keeneston Belle on the hunt for a husband, rub her butt implants against his crotch at another wedding and not be able to do anything about it. No, it was time. She just needed to prepare for it.

  “I’ll see you soon.” The I love you was left unsaid once again.

  Carter’s lips were tight as he boosted her up and into the open window.

  “Reagan!” Dread filled her as she looked up from where she’d somersaulted through the window and onto the soft rug to find Piper staring at her with the phone to her ear. She quickly hung up on her call. “What on earth?”

  “Cousin special!” Reagan cried as she scrambled to her feet. The cousins had a long-standing deal that if they needed help with no questions asked, they called it a cousin special. It got them out of many a scrape with their overprotective fathers. “Hey, what’s the matter?” Reagan asked as self-worry fled and concern for her cousin filled her.

  Piper had been talking a lot about a new experiment she had been working on the field of nanotechnology and virology. She’d been working almost nonstop for the past year and when they got together, it was clear she was under strain even when she pretended not to be.

  “Nothing,” Piper said with a false smile.

  “Nothing?” Reagan echoed with disbelief as she rushed to her cousin’s side. “You’re white and shaking like a leaf. Who was on the phone?”

  “Really,” Piper said with a forced smile, “it was nothing. Just something at work not going according to plan.”

  “Piper, you know you can tell me anything—”

  “And will you tell me why you just fell into the room through the window?” Piper challenged, with steel to her voice that Reagan had never heard.

  “Point taken. Just know I’m here if you need me.”

  Piper nodded her head silently as she put her phone into her back pocket and let out a deep breath. “I’m sorry I snapped. There’s a lot going on at work right now. Come on, let’s get back to the party.”

  Reagan put her arm around her cousin as they walked back to the party. “I’m really happy for Layne.”

  “Me too,” Piper said with a real smile as they saw Walker kiss Layne right there in the middle of the entire town.

  “How does he do that and not get killed by Uncle Miles?”

  Piper shrugged. “The same way your sister and Matt do. Your dad will accept whoever you marry. You know that, right?”

  “I don’t think he will.”

  “You’re not giving him, or the man you’re dating, enough credit.”

  “I’m not dating anyone,” Reagan said, even though it sounded hallow to her ears.

  “Right,” Piper laughed. “And I didn’t provide an alibi for you three times in the last two weeks. Take a chance on those you love. It’s time, Rea.”

  “I could give you the same advice,” Reagan told her and noticed her smile instantly fell.

  “Soon,” Piper whispered a second before they were engulfed in the crowd once again.

  * * *

  Carter slid his arm around Reagan as she set the bowl of popcorn on her lap. What he would do for this woman. Carter pressed play as the romantic comedy she’d rented began.

  “Have you started looking into a second plane?” Carter asked as she cuddled up against him.

  “I have my eye on a couple of them. I’m hoping they don’t sell quickly and the price goes down a little. How are the races coming?”

  Carter and Reagan slid into comfortable chatter as the previews played. They talked about work, the book they were both reading, and then Reagan thanked him for watching the chick flick with him in such a way he thought about renting the sequel for the next night.

  “Are you expecting someone?” Reagan asked as car lights from the driveway flashed through the window. “Oh, shit. Don’t tell me my father found me.”

  Reagan leapt up with the bowl of popcorn and ran down the hall to the guest room. She hid in the dark, leaving the door only slightly cracked so she could hear as the doorbell rang.

  “Hey, bro,” Reagan heard Sienna say as she walking into the house.

  “Carter, man, I may have lost a little respect for you,” Reagan heard Ryan say to Carter. The television was suddenly muted and Reagan covered her mouth so she didn’t laugh out loud. But then there was a snort and thundering footfalls that shook the lights.

  A big black nose shoved its way into the door and snorted. Reagan battled Hooch as he slobbered all over the leg she was using to try to shut the door.

  “Woof!” the deep bark reverberated through her as his nose shoved through the door, snotted on her shirt, and shoved against the popcorn bowl.

  “What is it, Hooch?” she heard Sienna call out.

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing. Want something to drink?” Carter asked, diverting them.

  “No thanks. We’re not staying. We were over at Mom and Dad’s and thought we’d stop by to see how you’re doing,” Sienna said.

  Hooch opened his mouth to bark again and Reagan shoved a handful of popcorn into it. The dog’s tail thumped madly against the hardwood as he sat for more. Reagan gave up thinking she could close the door
. As she listened to Sienna, Ryan, and Carter chat about the pregnancy, their parents, and the farm, Reagan ate a piece of popcorn and fed a piece to Hooch.

  “Hooch! Let’s go!” she heard Ryan call out. The dog whimpered, but after she fed him the last piece of popcorn he thundered down the hall.

  Reagan looked sadly at her empty bowl and waited until Sienna and Ryan were out of the driveway before she came back out. She pouted at Carter and held out her empty bowl. “He ate my popcorn.”

  “You know, if we told them—”

  Reagan groaned. “I know. We wouldn’t have to hide. I’m thinking about it, Carter.”

  “I’ll make you some more popcorn while you think hard about it. I’m ready, Rea. I’m not hiding us forever.”

  “I know,” Reagan said, taking a deep breath. Soon. She would have to tell the world she was with Carter. Not that she wasn’t proud as she could be to be his girlfriend. She already knew Carter was a great guy and friend, but he was also a great boyfriend and partner. She wanted to be with him in a more public way. She just worried that her father would cause a scene and Carter would think she wasn’t worth the hassle. She’d do anything she could to keep Carter, even if it meant lying to everyone else. But her time was almost up.

  8

  Love was worth fighting for. At least that’s what Carter Ashton told himself as his girlfriend’s father leapt on top of the round reception table covered in a white tablecloth at Layne and Walker’s wedding.

  Crystal flutes filled with champagne tipped and rolled to the ground under the three-hundred-year-old oak tree lit up by tiny white lights where the reception was taking place on the Davies Family Farm. Some flutes smashed when they fell on the grass as Cy Davies launched himself through the air at Carter, which sent the table teetering. Carter shoved Reagan behind him and waited. It wouldn’t take long for Cy to get to him, and Carter was done running.

  Carter knew this was coming the second he’d pulled Reagan into his arms and thoroughly kissed her in front of the whole party, including her very overprotective father. But he’d decided he’d given Reagan enough time to come to terms that their relationship was forever. It was time to become public. So he’d tossed back a couple of bourbons as he watched Reagan across the dance floor at yet another wedding that wasn’t his and decided that was the time to do it. He’d walked across the dance floor, held out his hand with his heart in his palm, and asked Reagan to dance. When she’d said yes, he knew she was ready to tell the world they were together and that made him so damn proud he’d kissed her right there in the middle of the dance floor.

  There were screams, the loudest coming from Cy’s wife, Gemma, and Carter’s own parents, Will and Kenna. Reagan fought to get between Carter and her father, but Carter saw his hopefully soon-to-be brother-in-law, Matt Walz, swoop in and suddenly Carter couldn’t feel Reagan behind him anymore. He heard her, though. She was cussing up a storm at Matt for holding her back. In that instant, she sounded remarkably like her father.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing kissing my daughter?” Cy bellowed as he charged across the dance floor like a raging bull. The dance floor, filled with friends and the entire Davies and Faulkner families, parted like the Red Sea.

  “I’m kissing my girlfriend, sir,” Carter spoke loudly and clearly a second before Cy’s fist connected with his chin.

  “I’m so glad our parents moved to Florida,” Carter heard one of the Faulkner women say to her cousins, who were visiting from Shadows Landing, South Carolina, for the first time. Stars danced in front of Carter’s eyes. Or maybe they were the lights in the tree blurring as he fell to the ground.

  Nope, Carter checked. He was still standing. That alone was a victory for him. In that instant, a strong arm wrapped around his shoulder as the groom, SEAL Team Six member Walker Greene, smiled at him and winked.

  “Uncle Cy,” he said with his slow Charleston drawl to the man that had been his uncle for about one hour. “As the newest member of the family it’s my turn to catch up on welcoming the new beau.”

  Carter wasn’t a slouch. He was over six feet tall and had grown up working on a farm. He had muscles, but he looked skinny next to Walker’s thick body, which was built to survive any condition known to man, including a week alone on the ocean after his team leader had tried to kill him. Carter also knew Walker regularly worked out with Cy, his father-in-law, Miles, and Ahmed, the biggest badass of them all even if he was retired from the Rahmi Security Forces.

  Cy was breathing hard. Reagan was threatening bodily harm upon her father. Gemma was smiling, and his parents had taken a stand on Carter’s left side.

  “Come on, Uncle Cy. It’s my right having survived your best try at cracking me, right?” Walker grinned. He didn’t wait for an answer, instead Carter just felt Walker tugging him away from the dance floor as they headed for the nearby barn.

  “I’ve learned so many uses for a spoon. I can’t wait to show you,” Walker said loudly and Carter heard Miles chuckle. Carter didn’t know what he was in for, but as he looked back into the worried hazel eyes of the woman he’d fallen in love with over the course of their secret relationship, he was determined to face it head on. He’d do anything for Reagan, even go toe-to-toe with her family. A family he’d once considered almost as close to him as his own.

  * * *

  Reagan slammed her fist backward and heard Matt grunt as she hit her brother-in-law in the balls.

  “You know your sister and I are trying to have kids, right?” he groaned as he loosened his hold on her.

  Reagan didn’t know where to go or what to do first. Go after Walker with Carter or tackle her father to the ground and tell him he was ruining her life. In the end, she didn’t have to make the decision because her father made it for her as her twin sister, Riley, and their cousins, along with their very pregnant cousin-in-law, who also happened to be Carter’s sister, Sienna, stepped up to have her back.

  Sienna rubbed her belly, which was cutely rounded with her and Ryan’s first baby, who was due in four months. Ryan, bless his torn heart, stood looking back and forth between his wife and his uncle as Sienna stepped around Reagan and stood patiently as Cy blustered about hiding a boyfriend from him.

  “Are you done?” Sienna asked him calmly. Reagan looked to her sister, Riley, questioningly. Riley shrugged, indicating she didn’t know what Sienna was up to either.

  “She lied to me. She lied to all of us. She’s been sneaking around like a teenager. And any man who isn’t brave enough to date my daughter in public doesn’t deserve her!” Cy yelled over Sienna’s head in the direction Walker had dragged Carter. Reagan felt the hit as if her father had been standing in front of her.

  “Carter has wanted to from the very beginning. I’m the one who told him to keep it secret because of you. You ruin everything!” Reagan yelled back as anger and tears battled within her. She loved her father. Loved him with all her heart. But this overprotectiveness had to stop. He’d run off every boy she and Riley had brought home, until Matt.

  “Now are you done?” Sienna asked Cy again.

  “Don’t you dare try to give me that mumbo-jumbo you give to your football players,” Cy growled.

  Sienna shook her head. She was the sports psychologist for the local professional football team. “My brother is a kind and compassionate man who has too much respect for his friends to fight you. That’s what makes you the luckiest man here. Your daughter will be loved, respected, and cherished. But nooooo, you have to be all big and bad over the fact that your thirty-year-old daughter is having sex with my brother. Out of everyone Reagan could have brought home, I think she made one hell of a good decision.” Sienna took a deep breath and smiled a threatening smile that had Reagan taking a step back from her. “I married into the Davies family, right?” she asked, smiling over at Ryan whose mom was Cy’s sister.

  Reagan’s father nodded slowly in agreement, dumbfounded that the lovely and sweet Sienna has raised her voice at him.

&
nbsp; “So, I thought I’d settle this as a Davies instead of as an Ashton. I love my brother with all my heart, and while he has too much respect to fight back, I don’t. And you’ve gone and pissed me off. You should know by now to never, and I mean never, piss off a pregnant lady.”

  Reagan gasped as Sienna pulled back her hand and slammed her fist into Cy’s nose.

  “Ow!” Sienna cried as she clutched her hand. Reagan looked to her father who absorbed the hit as if it were nothing. Instead, his face was locked in surprise. His mouth was slightly open and his eyes wide as Will and Ryan raced to Sienna’s side and wrapped their arms protectively around her.

  “You hit me,” Cy sputtered in shock.

  “Someone needed to,” Sienna said with a huff as she shook her hand.

  “If she hadn’t, then I would have,” Will Ashton said, standing eye to eye with Cy. “You’re my friend, Cy. You’re practically a brother to me. How could you think so little of my son?” Shaking his head, Will turned to Layne and gave her a strained smile. “Congratulations, Layne. I’m sorry we’ve ruined your wedding.”

  Layne smiled kindly as she hurried forward and grabbed Will’s hands. “It’s not a party until a punch is thrown.” The band took the hint and began to play a fast song.

  “I’m going to find my son and then head home. We’ll stop by when you get back from your honeymoon to see you both,” Will told her as he reached for his wife and daughter.

  “I look forward to it. You’ll find them behind the barn. I’m sure Walker hasn’t taken him far,” Layne said before kissing Kenna’s cheek.

  Sienna looked unsure of herself as she stopped in front of Reagan. “I’m sorry I hit your dad. Please don’t hate me.”

  All the steam went out of Reagan. If only she’d been braver and told the truth sooner, all of this could have been avoided. And now her cousin Ryan was also stuck in the middle. Stuck between his family and his own wife and in-laws. Sienna looked to her husband who stood in the middle of them as she reached for her father’s hand.