by Score, Lucy
The whole market had the festive feel of a summer picnic. And it wasn’t long before Summer was drawn into conversations with Fitz, who was there for a bag of donuts, and Ernest Washington. Rainbow stopped by and officially introduced herself. She passed Summer a brochure on opening a new checking account at the bank.
Beckett took a break to catch up with the other vendors and make himself available to the rest of the residents. Carter called it his “kissing babies lap.” He came back twenty minutes later with a carrier of coffees. “Overly Caffeinated traded me coffee for two dozen eggs. Can you bag ’em up for me, Summer?” he asked, handing over the coffee.
When Beckett left to deliver the eggs, Summer allowed herself a short coffee break to scope out the stand next door. It was an organic milk stand run by a local dairy farm. Their big draw was the frisky little calf they brought with them. Sassy trotted around her portable pen welcoming pats and scratches from treat-bearing visitors.
Jax caught Summer stroking Sassy’s soft ears. “It’s emotional blackmail,” he told her. “How is someone supposed to just pick up a carton of growth hormone-laden milk at the gas station without thinking about happy, grass-fed Sassy?”
“At least they aren’t selling steaks with Sassy here as their spokesperson,” Summer said, giving her a final ear scratch before ducking back under the canopy. “That would be emotional blackmail and a terrible business strategy.”
Summer moved in behind Carter to grab more paper bags and caught the tail end of his conversation with a frazzled looking woman with frizzy auburn hair. “So we’ll see you at ten tomorrow. I really, really appreciate it,” she said.
“Looking forward to it, Tracey,” Carter said in a voice that made Summer believe he was lying through his nice, straight teeth. The woman hurried off carting a half dozen bags with her and Carter turned around to look at Beckett.
“Absolutely not,” Beckett snapped. “There’s no fucking way you’re dragging me into that mess again.” He shuddered. “I still have nightmares about last year.”
“Fine. I can count on my favorite brother here,” Carter said, dropping an arm over Jax’s shoulders.
“I get to be the favorite? Cool.” Jax grinned.
“You won’t think so when one of those baby-toothed monsters sets fire to your pants while the others try to pillage the farm.”
“Does Beckett hate children?” Summer asked.
“These aren’t just any children. They’re Higgenworth Communal Alternative Education Day Care children,” Beckett said, his eye twitching.
When Summer just looked at him, Carter stepped in. “They come from parents who don’t like using the word ‘no’ and think that structure and discipline squash their delicate, little kid spirits.”
“So they’re holy terrors?”
“Exactly. And you, my beautiful girl,” he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in, “get to see them up close and personal tomorrow morning when they come for their annual field trip.”
“Stop making out and get me some change,” Beckett snarked.
“You’re just jealous that you have no one to make out with,” Phoebe clucked.
“That’s low, Mom. Real low.”
Summer counted out ears of corn and bagged tomatoes for Carter while he talked trailer hitches and rainwater barrels with patrons. She was so busy making change that she didn’t notice that Nikolai had arrived until he shoved his camera in her face.
“I didn’t recognize you in that getup,” he said, tapping the bill of her hat. “Didn’t know you were a Yankees fan.”
Summer looked at his designer jeans and leather loafers and grinned. Wait until Clementine got a load of him. “Welcome to Blue Moon Bend,” she said, drawing him behind the table.
“Sorry I’m late. I drove around looking for a parking meter before I realized there aren’t any here.”
She laughed. It was nice to see someone who was more a fish out of water here than she was. “Let me introduce you to everyone. We’ve got all four Pierces here.” She made the introductions and gave Nikolai little pieces on his subjects. Carter the ex-Army Ranger farmer. Beckett the mayor. Jax the Hollywood scriptwriter. And Phoebe, the mother with a master’s degree in agricultural science.
Nikolai had an easy way about him that helped his subjects relax more in front of the camera. She needn’t have worried about him warming up the Pierces. In no time he had the brothers razzing each other and Phoebe smacking heads.
She helped Nikolai stow his gear before jumping out of the stand. “I don’t think portraits will work as well as candids here,” she cautioned him.
Eyebrow raised, Nikolai peered at her over the screen of his camera.
“Sorry. Micromanaging,” Summer waved her hands.
She let him work, let the Pierces execute their well-honed farmers market choreography. Laughing, chatting, bagging. Nikolai quietly capturing the way Carter tossed tomatoes into the open bag Phoebe held. How Beckett stepped in and seamlessly changed the subject when Jax’s conversation with someone shifted to Joey. They functioned as a team and not just at the market.
It gave her a little twinge of envy to know she wasn’t a part of it.
As the farmers market began to wind down early that afternoon, the Pierce brothers started loading up the now nearly empty bushels and baskets. The leftover produce went into Phoebe’s car, which she would deliver to a church that fed the hungry and down-on-their-luck.
Carter pressed cash into Summer’s hand and a kiss on her mouth and sent her off to grab take and bake pizzas from Maizie at Peace of Pizza’s stand for a late lunch back on the farm.
With Nikolai following them in his rented SUV, they headed back to the farm where they enjoyed a casual, friendly lunch on the porch. Nikolai took the afternoon to shoot at the stables and Jax tagged along. Presumably to put himself in Joey’s way.
Summer volunteered to weed and water the flowerbeds while Carter and Beckett repaired a portion of fencing that had been damaged by a tree branch during a summer thunderstorm.
The humidity clung to Summer like a sweater, and in minutes she had worked up a satisfying sweat. It was such a pleasure to discover how good physical labor made her feel. It was comforting, the simplicity of clearing out what didn’t belong and leaving order and beauty in its place.
She gave the front beds a good soaking with the hose before working her way around the side of the house where Carter and Beckett were just finishing up the new fence rail.
“Hey, Summer, when you’re done there we have a field of lettuce to harvest,” Beckett teased.
She glared at him and fisted her hands on her hips.
“Now, Beckett, don’t go picking on her like that,” Carter said. “Summer can’t help that she’s a city girl who doesn’t like getting dirty.”
“Aren’t you two funny?” she snipped. “You know, I don’t mind getting dirty as much as you two mind getting wet.”
She managed to spray Beckett in the chest with the hose and hit Carter full in the face before he gave chase. She dropped the hose and took off, looping around the front of the house and running for her life past the little barn.
She made it as far as the orchard before her lungs and legs gave out.
Crouching behind an apple tree, she tried to catch her breath. Her hands were coated with mud from weeding and sweat trickled down her back.
“Summer, where are you?” His sing-song tone told her she was in trouble if he caught her.
She smothered her laughter as he stalked past her, gaze roaming the orchard.
Carter never saw it coming. One moment he was the hunter and the next the hunted. Summer launched herself onto his back, her muddy palm smearing across his face, through his beard, and up into his hair.
His counterattack was lightning fast and brutal.
He spun her off of his back and tossed her over his shoulder like she weighed less than a sack of feed.
Her victorious laughter quickly changed to nervous giggles when he
started to walk and then run.
“Where are you taking me?” she yelped, trying to right herself.
He smacked her soundly on the ass. “Farm rules, honey.”
She saw the wood of the dock racing by under his feet and realized what he was about to do.
“Carter Pierce, don’t you dare,” she shrieked.
Her protests did no good. Carter sprinted the length of the dock and launched them both off the end.
The icy pond water closed over her and Summer tried to flail her way to freedom. But his strong hands were everywhere. She froze when one of those hands splayed across her bare stomach under her t-shirt. Their heads broke the surface and she could see the fire in her eyes mirrored in his. He locked her legs around his waist, keeping one hand just under her breast.
“Summer.” It was a warning.
“Carter.” It was a dare.
And then his mouth was on hers. The frigid water forgotten, Summer opened for him. His tongue swept into her mouth, stealing her breath and sanity. His hands cruised up, taking her t-shirt with them. He tossed it over his shoulder where it landed with a sopping thump on the deck.
“Here?” she whispered against his mouth.
“I don’t have a condom,” he said, moving his lips over hers.
She pulled his t-shirt over his head and tossed it toward land.
“I don’t want to stop,” she murmured, diving into a kiss so hot it burned.
“Are you sure?” he asked her, nudging her chin so she’d look at him.
“I’m positive.” She crushed her mouth to his.
One hand deftly unhooked her bra while the other yanked the straps from her shoulders.
She shivered as her breasts tumbled free, into Carter’s waiting palms.
He propelled them toward the dock and closed her fingers around the ladder behind her. “Hold on,” he ordered.
Carter dipped below the surface and with a swift tug her shorts and underwear were yanked free. He rose out of the water, droplets clinging to his hair and skin, and reached for her.
Even in the cool water, the heat from his body warmed her. He wrapped her legs around his waist again and she felt him, hard and ready against her.
“Don’t let go,” he told her when she tried to release the ladder.
Her arms quaked and her breath came in short gasps. “Look at me, Summer.”
She did as he asked and in his face she saw a raw, desperate need. In his eyes, something softer.
He entered her with one powerful surge that tore a cry from her throat.
“I could have you like this every day for the rest of my life and it still wouldn’t be enough.”
His whispered words broke something loose inside her.
“Carter,” she sobbed out his name. “I love you.”
He answered her with his body. Giving until she could take no more.
In the water, under the sun, they loved each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Higgenworth Communal Alternative Education Day Care disembarked from their fleet of minivans at precisely 10:35 Monday morning.
“I’m so sorry,” puffed Tracey, the center director, as she hauled a sticky toddler in a tie-dye t-shirt out of a car seat and handed her to Carter. “Ernie and Wahlon tried to escape again. Grandma Phyllis barely caught them before they climbed the fence. And then Katie Bell there threw up in the van, and we had to pull into the car wash to get everyone cleaned up.”
Carter held Katie Bell out at arm’s length, and she giggled, reaching for his beard.
“Don’t let her get hold of that,” Tracey warned, hefting a little boy out of his seat. “She’s little but has fists like a vice grip.” She passed him to Summer.
“Okay, HCAEDC adults,” she called. “Let’s do a headcount before we lose another one.”
The five chaperones looked woefully unprepared for the chaos that a dozen tie-dye clad toddlers would wreak. Four of them were crying. Two were rolling around in the gravel yelling “Hulk smash!” A little girl was trying to fit her head through the spindles on the front porch. And Grandma Phyllis was sliding a flask back into her fanny pack.
“It’s liquid Benadryl,” she assured Summer, sneezing three times. “I’m allergic to —” She sneezed again. “Everything.”
The little boy in Summer’s arms turned and squished her cheeks between his chubby little hands. “Fis’ face!” he shrieked. “Fis’ face!”
She heard the click of Niko’s camera.
“If you don’t put that camera down and help us, I’m going to Hulk smash you,” Summer said politely through her fish face.
Katie Bell took advantage of Carter’s distraction and grabbed two fistfuls of beard. Niko’s camera clicked again.
The headcount came out wrong three times until Jax came out of the house clutching a pigtailed little girl like a football under his arm. “I found her watching TV inside. I could only find one of her shoes.”
Summer put her charge on the ground and hurried to Carter’s rescue. She tickled Katie Bell until the little girl let go of her prize. Carter dumped her in a pile of kids and yanked out his cellphone. “We’re gonna need all hands on deck for this.”
The tour started off well enough with the adults, now including Joey and Phoebe, forming a circle around the rainbow-clad toddlers.
“This is not part of my job,” Joey grumbled as a three-year-old boy walked behind her smacking her.
“Butt. Butt. Butt.” Smack. Smack. Smack.
He wound up again, but Joey was faster. She whirled around and pointed a finger in his face. “Listen, Lucifer Jr., smack me or anyone else here one more time today and I’m feeding you to the goat.”
Lucifer Jr. let out a satisfying scream and ran to the opposite side of the circle.
“There’s supposed to be safety in numbers,” Carter muttered.
“I think we need more adults,” Summer whispered back.
“I wish you had herding dogs,” Tracey called to Carter, as she chased a little boy with glasses and a fishing hat back into the fold.
The man walking behind Summer — Grandpa Willis — caught up to the pigtailed girl who was taking off her shirt. “Mai Tai Joplin! We keep our shirts on in public, don’t we?” Mai Tai shoved a finger up her nose and wandered off. “These are their field trip shirts,” he said to Summer. “We make ‘em wear ‘em so we can see them if they wander off. One time we lost one in dressed camo for an hour in the corn maze. He had beheaded the scarecrow before we could get to him.”
Summer pasted a smile on her face and hurried to catch up with Carter.
“What do you usually do on the tour?” Summer hissed to Carter.
“We used to take them to the horse barn, but Joey put an end to that last year when they ate the sugar cubes they were supposed to feed to the horses. It was horrible. It took the horses two days to recover from the hell that broke loose in that barn.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Look around you. Is that really a stretch? We also used to do hay rides, but two years ago Johnny ‘Future Juvenile Delinquent’ Delroy climbed up on the tractor and put it in gear. “I still have nightmares about it,” he shivered. “Now we just walk them around until they get sleepy and then we send them back to the school for lunch.”
“How long until then?”
“11:30.”
She grabbed his watch arm and checked the time. “We’re never going to make it.”
“Stay strong, honey. I’ll protect you as long as I can.”
Carter’s protection lasted all of three minutes until Johnny’s little brother, Jimmi picked up a handful of goat poop and threw it at Summer.
“Now, Jimmi, what have we told you about throwing poop?” Tracey sighed.
Summer looked down at her shorts and gagged. “I need to go get cleaned up,” she told Joey. Nikolai’s camera clicked and Summer wanted to smash it into his face.
“There is no way in hell you’re leaving the circle,” Joey
said, firmly gripping her arm. “They’re trying to pick us off one by one. I’m not letting that happen. Now shake it off and stay strong.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Carter announced. “Close ranks and I’ll be back in five.”
“Where are you going?” Jax demanded. “Never mind, I don’t care. Send me instead.”
“Just keep walking. I’ll catch back up,” Carter answered, jogging away.
Summer watched him go with a combination of envy and abject fear. “He’s never coming back, is he?”
“He wouldn’t abandon us,” Joey said, but Summer heard the uncertainty in her tone.
They got the kids, skipping and running, past the CSA barn and around the eggplants and tomatoes without losing any when Carter caught up with them.
“Hey kids! Who wants to play in a fenced in pasture with a locked gate?”
A dozen little ones cheered and stampeded after Carter as he jogged back toward the house.
Summer and Joey jogged to catch up. “This is so wrong,” Summer said, watching Carter and Jax wade through the pack of children now safely locked in the pig paddock.
“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Tracey sighed. “I could go to the bathroom if I wanted to instead of holding it for eight hours. Or I could eat a sandwich without worrying that one of them figured out the key code to get outside again.”
Grandpa Willis sidled up next to her. “Do you think the parents would go for this if we called it free range play? We could pad the walls of the meditation room in the basement.”
“I think it’s worth a shot,” Tracey nodded, mesmerized by the glimpse of freedom.
“And what does a cow say?” Carter yelled.
“Mooooooooo!” The kids shouted. Except for Katie Bell, who barked.
“I swear to you,” Carter said, from under the ice pack on his forehead as he held Summer’s feet in his lap. “Our children will never behave like that.”
Summer shifted the pillow off her face and peered at him on the other end of the couch.
