She blushed, her cheeks turning bright pink. “Speaking of which… where are my panties? I found the dress hanging in the bathroom, but the panties are nowhere to be seen.”
“You really did throw up a lot. It went everywhere,” he said. “As for the panties… I need a souvenir, don’t I?”
“Forget it. Just get me back to my car so I can put this whole mess behind me,” she said through clenched teeth. Her jaw was so tight it was a wonder the muscles didn’t simply snap.
Reaching the bottom of the steps, he didn’t put her down, but continued to carry her until he reached his truck. Opening the door, he deposited her on the ancient and cracked vinyl seat in a repeat of the previous night’s actions. He walked around to the driver’s side and was climbing behind the wheel just as she reached behind her and dug out one high heeled shoe that was protruding from the seat.
“I don’t guess the other one is in here, is it?” she asked.
“It might be. I’ll poke around later and see if I can’t find it,” he offered. “Of course, I can’t exactly bring it to you, now can I?”
It still stung. Hell, he knew his reputation. It had never bothered him before. Why it was pissing him off now was a mystery. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Yes, he did know. He wanted her. Somehow, without him realizing it, Josephine Marcum had become one of the sexiest women he’d ever met. Beautiful, smart, feisty as hell, and all bundled up in a petite, curvy body—yeah, he was sunk.
“If you find my shoe, just bring it to the library… discreetly, of course,” she said primly.
He couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face at her tone. She’d be a wildcat if she ever let loose, he thought. “I like that.”
“What?”
He was poking the bear, or the wildcat in this case. “Your librarian voice, all prim and proper… sitting there in my pants. Not a stitch on under them, and still on a moral high horse tall enough to kill you if you fall.” The glare he received in response to that made it completely worthwhile.
“I really don’t like you.”
Carter smiled wider. “Then maybe you should give me back my pants.”
As they pulled onto the road, she made not a sound. But if looks could kill, Josie Marcum would have laid him out in two seconds flat.
They’d reached the end of Main Street, where it connected to the highway that would take them back to the scene of the crime when Josie began to flail about in the seat. Carter turned toward her just as she managed to unbuckle the seatbelt and slide all the way down to the floor. She was tucked under the dash like a stowaway.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“My parents!” she hissed back at him in a low whisper. “They’re coming this way!”
Carter looked up and saw them through the intersection. They were facing them, but with the sun so low in the sky he doubted they would have seen her. “You don’t have to whisper. The truck’s engine is loud enough that they couldn’t hear you if even if you yelled… which you do seem to do an awful lot.”
“Carter, I can’t let them see me like this!”
The desperation was real. She wasn’t being melodramatic or carrying on for effect. And it wasn’t embarrassment either. This was something else altogether.
“Why, Josie? Just tell me why.”
She looked up at him and the hurt he saw in her eyes was almost too much to bear. “Because I can’t disappoint them. Ever. They saved me and everyone in this town knows it. If I don’t live up to that, Carter, I’ll never live it down.”
“What the hell does that mean?” he demanded, coasting through the light after it changed. William Marcum gave him a wave, but there was little warmth in his smile. Of course, Carter knew he hadn’t done a whole lot to endear himself to the local ministerial association. The bastard son of a drunken criminal and a girl who should have known better, everyone in town had expectations of him but none of them were good.
“It means that everyone in this town looks up to them. They always tell Mommy and Daddy how good it was of them to bring me home, what wonderful people they are to have adopted a child from such a horrible place… If I embarrass them—.”
Frustrated, he slapped his palm against the steering wheel. “Fucking hell, Josie! They’re not going to send you back!”
“No,” she agreed. “They won’t. But I don’t ever want them to wish they had.”
He hated Fontaine in that moment. Josie being adopted was no secret. And over the years, he’d heard the talk often enough. Everyone always told her how lucky she was, how grateful she ought to be. But what that really boiled down to was people saying she’d gotten lucky and had been giving something she hadn’t earned or didn’t deserve. Ultimately, they were saying the same thing to her that they always said to him. You’re not good enough.
“Your parents love you… and you don’t put conditions on that,” he said softly, reaching down to help her up out of the floor.
“It feels like there are conditions,” she admitted. “Make good grades. So I did. Make better grades. So I did. Don’t date that boy because he’s trouble, so I didn’t. I’ve never once gone against the things they’ve told me to do… until last night. And you see what a disaster that turned out to be!”
“It doesn’t look so bad from here,” he answered. “You’re more than where you come from, Josie Marcum.” And so was he, even if no one would ever believe it.
2
Josie rolled onto her side as the phone buzzed on the night stand. She smiled as she saw the name on the screen. In the week since he’d rescued her, nightly phone calls and daily texts had become a thing.
“You have the wrong number,” she said as she answered.
“How can you be sure?” he replied suggestively. “You don’t even know what I want yet.”
But God above, she wanted to. “Behave, Carter.”
He chucked. “Where’s the fun in that, cupcake? But since you won’t misbehave with me, I guess I’ll have to.”
He didn’t mean it. She knew that. Carter flirted the way most men breathed, it just happened whether he intended to or not. Deciding to move the conversation to safer waters, she asked, “What wonderful things did you find at that auction in Florence today?”
He sighed. “The house had been picked pretty clean by the time we got there. Got a few windows that Savannah will probably have me turn into something crazy… we did manage to get a real pretty mantle, but I think that’s just because the damn thing was marble and no one else wanted to carry it. Thank God we made Emmitt go.”
She giggled at the idea of Emmitt attending an auction surrounded by antique dealers. Carter’s mountain of a cousin terrified most people, but he’d always been kind to her. He’d taken excellent care of every stray she’d ever carried up to his door and there’d been more than a few over the years.
“So you have to give me all the details,” she urged.
“About the mantle?” he asked. “It was heavy as shit. What other details do you need?”
If he’d been in front of her, she would have smacked him for being obtuse. “About Bennett and Mia Darcy!” she said. Rumors had been swirling all over town about the two of them. Their secret engagement, the family feud between the Darcy and Hayes clans, it was the stuff of romantic dreams. And now the daring rescue with Bennett pulling Mia to safety after she crashed her car in a flooded creek. It was definitely swoon worthy.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Bennett pulled her out of the water. That’s all I know. That’s all I want to know.”
“You don’t think it’s romantic?” she asked. “He saved her… after all those years of pining for her, he risked his life—.”
“Bennett is a Boy Scout, Josie. It could have been Samuel Darcy in that damn creek and he would have pulled the son of a bitch out. That’s just who Bennett is. Don’t be reading more into this than there is. It’s not a romance novel. It’s not one of those damn Lifetime movies you love.”
&
nbsp; “You don’t have an ounce of romance in your soul, do you?” Josie demanded. “You can’t tell me that Bennett doesn’t still have feelings for her.”
“I’m sure he does,” Carter agreed. “But it’s not my fault he’s a dumbass.”
“Carter, I’ve seen them… Out in public, when they run into each other. It’s like the air is just charged around them. You have to see that they belong together?”
He sighed again, this time sounding more than a little irritated. “What I see is that she broke his heart once. She walked out on him without a backward glance, and given half the chance, she’ll do it again. I’m not going to be Team Mia, Josie. Ever.”
He was unreasonable. “And people think Emmitt is the sourpuss! Clearly they’ve never heard you on this subject!”
The last thing Carter wanted to talk about was Mia Darcy. He’d gotten used to his nightly phone calls with Josie, of talking to her while he pictured her laying in bed wearing something white, innocent, and still sexy as fuck. It bugged the hell out of them Mia Darcy was now fucking that up too. She was in Bennett’s head making him crazy. The whole family was in an uproar over it, but no one said anything to Bennett. No. They came to him and had him talk to Bennett. Or distract Bennett. Or try to talk some sense into Bennett. He was done with it all.
“Dammit, Josie, can we not just talk about something else?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said, and from the clipped tone of her voice he knew she was pissed. Lord she could go from rainbows and kittens to daggers and bullets in two seconds flat.
Since there was no hope in hell of putting that cat back in the bag, he decided just to poke it and see what happened. “You could tell me what you’re wearing.”
“Ooooooh!”
And there it was. He’d rendered her speechless, left her hissing, spitting, clawing and probably throwing shit. His work was done.
“Listen here, Carter, I’m not one of your floozies! I’m not chasing after you. I’m not sleeping with you. I’m not having phone sex with you!”
“I didn’t ask you to,” he pointed out reasonably. “I just asked you what you’re wearing. It’s supposed to get cold tonight, Josie, and you’re so little that it wouldn’t take much to turn you into a popsicle.” She was probably going to key his truck. No. No one would bother, he reminded himself. Hell, they’d have to find a spot that was more paint than rust.
The sound of her taking deep breaths and counting slowly made him grin. “I don’t know what makes you fly off the handle like that, darlin’. I really don’t.”
“I ought to change my number,” she said. “I swear you just enjoy pissing me off.”
He didn’t even bother to deny it. “You do look awful cute when you’re mad… want to snap a pic and send it to me?”
“No. I don’t. And I’m wearing something hideous,” she said. “Thermal, even. Something so unsexy it’ll mark me for life!”
He didn’t laugh at that. “Josie, haven’t you figured out by now that it’s not what you’re wearing? It’s just the fact that it’s you.”
She sighed then. He could hear her flopping back on the bed, the springs of the ancient iron bed bouncing. Lord did that give him filthy ideas. She’d sent him one picture of her laying on that bed, fully clothed, nothing even remotely suggestive about it but it had fueled more fantasies than the Playboy magazines he’d stolen from Emmitt as a kid.
“What are we doing, Carter? I think we’re friends and then you say things like that… I just don’t know what to do.”
“We are friends,” he replied, kicking off his boots and laying back on his own bed. He stared up at the ceiling and wished with everything in him that she was there with him. “But we’re not just friends, Josie. Or at least that’s not what I want us to be.”
“Carter—.”
“Don’t say no,” he urged. “Just think about it. If you decide it’s not worth the risk, fine… I’ll never bring it up again. But you wanted fun, Josie. Your words, not mine.”
“I know that,” she answered.
“I can make it fun, Josie.” He’d use every damn thing he’d learned. It wouldn’t be just fun. It’d be unforgettable. Carter knew that if he could get her in his bed once, he could keep her there, at least long enough to get her out of his system.
“If,” she began, “I agreed… it would have to be a secret. I won’t be just another name on the list.”
“There is no list,” he replied. Half the women he was rumored to have slept with were nothing more than friends, and the other half, well, he hadn’t broken any promises to anybody. “And I don’t give a damn what any one thinks but you. I can be as discreet as you need me to be.”
“I have to think. I’ll let you know,” she said.
Which meant he’d overplayed his hand and would likely never hear from her again. Fuck.
3
Carter answered his phone knowing it wouldn’t be a call from the one person he wanted to hear from. Since their conversation the day after Mia’s accident, he hadn’t heard a word from her. And now, Bennett was losing his shit which was undoubtedly the reason his mother was calling.
“Hey, Mama,” he said. He could see his plan of going to the bar and getting completely shitfaced, and maybe bringing home some Amazon woman who’d make him completely forget about his own little pixie from hell, going down the toilet.
Lynnette Hayes clucked her tongue at him like a worried hen. “Carter, you need to go pick up Bennett and head out to Emmitt’s. That boy needs to clear his head… Some good hard work on the farm will fix him right up.”
It wouldn’t. The only thing that would fix Bennett up was climbing right back into Mia Darcy’s pants, but that caused a whole slew of new problems and he sure as hell wasn’t about to say that to his mother. Lord, he wanted to be done with it all. He wanted to not be assigned to take care of poor, broken hearted Bennett or to lure surly ass Emmitt out of his house or keep Savannah from letting her mouth write checks her ass couldn’t cash. For someone that was a reputed layabout, he sure as hell didn’t get a moment’s peace from people asking him to fix things.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m on my way to Bennett’s now. Emmitt already texted me.”
Lynnette grew quiet. “Emmitt can text? Does he say more that way than he does in person?”
Carter laughed out loud in spite of his shitty mood. He couldn’t help it. “No. Not really. And yes, in spite of the fact that his hands are the size of a Christmas ham, he can text.”
“All right, then. Get Bennett out there and let him work off some of the mad… or whatever else it is that’s got him wound up like a long tailed cat. And don’t drink too much while you’re out there! You boys act like fools when you get drunk!”
Carter pulled his truck into Bennett’s driveway, knowing his mother was watching from her front window across the street. Climbing out of the truck, he waved a little and headed for the porch. From the corner of his eye, he saw a streak of movement across the backyard. Turning his head fully, he caught sight of Mia Darcy’s retreating form as she sped through the woods and back to her very own ivory tower.
“Shit,” he muttered, even as he opened the door to let himself in. Bennett was standing in the kitchen looking poleaxed, for lack of a better word. “Dude, what the fuck?”
“Mind your own business, Carter,” Bennett snapped, but he didn’t bother to turn around.
That pissed him off. Hell, when Bennett had mooned over her a decade ago, Carter had been the one to drag him kicking and screaming back to the land of the living. “Last time I checked you were still my blood… and she’s still the woman who tried to rip your heart right out of your chest just like in the Temple of Doom, so I figure that makes it my business.” There was no way this was going to go well. Bennet would be heart broken, the whole town would be talking about them. Again. And any time a Hayes tangled with a Darcy, Samuel would start calling favors. Property taxes doubles, mortgages were suddenly called in or payments were misplaced. That m
an had fucked them over more times than any of them could count.
“You figured wrong. I can handle this.” Bennet had poured them both glasses of bourbon as he spoke.
Carter laughed—hard. He bent over double with his hands on his knees and laughed until he couldn’t breathe. The sheer ridiculousness of Bennett, the original love sick fool, telling him he could handle it was just too much. Finally, breathless and wiping tears from his eyes, Carter rose to his full height and shook his head. “You’re so damn dumb I almost feel sorry for you.”
Bennett passed him a glass of bourbon and a warning look to accompany it. “I get that you don’t have more than a passing acquaintance with sympathy, Carter, but in general, people don’t express it by laughing so hard they damn near piss themselves.”
“Can’t help it,” Carter replied taking the glass and slamming the bourbon before handing it back for a refill. It burned like fire, but damn it was worth it. What he had to say wouldn’t be taken well, but that didn’t make it any less true. “It’s funny now. But when she chews you up and spits you out again, none of us will be laughing… We don’t need another reason to hate the Darcys. We got plenty already.”
The Darcys had been his family’s enemy for so long he wasn’t even sure why they all hated one another. He just that knew it ran deep and Bennett and Mia would never not be caught in the middle of it. They both needed to accept it and move the hell on.
After a long pause, Bennett nodded. “You’ve made your point. Why are you here?”
Carter shrugged, trying to make it appear casual and not like the whole family plotting to get him out of the house and away from temptation. “Emmitt’s tearing down that old barn today… figured a little destruction might improve your mood.”
“You’re driving,” Bennett said as he moved toward the door. “You’ve had less bourbon.”
Carter followed Bennett outside and then climbed behind the steering wheel. Bennett was shifting in the seat, digging between the cushions until his hand emerged, clutching a very tiny and very pointy high heeled shoe. He cocked an eyebrow at Carter. “Changing up your wardrobe a little?”
Carter (Bourbon & Blood Book 3) Page 2
