by Lauren Layne
Not that he was into her. But still, the way he’d looked at her on the field . . .
Just heat of the moment. A heat he probably assuaged later with Felicity.
“It was really nothing,” Olive said, feeling like a broken record as she started writing on another name tag. “I’ve had blinks last longer than that kiss.”
“It’s not just that,” Caitlyn said, plucking at the comforter in agitation. “Carter wouldn’t even be in town if it weren’t for me dangling Felicity’s divorce and return to Haven in front of him.”
This time Olive caught the flinch in time, but damn, Caitlyn was delivering a lot of unintentional jabs here. Olive didn’t want to be reminded that she and Carter were an unlikely pairing. Or that he and Felicity were a very likely pairing.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Olive said, placing the cap back on the marker with more force than necessary. “He’s here. And now she’s here. Everybody wins.”
“You don’t,” Caitlyn said softly.
Olive was already shaking her head. “I’m exactly the same as I’ve ever been. Perfectly happy with my choices in life. I have my dream career, I’m living in the town I grew up in, which I love. I have amazing friends, I own my own house, I know how to change my own tire and grill my own steaks, and none of that changes just because your brother decided to kill time with me as his source of amusement until his lady love arrived.”
Caitlyn rubbed her stomach again as she studied Olive. “That was a lot of information.”
Olive shrugged. She’d meant every word. She was happy. She had been happy before Carter strolled into town. And she would be happy again after he left. So what if in the in-between time she was feeling a little . . . confused.
“What if I were to tell you that I don’t think Felicity is right for him?” Caitlyn said.
“I’d tell you that it’s none of my business. And that maybe you should have thought that through before using her to get him to come back to Haven,” Olive couldn’t resist adding.
“I know,” Caitlyn said glumly. “I just missed him. A couple of days at Christmas and box seats to his games a couple times a year isn’t the same as when he lived down the hall and I could go to him for everything.”
Olive’s hand paused in the process of writing out another name tag. Caitlyn’s words hit a raw spot, because Olive had learned exactly what it was like to have Carter within shouting distance. And the past couple of days, she’d also learned the pain that came with having that taken away.
It was a pain she should get used to, since after the reunion, he’d be gone for good.
“You should tell Carter that,” Olive said, finishing the last sheet of name tags and beginning to gather their supplies. “Let him know you miss him and want to see him more often. And next time, leave his ex out of it.”
“Aha!” Caitlyn’s eyes lit up. “Did you hear your tone just then? Snippy. You do hate that she’s here.”
“Not that she’s here,” Olive said, choosing her words carefully. It’s the reason that she’s here.
As far as Olive knew, Carter still hadn’t mentioned to his family about his and Felicity’s stupid ten-year marriage pact. She didn’t actually think they could be so stupid as to assume they’d still be compatible enough for marriage simply because they’d had some sweet puppy love in their teens.
But then, what did she know about relationships, or love, for that matter? Maybe it really was like the movies, and some people were simply meant to be. Maybe they could lock eyes after years apart and immediately resurrect their soul mate status. Wasn’t that how it worked in The Notebook?
Come to think of it, she never had liked that movie as much as everybody else. Sofia had made her watch it, then had been scandalized when Olive hadn’t cried: “If that movie doesn’t make you cry, nothing will.” Olive had shrugged—she simply wasn’t wired that way.
Saying goodbye to Caitlyn, Olive loaded the name tag supplies into her car and then decided to leave Bingo at Caitlyn and AJ’s and walk to the next item on her to-do list to get some fresh air.
She was halfway down Franklin Street, nearly to the florist, when she passed by SherryLee’s coffee shop. There, sitting at the table by the window, in plain view for everyone to see, were Carter and Felicity.
Holding hands.
Olive reversed course before either could see her and managed to make it back to her car before she proved Sofia wrong.
Olive could cry after all.
Carter was grinning as he jogged up the steps to Olive’s house, bottle of Zinfandel in hand. He also had picked up a pan of what his mother had assured him was the best lasagna in town—other than her own—but he’d left it in his refrigerator to be retrieved later, on account of the whole one-arm thing.
Even with the annoyance of still being hampered by his injury, even with the surgery on the calendar and the iffy prognosis that came with it, Carter felt the lightest he had in weeks as he reached for Olive’s doorknob to open it without knocking, as had become second nature over the past couple of weeks.
Carter’s smile faded slightly when he found it locked.
Impatient to see her, he tucked the wine bottle under his slinged arm and knocked. There was no answer, so he gave it a second before knocking again. Bingo was in the driveway, so he knew she was home.
“Hey, Olive,” he called when, after another knock, she still didn’t respond. He rattled the doorknob.
“Take the hint, dude!”
Carter started in surprise when he heard her voice, sounding as though it was directly on the other side of the door. Carter felt an unexpected flicker of hurt at the realization that she’d become the one person he could never wait to see, the one person he’d never close his door to. And that the feeling was apparently not mutual.
“What’s wrong?” he asked softly, already wanting to fix it.
“Nothing. Go away.”
He frowned. The Olive he knew was not the type to hide when something was bothering her. And definitely not the type to lie.
“What happened to ‘this is Haven, we don’t lock doors’?” he said, twisting the door handle again, futilely.
“That was before there were unwanted men on this block.”
Again, the flash of hurt, though at least now he had confirmation that he was at the crux of what was pissing her off. And, if he was really honest with himself, it was deserved. He had been avoiding her since the softball game, needing to sort things out, first in his own head, then with his mother, then, perhaps most crucially, with Felicity.
“Look, Olive,” he tried. “I know that things were weird after the game.”
“Oh, you mean when you dropped me in the dirt, and then chased after your ex?”
Carter flinched, then rested his forehead against her front door, frustrated. “It wasn’t what you think—”
The door yanked open, and he nearly fell forward, but her palm found the center of his chest, not in a gentle-caress kind of way, but in a firm, back-the-hell-up kind of way.
“Really?” she said. “Which part wasn’t what I thought? That I kissed you, and you promptly dropped me to go after the woman you pledged to marry if you were both single? Or that you disappeared completely after that?”
Carter understood her anger—he regretted it. But he also felt a little surge of elation at the fact that she cared.
Still glaring at him, her eyes dropped to the wine still tucked beneath his arm. She reached out and tugged it, tucking it under her own arm. “Thank you. Bye.”
Carter laughed in disbelief. “Seriously? Can’t we just—”
“What did you think, Carter?” she interrupted. “That Felicity would come back into town, you guys would pick up where you left off, and you and I would pick up where we left off? It’s different now. I’m happy for you two, but I don’t have any interest in being the third wheel to your love story.”
“You’re getting it wrong,” Carter said, frustrated.
She sighed wearily and l
eaned against the doorway. “How so?”
He swallowed. He had no idea what he wanted to say. It’s not as though he and Olive were going to ride off into the sunset. He’d be gone in a couple of weeks, and she’d be right here, same as she’d always been. She had no interest in being a pro baseball player’s girlfriend, and he didn’t know how to be a high school teacher’s boyfriend.
He didn’t even want that.
Did he?
“Yeah, okay then. Good talk,” she said dismissively, starting to close the door again.
He reached out and slammed the door open, and just started talking. “I’m sorry I left you after the game. I wasn’t expecting her. It was a knee-jerk reaction, but—”
“It’s fine, Carter,” Olive said, the resignation in her voice making him panic.
But it wasn’t fine. For the first time since she’d opened the door, he looked at her—really looked at her—and saw what he’d missed before. The slight red around her eyes and nose.
Olive Dunn had been crying.
Over him?
The selfish, possessive part of him wanted it to be so. The friend in him ached at the thought.
He reached out to touch her cheek, but she jerked back, slapping his hand at the same time. Carter nearly smiled, but her next words erased the urge.
“I saw you,” she said quietly. “This afternoon, the two of you at SherryLee’s. Holding hands.”
His stomach dropped, because he knew exactly how that must have looked. “It wasn’t what you think,” he said quickly.
“I don’t really care. I wish you guys all sorts of cute babies.”
She started to close the door again, and this time he blocked it with his body. “I’m not having babies with Felicity. I’m not doing anything with Felicity. I’m here, Olive,” Carter said a little desperately. “Standing on your front doorstep.”
Olive rested her cheek on the side of the door. “I do still want to be your friend, Carter. I just need a day.”
Friend. Carter realized in that moment one didn’t explain things to an irate Olive Dunn. They showed her.
Acting on instinct and weeks’ worth of building attraction, Carter stepped toward her, closing the distance between them.
He took his time lowering his head, letting his lips move over hers with enough gentleness not to scare her away, but enough urgency to let her know that friendship didn’t have a damn thing to do with his reason for being here at this moment.
She didn’t kiss him back, but neither did she move away. She stood perfectly still, as though thinking through the pros and cons of his nearness, and had he not been so turned on, he might have smiled because it was exactly the way he’d expect a biology teacher with Olive’s brain to do things.
Carter lifted his head, but didn’t step back. He wanted her. But the next move had to be Olive’s.
He held his breath as he rested his cheek against hers, hoping he hadn’t destroyed everything they’d built by kissing her. But he also knew if he and Olive didn’t confront the heat between them, he’d regret it long after he left Haven.
Still, she didn’t move, and just as Carter’s heart began to sink in realization that she didn’t feel the same way—that he’d imagined the pull between them—Olive lifted her hands to his face and set her lips against his.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tuesday, August 25
Olive had never really understood the concept of losing oneself in lust. She’d seen it in movies. She’d read about it in books. She’d heard Kelly describe it in far more detail than she’d ever really wanted to hear about her friends.
And though she understood that sort of primal reaction on an academic level—they were all animals, after all—she’d never experienced it.
She’d never even hoped to experience it, having decided after a string of meh sexual encounters that perhaps she wasn’t wired that way. Or perhaps, more likely, she simply didn’t inspire that reaction in men.
In kissing Carter, Olive realized her error. It wasn’t that she wasn’t built that way, or that men didn’t feel that way. It was just that she hadn’t been with the right man. This man.
For a long, gratifying moment, Carter simply let her kiss him—he let her discover and enjoy him, her palms becoming accustomed to the hard planes of his face, her fingers learning the texture of his hair, her mouth discovering that he tasted like mint and man.
But then she bit his bottom lip, and his control snapped. He stepped all the way into her foyer, kicked her front door shut, and a second later had Olive pinned against that same door, his hand braced next to her head as he tilted his head and crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss that left her breathless.
Olive’s hands slid to his waist, fingers greedily pulling at his shirt, needing him closer. Carter groaned, the hand he’d braced on her door sliding down to cup her face, tilting her head back, his tongue plunging deep.
The last man she’d kissed had been about her height, but Carter had a few inches on her, and years of turning his body into a high-performance machine had made him wonderfully broad and hard. For the first time in her life, Olive understood what it meant to feel fully woman. Understood that it wasn’t about strength and weakness, or big and small, but simply male to female. Want to want.
Olive bit his lip again, and he rewarded her with another aroused groan, followed almost immediately by a sound of irritated pain.
“What’s wrong?” she asked when he pulled back, breathing hard as he frowned down at her.
“I’ve hated this fucking sling from the very beginning, but never as much as at this moment,” he said, his lone good hand sliding from her face, over her shoulder, and down to her waist, his gaze raking over her body as though it were killing him to have only one hand to explore her with.
Some little devil nudged Olive on, and instead of sympathizing, she tortured him further, easing him back slightly so that her hands could grip the hem of her tank top. Holding his gaze, she tugged the shirt upward, up and over her head, tossing it aside and standing before him in only a black bra.
Carter’s breath whooshed out as he looked down at her, and Olive felt a rush of feminine power. She may not be experienced at this, but she knew when a man wanted her, and even if it weren’t for the bulge at the front of his jeans, the heat of Carter Ramsey’s gaze told her that he wanted to be here.
Wanted her.
“God, Olive,” he murmured, lifting his hand and brushing the backs of his fingers over the swells of her breasts.
This time it was her breath that left her on a gust, and he gave her a knowing look before slipping his fingers beneath the fabric, almost but not quite grazing her nipple. Her back arched of its own accord, wanting more, and he gave her a wicked smile, continuing his teasing strokes.
“I hate you,” she managed as his lips found her throat.
“I know.” His fingers slipped lower, brushing against her nipple, and he smiled against her neck when she cried out.
Over and over, his fingers played with her, his movements hampered by the tight fabric, until he’d finally had enough and removed his hand, sliding it to her back. She frowned in protest at the loss of his hand on her breast, and was just about to join his complaining about his splint when her bra slipped free, his adept fingers having managed the clasp one-handed.
She freed herself as Carter’s mouth moved from her neck down to her collarbone, his teeth nipping just hard enough to thrill before he bent down farther, his mouth hovering above the tip of her breast for a torturous heartbeat, before his tongue licked over her in a teasing flick.
Olive let out a desperate cry as she arched into him. His lips closed over her nipple, warm and wet as he stroked her with his tongue in a hot swirling motion that made her see stars. His hand played with her other breast, and then he returned to the first, back and forth, until she could barely remember her own name.
Carter’s hand slid to the waistband of her shorts, and then he scowled up at her. “Of all the days yo
u don’t wear your gym shorts.”
“What?” she asked, wits still scattered.
“Well,” he said, knees unbending as he straightened and pressed a kiss to her mouth, “if it weren’t for this damn button and zipper, my hand could be down your shorts right now, where I’m guessing my fingers would find you wet.” His palm slid down, cupping her, and she gasped.
Her eyes closed, her head pressing back against the door, she was trying to clear her mind and get control of the situation, but it was so hard when he was stroking her through the shorts, the air cool on her breasts, still wet from his mouth.
“Help me out with this damn button, and it’ll be worth your while,” he said with a smile against her cheek as his free hand tugged impatiently at her jean shorts.
Control was overrated.
Taking a deep breath, she lifted her eyes to his and did as he asked, her fingers fumbling only a little as she undid the button, the sound of the zipper rasp almost electric.
His fingers found her blue boy short–cut underwear. It didn’t even pretend to match her bra, but he didn’t seem to care. Not when he traced his fingers over the front of the fabric, and not when he moved his hand up slightly, then back down, under the fabric . . .
They both moaned when his fingers found her wet and ready for him.
“I knew it,” Carter said huskily, his fingers sliding over her, exploring at first, then more deliberately, stroking her clit in torturous circles before moving down to push a finger inside her.
Olive’s fingers dug into his shoulders as she fought against the climax, not wanting the moment to end even as she needed release.
He slid another finger into her, pushing her ever closer to the edge, and somehow she found the willpower to grip his wrist. “Wait.”
He stilled immediately. “You want me to stop?”
“Not even close,” she said gently, easing him away from her slightly as her fingers dropped to his shoulder. “Now, let’s see if this damn sling is as easy to get off as it was to get on.”