by Lauren Layne
It was, soon going the way of her bra on her floor. His shirt was harder, having to go up and over his head without jarring his shoulder or cast, but the struggle was worth it.
She’d already seen Carter shirtless that day in the bathroom when she’d helped him with the sling, but having him shirtless and hers to touch was heaven.
Her fingers boldly explored the hard planes of his chest, the defined grooves of his abs, the broad, firm expanse of his back, her short nails dragging down slightly on either side of his spine as he let her investigate every inch of his exposed skin.
She wanted more.
His lips caressed her ear as his hand stroked the curve of her waist. “If I could, I’d carry you to the bed, but given the circumstances . . .”
“Maybe some other time,” she said with a smile, even as a little part of her heart acknowledged that there was unlikely to be another time. Or at least very many.
She led him upstairs, though it took five times longer than it should have because they kept stopping to make out like a couple of horny teenagers.
Finally inside her bedroom, Olive went to her toes to press her mouth against his, moving her fingers down to the fly of his jeans, flicking the button open. He exhaled against her mouth as her palm slid into his open fly, rubbing the straining bulge beneath his boxers.
Carter kicked off his shoes, and together, they wrangled his jeans down and off until she was staring at Carter Ramsey wearing nothing but green boxers and a cast.
“Real people don’t look like this,” she muttered, her hands on his waist as she looked him up and down.
“Trust me. I’m as real as it gets,” he said, wrapping his casted arm gently around her waist. His other hand brushed her hair from her face, the gesture almost tender as he pulled her against him for a searing, possessive kiss that made her feel achingly wanted.
Achingly his.
He pulled back, breathing hard, looking down at her bare breasts, his hand sliding down her stomach, hooking a finger into her underwear before his gaze came up again. “Tell me you have a condom.”
“Ah.” Her mind went blank. “Maybe?” Her heart sank, as she mentally went through the contents of her nightstand. Once upon a time, for a flash-in-the-pan boyfriend, she’d probably had a box, but she was pretty sure it was long gone.
“Hold on,” he said, stepping back. “Hold the fuck on.”
He bent, rummaging in his jeans for his wallet, his fingers gratifyingly shaky as he opened it, riffling through the contents.
He pulled out a foil packet with a grin.
She laughed at his boyishly triumphant expression. “What is this, high school?”
“God, I hope not,” he muttered. “I was an idiot in high school. Missed out on all the good girls.”
His playful words touched a part of her heart so deeply, she thought she might crack.
“Off,” he said, pointing at the underwear she was still wearing.
“Off,” she echoed, pointing at the boxers he was still wearing.
With two hands, she was faster, and reached out to help hurry him along until finally they were both naked and he was nudging her back on the bed, his body lowering to cover hers.
“Is this okay?” she asked, with a wary glance at the cast propped up along the side of her face.
“Okay doesn’t even begin to cover it,” he said, tearing open the condom with his teeth and maneuvering it on one-handed with ease. His knee nudged her legs apart as he settled all the way over her, his eyes searching her face, looking slightly stunned. “Your body fits mine so perfectly.”
And then he proved exactly how perfectly they fit, sliding inside her.
Olive wanted to watch his face, wanted to commit the moment to memory, but then he began to move, and her eyes closed in need, her legs wrapping around his waist, as he murmured words she couldn’t make out over the roaring in her own ears.
This was why people made such a big deal about sex, she realized, as reality seemed to get a little further away from her with each stroke, with each brush of his hand, his lips . . .
This was why people made such a big deal about lo—
Carter took her over the ledge before the thought could take hold, capturing her cries with his mouth.
Her body still clenching around his, Carter plunged his hand into her hair, fingers tangling into the strands as he thrust firmly into her one last time, his body bucking as he groaned into her neck.
Finally, their bodies relaxed, slowly, together, as he lowered atop her, his weight warm and welcome.
She kissed his injured shoulder, smiling at the slightly salty taste of him.
Carter made a muffled noise against her neck, something that might have been I’ll move in a minute.
But she was in no hurry. She wrapped her arms around Carter Ramsey and would hold on as long as she had him.
Which wouldn’t be long at all.
Her smile faded as reality settled through the rose-colored orgasmic fog.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Thursday, August 27
Carter sat at his kitchen table, beer in hand, feet propped on the chair next to him, as he flicked down the papers he was holding so he could see Olive over the top.
“Be honest,” he said, taking a sip of the beer. “Did you seduce me the other day so I’d help you mark these RSVPs?”
She looked at him over the top of the RSVP card she’d just pulled out of an envelope and gave him a smug smile.
“At least you fed me,” he said with a fake sigh, eyeing the box of pizza. He contemplated another piece and decided against it. He had very specific plans for the rest of his evening with Olive, and they’d be better served without an extra helping of bread, sausage grease, and mozzarella.
First, though, they had to go through the stack of reunion RSVP cards that had been mailed to Olive’s house.
“Remind me again, what year is it?” Carter said. “Don’t they do this stuff electronically these days?”
“You can blame your sister for that,” Olive said. “She insisted that sending out old-fashioned paper invitations was classier.”
“And yet, Caitlyn’s not here,” Carter grumbled.
“Do you really want her to be?” Olive said slyly. “I’d have to put on pants.”
“Excellent point,” he said, reaching under the table to find her bare knee.
“Ah ah.” She swatted his hand. “We have to finish these first. Ugh, we should have gone with the ones without glitter.” She wiped her fingers futilely on one of the discarded envelopes.
The mention of glitter reminded him of their first meeting—well, their first meeting this decade—and he smiled at the memory. Who would have thought that he and the green-glitter woman next door would end up here, postcoitus, and headed toward round three for the day if Carter had his way?
“Do you still have that green glitter?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“No reason.” The thought of a naked Olive covered in glitter was strangely arousing. For that matter, the thought of Olive naked in any capacity was arousing.
Carter shifted uncomfortably in his chair. There was sex, and then there was whatever she’d been doing to him—with him—the past couple of days.
He didn’t think it had a name, but the closest he could come up with was heaven.
“Do I even want to know what you’re thinking right now?” she asked with a knowing smile.
“Let’s just say you need to start reading those names faster,” he said, reluctantly turning his attention back to checking names off the list.
It took them about a half hour to finish the rest of the cards, and after the final envelope was in the box, Olive tossed the last RSVP on the table. “Done. And we have a lot more people coming than I expected. Nearly the entire class. Your sister was right about your presence being a major draw.”
One name had been conspicuously absent. Carter had no idea whether Felicity still planned to attend the
reunion, but he guessed no. When he’d met her at SherryLee’s shop to tell her that he was glad to see her but he wasn’t interested in seeing her, she’d taken the news calmly, but he knew her well enough to know she’d been surprised. And disappointed.
Carter wondered whether she’d be as disappointed if she knew that the best years of his career were behind him. Wondered whether part of the reason she’d even considered reconciling with her high school boyfriend was because of his pro-athlete status.
Then there was Olive, who didn’t care in the least that he was famous. Who would probably prefer it if he weren’t.
Carter leaned forward and held out his casted hand, waiting with an expectant look as she tentatively placed her hand on the exposed part of his fingers.
“Shouldn’t you be wearing your sling?” she asked.
“Nah. I’ll be officially done with it next week anyway, and the angle of it has started to make my shoulder hurt more.” With his good hand, he flipped hers over, palm up, and used his thumb to massage the center of her palm.
“And then what?”
“I’m not sure, exactly. It’ll depend on what they find at my next appointment.”
But he didn’t want to think about that. Or the long year ahead of him dedicated to recovery. A year in which he’d be in the city, and Olive would be . . . here.
“So, what’s next on this reunion business?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Easy stuff,” Olive said. “I just need to make a few phone calls to secure the red carpet rental. Try to figure out if I can find a champagne fountain in our budget. Hire some kids from the theater department to dress up as paparazzi.”
“Taking this ‘Before They Were Famous’ theme to the max, huh?”
She smiled distractedly, pulling her hand back and taking a sip of her water. “It’s as close as most of us will get.”
“Lucky dogs,” he said with a wink.
She gazed at him over her water glass, then set it aside. “Did you like it? At the beginning?”
“What?”
“Being famous.”
He was a little startled at the wording of her question. “Who says I don’t like it now?”
“Do you?”
He thought it over. “I don’t mind the being-famous part. It’s the fact that nobody seems to want to see beneath the fame that gets to me.”
“I’ve seen beneath it,” she said, continuing to gaze steadily.
Carter felt something strange in his chest. “I know.”
She waited a beat. “It’s terrible.”
Carter burst out laughing, relishing how this woman could make him feel things he’d never felt before and make him laugh like he’d never laughed before, all within the span of ten seconds.
“All right, so what can I do to help?”
“Nothing,” she said, standing and picking up the pizza box, carrying it to the fridge. “In fact, it’s probably a good idea if you back off entirely.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, watching as she shoved the oversize box into the fridge with impressive force.
“Well, half the town already thinks something is brewing between us,” she said, still jamming the box onto the shelf. “And I’m a terrible actor. If they see us together, they’ll know in an instant that we sexed.”
“Sexed? You’ve been spending too much time in the science classroom, and not enough in English class. You can’t turn sex into a verb.”
“I’m a biology teacher, which is all about sex, so I can do whatever I want,” she said, lifting her fist in triumph when the pizza box finally caved to her will and she could close the door.
“Fine, call it whatever you want, so long as we can keep doing it.”
She gave him a sultry smile that looked both nothing like Olive and exactly like Olive as she walked back toward him. “We can do it again—lots of agains—if,” she said, lifting one leg to drop over his lap before lowering herself to straddle him, “we keep it a secret.”
Carter was so distracted by the lush, right feel of her body on his that he nearly missed her words.
He reached around and wrapped his fingers gently around her ponytail, pulling the long blonde hair over her shoulder and inspecting the silky strands as he processed her words. “You want to keep it on the DL?”
“You disagree?” she asked, setting her fingers against his jaw and tracing her nails over his five-o’clock shadow, as though learning his shape.
“It’s . . . new,” he admitted.
She smiled. “Let me guess. Most women want to advertise they’re sleeping with the Man of the Year?”
Carter winced. He’d forgotten that he had only another week until the magazine hit newsstands, trying to think about it as little as possible. Not because the title itself was so bad, or the story unearthed some big secret, but because he couldn’t shake the sense that when it came out, everything would change. This would change.
“Don’t worry,” she said, giving him an affectionate pat. “I promise you’re still the most impressive notch on my bedpost.”
“Then why the secrecy?” he pressed, trying not to be irked that she was apparently embarrassed by their relationship.
She sighed and let her hand drop, then pulled back until her ponytail slipped from his fingers. Her expression turned serious. “It’s not that I’m ashamed. And I’m not embarrassed,” she said, reading his mind. “It’s just . . .” Olive looked down, gathering her thoughts, before meeting his eyes once more. “In a week or so, this will all be over. You’ll be back in the city, I’ll be back at school. Who knows when we’ll even see each other again, and when we do, there’s a good chance we’ll both be married. Me, probably to a fellow teacher, who has a hairpiece but is sweet to me. You, to a model, who also has a hairpiece in the form of extensions, who’s sweet to you. I’m fine with that future. But in the meantime, I don’t want to be that woman.”
“What woman?” he asked, trying to ignore how much the picture she’d just painted bothered him.
“The one Carter Ramsey left behind,” she said with a smile that didn’t get anywhere near her eyes.
Carter’s heart seemed to freeze in his chest, followed by a sharp sinking feeling in his stomach. “Olive.”
“No. No. No.” She lifted her hand and placed three fingers against his lips, silencing him. “Don’t misunderstand. I won’t think of myself as the woman you left behind. I neither want you to stay, nor do I want to go with you, and I can’t think of a situation less suited to long distance than ours. But I can’t stomach other people thinking that.”
“I never pegged you as someone who cared about what others thought,” he said, his words slightly muffled against her fingers.
She gave another of those tight smiles. “I’ve worked hard not to be. Most of us eccentrics learn early on our role in society, especially in a small town. You can either let it define you, or you can lean all the way into it. I’ve done the latter. But I’ve also worked hard to establish the Olive Dunn brand. Being associated with you will undo all of that. I’ll cease to be the idiosyncratic but lovable high school teacher and become the other Haven girl that Carter Ramsey left behind.”
“Ah,” Carter said, understanding Olive a little more clearly now than he ever had. It wasn’t that she’d built walls, per se. She was as open a person as he’d ever known, she knew who she was, and she genuinely liked who she was. But much of Olive’s sense of security came from being the person who defined who she was. She let people know who Olive Dunn was, not the other way around. In many ways, it was the complete opposite of his life, where there was nonstop speculation on whom he was dating, how he was feeling, what he was thinking.
One more reason the two of them were incompatible in the long term.
“Are you disappointed that I won’t be making a marriage pact with you?” she teased.
“Well, of course not,” he said, smiling, because she expected him to. “How could you when you’ve got lofty plans to marry that nerdy
teacher?”
“Exactly.” She patted his chest. “Also, that pact was idiotic.”
It was. He’d known it then, and he definitely knew it now.
And yet, there was apparently still a stupid eighteen-year-old boy inside him, because he desperately wanted to make Olive promise . . . something.
But Olive didn’t belong in his life. He didn’t have a normal nine-to-five schedule. He traveled more often than he was home, and when he was home, it had to be in the city.
Olive belonged here.
Even if he used his considerable resources to come see her in Haven as often as he could, after his injury healed, the best they could manage would be a few hours here and there between games and travel.
“So we’re agreed?” Olive asked softly. “What happens between us stays between us?”
“Depends,” Carter said with a wicked grin, running his hands over her thighs. “Can we be done with the reunion stuff for the night? I’ve got some other, more interesting things in mind.”
She smiled against his mouth. “I like interesting.”
Carter smiled back, even as his chest ached. I like you.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tuesday, September 1
Nearly a month ago, Carter had stood in his penthouse kitchen and debated which was worse: the injury, or the fact that he’d been named Man of the Year.
He didn’t know if it was ironic or fitting that the very day he had his cast removed was the day the magazine hit newsstands. He knew only that his phone had been buzzing all day with congratulations from friends and gentle ribs from teammates, and that . . . he didn’t mind in the least.
The cast was off.
And he had someone to celebrate with.
Over the course of his career, Carter had developed a system for whenever he had something to celebrate. Depending on how big the win, how lucrative the contract, how highly regarded the accolade, he rewarded himself accordingly.
Outrageously expensive champagne after being named Rookie of the Year, even though he had barely been of legal age to drink and didn’t particularly like champagne. A trip to Vegas to celebrate signing one of the largest contracts in MLB history, even though he didn’t particularly like to gamble. A brand-new Porsche after winning his first AL MVP, even though he rarely had need for a car.