“I don’t know. I—” Regan stopped, frozen in her seat as the room and everyone’s faces swirled around her. “I gotta go.”
“What?” Ellie was on her feet almost as fast as Regan. “What the hell is going on?”
Regan couldn’t answer. All she could do was press her hand across her eyes, then her mouth, as Jayne stared back at her with something Regan could only describe as hope.
“Nick can drive y—”
“No!” She yanked her jacket off the back of the chair and shook her head. “No, I’ll take a cab.”
And less than a minute later, she was giving the taxi driver instructions to Jayne’s house. If he wasn’t there, she’d damn well sit on the front porch until he got there.
Carter had never told her to stay, he’d hardly even put up an argument. All he’d asked was if she was sure that’s what she wanted to do.
How could she have missed that? Shit! A few days ago, she’d torn a strip off Julia and Rossick over the same thing, about how he wanted them to be happy, to have what they wanted, not what he wanted, because he loved them.
Regan pressed her head against the headrest and stifled the growl that threatened to explode out of her. Of all the times to get a law-abiding taxi driver…she should have made Ellie drive her; they’d have been there in half the time. When they finally pulled into Jayne’s driveway, Regan threw a wad of cash at him and all but fell out of the car. It took her a second to find her footing, but one look at Carter sitting on the front step of the house, a beer in one hand, Duke lying beside him, and her knees almost gave out again.
She could do this. It’d be easier if her stomach would stop flip-flopping like that, but he was a doctor, so she wouldn’t be the first person to throw up on him, right?
Carter didn’t move, just sat there watching her approach with eyes so dark she almost missed how his pupils dilated.
Almost.
“Hey.” She swallowed hard and licked her lips. “You okay?”
“Great.”
Even Duke frowned at Carter’s grunt.
“Good,” she said, forcing her breath into her lungs. “So I was, uh, wondering a few things.”
Carter didn’t say anything, just lifted the bottle to his lips and drank.
“Right. Okay. Um, the first thing I was wondering was this.” One step closer. Then another. “What do you want?”
He lowered his bottle slowly, frowning as he did.
“You,” she said. “What do you want? Don’t think about what anyone else wants or needs, and don’t think about making anyone else happy. Just think about you, what you want, and what’s going to make you happy. What would that be?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even have to; it was in those eyes, those freakin’ dark eyes that stared back at her with the words he was too scared to say. Words she was just as scared to say herself. Or hear.
Even so, she couldn’t stop her lips from twitching against a grin that bubbled out of her no matter how hard she tried to stop it.
“Okay. Good. Whew.” She huffed out a breath and nodded, her eyes wide with relief. “That’s very good. But it means I need to tell you something; a confession of sorts.”
His hand shook ever so slightly as he lifted the bottle to his lips again and croaked out a tight, “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I lied to you.”
“ ’Bout what?” Carter rested his elbows on his bent knees, and dangled the beer bottle from his fingers.
“I, uh…” She bit her bottom lip, shrugged slowly and tried once again to rein in her grin. “I am, in fact, completely useless with a hammer.”
It started slowly, one heartbeat at a time, his eyes softened and the tension around his mouth began to ease.
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. And don’t get me started on screwdrivers. All that lefty-righty-loosey-goosey stuff.”
“Lefty loosey, righty tighty.”
“Whatever. The point is I’m going to need someone who knows about hammers.” She pulled the tight scroll out of her sleeve and held it out for him to take, then waited while he read it. Twice.
“Holy shit.” He whistled, low and short. “That’s, uh…”
“I know. But here’s the thing. It’s too much space for one person, and since you said yourself that Jayne and Nick don’t want you hanging around being the third wheel all the time, you’re going to need somewhere to live. So I was thinking…”
“Regan…”
“What?”
He pushed slowly to his feet and turned toward the door, leaving her standing there like a complete…oh, he was just putting Duke inside. By the time he closed the door and turned back around, she’d managed to swallow most of her panic.
“You want me to be your roommate?”
“Yeah. In my room. With me.” The only way she could calm her trembling was to keep blathering on. So she did. “But don’t think just because the house is paid for that you’re going to get to live here for free, because I’m still going to charge you.”
“Yeah?” He set his bottle next to the porch rail and took one step down.
“Damn right. For starters, I’m going to want free medical care for the rest of my life.”
“I think I can manage that.”
“And you’re going to have to renovate the garage on your own because I wasn’t kidding before, I really am completely useless at most blue jobs.”
“No problem. I know all about hammers.”
“You mean Nick does.”
His grin grew slowly, as he shuffled down to the next step. “Whatever.”
Finally, he moved down to the bottom of the stairs and stopped right in front of her. The air between them snapped, her fingers itched to reach out to him, but she didn’t. Not yet.
“There’s something else.” Swiping her tongue over her parched lips, she swallowed again and squared her shoulders, but before she could say it, he was right there, his mouth a breath away from hers.
“You don’t have to say it,” he murmured, smiling slowly. “I already know.”
Regan’s lip trembled and her eyes filled, but when she tried to say it, to push the words off her tongue, all that came out was a disgustingly unattractive choking laugh over a sob-hiccup.
“Nice,” he smirked, using the hem of his shirt to wipe her nose. When she looked down, trying to get a grip again, he just lifted her face up to his and kissed her, soft, gentle, and oh-so-freakin’ slow. “I love you, too, Red, but are you sure? What about…I mean, I can’t….”
“You can’t what? Have kids?” She tipped her head a little to the left and sighed. “News flash, Sparky, you already told me that.”
“I know, but—”
“There’s no ‘but.’ I know some guys think it’s a testament to their manhood to be able to father a child, but just because your sperm works doesn’t make you a good dad.” She slid her fingers up around the back of his neck and gazed up at him. “And you, Carter, are going to make an amazing dad.”
“So are you saying…?”
“I’m saying if you’re open to it, at some point down the road, we should talk about adopting or fostering a child or two.”
“Oh, I’m open, sweetheart, but I was hoping for something more like…” Slowly, Carter’s grin returned, getting bigger as he first held up two fingers, then three, slowly raised a fourth, then wavered a little when his thumb inched its way out, too.
Regan laughed quietly as she gently pushed his thumb and half of his fingers back down. “Easy there, Sparky, one thing at a time.”
“Right. Okay,” he breathed, resting his forehead against hers. “Did I mention I love you?”
And then suddenly, she couldn’t hold it in anymore; she must have said it a dozen times and each time she did, he kissed her again, right out there on the driveway for all the neighbors to see.
“Okay, enough,” she laughed, fisting her hands around his shirt and pounding him on the chest. “I have one rule.”
“Only on
e?” The slow smile, the laugh lines around his eyes…
“For now there’s only one,” she said, fear beginning to creep its way back in again. “But that might change.”
“Okay, what’s your rule?” He slid his hand around her neck and kissed her one more time, bringing her in closer until she melted against him. Damn it was hard to think straight when he did that.
“I…uh…oh…” She gave into the tremor that shook her whole body, then leaned back so she could look up at him, so she could see the truth no matter what it was. “If we do this, you can’t change your mind. Not next week, not next year, not ever. So if you’re not one hundred and eighty-seven percent sure right now, just tell me, because I’m prepared for it now, I…I can handle it right now…but next month or next year…”
Carter eased her hair back from her face and smiled until her knees started to wobble. “I’m not gonna change my mind, Red. Ever.”
He sounded so sure, and yet…
“H-how do you know that?” she asked. “Look at Maya, look at Ellie, look at…look at my parents.”
“I don’t want to look at them,” he said. “I just want to look at you, and right now I’d really like to look at you naked.”
“Oh.” Regan sputtered over a laugh and glanced around to see Mrs. Eggert’s face peering at them from her window across the street. “Then we might want to take this inside before Mrs. Eggert calls the cops.”
Carter draped his arm around her neck and started down the driveway. She didn’t even have to ask, she knew they were heading back to her apartment.
“So.” He drew the word out slowly, as if he was considering its deeper meaning, then laughed slowly. “If you’re going to be like my steady chick now, maybe we should get you a matching bike.”
“I’m not a chick and I don’t want my own bike. I like riding on the back of yours.”
He growled low in his throat, pulled her close enough that he could kiss her, hard and fast, then ginned. “Good answer.”
With her apartment building in sight now, they picked up their pace and crossed the highway against the light. Regan ducked her head against the wind, missed the curb and tripped, but Carter steadied her, then tucked her in tighter under his arm.
“Not a bike,” she said. “But the insurance company wrote off my car, so I’m going to have to look for something else.”
Carter didn’t miss a beat, just lifted his chin to the row of vehicles parked outside her building. “What about that one?”
Dented and scratched, with primer covering the entire front bumper and a huge red for sale sign in the window, Regan just shook her head at the once-white minivan and kept walking.
“Oh, come on,” he laughed. “I’d buy it just for that Death Star antenna topper. I gotta get me one of those.”
They hustled up the walk to the front door and ducked into the elevator. The doors hadn’t even closed when Carter pulled her in for a kiss, then hesitated, and looked down at her with a small frown.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said quietly. “But you understand this doesn’t change anything. I’m still going to go work for Griffin.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do.” Leaning back against the elevator door, she pressed her hands flat against his chest. “I told him I’d do this film with him, and when it’s done, and we’ve had time to catch our breath, then we’ll sit down and figure out what we want to do after that.”
Carter nudged her chin a little until she looked up at him. “When you say ‘we’—?”
“I mean you and me, we.”
“Okay, good.”
The elevator opened onto her floor and they almost tripped over each other getting into her apartment, dragging jackets off as they stumbled inside.
“Look, Carter, in one fell swoop, Mrs. G has wiped out two of the three biggest bills I have, but I still have my mom to look after, and you need to know that there’s nothing I won’t do to keep her in Hillcrest.”
“I know, but—”
She muffled his words with a kiss, distracted him by shoving his shirt up and over his head.
“So if that means I run a salon out of the house during the week and fly to Timbuktu on the weekends to work with Griffin, or vice versa, that’s what I’ll do.”
“I know.”
She wanted to say more, to make him understand exactly what might happen, but he pressed his finger against her mouth and smiled.
“I know all that, Red, and I get it. If that’s what you want to do, then do it, but you need to know something, too.”
“What?” God, why did he have to look at her like that, so soft, so sure? And how ridiculous were they, standing in her front little hallway, both half-naked, staring at each other like it was the first time they’d ever seen each other?
“If keeping your mom at Hillcrest is what you want, then I’ll do whatever I can to help keep her there.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts.” A slow grin, then an even slower kiss, had her melting against him. “This is what I want. I want you.”
She couldn’t stop smiling, not when he blushed a little, not when he rubbed his earlobe, and not when he finally shrugged and chuckled, low in his chest.
“I mean, sure, part of it’s about making you happy and all that shit, but right now…” he trailed off, blowing a slow breath across his bottom lip. “If we don’t get moving, we’re not going to make it to the bedroom.”
“Oh, Carter.” She smiled against his mouth as she slowly reached for his fly. “We’re not going to make it anywhere near the bedroom.”
They didn’t; not until much later. And when they finally collapsed on the bed, Regan wasted no time curling up next to him and tucking her face up against his neck. Carter wrapped his arms around her and just held her close for a long time.
“I made Rossick tell me what he said to you.”
Regan sighed. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Why not?” There was something in his voice, almost possessive.
“Because he’s your friend.” Groaning, she leaned up on her elbows so she could see his face. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” He pinched his lips together for a second, then shrugged when she kept staring at him. “Okay, so I might have punched him.”
“You didn’t!”
“Damn right I did. He deserved it.”
She could have argued with him; in fact, she probably should have, but she didn’t because part of her would have liked to have punched Rossick herself. So instead, she inched up on the bed and kissed him, just once, and just on the cheek.
“You’re right,” she murmured. “He did. And when I get my strength back, you’re gonna get so lucky.”
“Mmmm, okay.” Carter sighed against her hair. “Then can we talk about you getting my name tattooed across your butt?”
“I’m not getting—” She didn’t even get the words out before he flipped her onto her back and was kissing her again, hungry, fast, and desperate. Trailing kisses along her jaw, Carter slipped one hand under her and lifted, just a little, but enough to make her breath catch in her throat, and her fingers to wind their way through his hair, guiding him to her neck…right…almost…there…
“Okay,” she breathed. “You win. Tattoo me anywhere you want.”
Epilogue
“Well, Your Highness, I guess this is it.”
Han Solo, The Empire Strikes Back
MID-AUGUST
The only thing better than saying goodbye to the movie set for the last time was finding Carter waiting for her at the arrivals gate with a slow smile and an even slower kiss.
“God I missed you,” he growled.
“I was just home a week ago,” she laughed. “But thank you, that’s nice to hear.”
The last six months had been a crazy juggle of flying to four different locations for different lengths of time, finalizing the transfer of the house into Regan’s and Ca
rter’s names, getting the permits for the renovations, and somehow getting the work done even though Nick was busy building his own house at the same time.
Regan flew home as often as she could, and twice Carter flew to meet her, once in New Orleans and then again for a few days in Glasgow.
No one in the Goodsen family had raised a single argument about any of it, and Regan was pretty sure that was because Mrs. G had somehow found out Jeff had refused to give Regan a mortgage. If the rumors were true, the old girl threatened to cut the whole lot of them out of her will completely if any of them even thought about raising a stink.
Regan couldn’t wait to see her. In the crazy world of Griffin Carr, she’d met a lot of different people in the last six months; actors, producers, writers, camera crew, craft service people…the list went on and on.
But the one that stood out the most was Barry Weiss from Storage Wars. Regan had walked into a deli in L.A., and there he was, having lunch by himself. She’d run across her share of celebrities out and about, but she just let them go about their business. Barry, on the other hand…
Well, by the time Regan left, she not only had his autograph, but she had that autograph on one of his skeleton gloves for Mrs. G.
“Come on.” Carter threw her suitcase in the back of a cab and handed the driver a wad of cash and started to walk away.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “That’s my stuff!”
“Not enough room on the bike for it and you,” he grinned. “So Earl’s going to take it home for us. I talked to him before you landed.”
All thoughts of her suitcase vanished. “You brought the bike?”
“And your favorite pink helmet, so let’s get going or we’re going to be late.”
“Late for what?” she asked. “Another haircut?”
He’d been to see Hazel a couple more times since Regan met her, but his hair had grown out enough again that he had to tuck it behind his ears to keep it out of his face. “No.” His smile widened. “She went home again. Looks like she got the all clear this time.”
“Really?” Regan exhaled. “Thank God. So where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Prima Donna Page 29