He didn’t let go of my hand until we got to the front door. “Ready?” he asked me, his hand on the knob.
I nodded. “Nope. Not even remotely.”
Carter laughed. “Quit worrying, Edie. You’ll be fine.” I froze at his use of the nickname used by no one but Ever. He noticed my reaction. “You don’t like that nickname?”
I could barely whisper. “Ever calls me that sometimes. Or she used to.”
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. It just took me off guard.”
He squeezed my hand once more, then pushed the door open and led the way in. A wall of noise hit me: music, laughter, voices, pots and pans clanging, a dog barking, a TV going. I’d never seen so much activity in one place in all my life, and it overwhelmed me. There were at least a dozen conversations happening, and there were at least ten people here that Carter hadn’t told me about. Cousins, aunts, and uncles? I didn’t know. A family this size was an anomaly to me. There was a little boy running around, clutching a toy sword and shouting something indecipherable, and, as I watched, he whacked someone at random across the knee with his sword with an ear-piercing “HI-YAH!”
As soon as the door opened, all the conversations stopped, and every eye turned to Carter, and to me.
“Hey, everybody!” Carter called out as he kicked off his boots. I shrank back against the door, feeling the weight of at least twenty pairs of eyes on me, assessing, wondering, judging. He pulled me forward gently. “This is my friend, Eden.” He emphasized the word friend ever so slightly.
A chorus of hellos hit me, and a woman who looked exactly like Carter bustled over to me, smiling brightly, wearing a Pepto Bismol–pink apron that was spattered with sweet potato, pie crust, flour, cranberry sauce, and who knew what else. She was tall, with ink-black hair tied up in a messy bun. “Eden, welcome. I’m so excited you’re here!” She leaned in and hugged me, keeping her messy hands and apron away from my clothes.
Why? I wanted to ask. “Thanks,” was what I said. “You have a beautiful home.” I sniffed the air, smelling the various dishes she was preparing. “It all smells delicious.”
“Thank you.” She turned to glare at Carter. “I’m Karen. My son seems to have regained his powers of speech lately, but obviously not his manners.”
“Sorry, Mom.” Carter cleared his throat and shuffled uncomfortably. “Eden Eliot, this is my mother, Karen Haven. Mom, this is my friend Eden.”
I wondered if maybe he was overdoing it a bit with the emphasis on our friendship status. But, then again, that might have just been my subconscious wishing vainly that I could have been meeting his family under other, less platonic circumstances.
Carter gestured at a tall, slim, athletic man with gray at the temples of his auburn hair. “Dad, this is Eden. Eden, my dad, Richard Haven.”
I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Haven.”
This earned me a snort, the same sound Carter so frequently made. “Richard, please. It’s wonderful to have you here, Eden.”
Karen whacked Carter across the arm, smearing sweet potato on his sleeve. “Now you’re just being an idiot. This isn’t the court of King Henry the Eighth, son. Such formality is entirely unnecessary.”
I had to hide my smirk as Carter wiped at the smear of goo on his sweater. Seeing him put in his place by his mom was both funny and heartwarming. “It’s nice to meet you, Karen.”
Karen curtsied, spreading her apron in lieu of skirts. “Likewise, I’m sure.”
I snorted, and matched her curtsey as well as I could, at least. “Milady.”
Carter’s glare shifted from his mom to me. “You’re not supposed to encourage her, Eden. Whose friend are you, anyway?”
Karen took me by the arm and pulled me toward the kitchen. “Mine, now. Go say hello to your cousins, Carter. You can have her back later.”
I followed Karen into the spacious kitchen. There was a huge island in the center of the room, clearly the focal point of the space. It was comprised of an enormous butcher’s block, a slab of wood several inches thick. The rest of the counters were dark marble, and the cabinets were stained the same shade as the butcher’s block. At the moment, every available inch of counter space was cluttered with bowls and utensils and covered plates, foil-covered casserole dishes, spice bottles, the weapons of a culinary war. There was a giant bottle of wine sitting on the island, opened, with a cluster of wine glasses surrounding it. I stared longingly at the wine, wishing I could have some.
Karen followed my gaze, and laughed. “Honestly, that was the hardest part of all five of my pregnancies. No wine for nine months?” She faked an exaggerated shudder. “Shoot me now.”
I laughed, feeling at ease around this woman after not even five minutes. “It’s pretty tough,” I agreed. “And five times? How did you do it without going crazy?”
“This is your first, I assume?” Karen tipped a couple of inches of wine into a glass, and handed it to me. “You’re allowed one half glass, I think.”
I hesitated, then took the goblet, swirling the ruby-red liquid in the glass. “Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt the baby.”
Karen smiled gently. “Oh, I’m sure. A few sips of wine, once, isn’t going to do any harm.” She gestured at the living room, where the Haven brothers were rough-housing and laughing. “Richard had a knack for knocking me up in time for the holidays, so I could never drink with everyone else. I’d allow myself one glass, for Christmas Eve lunch. They all turned out just fine, I think.”
I eyed the four men. They were all tall, dark, and handsome, each different than the other, but all four were gorgeous. None of them were quite as incredible as Carter to me, though. “I’d say so,” I deadpanned.
Karen snorted, swallowing a mouthful of wine. She had to cover her mouth to keep from spraying me. “They’re quite a collection, aren’t they?”
I took a tentative sip of the wine. My eyes slid closed, and I moaned in appreciation as the dry, velvety liquid hit my palate. “God, that’s good. You don’t know how bad I’ve wanted this.”
Karen chuckled. “I think I do. Five times, remember? Try being pregnant with three boys under seven running around.”
I paled at the thought, watching the toddler as he tirelessly sprinted from one corner of the house to the other, leaping off the back of the couch, rolling across an ottoman, slicing at the air with his sword all the while. “Were they all like that?” I gestured at the little boy, who I thought might be three or four, but wasn’t sure.
Karen nodded, peeking into one of two stacked ovens. “Oh, yeah. Danny there is a handful, but there’s only one of him. All of my boys were wild little hellions. And they’d team up. Kirk was the brains, always coming up with devious plans, and Max and Carter would carry the plan out.”
“What about Tom?”
“Oh, Tommy was the distraction. I’m telling you, they were tactical.” She closed the oven, and turned back to me. “I remember once…Max was nine, which means Kirk was seven, Carter five, and Tommy three. Max wanted cookies. I’d just baked a tray of chocolate chip cookies, and I’d told him he couldn’t have any until after dinner. So Max, he convinces Kirk and Carter to help him get some anyway. Poor little Tommy, he was too young to know any better, and he idolized his older brothers, Carter in particular. He’d do anything they asked. So they wait until Tommy was playing with his favorite toy, and then they snatch it from him. He goes haywire, of course. Which was what they wanted. I go to see what’s wrong with Tommy, and while I’m in here trying to translate screaming toddler, the three older ones are in the kitchen, sneaking handfuls of cookies.”
“Did they give Tommy any?”
Karen laughed. “Of course they did! They waited until I’d calmed Tom down, and then gave him a cookie. I didn’t figure out what they’d done until Tommy comes into the kitchen, smeared with chocolate, asking for more cookie, more cookie.”
I laughed. “Sounds like y
ou were busy.”
“Busy is one word for it. It was chaos, complete and utter chaos. The house was always a disaster, the sink was always full of dishes, the garbage overflowing. Toilets were nasty, showers needed cleaning. But…it was worth every minute.”
Carter came in at that moment and poured himself a glass of wine. “Are you telling embarrassing stories, Mom?”
“Yep. I was just getting to the part where you ran around the neighborhood buck-ass naked until you were three.”
I laughed, choking on my mouthful of wine. “He did?”
Karen nodded. “Oh, yes. I couldn’t keep clothes on the boy. I’d get him dressed and he’d be naked as the day he was born within an hour. And he’d run away. I’d have to chase him down the beach, his skinny little behind waggling.”
Carter shook his head, glaring at his mom. “Seriously? Are you gonna bust out pictures next? God, Mom.”
With a devious laugh, Karen pulled out her phone. “Well, now that you remind me…. Richard scanned all of our family photographs in the computer last spring, and I have a few favorites on here.” She tapped and scrolled through her photo album, and then handed me the phone. “Swipe right. Lots of good ones of the boys. And yes, there’s the obligatory naked Carter in the bath pictures.”
I giggled as I swiped through the images of Carter’s childhood. He was an adorable little boy and, judging from the pictures, fearless. She had shots of him at all ages, from infancy to adulthood, and in many of them he was climbing trees, riding dirt bikes and horses, racing four-wheelers. And, as Karen had promised, there was a photo of Carter at age two or three in the bathtub. It wasn’t a tastefully posed one, either. All of his little-boy bits were on display. In one of the bathtub pics, he was actually playing with himself. I could almost hear him, tiny little voice saying “boing…boing…boing….”
Carter glanced over my shoulder, and then started coughing and hacking. He snatched the phone out of my hands and held it up out of my reach. “MOM! Are you fucking serious? You’re actually showing her bathtub pictures? Who even takes those?”
Karen just laughed. “When you have kids, you’ll understand. It’s cute! And, in your case, always good for a laugh.” She glanced at me. “Did you see the one where he was—”
I snorted, reenacting what Carter had been doing in the photo. “Boing! Boing! Boing!”
Carter glared at us both, and Karen laughed so hard she doubled over.
A little hand grabbed a fistful of Carter’s sweater and tugged. “You said a potty talk, Uncle Carter.”
Carter looked down at the toddler. “I sure did, Danny. And I’m your cousin, not your uncle.”
Danny frowned. “You shouldn’t say potty talk. Can I call you Uncle anyway?”
“Sure you can. And no. I probably shouldn’t say bad words around you, should I? I’m sorry, Danny. How about we make a deal? I won’t say bad words if you won’t.” Carter knelt down and held out his hand to shake.
Danny crossed his arms. “How ’bout you pay me a dollar? Sometimes Daddy says bad words when he’s watching feetsball. Mommy gets mad at him, and he has to give me a dollar every time he says one.”
“You must have a lot of dollars, huh?” Carter asked, shooting an amused glance at the cousin who I assumed was Danny’s dad, a burly, auburn-haired man with a long beard.
“He’s got more money than he knows what to do with,” the man said, not looking away from the game on the TV.
“Nuh-uh,” Danny said. “I spended it.”
This caught the father’s attention. “On what?
“The ice cream truck.”
“The ice cream truck? You spent all of it at the ice cream truck?”
Danny shrugged, looking down at the floor. He was realizing he might’ve said something he shouldn’t have. “Not all of it. I got few dollars left.”
“There was more than twenty dollars there!” The father glanced from Danny to a pretty woman with white-blonde hair and a lip piercing. “Where was your mother while you were buying ice cream?”
Danny glanced from his mother to his father. “Looking at her people books. I asked if I could play outside and she said yes, and the ice cream truck always comes right up to the fence and I don’t even gotta go in the street or nothing!”
“On people books,” the father said, lifting an eyebrow at his wife in accusation.
“I knew where he was, Alex,” the woman said. “I just didn’t know he was smuggling money outside.”
“And you didn’t notice he—oh, I don’t know—had ice cream?” Alex demanded. “Maybe that’s why he never wanted to eat his dinner all summer long!”
Karen stepped in at that point. “Marie, Alex. It’s just ice cream. Relax.”
Marie cast a grateful glance at Karen. Alex turned back to the TV, grumbling something under his breath about “social media time-sucks.”
I’d watched the exchange with curiosity. Alex and Marie had basically argued in public, about what seemed to me to be a fairly serious parenting issue. Although, with the exception of myself, everyone in the house was family, so maybe to them it wasn’t public. I couldn’t fathom having that kind of conversation in such a public setting. But then, I couldn’t fathom much of anything about how this family operated. It was just so big. There were at least ten different conversations happening all at once, with everyone trying to talk louder than everyone else. The result was that everyone was basically shouting at each other about golf scores and stock exchange tips and recipes and gossip about extended family members I assumed weren’t present.
Case in point was Carter, standing next to me in the kitchen, munching on pita chips dipped in a bowl of what looked like homemade hummus. He conducted an entire conversation with someone clear across the house at a volume loud enough to be heard across a football stadium. The Carter I was seeing in this home, around his family, was almost a different person from the one I knew. He was completely relaxed, talkative, wandering around the room restlessly, easily moving from conversation to conversation. Around me, he was quieter, not exactly taciturn, but not chatty, either. He was given to stillness, whereas here he seemed almost physically unable to stay in the same place for more than a few minutes.
Yet, I noticed no matter where in the room he was, no matter who he was talking to or how deep in conversation he seemed to be, Carter was always aware of me. I’d feel his eyes on me, watching, checking. And as the day progressed, he made a point of always returning to where I was camped out in the kitchen.
Karen had pulled me into the kitchen when we first arrived, and I hadn’t left it. I hadn’t even crossed the threshold into the living room, which seemed to be the domain of the men, for the most part. The women, who were seriously outnumbered in this company, congregated in the kitchen around Karen, or at the dining room table. I’d offered to help her cook, but she waved me off, saying she enjoyed it, and there wasn’t much left to do anyway. Yet, for all that, she was always busy, chopping or stirring or spooning out.
The other thing I didn’t understand was what time we would be sitting down to dinner. Carter had rushed me out the door as if we would be sitting down to eat the moment we arrived. By all appearances, Karen was preparing a huge amount of food, and yet it was nearing three o’clock in the afternoon and the appetizers were still going strong. The table was littered with bowls of chips and dip, plates of cheese, trays of celery and carrots and peppers, a shrimp cocktail setup, sandwich rolls sliced into inch-thick snack-sized pieces, dishes of candy and unwrapped Reese’s Miniatures…more snacks and appetizers than I’d ever seen in one place in my life.
The other thing in abundance was plenty was booze. The wine was almost gone, and the men drifted into the kitchen several times to grab a bottle of beer from the fridge. I’d sipped my half-glass as slowly as I could, and managed to make it last for almost an hour, which I felt had to be some kind of record for what amounted to a few sips. Even Carter had knocked back at least three beers that I’d seen, which seemed lik
e a lot for him, from what I knew about him.
I snagged his arm as he passed by me to get a new bottle of beer. “I thought you said we had to hurry to get here before the sweet potato pie was gone?” I lifted an eyebrow at him. “It’s past three. What happened to lunch?”
Carter chuckled. “Well, for one thing, the hurry-up bit may have been a ploy to get you here. I knew if I gave you time to think about it, you’d chicken out. I got you out the door as fast as I could, so you wouldn’t flake on me. But, yes, Christmas ‘lunch,’” he made air quotes around the last word, “is kind of a misnomer, I guess. We probably won’t eat for another hour or so, and then we’ll all eat until we can’t eat any more… and then we’ll keep snacking all night.”
“All night? How is everyone getting home? Several people here seem three sheets to wind already and it’s not even four.”
Carter laughed. “Oh, god, no one actually leaves, babe. There are four bedrooms upstairs, two pull-out couches, a bedroom in the basement, plus a guest cottage down the beach a ways. My folks own almost forty acres, and over five hundred feet of that is waterfront.”
Babe. He called me “babe.” I shouldn’t have liked that as much as I did. He’d mentioned his parents had money, but I’d forgotten. The house itself seemed modest, to my eyes. I’d grown up in a seven-thousand-square-foot mansion in Bloomfield Hills, surrounded by auto industry executives who liked to throw around their money. This family wasn’t like that, clearly. If they had money, they didn’t show it the way I was used to seeing. This house wasn’t small, but it was gorgeous, and tasteful. The appliances were upper-end, but not luxury-brand, and the furniture was the same, nice, comfortable, but not showy. It felt like a home, well-loved and lived in.
I’d spent most of the afternoon talking to Karen, but I’d also met a few cousins, one of Carter’s aunts, both of his uncles, and few others I couldn’t remember. Everyone was easy to talk to, intelligent and willing to listen. And none of them asked me any awkward questions about my obvious pregnancy. Either Carter had asked them not to, or they were simply being tactful.
Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3) Page 20