Carter Bravo's Christmas Bride Page 5

  “No. No, you haven’t, Carter. You haven’t shown it’s over by moving on. And if you think about it a little, you’ll see I’m right. You and Paige are a great match. And frankly, if you choose Paige, Sherry will definitely wake up and smell the coffee. She’s always gone on about Paige, always believed that you’re secretly in love with Paige.”

  Carter made a strangled sound. “Are you crazy? Of course I’m not secretly in love with Paige.”

  Murray grunted. “Sherry would never admit it, but we both know she sees Paige as the rival she couldn’t beat.”

  “Uh, we do?”

  A firm nod from Murray. “You bet we do. So if you and Paige finally get together, finally couple up and admit what’s really going on between you, Sherry will have to accept that she’s never getting you back.”

  Carter cleared his throat. “Murray.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Murray, but no. Just...no.”

  Murray glared at him. “I’m only asking you to think about it.”

  “There’s nothing to think about.”

  “What is the matter with you?” Murray practically shouted. “Why can’t you see?”

  “Murray, whoa. Chill.”

  But Murray did not chill. “Open your mind, Carter!” He turned and flung the door open. “Open your mind and see the light.” Murray left, slamming the door good and hard behind him.

  Carter stared at that door for several very long seconds. And then he shrugged and opened his laptop again and put Murray Preble out of his mind.

  Or tried to.

  Unfortunately, Murray’s weird visit stuck with him, made the Cobra engine schematics blur in front of him, made it so all he could think about was Paige.

  “Open your mind!” Murray had yelled at him just before he slammed the office door.

  Carter kept thinking about that. About his mind opening.

  Opening like a door, a door that hadn’t really been there before. He looked through that new open door and saw everything he wanted: marriage and a family.

  To a sane and even-tempered woman.

  A woman like Paige.

  Because Murray was right. Paige was perfect for Carter.

  No. Of course, he wasn’t in love with Paige. He wasn’t in love with anybody. Carter had no intention of going to the stupid place, thank you very much. But now that he’d opened that door, he could clearly see that Paige was just about as good as it got for a man like him.

  How come he’d never realized it before?

  Paige was smart and fun, and he loved being with her. She was completely reasonable, no drama, not ever. He worked with her and he hung with her and her little sister was family to him. Even their dogs were best friends.

  He couldn’t imagine his life without Paige. And to marry her and have kids with her...

  Hot damn. That could work out. That could be good.

  Carter got up from his desk and stared at the fine back and arms of Miss Superfit November as he worked out the kinks in the plan he was formulating.

  Kinks like the fact that to have kids together, he and Paige would have to have sex with each other.

  That could be weird. He’d never considered sex and Paige in the same sentence before—or wait. Scratch that. He had been attracted to Paige way back at the beginning. But then they’d decided to be friends without benefits and he’d accepted that.

  So the idea of having sex with her didn’t gross him out or leave him cold. It had just always seemed like a bad idea to go there, to take the chance of messing up a great friendship—not to mention a successful business partnership.

  However, now that he’d let himself consider the concept of Paige as a bed partner, well, it didn’t strike him as awful. He could get into it. He was sure that he could. And sex didn’t necessarily have to screw up what they had. If they got married, that would only make their friendship and business partnership stronger.

  Oh, yeah. The door was open, all right, open wide and showing him everything. It all fell into place.

  He didn’t have to be alone. He could get married and have a family, after all.

  A family with his best friend.

  A family with Paige...

  Talk about huge.

  Carter left BCC at a quarter after five that night. He’d planned to go home and shower, then take Sally and head over to Paige’s.

  But after opening that door in his mind and seeing a family with Paige on the other side, well, he wasn’t quite ready to spend the evening with her. It was all too new and also a little bit scary.

  He had to find just the right way to bring it up to her.

  And he needed to find out for sure if they had the necessary physical chemistry together.

  And hey. What if she just said no?

  Uh-uh. He wasn’t ready to see Paige. He could blow this whole thing before it even got started if he didn’t handle it right.

  So that night he stayed home.

  * * *

  Paige spent the day on household stuff. She bought groceries and baked a casserole, vacuumed and dusted the downstairs.

  And the whole day she kind of dreaded the evening, when Carter would show up and she’d have to deal with him while knowing that her sister—and apparently most of the people they knew—believed that Paige was in love with him.

  And that he was in love with her.

  Awkward. Embarrassing. Too strange for words.

  She hardly knew what to say to him—to Carter, of all people.

  But then, as it turned out, he didn’t show up.

  And that just made her sad. So she put on some old yoga pants and a baggy sweatshirt, streamed a tearjerker on Netflix and ate a quart of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.

  * * *

  The next morning, Sunday, Carter considered chickening out again and not showing up at Paige’s to walk Biscuit with Sally, not being there to get the coffee going.

  But if he bailed on their usual routine again, he’d have to admit to himself that opening the door in his mind had freaked him out just a little—hell. Who was he kidding?

  Opening that door freaked him out a lot.

  But freaking out was no excuse to turn wimp and bail on his girls.

  So he walked Biscuit with Sally as usual and then let himself back into Paige’s quiet house and made the coffee.

  He was standing at the fridge, staring inside, trying to decide what to make for breakfast as his brain kept insisting on circling back to the mind-altering concept of Paige and him and a houseful of baby Bravos, when he heard a soft sigh behind him.

  A hot bolt of lightning seemed to surge across his shoulder blades and the hair on the back of his neck stood to attention. Bizarre.

  He shut the door and turned around.

  And there she was: Paige, leaning in the doorway, wearing that old plaid robe, flannel pajamas and silly fuzzy slippers he’d seen a hundred times. She’d tried to comb her hair, but she must have slept on it hard, because it still stuck up on the left side.

  “Hey,” she said. The single huskily spoken word seemed to hit him in the chest and then curl around him like a hug.

  “Mornin’.” Damn, she was cute. With those big brown eyes and that soft, pretty mouth. Not aggressively sexy, not showy like most of the women he’d dated. But hot in her own down-to-earth, real sort of way. The more he looked at her, the more he thought he could definitely tap that.

  And wouldn’t it be great to live here with her in the house she grew up in, to stop going back and forth between their houses? Her house was homier than his, a perfect place to raise their family.

  If she would have him.

  She was so smart. And she could be intimidating with that steady, unruffled way she had of looking at a guy. Since that basta
rd in college broke her heart, she didn’t give her trust easily—not to men, anyway.

  But he had a head start on that, being her best friend and all.

  “What?” She straightened in the doorway.

  “Nothing.” It came out nice and calm, giving zero hint of the nervous energy churning inside him. “I was thinking eggs Benedict. I didn’t make muffins, but I see you have some store-bought.”

  “Sounds wonderful.” She went to the coffeepot and filled a mug, turning back around the way she did almost every morning, leaning on the counter for her first sip. A pleasured sound escaped her.

  Would she make sounds like that in bed?

  He realized he really wanted to find out.

  The big brown eyes were soft and shadowed. He couldn’t really read them. She said, “You’re good to us, Carter. Thank you.”

  “I never did anything I didn’t want to do.” It came out gruff, low. It wasn’t what he’d meant to say and he wondered where the hell it came from.

  But those soft lips turned up in the beginning of a smile. “I know that.”

  “I like it here, with you. With Dawn.”

  “I’m glad.”

  He was maybe three steps away from her. It would have been so easy, to close the distance, take the mug, set it on the counter. Draw her into his arms...

  “Carter, hey!” Dawn chirped from the doorway, shattering the moment. She joined him at the fridge, pulling the door open again and taking out a carton of orange juice. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “Eggs Benedict,” said Paige.

  “Yum. Just what I was I hoping for.” Dawn edged around Carter, set the pitcher on the counter and opened the cupboard to get down the juice glasses.

  Paige and Dawn got the table ready and he cooked the food. They sat down to eat. Things started getting really strange about then. He kept having the feeling that something was going on at that table between the sisters, as if they knew something he didn’t and both of them were on edge about it.

  They told him repeatedly, way more times than necessary, how much they loved his eggs Benedict. Then they started in on Christmas stuff—on how they were looking forward to Rocky Mountain Christmas, Justice Creek’s big holiday shopping event next Saturday.

  Next Saturday was also the date of the Holiday Ball at Justice Creek’s world-famous Haltersham Hotel. It was a charity event to support the local children’s shelter. Carter had bought a bunch of tickets at a chamber of commerce auction months ago and passed them out at the shop. He’d given some to Dawn and Paige, as well. At the time, he’d planned to take Sherry. When they broke up, he’d gotten Paige to agree to go with him.

  He asked Dawn, “So, are you going to use those tickets I gave you for the Holiday Ball?”

  She nodded. “Me and Molly and a couple of other friends are going together.”

  “Sounds good.” He turned to Paige. “We still on for that?”

  Her eyes looked enormous suddenly. She stammered out, “Uh, yeah. Sure. Of course, we are.”

  Dawn chimed in way too brightly, “I think it’s going to be cool!”

  Paige started talking again—as if she couldn’t get away from the subject of the ball fast enough. Suddenly, she was all about how she needed to bring the Christmas stuff down from the attic. Dawn said she wanted to go to Molly’s after breakfast, but she promised that later in the day, she’d come back and help with hauling the boxes down, and then they could maybe start on the tree.

  Carter said, “I’ll bring it all down for you, soon as we’re through with breakfast.” All the girlie chatter ceased abruptly. He looked at Paige and then at Dawn and then back at Paige again. “What did I say?”

  “Nothing,” said Dawn.

  “You didn’t,” added Paige. “You didn’t say a thing.”

  None of this made sense. They kept shooting each other looks. “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing, really,” Paige insisted. She and Dawn traded frantic glances that told him there was actually a whole lot going on here.

  Women. He knew he had to give it up, that if they didn’t want to tell him, he was never going to know.

  He shrugged. “So, then...I’ll get the Christmas stuff down before I go?”

  “Um, great,” said Dawn.

  “Thank you,” said Paige. “I’ll help. It won’t take long.”

  After the meal, he cleared off while Paige and Dawn ran upstairs to get dressed. Paige came down a few minutes later in jeans and an old flannel shirt, her hair tied up in a ponytail. He followed her back up to the attic, admiring the view the whole way. She filled out those worn jeans real nice.

  At the top of the stairs, she hustled along the landing to the door at the end where a narrow set of steps led up to the area under the eaves. They went up. Paige pulled the chain on the bulb that hung from the rafters, and light filled the dusty space.

  “Over here.” She pointed at the stacks of plastic bins and cardboard boxes grouped together near the one small attic window that looked out the front of the house. Her eight-foot tree was there, in three sections, wrapped in heavy plastic for protection.

  They went to work hauling everything down to the living room. It took several trips up and back. The whole time, he kept on the lookout for his moment—to try a first kiss, maybe.

  Or to catch her arm, turn her toward him, tell her that he had something important to say...

  But somehow the moment never came. She seemed in a really big hurry. And she actively avoided meeting his eyes. Whenever they happened to face each other in the process of turning to the stairs or grabbing for another box, her gaze would slide on by, not once connecting with his.

  When he set the last bin down in the living room, she suddenly couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.

  “Whew.” She gave him a blinding smile, at the same time letting her gaze skitter away to some point past his left shoulder. “That was easy. Thanks to you—and you’re excused, Carter. I’ve got it from here.”

  Excused.

  He was excused?

  What did that even mean? Excused for the day? For freaking ever?

  Forget it. He wasn’t even going to ask. Instead, he suggested, “How about you let me help you get the tree upright before I go?”

  For that, he got a blinding smile, one that seemed more than a little forced. “That would be great...”

  So she grabbed the stand and set it up, centering it in the bay window that faced the front yard. They peeled the protective wrapping off the tree sections and she guided them into place as he lowered them.

  After that, he figured she could manage the rest. And by then, he couldn’t wait to get out of there. He called Sally in from the kitchen, took her leash and his jacket from the hook by the door—and left.

  At home, he kind of settled down a little. He started thinking that he’d let his nervousness about approaching Paige as a woman—as a prospective bride, for crying out loud—affect his judgment.

  There was nothing going on with Paige. Or with Dawn, either. He was the one with the problem. He felt edgy and unsure. He didn’t know how to kick-start a conversation about forever—not with Paige. He’d never expected to be talking about marriage with her.

  He needed more time to think about it. Too bad that thinking about it, so far, had gotten him exactly nowhere.

  One thing for certain, though, he’d lose what was left of his mind if he spent the day hanging around the house. So he went on over to BCC, which was closed on Sunday.

  Alone in the deserted shop, he played heavy metal at mind-numbing volume and went to work bolting the stupid spoiler to the trunk of Deacon’s Cobra.

  * * *

  Paige had the Christmas carols playing and was arranging strings of lighted garland on the mantel when Dawn and Molly came in at noon.
The girls made grilled cheese sandwiches and heated up a couple of cans of soup, then called Paige in to join them.

  After lunch, Molly and Dawn pitched in with the tree and the other decorations. It was nice, really, with the holiday tunes playing and the three of them humming along, dragging Christmas treasures out of the boxes and bins and hanging them on the tree.

  Molly, fuller-figured than Paige, with thick black hair and big dark eyes, spent so much time at their house she counted as a sister, too. Her parents had divorced the year before and Molly said she felt more at home with the Kettleman sisters than she did at her mom’s house or at the condo where her dad lived with his new girlfriend. Paige and Dawn had taken care to stay on good terms with both of Molly’s parents, so her folks had no issue with Molly hanging at Dawn’s a lot of the time.

  It was lovely, that Sunday afternoon, a holiday memory in the making—Dawn and Molly and Paige, getting the house ready for the holidays. Really, life lately was just about perfect.

  Or it would be, if not for Paige’s problem with Carter. Since the damn love quiz, she found it hard even to talk to him. She felt so nervous around him.

  And it hurt him, the way she was behaving. She could see the confusion and pain in his eyes. He didn’t know what was wrong. He didn’t understand.

  And she didn’t know what to do about that.

  Hold steady and wait? Only six days had passed since that day at Deacon Leery’s office. She couldn’t help hoping that maybe this crazy feeling would fade.

  Or maybe honesty was the best policy. Maybe she should just...bust herself to him. Tell him she was in love with him and let the chips fall where they may.

  Paige cringed at the thought. How could that possibly go well? The man couldn’t get away fast enough when women started using the L word around him.

  And surely it was too early for such a drastic move.

  Dear God. This was hard.

  Why now? It didn’t even seem fair.

  She’d finally gotten over her parents’ deaths—or as over it as a person ever gets after something like that. She loved her job and business was good. Her sister was happy, graduating with honors in the spring. She had Carter for companionship. And now and then, she went out with attractive men, but refused to get bogged down in the responsibilities of a committed relationship.