Carter (Bourbon & Blood Book 3) (11 page)

T
he truck’s
powerful engine rumbled as Clayton Darcy extricated himself from the backseat. He was drunk off his ass and they’d probably all hear it about tomorrow from Mia and Annalee, Carter thought. If anyone had told him that he’d be out drinking with a Darcy, much less with the rest of the Hayes clan with him, he’d have called them a damn liar.

But his mind wasn’t really on Clayton or even on the game they’d just watched while consuming excessive amounts of beer and more than their fair share of shots. It was
her
. She was in his fucking head, mixing it all up and making him crazy. It had been like that from day one and he was tired of it. He knew he’d been an ass the other day at the library. He’d been jealous and mean, jumping to conclusions.

He’d walked out, too and that wasn’t something she’d forgive easily. That was evidenced by the fact that she hadn’t called him, texted or tried to reach out to him in any way. They were both pouting like overgrown children.

He glanced over toward her house. It was one of the smaller homes in the subdivision where Clayton Darcy lived. It had been hell sneaking around in that neighborhood and trying not to be seen, but again, that had been her choice. She was the one who wanted to hide, who wanted to pretend like they were nothing to each other.

The light was on upstairs in her bedroom. Was she in bed reading one of the smutty novels she liked? Or was she watching some sappy TV show while eating ice cream? He knew her habits, he knew so much about her, and yet in public, they’d never shared more than a few words.

Clayton stumbled up the driveway and managed to get himself in the house. Emmitt, the only one of them still sober, shifted the truck into drive. It surged forward but had gone no more than fifty feet before Carter yelled out. “Stop the truck!”

“You puke in here and I’m gonna kick your ass!” Emmitt shouted.

“Just let me out, dammit!” Carter replied.

Bennett shifted forward in his seat and Carter moved past him through the open door. He crossed the road and marched toward her front door. He was done with hiding. She wanted him to be some big secret, something on the side while she played the good girl in front of the whole town. He was done with that shit.

Raising his fist, he pounded on the door. “Josie! I know you’re in there!”

In the truck, Bennett looked at Emmitt, “Did you know about this?”

“Ain’t that Josie Marcum’s house?” Emmitt shot back. “What the hell would she be doing with Carter?”

Bennet raised his eyebrow. “What do all women do with Carter?”

“True enough… but Josie Marcum? Hell.”

They watched him walking up to her door. Bennett asked, “Should we wait for him?”

“Hell no!” Emmitt said. “I’m not sitting outside waiting for his ass while he gets laid!”

“We don’t know that he’s getting laid!” Bennett protested.

Emmitt made a noise of complete derision. “It’s Carter and she’s female. Hell, she’ll probably greet him pussy first.”

“Jesus, you’re crude!” Bennett said with a shake of his head.

“Yeah, well, I’m not in love so I don’t have to pretty it all up,” Emmitt said and eased the truck into drive. “She can drive his ass home when she’s done with him.”

On the porch, Carter was preparing to bang on the door again, when the porch light suddenly flicked on. The door opened a crack and he could see Josie peering out at him.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed at him.

“Open the damn door and let me in!” he barked.

“I will not!”

“If you don’t,” he replied, “I will stand out here making so damn much noise one of your uptight neighbors will call the cops. It’ll be all over town by morning, Josie, that I got arrested on your doorstep!”

Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Carter smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly expression. There was none of his usual charm in it. Instead it was mean and even a little vicious. “You ought to know better than anybody that there’s not a lot I won’t do. Now open the damn door!”

The door closed and he heard the lock click and the chain slide free. When she opened it and stepped back, he didn’t hesitate, but just barged in, slamming the door behind him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “Do you have any idea what people will say?”

“The truth?” he asked. “That I’ve been sneaking over here and fucking you for over a month? That I make you scream and beg and say the kind of words that would have everybody at the First Baptist Church praying for your soul?”

She rolled her eyes heavenward. “Just because I don’t want to trot my business out for everyone in town
or
be lumped in with all the other women you string along—.”

“String along?” he demanded. He was so angry he wanted to shake her. Instead, he ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration and annoyance. “Since I bumped into you in that damn bar in Cincinnati I haven’t had time for a conversation with another woman, much less the time to string one along! And if anyone’s doing any stringing here, it’s you!”

“Me? I don’t think so, Carter Hayes. You’re welcome to walk anytime you want to. In fact, you already did, without a backward glance! Find someone else to have your fun with!”

He laughed at that but it was a humorless sound.

She continued, all but shouting. “That’s all this has been for you anyway. Just a little bit of fun, right? Isn’t that what you said? We’d stop when it wasn’t fun for either of us anymore!”

“Oh, yeah. This is so much fun!” he snarked. It was fun like ramming your face into a brick wall. He started to walk out. Hell, he wasn’t even sure why he came there. It had been a beer-fueled impulse and now he wasn’t sure if he regretted it or not. He glanced back at her. She was clearly mad as hell. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her chin was up. But it was the look of hurt and disappointment in her eyes that made him stop. He’d known she could hurt him. She had more times already than he could count. But he’d never thought, not even for a second, that he had the power to hurt her.

“Fuck it,” he whispered and turned back to her. He grasped her wrist, tugging her forward until she was pressed against him. She wore nothing or next to nothing beneath the robe she had on. His hands went to her hair immediately, tugging her head back until she was looking up at him. Her lips were parted, not in surprise, but anticipation. Lowering his mouth to hers, he kissed her, his lips moving over hers with all the urgency that he felt. He didn’t want to lose her, but he wasn’t going to take the scraps either.

Sliding his tongue between her lips, the kiss took on a note that was blatantly carnal. He wasn’t even sure how it happened, but suddenly her back was against the wall and her legs were wrapped around his waist. His cock was so hard he thought it might literally kill him, and she was moaning into his mouth. Drawing back, Carter looked at her, at the flush in her cheeks and her kiss swollen lips. Without a drop of makeup on her face, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. If he unzipped his pants, he could be inside her in less than ten seconds. And he was going to walk away.

“I’m not doing this with you anymore, Josie… you want to fuck me, then you’re going to have to date me.”

“Excuse me?” she said, blinking at him in confusion.

“You heard me,” he said. “If you want me in your bed, then you’re going to be seen with me… in public.” He stepped back, and her legs unlocked from his waist until she was standing on her own two feet. “You know where to find me.”

“That’s it?” she asked, her brain still clearly muddled from the
slightly-more-than-just-a-kiss.
“You’re leaving now?”

“I mean it, Josie… I want you. I want you so bad right now it’s fucking killing me. But I’m not going to just be the man you’re sleeping with.”

“What are you going to be then?”

“If you’d let me, I’d be the man who loves you.”

She said nothing, but her eyes widened and her jaw went slightly slack. He’d dropped a bomb on her and he’d just leave it to sink in.

Carter opened the door and walked out into the night. Bennett and Emmitt were long gone. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d walked home, probably wouldn’t be the last, because he didn’t believe for a second that Josie Marcum would ditch her good girl image to slum it with him.

But there was a little spark of hope. It was enough to keep him going.

J
osie watched him walk away
. She didn’t try to stop him, not because she didn’t want to, but because her body had simply stopped responding to her brain. Stunned, more than a little drunk on the bottle of wine she’d consumed not long before Carter banged on her door, she couldn’t think or function.

There was still some wine left and she needed it. Forcing her feet to move, one in front of the other, she entered the kitchen and grabbed the bottle from the counter. She didn’t even bother with a glass, but just drained it completely as she walked back to the living room and flopped down on the couch, the empty bottle rolling from her hand. “He didn’t actually say he loved me,” she told herself. “Just that he wanted to.”

Oh, she needed to talk to her mother. But calling her up this late at night, half drunk and after having Carter banging on the door loud enough for all the neighbors to hear? Actually, her mother was probably already up because one of those neighbors would have called her.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, her cell phone buzzed on the table. Josie fumbled for it, finally managed to close her hand around it and accepted the call.

“Hey, Mom.” The words were slurred, but not horribly.

“Did that boy get you drunk, Josephine?”

“No,” Josie I admitted. “I got myself drunk long before he showed up… He says he wants to date me. Publicly. That he’s tired of sneaking around. He said—.” She stopped there, even drunk she wasn’t sure she could say that to her mother.

“Josephine, just tell me. Dear heavens!”

Josie laid back down on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. It wasn’t spinning, but it was a little wobbly. “He said that he doesn’t want to be just the man I’m sleeping with… that he wants to be the man who loves me, if I’ll let him.”

Deborah went silent for a minute, thinking before speaking. “Then you should invite him to church.”

It was such a typical answer from her mother that Josie could only laugh. “He’ll say no.”

“No, he won’t. If he wants your relationship to be public then there is no better way to say that I am serious about this girl than to attend church with her. Ask him and see.”

The wine hit her hard, and all she wanted was sleep. “Tomorrow,” Josie said. “I’m going to talk to him tomorrow.”

C
arter was hungover as hell
. Rolling onto his back, he stared up at the ceiling and willed himself not to puke. After leaving Josie’s house,
after making an ass of himself,
he thought, he’d come home and finished off a bottle of Fire Creek that had been in the cabinet. It had been a horrible, awful, stupid mistake.

Gingerly, he sat up, put his feet on the floor and focused all his energy on not tossing his proverbial cookies. She was making him crazy. He was so turned inside out by her that he literally didn’t know if he was coming or going and he didn’t even know how the hell it had happened.

Forcing himself to get to his feet, Carter walked from the bedroom to the bathroom under his own steam. He was buck naked and smelled like a barroom.

Shower, he thought. He needed a shower. He needed to never smell bourbon again. Or for someone to just kill him and end his misery. That would work. He could call Emmitt. Emmitt would happily end his life since his stunt with the library book on erectile dysfunction had apparently blown the gossip mill wide open. Emmitt was less then pleased with him, to put it mildly.

Turning on the taps, he waited for the water to warm and leaned his aching head against the cool tile. He pressed his whole face against it and let out a groan at the relief it provided.

The pounding on the door only echoed the pounding in his head. “Fuck. Just fuck.”

Turning the taps back off, he cursed again. It would take a million years to get the water hot at this rate. Whoever was at his door, he intended to make them go away quick. He was in no mood. Rather than get dressed, he just grabbed a towel from the shelf and wrapped it around his waist as he half stumbled to the door.

Yanking it open he found himself face to face with the woman who was responsible for his misery. Josie stood there looking almost as miserable as he felt. There was just enough meanness in him to appreciate that. He let his eyes wander, taking her in from head to toe. She was wearing a sweater dress and a pair of the high heeled boots she favored, but there were dark circles under her eyes and she looked more than a little green around the gills.

“You look awful,” she said.

“You don’t look much better.” The retort was snappy, his tone clipped. He didn’t know what the hell she was doing there, but it probably wasn’t good.

“Let me in, Carter,” she said clearly in no mood to tolerate his shit.

“Afraid somebody will see you out there?”

“No. But I am afraid of freezing my tail off. Stop being an asshole!”

He shrugged and stepped back, leaving the door open for her to come inside. He was being a dick and it was only partially because of the hangover. Crying over her wasn’t an option, so that left being a first class prick.

“What do you want, Josephine?”

“To talk… there are a few things we need to clear up,” she said softly.

“Like what?”

“Jordan Simmons.”

Just the name made him want to punch something. He didn’t believe for a second that Josie had any interest in that pompous little shit. It had been a knee jerk reaction when he’d first seen them together. Jealousy was an ugly feeling and one he wasn’t accustomed to. But later on, when he’d been thinking more clearly, it had bothered him for other reasons.

If Josie walked down Main Street with Simmons, people would smile and nod, perfectly pleased with the pairing up of the current minister’s daughter and the minister in training. It didn’t matter that Simmons was a first class asshole and a sneaky piece of shit. He played the game, he looked the part and everyone in town bowed and scraped to him. Meanwhile, they looked at him like he was something dirty they’d stepped in.

“I don’t have fuck all to say about Jordan Simmons. He’s a smarmy shit and we both know it.”

She raised her eyebrows at that. “Funny, you seemed to have a very different take on things the other day.”

“I flew off the handle a little. That’s what I do.”

“No, it isn’t. You don’t have some wild temper. You don’t yell or scream or get mad… Except with me. I make you crazy,” she said. “Because I’m a giant pain in the ass.”

He didn’t disagree with her. Every bit of that was true. She was also sweet, and so damn pretty it hurt to look at her sometimes, and funny, and unfailingly kind. And her being a pain in the ass wasn’t always a flaw. At times, it was one of the things he liked best about her. His cupcake didn’t take any shit.

“You do make me crazy,” he said. “In a lot of ways.”

She moved deeper into the room and perched on the arm of the couch. “You’re right to be mad at me, to tell me to stop being so scared of other people’s opinions… The only opinion that ought to matter to me is yours.”

That brought him up short. Standing there in nothing but a towel and reeking of bourbon and heaven only knew what else, he just couldn’t make sense of it. “Why would my opinion be the only one that matters?”

“Did you mean what you said last night? That you wanted to be the man who loved me?”

Fuck, he had not meant to say that. Being pissed and drunk made him too damned honest for his own good. But there was no taking it back. “Hell, Josie… I
am
the man who loves you. Do you honestly think I’d have snuck around and carried on the way I did with you for any other reason? If all I wanted was to get laid, I could have done that without working nearly as hard.”

“Well, that’s pretty.”

He chuckled a little. In spite of his shitty mood, his aching head, and the fact that his guts clearly no longer wanted to stay on the inside, her caustic tone still managed to tickle him. “It’s the truth. There are a lot of women in this town who would have been more than happy to parade around with me… at least for the short term. That’s what I am to most of them. Short term. The guy you have fun with before you go and find one to settle down with that has a good job and a solid future and a stable income.”

“You have all those things. I know how hard you work to help Savannah with Revision,” she protested. “You’re not just an employee there, Carter. You’re a partner.”

“People don’t see me that way. They don’t want to. They’ve got ideas about who I am and they’re comfortable with ‘em. Same way with you. People wouldn’t bat an eye if you walked out with Simmons because to their mind, you all belong together. The one place you don’t belong would be with me.” It hurt to admit that. It stung like a hundred slivers of glass slicing into him at once.

“They’re wrong,” she said, softly. “I’m a hypocrite, Carter. I curse. I drink. I have hot, steamy affairs with the town bad boy. And I do it all while looking down my nose at people who look down their nose at me… I’m not perfect. I’m not even good most of the time. I just hide all the wickedness so no one sees.”

“That isn’t true… well, not all of that is true.”

Josie shrugged. “Close enough to truth. But I don’t want to be that person… I don’t want to pretend to be something I’m not. Especially if it means I can’t have you.”

Carter didn’t want to hope. He was afraid to let himself. “I can’t keep being your secret, Josie.”

“I’m not asking you to be… I came here this morning to invite you to church with me.”

He blinked at her. Then he blinked some more. “What?”

Josie smiled even though it did little to alleviate her general appearance of misery. “I talked to my Mom… Really talked to her, about things that I—let’s just say that she helped me see myself a little more clearly. And she also told me that if I wanted to be with you, I needed to just do it and stop hiding. She also said that there isn’t a more public way of announcing to the whole of Fontaine that you’re seeing someone than going to church together.”

Carter couldn’t wrap his head around that. Not any of it. Not Deborah Marcum telling her daughter to date him openly. He sure as hell couldn’t fathom Josie asking him to attend church with her. By Fontaine standards that was practically announcing an engagement.

“You’re gonna have to run that by me again,” he finally managed.

She rolled her eyes and then enunciated very carefully, “Will you go to church with me?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow is Sunday,” she said.

Carter felt panic rearing. He hadn’t stepped foot in a church other than attending funerals since he was a kid. But to walk into church with the preacher’s daughter and sit there during the sermon under his disapproving eye? That just sounded like the very definition of hell.

“I’ll make you a deal, Josie… I’ll go to church with you tomorrow morning if you go out with me tonight. I’ll pick you up, take you to dinner. We’ll sit out in public in full view of everyone and act like two people who don’t have a thing to hide.”

The smile that curved her lips was so beautiful it took his breath. She looked happy and freer than he’d ever seen her. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot… But now, I have to get to work. If I’m late, Doris will murder me.”

“Probably not murder… Doris’ real talent lies in just making you wish you were dead.”

Josie walked over to him and stood up on her tiptoes. She kissed his cheek and then wrinkled her nose. “Carter, I hope you’re planning on taking a shower sometime soon because you reek.”

“I’ll get on that,” he said. “How much wine did you drink last night, Josie?”

“Enough that I’m going to have to use all my patience and a lot of prayer to survive Doris today,” she quipped as she turned toward the door. “Where are you taking me tonight?”

“Dress up. Nice. It’s not every day you get to take the person you’re in love with on a first date,” he called after her, ignoring the fact that raising his voice made his head feel like it was going to split wide open. Some things were just worth it.

J
osie was still smiling
. It had been hours since she’d confronted Carter at his apartment, since she’d found all the courage she needed to just say to hell with it. People would talk and she would let them. If they were talking about her and Carter it was because they didn’t have enough going on in their own lives to keep them entertained. Not even Doris could dampen her mood.

At that thought, Josie looked up and caught Doris giving her the stink eye from the circulation desk. Okay, maybe Doris could dampen her mood. But really that wasn’t important in the over all scheme of things because Doris could dampen anyone’s mood. With her beady eyes, too stiff hair, turned down mouth and the general air of discontent that hovered around her, Doris was a walking and talking depressant.

Taking another book from the cart, Josie re-shelved it where it belonged. It was an annoying aspect of her job that re-shelving books was all she was permitted to do. She had a degree in library science, she had ideas for programs to make the library better, to bring people there and make it the center of their community. But as long as Doris reigned supreme, none of that would ever happen.

Picking up another book, Josie glanced at the cover. It was a torrid romance novel, the couple on the front locked in a heated embrace. That would be her. Tonight. It had been almost a week since she’d been in Carter’s arms. And she needed him.

“For Pete’s sake, Josephine! How long does it take you to re-shelve a book?”

Josie looked up to see Doris at the end of the stacks. The weight of disapproval in her stare was tangible. At any other time, Josie would have backed down immediately. She would have apologized and promised to do better. But the truth was, there was nothing wrong with the rate at which she was re-shelving books. There was nothing wrong with her job performance at all. She was actually more qualified to be head librarian than Doris, which was most certainly, a big part of the problem she had with Josie..

“I’m sorry, Doris… am I not scurrying quickly enough for you?” Josie asked, her voice saccharine sweet.

Sarcasm was apparently lost on Doris. “No, you’re not. You’re dawdling and taking your own sweet time about this and there are more carts to be re-shelved!”

Josie looked pointedly at the circulation desk where Doris’ sister-in-law and her cousin, both library employees, were pouring over the donated magazines and divvying up the best ones between them. “And there are more employees who can get to them… Or do I need to approach the County Commissioner about the fact that your relatives are part-time employees who act more like patrons!”

“I can’t fire you,” Doris said. “Not without their approval, but I can make your life a living hell every moment that you’re here.”

“And that would be different how? You’ll give me dirty looks? You’ll pawn all the crap jobs off on me while your family stuff their faces and read the latest tabloids? Oh, I know… you’ll remind me every day that I’m not wanted here and you’ll do whatever you can to get rid of me!” Josie was shouting by the time she reached the end of her list. “But you already
do
those things, Doris. Every day I come to work I stand here, re-shelving books like a trained monkey while your idiot cousin who’s never read an actual book in her
life
is in charge of acquisitions! You haven’t offered any new community events that aren’t a stale rehash of what you’ve done for the last seventeen years!”