Page 75 of I Think He Knows
“I’msorry,” Annie laments. “I had his poster on my wall in college. This is still weird for me.”
I follow her gaze, and there he is. Carter in motion, jogging across the park and laughingly calling to Legs as he tosses a frisbee her way. He looks like sheer perfection—long and lean and muscular, hair tousled and full lips curved in a smile. Wayfarer sunglasses hide his eyes, but I’m sure they’re gleaming.
“You made it!” Luke calls, all jolly all of a sudden.
“You invited Carter?” I squeak, frantically patting my bird's nest hair.
“Um, if you mean ‘did I invite the newest member of our family to our family softball game’, then yes. Yes I did.” Luke looks at me as if to sayduh.
“But…” I protest, still staring at Carter. He’s getting closer by the second, smiling warmly at me. I can almostfeelthe look in his eyes physically, like his hands are skimming my hips again.
“Mom, look, my new daddy’s here!” Legs yells. She sees my expression and rolls her eyes. “What? I’m justpracticingfor the campout.”
Carter laughs and ruffles her hair. “Morning, everyone.”
“Morning,” Liam says gruffly, then points to the cardboard tray of coffees next to him. “Got you one.”
“Thanks, man.” Carter scoops up a coffee and takes a casual sip. Like he’s simply drinking coffee to enjoy it, and not chugging it like it’s a lifeline to fix a hangover and/or exhaustion like the rest of us.
“Great party last night, by the way.”
Despite Liam being the one who spoke, Carter looks straight at me. His blue gaze sears with heat as he says, “I know I had fun.”
His words are like a caress dancing down my spine.
“You, um, don’t happen to have CCTV on your property, do you?” Liam goes on. “In case of… party crashers or whatnot?”
Beside him, Annie goes scarlet.
Theytotallygot up to no good last night!
Carter’s eyes dance knowingly as he replies, “I do, yes. But all tapes from last night will be erased for privacy reasons.”
“Oh. Good, good.” Liam clears his throat. Carter catches my eye and makes an O shape with his mouth, eyes popping. We are clearly on the exact same train of thought about my brother and his wife’s extracurricular activities from last night. I hide a snort of laughter behind my hand.
It’s almost enough to forget that I’m mad at him.
Almost.
Because the man bought me a freaking real diamond engagement ring. What on earth was he thinking?
I rearrange my snort-laughing expression to a bit of a glare, enough to communicate:I’m onto you, I know what you did and I’m not best pleased about it.
He scans my face, and then smiles. Like this is no big deal. When this is a ginormous deal of astronomical, Jupiter-sized proportions.
“Well, Luke might’ve invited you to a softball game,” Mindy says. “But I don’t know how much game playing will actually happen today.”
“No problem,” Carter says easily. He’s still smiling, and I’m still fixin’ to give him a piece of my mind. He could have bought himself a brand new Jeep for that pricetag, for goodness sakes. And Lord knows, he could do with replacing that rust bucket he drives.
“I, um, actually think we should play softball!” I say, rising from my chair. “Immediately. In fact, Carter, can you accompany me to the car? I think I left my glove in there.”
“You don’t own a glove,” Luke says, scratching his head. “You say you only come to these things to make daisy chains in the grass and eat Spitz.”
“Sure she has a glove!” Mindy shoots her husbanda shut the hell uplook. “Go, you two. Now.”
“Okay…” Carter says, shrugging as he falls into step beside me. “Wouldn’t want Lana to have to carry one whole imaginary glove all by herself.”
The second we round the corner and are out of sight of the others, I grab him by the sleeve of his t-shirt and yank him to the first private place I can find, which happens to be behind an ancient gear shed that has a rusting metal roof. It maybe isn’t my finest idea because there’s a fence behind the shed too, meaning that we have approximately six inches of room between us.