Love was worth fighting for. At least that’s what Carter Ashton told himself as his girlfriend’s father leapt on top of the round reception table covered in a white tablecloth at Layne and Walker’s wedding.
Crystal flutes filled with champagne tipped and rolled to the ground under the three-hundred-year-old oak tree lit up by tiny white lights where the reception was taking place on the Davies Family Farm. Some flutes smashed when they fell on the grass as Cy Davies launched himself through the air at Carter, which sent the table teetering. Carter shoved Reagan behind him and waited. It wouldn’t take long for Cy to get to him, and Carter was done running.
Carter knew this was coming the second he’d pulled Reagan into his arms and thoroughly kissed her in front of the whole party, including her very overprotective father. But he’d decided he’d given Reagan enough time to come to terms that their relationship was forever. It was time to become public. So he’d tossed back a couple of bourbons as he watched Reagan across the dance floor at yet another wedding that wasn’t his and decided that was the time to do it. He’d walked across the dance floor, held out his hand with his heart in his palm, and asked Reagan to dance. When she’d said yes, he knew she was ready to tell the world they were together and that made him so damn proud he’d kissed her right there in the middle of the dance floor.
There were screams, the loudest coming from Cy’s wife, Gemma, and Carter’s own parents, Will and Kenna. Reagan fought to get between Carter and her father, but Carter saw his hopefully soon-to-be brother-in-law, Matt Walz, swoop in and suddenly Carter couldn’t feel Reagan behind him anymore. He heard her, though. She was cussing up a storm at Matt for holding her back. In that instant, she sounded remarkably like her father.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing kissing my daughter?” Cy bellowed as he charged across the dance floor like a raging bull. The dance floor, filled with friends and the entire Davies and Faulkner families, parted like the Red Sea.
“I’m kissing my girlfriend, sir,” Carter spoke loudly and clearly a second before Cy’s fist connected with his chin.
“I’m so glad our parents moved to Florida,” Carter heard one of the Faulkner women say to her cousins, who were visiting from Shadows Landing, South Carolina, for the first time. Stars danced in front of Carter’s eyes. Or maybe they were the lights in the tree blurring as he fell to the ground.
Nope, Carter checked. He was still standing. That alone was a victory for him. In that instant, a strong arm wrapped around his shoulder as the groom, SEAL Team Six member Walker Greene, smiled at him and winked.
“Uncle Cy,” he said with his slow Charleston drawl to the man that had been his uncle for about one hour. “As the newest member of the family it’s my turn to catch up on welcoming the new beau.”
Carter wasn’t a slouch. He was over six feet tall and had grown up working on a farm. He had muscles, but he looked skinny next to Walker’s thick body, which was built to survive any condition known to man, including a week alone on the ocean after his team leader had tried to kill him. Carter also knew Walker regularly worked out with Cy, his father-in-law, Miles, and Ahmed, the biggest badass of them all even if he was retired from the Rahmi Security Forces.
Cy was breathing hard. Reagan was threatening bodily harm upon her father. Gemma was smiling, and his parents had taken a stand on Carter’s left side.
“Come on, Uncle Cy. It’s my right having survived your best try at cracking me, right?” Walker grinned. He didn’t wait for an answer, instead Carter just felt Walker tugging him away from the dance floor as they headed for the nearby barn.
“I’ve learned so many uses for a spoon. I can’t wait to show you,” Walker said loudly and Carter heard Miles chuckle. Carter didn’t know what he was in for, but as he looked back into the worried hazel eyes of the woman he’d fallen in love with over the course of their secret relationship, he was determined to face it head on. He’d do anything for Reagan, even go toe-to-toe with her family. A family he’d once considered almost as close to him as his own.
* * *
Reagan slammed her fist backward and heard Matt grunt as she hit her brother-in-law in the balls.
“You know your sister and I are trying to have kids, right?” he groaned as he loosened his hold on her.
Reagan didn’t know where to go or what to do first. Go after Walker with Carter or tackle her father to the ground and tell him he was ruining her life. In the end, she didn’t have to make the decision because her father made it for her as her twin sister, Riley, and their cousins, along with their very pregnant cousin-in-law, who also happened to be Carter’s sister, Sienna, stepped up to have her back.
Sienna rubbed her belly, which was cutely rounded with her and Ryan’s first baby, who was due in four months. Ryan, bless his torn heart, stood looking back and forth between his wife and his uncle as Sienna stepped around Reagan and stood patiently as Cy blustered about hiding a boyfriend from him.
“Are you done?” Sienna asked him calmly. Reagan looked to her sister, Riley, questioningly. Riley shrugged, indicating she didn’t know what Sienna was up to either.
“She lied to me. She lied to all of us. She’s been sneaking around like a teenager. And any man who isn’t brave enough to date my daughter in public doesn’t deserve her!” Cy yelled over Sienna’s head in the direction Walker had dragged Carter. Reagan felt the hit as if her father had been standing in front of her.
“Carter has wanted to from the very beginning. I’m the one who told him to keep it secret because of you. You ruin everything!” Reagan yelled back as anger and tears battled within her. She loved her father. Loved him with all her heart. But this overprotectiveness had to stop. He’d run off every boy she and Riley had brought home, until Matt.
“Now are you done?” Sienna asked Cy again.
“Don’t you dare try to give me that mumbo-jumbo you give to your football players,” Cy growled.
Sienna shook her head. She was the sports psychologist for the local professional football team. “My brother is a kind and compassionate man who has too much respect for his friends to fight you. That’s what makes you the luckiest man here. Your daughter will be loved, respected, and cherished. But nooooo, you have to be all big and bad over the fact that your thirty-year-old daughter is having sex with my brother. Out of everyone Reagan could have brought home, I think she made one hell of a good decision.” Sienna took a deep breath and smiled a threatening smile that had Reagan taking a step back from her. “I married into the Davies family, right?” she asked, smiling over at Ryan whose mom was Cy’s sister.
Reagan’s father nodded slowly in agreement, dumbfounded that the lovely and sweet Sienna has raised her voice at him.
“So, I thought I’d settle this as a Davies instead of as an Ashton. I love my brother with all my heart, and while he has too much respect to fight back, I don’t. And you’ve gone and pissed me off. You should know by now to never, and I mean never, piss off a pregnant lady.”
Reagan gasped as Sienna pulled back her hand and slammed her fist into Cy’s nose.
“Ow!” Sienna cried as she clutched her hand. Reagan looked to her father who absorbed the hit as if it were nothing. Instead, his face was locked in surprise. His mouth was slightly open and his eyes wide as Will and Ryan raced to Sienna’s side and wrapped their arms protectively around her.
“You hit me,” Cy sputtered in shock.