“No. I’ve been too busy this last month to do anything but eat, sleep, and fly. In fact, I have to fly out the day after the wedding. But you know that. I’m flying two of your mares to California.” Before he could respond, she’d looked at her watch and slapped his shoulder like best buds. “I need to go help my dad. Great horse, Carter. This was fun. Let’s do it again soon.” And then she’d left without looking back.
They hadn’t been together since that day. Carter had tried to get Reagan to come back to the farm to ride, but she’d been too busy and then he’d been too busy. But now she was thirty feet from him in a beautiful gown at a wedding celebrating the love between one of their good friends and his new wife. This was the moment for Carter to make his move. He set his drink down and wound his way along the edge of the dance floor toward the woman he wanted as his best friend and something so much more.
* * *
Reagan smiled to no one in particular. Her sister, Riley, had left her to go dance after catching Reagan casting glances in Carter’s direction. Riley believed Reagan was keeping a secret, and she was. But she wasn’t going to tell anyone what it was, even her twin sister. It was hard to admit to herself that, above all else, Reagan wanted Carter Ashton to kiss her. The trouble was that was something friends didn’t do. Carter had never shown interest in her other than a riding buddy and a good friend. How could she tell him she wanted more—way more? It was a relief when Riley stopped interrogating her to go dancing among most of their cousins, which left Reagan standing on the sidelines watching others with their dates. She’d kill to have a date, but she had a father issue. And it boiled down to one simple fact . . . having an ex-spy as a father sucked. He tried to slip GPS devices into her clothes. He would regularly try to hack her phone. And he would always scare off any date she or her sister had brought home.
“If I wasn’t a lesbian, a man like that would be exactly what I would want,” Veronica, Zain’s assistant, whispered behind her champagne glass as she stopped to stand next to Reagan. If Reagan were a lesbian, Veronica would be out of her league. The tall blonde knockout was always walking perfection. Red lips, a perfect manicure, and a brain that ran circles around everyone else’s. She was organized, smart, a problem solver, and did it all without a hair out of place or raising her voice. Reagan was more of a disorganized, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants girl who had inherited the temper that came with her red hair. However, she could spy with the best of them.
Reagan turned to see who Veronica was talking about and saw Carter tossing back a bourbon and setting it on the bar top. “Carter?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how sexy he is? Even I have noticed that.”
Reagan looked at him as he buttoned his tuxedo jacket and turned toward her. Their eyes locked and Reagan gulped. His brown eyes were a couple shades darker than the bourbon he’d just enjoyed, but his hair was brown with tinges of auburn that always seemed to shine in the light.
“He’s my friend. One of my best friends, actually,” Reagan said to Veronica as Carter began to walk toward her. Dear Lord, he was sexy, and she didn’t think it was just the tuxedo.
“Seems like he’s coming this way. I doubt it’s for me,” Veronica teased.
Reagan looked away from the man walking toward her. If only. Carter was one of her best friends. She liked him, a lot. She thought he was attractive. The only problem was they never showed any inclination toward being something more. She wouldn’t know how to do that. Flirting was not something Reagan excelled at, and reading the signs to know if he was open to it would be impossible since she didn’t speak that language. Disable a GPS tracker, sure. Figure out if someone was flirty, nope. “He probably wants to talk about his new horse.”
Veronica’s eyes went wide, and she hid her smirk behind her glass. “Riding may be on his mind, but I don’t think it’s a horse he’s thinking about.”
Before Reagan could ask, Carter was standing in front of her. Reagan shot Veronica a glare. She’d never been flustered in front of Carter before, but now she was nearing full-blown panic. She was having a very hard time thinking of anything except for what Veronica had just said.
“You look beautiful tonight, Reagan. Would you like to dance?”
Reagan looked at Carter’s outstretched hand and back to his face. He was smiling, and a hint of a dimple could be seen on his freshly shaven face. “Sure,” she said, placing her hand in his as the music moved from a fast song to a slow song.
Carter pulled her hand to his chest as he slipped his other hand around her waist. Was he holding her too close? Reagan’s breathing hitched as his fingers dug into her hips, pulling her closer to him. Her questioning eyes shot to his as he smiled at her. He moved slowly, sensuously, or maybe it was normal, but Reagan was flustered as she tried to read the signals he was sending. She wasn’t sure what was real and what was stuck in her mind from the talk with Veronica.
Carter’s hand drifted from her hip, and Reagan focused all her attention on where it traveled, up and around her back before sliding inside the loose draping material of her dress where her bra strap would have been. Reagan’s breath caught at the feel of his hand against the bare skin of her back. His muscular thigh pressed between her legs as he dipped her backward to the music. As her dress parted at the split up to her thigh, his leg brushed against her intimately at the same time his fingers fluttered against her, achingly close to the side of her breast. The moment seemed to last forever, but it was over in a second. Carter stood her upright, released her, stepped to the side, and began to clap with the others, thanking the band for the great song.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Reagan. Thanks for the dance.”
Reagan stood dumbly on the edge of the dance floor, watching as Carter walked out of the reception and into the night. What had happened? Whatever it was, it had left her breathing hard, flushed, and tingling in spots not meant for best friends. One thing was for sure: in those four minutes, Carter Ashton had made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt in her life. Now, just what the hell was she going to do about it?
2
Reagan was busy in the cockpit of her plane as Diego, her horse handler, loaded the two mares from Ashton Farms into the small Embraer 140 plane. After stripping all the seats and overhead bins, her plane was only big enough to hold two horses, Diego, and two grooms, but she had big plans to expand the operation. Her plan had been to start small and develop a solid customer base, then she would buy a larger plane. So far, so good. As one of only a few air transport companies dedicated to the horse industry, she was constantly booked and already operating in the black. Owners of horses worth tens of millions of dollars liked to know their horses were on their own plane as opposed to being loaded as cargo on other larger commercial flights.
Reagan had just finished her preflight check when she heard someone enter the small cockpit. “Are we ready to go, Diego?” she asked as she pulled on her headset and looked out the window as the large loading ramp they used to walk the horses up to the entrance at the side of the plane was wheeled back to the hangar.
“We are.”
Reagan was worried she’d suffered whiplash from turning her head so fast at the deep voice that had answered her. She had been dreaming about that voice all night and it certainly wasn’t Diego’s cheerful, slightly accented one. “Carter!” she squeaked before schooling her features into a vision of peaceful calmness instead of the heart-pounding anxiety she felt. See, things her father had taught her were actually useful in real life. “Are you here to check on your mares before we leave?”
Carter grinned slowly and Reagan’s breath hitched. She knew he was attractive. The Keeneston Belles certainly thought highly of him. But registering him as an attractive friend was completely different when the possibility of being more than friends was on the table. Completely different.