Carter turned to see Andy Dinkler, Deputy Dinky’s son. His carrot-red hair stood out in the night as he looked up at Carter. Like his father, Andy was slightly below average height, below average or average in everything except for his heart. He had the biggest heart Carter had ever seen. All he wanted to do was help people.
“Yes, Andy. I do. But I’m not going home. I have to see a woman about a horse.”
Andy raised an eyebrow as he unlocked his truck. “A horse?”
“No, not a horse,” Carter sighed. His head was swimming. He’d had too much of the Rose Sisters’ special ice tea. The drink had seemed to be mostly bourbon that night. And all of Nash’s talk about longing and mistakes and secret relationships had sent Carter down the rabbit hole of thoughts and feelings about Reagan. “A woman. I need to see a woman.”
“Any specific woman?”
“I can’t tell you. In fact, I can’t tell anyone.” Carter sighed before directing Andy to drive him to Cade and Annie Davies’s house where Reagan was having a girl’s night with her cousin Sophie.
“You don’t have to talk to me about it, but why can’t you tell anyone?” Andy asked, full of concern.
“She doesn’t want it getting around we’re together.”
“Are you using her for sex?” Andy asked aghast and ready to defend the woman’s honor.
Carter shook his head. “No. I think I might love her. It’s complicated.”
“It’s not complicated if your intentions are clear.”
Dammit, Andy was making way too much sense. And that sense was exactly what was making it hard on Carter. Because deep down, he was like Andy—a good guy. He wasn’t like Nash, who was used to being undercover and hiding his feelings. Carter was a good man who wanted a good woman to love. And he had her. Now he just had to convince her to trust him enough to always be by her side, no matter how much her father overreacted.
Andy dropped him off at the end of the driveway leading to Cade and Annie’s house with a wave and an offer to talk if Carter ever wanted to. Carter ducked behind the bushes when he saw the first headlights coming his way. He watched as Layne drove away and then Riley. Piper’s car followed shortly after, then he saw his mark. He stepped out of the shadows and hit the car window when Reagan stopped at the end of the driveway before pulling out onto the road.
Reagan jumped, and he had a gun pointed at him in a blink of the eye before recognition set in. Reagan unlocked the door and put her gun away as Carter jumped in right before headlights appeared from behind them.
“What are you doing?” Reagan hissed. “Sienna’s right behind me.”
“I want us to be a couple,” Carter told her as Reagan shoved him down in the seat.
“We are a couple.”
“A public, real-life, for-all-the-world-to-see couple,” Carter told her.
“No. I don’t want to go public. My dad held Matt up against he wall in a chokehold because he put his arm around Riley at dinner.”
“I can handle it, Rea,” Carter told her from where he was bent over in his seat.
“But I can’t!” Carter looked up and saw a tear streaming down her cheek. “You mean too much to me, and the pressure and negativity my dad will put on us . . . It’ll ruin this wonderful, perfect thing we have going on. I can’t risk losing you.”
Carter’s heart sank. “Okay, Rea. We’ll keep it secret a little longer but not forever. I won’t keep you a dirty secret because what we have is beautiful, and it’s not something to be hidden away.”
7
“Reagan,” Carter called out with a grin, “did you forget something again?”
Reagan looked down at her shirt. Nope, her boobs were in place. Then she looked back to Carter who was dangling a pair of panties in his fingertips.
Reagan rolled her eyes and went to snatch them from his grasp. “I have a whole drawer filled of panties you’ve forgotten,” Carter laughed. But Reagan heard something, and she covered his mouth with her hand.
“Oh, Sugarbear,” Aniyah purred from nearby in the Desert Sun Farm garden. The spontaneous engagement celebration between Walker Greene, a SEAL Team Six member, and Layne Davies was in full swing after the town banded together and brought down a murderous traitor. “You know what gunfire does to me.”
Carter and Reagan had slipped away from the celebration and into Dani’s gardens behind the Ali Rahman family mansion for a little alone time. Apparently State Trooper DeAndre and his girlfriend, Aniyah, had the same idea.
“It sounds like they’re on the other side of the hedge,” Carter whispered into her ear.
“I love you, baby,” DeAndre said smoothly between the sounds of kissing.
“I love you too, Sugarbear. Hey—” she said suddenly. Carter and Reagan held their breath as Reagan had visions of Aniyah poking her head through the hedge and finding them. “What are these panties doing here?”
“The panty dropper,” DeAndre said in wonder. “The one thing I haven’t been able to find out.”
Reagan’s eyes widened as she looked at the panties in her hand to make sure they were hers.
“One thing you haven’t been able to figure out? You’ve been holding back on me. What other things have you found out?” Reagan didn’t need to see Aniyah to know she was standing with her hands on her curvy hips and staring her boyfriend down.
“Now, baby, you know you’re not any good at keeping secrets. I’m sure Reagan doesn’t want you telling everyone whom she is dating, or Father Ben wanting everyone to know why he joined the church, or who is pregnant. Shoot, I don’t even know if they know at this point that they’re pregnant and it would just be rude to spoil their happy news,” DeAndre said as if he were trying to calm a wild horse.
“Someone’s pregnant?” Reagan whispered to Carter.
Carter rolled his eyes. “That’s what you got out of it. Not Father Ben’s past life or the fact DeAndre knows about our relationship?”
Reagan stuck out her tongue and Carter sucked it into his mouth, silently laughing as she looked shocked. “Stop distracting me. I want to listen. How does he know all this stuff?”
“DeAndre Drews,” Aniyah sounded pissed, “you know all that and won’t tell me?”
“I’m sorry, baby, but you wouldn’t be able to not say anything. It’s one of the things I love about you. You would be so happy for the couples that you’d hug them and congratulate them in the middle of the café. And like I said, I don’t think Reagan wants anyone to know, and I don’t even know if the other couple knows they’re pregnant yet,” DeAndre said soothingly.
“Then how do you know?” Aniyah challenged.
“Baby, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It’s a gift. John Wolfe is trying to find out too, but he’s working with antiquated equipment, so to say. But here I stumble upon the panty dropper, the one case I can’t crack.”
“Can’t you take it to the crime lab and DNA it or something?” Aniyah asked. DeAndre had succeeded in drawing her off the topic of what else he knew.
“I tried. But half the town is filled with spies and top clearance military personnel. I can’t walk up and snag a piece of hair from their head and they not know what it’s for. And when I ran the DNA through the computers, I got nothing. No match or no near match to any criminals. Nothing. It’s like they don’t exist,” DeAndre said, sounding frustrated.
“I guess I could accidentally feel everyone’s butt to see who has no panty lines,” Aniyah said. Reagan’s face flamed as Carter rubbed his hand over her panty-free ass. She felt his body silently shaking with laughter behind her and elbowed him in the stomach, which only made him shake more.
“I don’t think that would go over well, baby.”
“At least give me a hint on who is pregnant so I can place a bet at the café. I have had my eye on this cute gun—gun print lingerie,” Aniyah said, although it sounded more like a question.