Page 3 of Loving Carter

“I believe you,” he says. “I wasn’t being sarcastic before. You always have a crowd, which is hard to do in a town as small as Endearing.”

“The Carter fan club was a large part of my business again this morning,” I say, wiping the counter. “The ladies hung around for a long time waiting for you.”

“And eating muffins while drinking coffee, I hope,” he says.

“Thankfully, yes. Your love life is good for business but bad for the self-concepts of the women in this town. You should start dating someone so the rest can stop chasing you. It’s not fair to the women.”

He raises one eyebrow. “That’s like blaming a flower for the bees liking it.”

A laugh bursts out of my mouth, startling me almost as much as it surprises him. “You are such a dork at times.”

“A good-looking dork,” he notes.

I notice he hasn’t acknowledged my comment about him dating. That’s typical. Carter always pretends he doesn’t notice the effect he has on women when he definitely does.

Take today. He looks dangerously handsome as always. He’s wearing a blue T-shirt that shows off his broad chest and significant muscles and jeans that make him look even taller than his six feet two inches. He may not like being a cowboy, but he sure looks like one, and it’s no surprise that several women in town chase him. What they don’t seem to get is that their efforts are in vain. He’s only here for a short time. When his aunts, Tillie and Edna, ran into health problems and needed help, he gave up his job in Dallas as a financial advisor and returned to the ranch where he and his brothers had been raised by the women when their parents died in a car crash.

Except it’s no longer a working cattle ranch. Instead, the ladies turned it into a dude ranch, which drives Carter nuts. Worse, his aunts insist he not make any changes because it would make them feel bad, and true to form, he’s picked up the reins without a complaint.

I don’t normally psychoanalyze people, but in Carter’s case, he acts like the firstborn child he is. He’s driven, responsible, and a natural leader. He’s been responsible from the start, even when he was a kid.

When he keeps reading the menu, I finally sigh. “How long are you going to study that menu? I readWar and Peacefaster.”

“You never readWar and Peace.” He gives me a pointed look.

“Yes, I did.”

“Reading the first chapter and then studying an overview of the plot on the internet is not the same as reading the book,” he says.

“Close enough, and I didn’t take as long on that book as you’re taking with that one-page menu. We both know you only want black coffee and a cinnamon roll. Hurry up, I’ve got work to do.”

Since I asked him to hurry, Carter naturally ignores me and continues to read the menu.

Now I’m getting aggravated. “Seriously, why are you studying that? You know what you want.”

He runs one hand through his dark hair and glances at me. With his hair ruffled like that, he looks like a teenager. “Fine. I’ll be different. I’ll have a blueberry muffin and an espresso.”

I blink, then grin. “Yeah, sure. As long as the blueberry muffin is actually a cinnamon roll and the espresso is black coffee, right?”

He grins. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

With a laugh, I turn to head into the back room so I can grab some more cinnamon rolls, but before I take a step, the midmorning waitress, Janie Brewer, slams through the front door like she’s been tossed by a tornado.

“Sorry, sorry,” the young woman says, stuffing her purse onto the shelf behind the counter. “Class at the college ran late, then I had trouble getting my car to start, plus all the lights on the way here were red, and traffic was terrible.”

She blurts out her explanation in what appears to be a single breath, and when she stops, I say, “Breathe, Janie. Everything’s fine. Melanie was here this morning. She just left a few minutes ago.” I gesture toward the empty room. “Plus, we don’t have any customers at the moment.”

Janie draws in a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s been crazy.”

“Not a problem,” I assure her. “All that matters is you’re here safe and sound.”

I like Janie, but she makes me feel old. She always wears chunky earrings in the shape of fruit that look like they hurt, and last week, she dyed her short hair blue, pink, and green. She looks adorable. The one time I tried to jazz up my hair, I bought white clip-on hair extensions. I thought they would look wispy and ethereal. But when I added the white extensions to my long red hair, I looked like I had peppermint candy on my head. Not the look I was going for.

Janie is currently staring at Carter with the usual glass-eyed look. She always reacts to Carter the way most women do.

“Janie,” I say, hoping to pull her back from the edge of a hormonal attack.

She smiles slightly at Carter, blinks more times than needed, and then immediately becomes flustered. “Hi, Carter,” she says.

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