Chapter 10
I’m so single if I win a trip for two, I’m going twice.
—Text from Ellodie to her mom
ELLODIE
“And that’s Auden.” Quaid’s voice literally made my ovaries sing.
How was I supposed to remember names when he’d just rocked my world?
Literally, there wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t still tingling from the things he’d just done to me.
I was so lost in thought that I didn’t hear what led to the man to my left saying what he said. ButI did look up when he spoke.
“Whoa, brother. You forget to take your contacts out again?” Gable asked, looking at Quaid kind of funny.
I looked over to see that his eyes were, indeed, red.
He shrugged. “I didn’t have my contact case to take them out, and I just put these in, so I’m not gonna just waste them.”
“You can use mine,” Quincy said as he pulled out his contact lens case from his pocket. “I was trying to decide if I wanted to go with the glasses or the contacts today since these allergies are kicking my ass. I have them in, but I’m not sure for how long.”
Quaid took the case gratefully, pulling them out of his eyes as I stood there and stared at him with wide eyes.
“You wear contacts?” I asked.
“We all do,” the stranger who was definitely related to Quaid answered.
“You do?” I wondered.
“Mom and Dad both have shit eyes.” He held out his hand. “I’mAuden.”
I shook his hand, and then was given an introduction to every single brother, again, as if they knew I hadn’t retained their names from the first time we were introduced.
“You got your glasses with you?” Quincy asked.
“In the cruiser,” he answered. “Want to run out and get them for me?”
Quincy was gone moments later, leaving me with six of the seven brothers staring at me.
“Your vision is bad enough you have to have your glasses on?” I wondered. “I had laser surgery when I was fifteen, and it was the best decision I’ve ever made.”
“We’ve all thought about it,” one of the brothers said, “but only Atlas ever went through with the procedure.”
“This is a nice place that you have, Ellodie.” Germaine, the dad of this tribe of tall, hot men, looked around. “I thought coming up to the building that it would be a bit run down on the inside like it is on the outside. But they updated it recently. I was in here a couple of years ago for a domestic dispute before I took the assistant chief position, and it was falling down around our ears.”
“I think it was updated about three years ago,” I said. “I just moved in last year, though.”
“It is a great location with you working at the hospital,” he said.
“It’s a great location, but pretty hard to find. It took me a while to find it this morning,” the youngest Carter brother, Garrett, grumbled. “Because this bitch doesn’t use his blinker.”
He pointed at Quinn, the youngest of Quaid’s triplet set.
“It’s no one’s business where I’m going,” Quinn argued.
“It is when we’re all literally following you,” Garrett contradicted him. “You were the only one with the address since y’all didn’t text in the group, but individually.”
“I don’t like texting in the group. You all send too many text messages,” Quinn defended himself.
“We don’t send that many,” Atlas or Auden said. “You just don’t like getting any messages. One message is too much in your opinion.”
Quinn shrugged, then looked at me. “Are you sure you want us protecting you?”
I opened my mouth, and then closed it before Quaid butted into our conversation. “She doesn’t get a choice.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it before common sense reared its ugly head.
He was right.
I needed to have someone protecting me. It freakin’ killed me to admit it, but I wasn’t trained in any way to defend myself.
Sure, I could lift a fifty-pound haybale up and over my head like it was a feather, but other than throwing a punch at someone standing still, I had no clue how to make sure I wasn’t murdered by a serial killer.
“Fine,” I said as I sat down on the arm of one couch. “What do we need to do from here?”
The brothers talked, and I mentally catalogued everything there was to know about the Carter men.
Quincy, Quaid, and Quinn were triplets. Then there were Auden and Atlas. Followed by Gable and Garrett. Rounding the crew off was the patriarch of the CarterClan, Germaine, who looked freakin’ great for his age. The younger Carter men could only hope they looked half as good when they got to his age.
Each and every one of them were muscled, though Quaid and Garrett were a little more on the thick side. ButI wouldn’t say they were fat by any means. It just meant they had way more muscle than the other six.
And all of them were dwarfing my delicate furniture that I’d gotten at an antique thrift store.
Maybe we should’ve gone to Quaid’s place…
Another knock on the door had me glancing at it nervously.
Were there more?
“Oh, Mom. Hey,” Garrett, I thought, answered with a grin. “Mamasauce, this is Ellodie. Ellodie, my mom.”
The woman who entered looked amazing for having nine children. And the younger version of herself walking in next to her was breathtaking. They both were. But the sister… Wow. They were both supermodel worthy, that was for sure.
Maybe the men were going to age gracefully after all. Because holy wow, Garnett was stunning. “It’s nice to meet you, Ellodie. This is my daughter, Ande.”
Ande waved.
“Aww, y’all are so cute,” Garnett cooed as she pulled out her phone to get a picture.
The men started to move, but she said, “Sit the fuck down and smile!”
All seven boys sat there and smiled.
I was shook.
The shock must’ve shown on my face because the beautiful female version of the brothers walked over and said, “Mom’ll probably post that to Facebook saying ‘my everything.’ And then everyone will think they’re all picture perfect, meanwhile Mom had to threaten them to stay.”
I blinked.
“I’mAnde,” she offered me her hand. “That’s my mom, Garnett. You’ve met my brothers? They introduced themselves nicely?”
“They better have,” Garnett quipped as she came over with her hand extended as well, which I took. “It’s nice to meet you, Ellodie. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
My gaze quickly went to Quaid, who was smirking at me. “All good things, I hope.”
“Oh, only the best,” Garnett agreed. “Quaid told us he picked you up last night on the side of the road changing some man’s tire in a tight dress.”
I snorted. “That’s actually true.”
“Us women need strong, strapping men who know how to change a tire,” Garnett admitted. “BecauseI don’t want to be waiting on the side of the road in Dallas traffic doing that for myself. No thank you. They can have the trash, mow the yard, and change all the tires. I’ll take vacuuming and washing the dishes any day.”
“That’s why I taught all of my sons everything I know.” Germaine puffed out his chest.
“You also taught them how to take thirty-minute shits,” Ande countered.
“That’s the truth,” Garnett said under her breath. “Hey, where are we going to breakfast? And if one of you says that…”
“PieHard!” Ande cried out. “Sorry, I already ordered it, Mamasauce.”
Mamasauce.
That was cute.
“Why is that a bad thing?” I whispered to Ande.
“Mom loves it there,” she admitted. “But it’s the only place we all want to go all the time. And she’s craving some pancakes.”
Pancakes did sound good. ButI’d never had this PieHard place, and it sounded intriguing. It also had an awesome name.
“I can make pancakes,” I offered. “And we can eat some of the PieHard as dessert.”
“Pancakes are dessert,” Atlas—or was it Auden?—pointed out.
I gave him a quelling look, which he promptly laughed at.
“Listen here, Auden,” I pointed at him.
“Atlas,” the one I thought was Atlas corrected.
“Whatever,” I said, pointing at the naughty one. “If your mama wants pancakes, then we’ll have pancakes. I have all the stuff for it.”
“Honey,” Garnett said quietly to the son I was now sharing an apartment with. “If you don’t marry this one, I’ll never forgive you.”
I snorted. “We’re nowhere near that point.”
“But you will be,” Garnett disagreed. “You will be.”
WhenI looked over at HotCop, he was staring at me with an amused look on his face.
He wasn’t denying his mother’s words, either.
Which only intrigued me more.
The man was overly sexy, had a great job, was nice and protective.
I hadn’t found a single thing wrong with him yet.
Which was pretty impressive seeing as I liked to pick apart my dates to the point where I practically created things wrong with them.
ButHotCop? There was just something about him. He wasn’t perfect. I was sure of that. Yet none of the overhanded things he’d done so far had pissed me off.
What was up with that?
“I’m going to throw up,” I admitted two hours later as we drove to a HomeGoods for a few extra essentials for Quaid’s place.
We’d been and gone from his house, and the moment I was there, I was already shaking my head and saying we needed to get more stuff, pronto.
I had no problem making do for however long I needed to, but I couldn’t share a towel with Quaid. The man had one and only one towel, and though I wouldn’t mind sharing a lot of things with the man, a towel wasn’t absorbent enough for two.
Oh, and he wasn’t lying about his dishes or cooking utensils.
The worst, though, was his lack of blinds or curtains.
The moment we dropped my bag off inside, we’d turned right around to head here.
Despite my overly filled belly.
“You ate three pancakes, a chocolate chip cookie, a blueberry muffin, half a honey scone, a macaroon, and bits and pieces of everything else my brothers had. I’m surprised I didn’t have to roll you out to the car.” He laughed.
I flipped him off, and he parked.
WhenI would’ve gotten out myself, he said, “Wait for me.”
Tingles and excitement danced in my belly as he rounded the hood of his truck, last year’s model of a FordF-250 according to him, and headed to my side.
His head seemed to be on a swivel as he took everything in, making me feel even more inadequate at protecting myself.
Once inside, he kept more of an eye on the people around me than the stuff I was putting into his cart.
“This or this?” I asked him as I held up a set of blinds for him to choose from.
It was, after all, his place.
“What’s the difference?” he asked.
“These go up by just pulling the blinds up by hand,” I explained. “These you still have those little strings that always seem to get tangled up in everything.”
“No strings,” he said. “Do you think it’s completely necessary to have them?”
I tilted my head. “Your brother lives across the street, right?”
He nodded, his green eyes studying my face, and wondering where I was going with this.
“And what if we—err, or someone else with you, eventually—start to get busy in the living room. And it’s dark outside, and there are lights on inside, and you have no blinds?” I paint the picture for him. “Do you care if they see?”
His eyes darkened. “You mean, what if I fuck the hell out of you in my living room, and I want to keep it a bit more private than sharing you with the world?”
“I just said that,” I said, cheeks on fire.
“I don’t mind people seeing, but only when I want them to see,” he whispered against my ear, making shivers track down my spine. “Get the ones without strings.”
We got twenty-eight sets of blinds, and curtains for the large windows in his living room that wouldn’t allow for anything but custom-made blinds.
By the time we were getting toilet brushes and toilet paper holders, I was a burning mess of need.
And he knew it.