Carter Bravo's Christmas Bride

They were telling questions.

And that was why she couldn’t put it out of her mind. Carter had answered the questions just as she would have. And that meant she couldn’t stop thinking that it might actually be true, that she’d gone and fallen secretly in love with her best friend.

And now just look at her, with that totally unacceptable secret loose and wreaking havoc in her mind and heart.

The only good news?

Nobody else knew. Not even Carter. He had no clue. She was dead certain of that. Thank God. He’d only been messing with her, taking that ridiculous quiz for her. He had no idea what he’d done.

The next morning, when he stopped by the house to walk the dogs and then fix breakfast for her and him and her younger sister, Dawn, he seemed totally oblivious. And then at work that day, he mostly stayed in the shop and she managed to stick to the office, so he had no chance to notice if she acted strange and preoccupied.

Mona, who worked side by side with her, caught on, though. “You okay, Paige? You seem kind of far away.”

“Christmas on my mind, I guess,” Paige outright lied. “And you know, it’s kind of quiet today. We should get out the decorations, get them up. You think?”

Mona loved Christmas. She zipped right out to the shed by the back gate and hauled the boxes of decorations up front to the office. They spent a couple of hours setting up the fake tree and tacking sparkly garland on every available surface. Mona already had her old iPod loaded up with Christmas favorites. She stuck it in the dock at the end of the service counter. Holiday tunes filled the air. Mona hummed along under her breath, thrilled to have the office full of Christmas and no longer worrying about what might be bugging Paige.

Wednesday morning when Paige followed the tempting smells of frying bacon and perfectly brewed coffee downstairs, she found the dogs—her beagle, Biscuit, and Carter’s hound, Sally—sprawled contentedly on the kitchen floor after their morning walk.

Carter stood at the stove. He had his back to her. She hesitated in the doorway in her flannel pj’s and plaid robe and watched him cooking up the bacon nice and slow.

He liked to come over before she and Dawn got up, especially lately, since he’d broken up with his last girlfriend, Sherry Leland. Lately, Carter ended up at Paige and Dawn’s a lot of the time. He would take Biscuit out with Sally, then let himself back in and start breakfast.

And even when he had a girlfriend, Carter still found time to walk Paige’s dog and brew her morning coffee two or three days a week. Most Sunday nights, he came over for dinner and stayed on to play video games or stream a movie.

That he spent so much time at the Kettlemans’ always bugged his girlfriends eventually. They didn’t really like that his best friend was a woman and his business partner. They also didn’t like that his best friend’s teenage sister was kind of a cross between a daughter and a little sister to him. Paige got why it bugged them. She wouldn’t like it, either, if her special guy spent most of his working life and half his free time with another woman. Paige used to suggest to him that maybe he should focus more on the girlfriend of the hour and not so much on hanging with her and Dawn.

He wouldn’t listen. He said he liked being with her and Dawn, and if his girlfriend was jealous, she needed to get over that.

Paige always felt kind of sorry for Carter’s girlfriends. Somehow they all fell so hard for him. And the deeper they fell, the more he pulled away from them. And the more he pulled away, the more upset they got. There would be scenes. Carter hated scenes, mostly because his childhood had been one long, dramatic scene.

His mother, Willow Mooney, had loved his father, Franklin Bravo, to distraction. Franklin was already married when he met Willow. But Frank Bravo didn’t let a little thing like a wife get in his way. He set Willow up in a house on the south side of town. Willow kicked Frank out of that house on a regular basis. But she always took him back, remaining his mistress for over two decades, giving Frank five children while he was still married to his first wife, Sondra, who gave him four.

Yeah. Falling for Carter? Not a wise move.

This can’t really be happening, Paige thought for about the fiftieth time since Monday and that awful, terrible, silly, pointless quiz. This can’t be happening to me.

But if it wasn’t, then why was she lurking in the doorway to the kitchen, staring longingly at Carter’s broad, thick shoulders and fine, tight butt?

It just made her feel sad. Beyond sad. Carter’s shoulders and butt had never mattered in the least to her before Monday. Why should they mean so much now?

He sent her a quick smile over one of those far-too-fine shoulders of his. “Coffee’s ready.”

As if she didn’t know. Carter was a great cook. And he had a way with coffee. She would know a Carter-brewed cup of coffee blindfolded. All it took was one sniff. Heaven in a cup.

“Thanks.” She shuffled over and filled a mug with the hot, wonderful brew. And then she stood there, leaning against the counter, sipping it slowly, her heart breaking at the hopeless absurdity of it all as Carter cracked eggs into her mother’s favorite cast-iron pan.

* * *

Carter woke on Thanksgiving morning to the sound of his cell ringing. He stuck out a hand, snared the damn thing off the nightstand and squinted at the display. It was 5:49 and his mother was calling.

When had Willow Mooney Bravo ever climbed out of bed before six in the morning? Never, that he could remember. Even when he and his brothers and sisters were small they knew not to bother Ma too early in the morning. She tended to throw things if you messed with her beauty sleep.

His sweet redbone coonhound, Sally, lifted her floppy-eared head from the foot of the bed and blinked at him questioningly.

“Hell if I know,” he said to the dog, and put the phone to his ear. “Ma? What’s going on? Did somebody die?”

“Happy Thanksgiving, darling. Everything is fine and no one has died. But I know you’re an early riser and I wanted to catch you before you left the house. I want a private word with you—today, I hope. I’m leaving for Palm Springs tomorrow and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.” Since his father had died four years ago, you could hardly catch his mother at home. She traveled the world, flitting from one luxury destination to the next. “I wonder if you could drop by for a drink before you join the rest of the family at Clara’s.”

His half sister Clara Bravo Ames had invited the whole family to her house that afternoon for a big Thanksgiving dinner. Paige and Dawn were coming, too. “Won’t you be at Clara’s?”

“It was sweet of Clara to include me, but no. Big family gatherings exhaust me and I have an early flight tomorrow morning—and besides, I want to speak with you alone.”

He didn’t really like the sound of that. “About what?”

“Darling. Honestly. Don’t be so suspicious. I’ll explain everything when we talk.”

“We’re talking now.” At the foot of the bed, Sally picked up the tension in his voice and whined. He snapped his fingers and she slinked up the bed, slithered in a circle and settled beside him where he could throw an arm around her and scratch her silky red head.

His mother went on, sounding way too casual for his peace of mind. “How about this? I know you’re expected at Clara’s at three. So let’s say two o’clock at my house, just you and me.” Her house was the Bravo Mansion, which his father had built for his first wife, Sondra. The mansion was full of beautiful things that used to be Sondra’s. When Sondra died, Frank married Willow and installed her at the mansion. By then, Carter had been twenty-three and on his own. He’d never had to live in the house he still considered Sondra’s, and he was damn glad he hadn’t. He didn’t want to go there today, either. “Carter. Are you still there?”

He patted Sally’s smooth flank. “Yeah.”

“Two o’clock, then?”

He reminded himself that she was his mother and he really didn’t see her all that often these days. “Yeah, Ma. See you then.” Disconnecting the call, he tossed the phone on the nightstand. Then he turned to Sally. “Walk?”

Sally let out a happy whine of agreement and lifted off her haunches enough to give a wag of her red tail.

“Let’s go pick up Biscuit and get after it, then.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, he stood on Paige’s front porch and stuck his key in the lock. Biscuit was waiting on the other side. He grabbed the beagle’s leash from the hook by the door and clipped it to Biscuit’s collar. Then he clicked his tongue and Biscuit trotted out the door to wiggle over and butt against Sally, who waited patiently for Carter to lock up again so they could get going.

Half an hour later, he was back in the kitchen at Paige’s, getting the coffee going, trying to decide between French toast and oatmeal. He settled on the oatmeal because of the huge dinner ahead of them at Clara’s. Paige and Dawn came down together as he was turning off the fire under the oats.

Through breakfast, Dawn chattered away as usual about the afternoon dinner at Clara’s, about how she and her best friend, Molly D’Abalo, were going to the movies with friends in the evening.

Dawn was a great kid. Not an ounce of bitterness in her, though she’d lost her mom and dad suddenly when she was only ten. Erica and Jerry Kettleman had been buried in an avalanche while off on a twenty-fifth anniversary skiing trip. Paige had come home from college to take care of her little sister. Together, they’d made it work. And now, at eighteen, Dawn had boundless enthusiasm and a smile for everyone. She was an A student and first chair clarinet with her high school band.

Babbling away happily between bites, Dawn inhaled her oatmeal. Once her bowl was empty, she jumped up, carried it to the sink, ran water in it and rushed off upstairs to get dressed.

Carter turned to Paige, who wore her heavy plaid robe, with her brown hair loose and uncombed on her shoulders. Her eyes looked kind of puffy. She’d hardly said a word since she came downstairs. “You okay?”

She blinked and seemed to shake herself. “Uh. Fine.”

“Sure?”