Chapter 28

June

My daddy always said that if you’re looking for something wrong, you’re going to find it. When you’re looking for trouble, you find trouble. If you’re digging for worms, you’ll find worms.

When I reach across the counter to grab my toothbrush, my knuckles graze Carter’s. It’s an accident, but it must have looked intentional.

My heart sinks as he flinches at my touch. I want to let the point of contact linger, but he’s quick to pull his hand away.

But it’s all in my head, I figure. It must be. What we had last night was beautiful. Incredible, even.

So why do I only want to touch him more, and he only wants to create space?

It becomes a twisted little experiment as we get ready for work. When I stretch out my legs to pull on pantyhose, does my body catch his gaze? I straighten his collar—but was that a moment of hesitation in his eyes as I do so, or was it just a trick of the light?

It’s as if all of that furiously passionate energy from last night has coalesced into a defensive cloud of coldness around Carter. A frosty haze that’s determined to keep me away from the man I thought I knew—and him away from me.

At this point, I don’t think it’s out of line for me to wonder just what is going on.

I mean, for the freaking love of Pete, I’ve been wondering that since late last night. Granted, it hasn’t all been an unpleasant ride since then, but this is already getting beyond aggravating.

And we haven’t even left the penthouse yet.

If I thought those few hours last night were bad, there’s a dark fog settling over the landscape of today, and I don’t need the Old Farmer’s Almanac to tell me that the forecast looks foreboding.

The fog I can nearly see—even walking into the office—is not like the aloof, icy cloud I noticed encircling this morning. The feeling is coming from Carter, but I can sense it souring everything today—at least for me.

Carter Abraham didn’t become Carter Abraham solely based on familial luck. This is a man with many rare gifts. While I’ve become very familiar with some of these gifts, there are others which I’m still learning about.

Some of them catch me off guard. For heck’s sake, I bet some of Carter’s powers would catch him off guard if he were to see them from another perspective.

Like my perspective. Like this morning, when his mysterious sour mood just infiltrates the atmosphere of the whole office.

As I’ve been learning in varied and often surprising lessons, Carter Abraham is a true force of nature. Even in this city, I bet that’s rare.

Force of nature or not, I am not appreciating Carter’s cold, prickly way of being this morning. Like almost running away from me to go straight into his office before closing the door.

The truth of Carter’s life hasn’t changed at all since last night—but he’s acting as if the act of telling me was the same as finally telling himself.

What’s stranger is that I’m fine, and he’s taking it so absurdly hard.

Maybe I’m being insensitive, but it doesn’t make a cowlick of horse sense. I’m trying to make heads or tails of it, but this whole experience is starting to feel as bumpy and nauseating as a makeshift thrill ride at the fairgrounds in Wahoo.

In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not thinking like a city gal at the moment—and I have some Sandhills-sized doubts, it would make the tiniest bit of difference if I were.

But I get to work, the same as I’ve been doing every other day. There’s going to be plenty of—I guess I’ll call it fertilizer—to deal with no matter where I go. Some places have their own unique brands of fertilizer, but most fertilizers are the same whether you’re in Nebraska, New York, or New Orleans.

There’s no point in running around the country, around the world, trying to find some place that’s fertilizer-free every time you get frustrated—because it really is everywhere. I haven’t been to too many places, but I’m already convinced of that.

Plus there’s a chance I’ll figure out—or just find out—what’s going on with Carter soon enough.

Plus, I’m pregnant and have the contract. Maybe this will all end up coming full circle to the original plan—a business arrangement.

And nothing more.

Yeah, that would be some fertilizer if it were to happen. But leaping to conclusions is not going to do anything but encourage more anxiety—and the whole anxiety thing was the least fun part of last night.

I could do without going down that road again. This morning was another little experience I don’t care to repeat.

That doesn’t mean the rest of today has to be sh—

Well, fertilizer-y.

“What is it now, June?” All it takes is me walking into his office for Carter to start hissing at me like some brutish jerk of a boss at his secretary.

To be just, I am a secretary, but…

No, I don’t like where this is going, any part of it.

“I just wanted to see if you needed anything, Carter!”

It feels kind of nice to throw his attitude right back in his face like that—and that feeling lasts a nice, solid three second or so until the senseless reality of it all sets in.

Carter pretends to ignore me, looking at some papers on his desk that I don’t think he’s even pretended to look at before. If I’m to believe my own eyes and my own memory—assets which have always worked just dandy for me—those papers have been sitting in the same spot, gathering dust for the last three days.

Shortly after that little yelling session, it feels like I’m in the middle of some weird, awful play that I just had the script for but lost it after yelling that one line. Carter’s still in character, projecting surliness and looking through his desk drawers for nothing, while I’m silent, confused, and falling out of whatever role I barely realized I was playing.

You know what? Forget this stuff.

Forget all of it.

Last night, we had some interesting times indeed. While I don’t regret it for a jiffy, you’d think with all that dark intensity, he would’ve exorcised some of this…whatever it is.

Or, all of it, ideally.

But as the father of my child refuses to step out from under the dark cloud he’s projecting everywhere, I remember that I’ve got my own priorities.

“As I hope you’ll recall, Mr. Abraham, I need to leave work early today. I have a medical appointment, you see. An ultrasound, to be specific, the first of my pregnancy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go home and get ready.”

Carter’s head is still down by the freaking desk drawer. It’s like he’s not even listening.

Because he’s not.

Is he?

My immediate impulse is to stand silently and watch closely, trying to decode every dark, broody movement for any sign that he is listening and that he does care.

That his feelings for me are still there, and that they didn’t just evaporate in the cloud or the fog or whatever metaphor my brain tries to throw out next to make sense of this craziness.

Forget that impulse. It’s doing me no good.

Is that a city gal impulse, or is that just ole Junebug?

Neither, it’s nothing.

And I’m neither. I’m just June, and it’s time for me to go to one of the most important appointments of my life.

Striding out the door and away from Carter’s office, there’s another impulse I need to fight—the impulse to stamp my pumps against the hard Abraham Fertility floor with each step. If I did that, it would create a series of satisfying, angry clicks ricocheting throughout the entire floor of the building.

But why would I do that? I’m just an expectant mother on her way to an ultrasound.

What could I possibly have to be angry about?

And of course, I realize none of this is any good for the growing baby inside of me. I have read babies are able to pick up on how their mothers feel. If that’s true, my poor little one must already be a nervous wreck.

Time to bull up my boot straps.

Time to stop this nonsense, I tell myself and focus on this tiny life growing inside of me.

Thanks to my decision to walk calmly towards the exit, it’s quiet enough to hear a voice coming from somewhere far behind me.

Just some voice, from some person, trying to project, or maybe yell, but lacking even the proper freaking commitment for that.

“June, wait…do you need me to…”

Or something like that. I’m long gone before I can hear anything else.