Honeysuckle Summer (The Sweet Magnolias #7)(61)

“Yeah, what if we’d needed you?” Mandy said, though she didn’t look half as upset as Carrie did.

“You both know you can reach me at any time on my cell phone,” Carter responded. “Did something happen? You’re usually not up this early.”

“We were worried!” Carrie practically shouted, an hysterical note in her voice. “We even called the dispatcher this morning when we realized you’d never come home. Gayle said she had no idea where you were. Apparently you didn’t bother to clock out.”

He ignored the accusation about clocking out. He’d deal with that at the station.

“If you were looking for me, why didn’t you try my cell phone?” he asked reasonably. “Do either of you even remember that I called here just as I was going off duty? You told me everything was fine. I even told you I was going to stop by Raylene’s. You could have called there if you were worried.”

“And interrupt your big late-night date?” Carrie said sarcastically. “That wouldn’t be cool.”

“It wasn’t a date,” Carter said. “I was just checking on her.”

“All night?” Carrie retorted. “Yeah, right.”

He narrowed his gaze and studied his sisters. “What’s really going on here? You knew where I was. You knew how to reach me. Why the overreaction? Were you scared about being in the house alone? Usually you can’t wait for me to let you hang out here alone so you can order pizza and watch movies half the night, because I wouldn’t let you do that in Columbia.”

Carrie looked at him as if he were denser than dirt. “No, you idiot, we’re scared you’re going to pick her over us.” As soon as she’d blurted that out, she looked even more miserable, as if she hadn’t meant for him to know how scared they were that he might abandon them.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, even though it was obvious that she was. “Come on, Carrie. You know that’s never going to happen. You’re my sisters. We’re a team. What put such a crazy idea into your heads? I would never choose anyone over you.”

“You’ve never stayed out all night before,” Mandy whispered, looking shaken, though less so than her sister. “That must mean Raylene’s different, that she’s more important than us.”

“No one is more important than the two of you,” he said fiercely. “I thought you knew that. It’s just that Raylene is the first woman in a while who’s actually mattered. I have no idea where it’s going to go, but I want to find out. That does not mean, though, that I will ever choose her over you. That’s simply not how family works, not ours, anyway.”

“You chose her last night,” Carrie said stubbornly. “That’s got to mean there was sex involved.”

Once again, the direction of the conversation caught him off guard. “Excuse me? You do not get to ask me if I’m having sex.”

“You’ll ask us, I bet,” Carrie retorted. “Assuming you ever let us date.”

“You can absolutely count on me asking, because you’re not even sixteen,” he said. “I’m more than ten years older than you and I’m responsible for you. I get to make those kinds of decisions for myself. You don’t, not for a long, long time.”

“How long?” Mandy asked, her expression a mix of curiosity and impishness.

“Until you’re at least thirty,” he said, as he had many times before. He was dead serious, but he doubted he could pull it off. He’d be happy if he could at least get them through high school before they took such a huge step.

One at a time, he held their gazes, then said, “And if there comes a time when you’re considering having sex, you talk to me first. I get to meet the guy. You use protection.”

Carrie moaned. “We’ll be virgins forever if we have to drag every guy over here before we sleep with him.”

Now it was Carter’s turn to groan, though he tried not to do it aloud. “There won’t be that many guys. Period.” He noted that the girls were still in their pj’s. “Were you both down here all night waiting for me? Seriously?”

They avoided looking at each other for a full minute, then Mandy grinned. “No, but you should have seen the guilty expression on your face when you walked in and saw us here.”

“Then you weren’t really worried?”

“Yes, we were,” Carrie insisted. “But we didn’t actually lose sleep over it. We just freaked out when we came down here this morning and realized you’d never come home. We didn’t know what it meant. Then we got to talking about what would happen if you decided to marry Raylene, and she didn’t want us around.”

The workings of their minds were going to be the death of him. “You had to know better,” he said.

“Well, we thought she liked us, but you never know,” Carrie said. “Some women want a man all to themselves.” She met his gaze. “So, if sex wasn’t involved, why did you stay there all night?”

“It definitely wasn’t about sex,” he repeated firmly. “Raylene was having a tough time last night, and I sat with her until she fell asleep.”

Carrie, of course, looked immediately skeptical. “Which was when? Fifteen minutes before you got here?”