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When Carson walked into the house, Lucas, one of his younger brothers, was making a sandwich in the kitchen. Bread, meat, and condiments were spread out on the counter in front of him. “If you came for a homecooked meal, I’ve got bad news for you.” He gestured to a bunch of canning jars on the island. “Mom has other plans for the kitchen tonight. She’s drafted me into helping her with rhubarb jam.”
Lucas and Jace were identical twins and hard to tell apart at times—both blond and six-foot-three, but Jace was off at med school and Lucas lived in town with roommates. That made things considerably easier.
“Lucky you,” Carson said. “One of the benefits of being Mom’s favorite.”
“I’m only her favorite if you define favorite as the one she always calls for help.”
“You should’ve learned to be incompetent at cooking like the rest of us.” Carson grabbed a plate from the cupboard and joined his brother. He hadn’t even realized he was hungry until he saw the food. Olivia’s visit had wiped all other thoughts from his mind.
Lucas spread some mayo across a piece of bread. “What brings you home anyway? I thought your PT appointment was on Friday.”
“It is. I came into town to drive Olivia Travers to her apartment.”
“Olivia Travers?” Lucas grabbed some turkey slices from the container. “Why would you do that?”
“We made an agreement.” Carson didn’t want to go into all of the details. “Basically she’s my slave until the cabin is finished.”
Lucas shook his head and chuckled. “I should’ve gone into football. You not only get groupies, you get slave girls as well?”
“Not that kind of slave girl. Aconstructionslave girl. Olivia is just going to work on the cabin.”
Lucas added a slice of cheese to his sandwich. “Dude, you’ve become too obsessed with that house if that’s what a slave girl means to you. Just saying, the girl looks good in a pair of shorts.”
“When have you ever seen Olivia in shorts?”
“I dated her roommate for a few months. I’ve been to their apartment.”
“You were dating her roommate and checking Olivia out?”
Lucas held up his hand to ward off the questioning. “Of course not. But a guy can’t help noticing when a girl looks good after a racquetball game. So how did you get a slave girl and where can I get mine?”
Their mother walked into the kitchen, carrying a pressure cooker she’d lugged up from the basement. “Who are you selling into slavery?”
“No one,” Carson said.
“Olivia Travers,” Lucas said meaningfully. “His old nemesis.”
“Olivia Travers…” Their mother set the pressure cooker on the counter. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
Lucas snickered and took his sandwich to the table. “Because she’s the one who called the police and busted Carson’s kegger.”
“Oh,” their mother drew out the word. “The responsible upstanding girl who didn’t want to see you throw your life away and had the courage to call you out. I’ve always liked her. She risked the displeasure of her peers to make sure my home wasn’t trashed by a bunch of drunk teenage hooligans.”
Carson slapped pieces of turkey on his sandwich. “She didn’t do it because she was trying to save my life or your furniture. She just wanted to take me down a peg.”
Lucas leaned back in his chair. “Did you ever find out why she had it in for you?”
Carson huffed. “She didn’t have a reason. She was just one of those snooty honors kids who hated all the jocks and couldn’t stand the fact that some people were actually having fun.” He went to put mustard on his sandwich and realized he’d already done it. Just talking about the woman was distracting in a bad way.
His mother pulled some empty canning jars from one of the shelves. “There’s a right way to have fun and a wrong way to have fun. Underage drinking is the wrong way.”
The standard lecture. It hadn’t changed over the years. Carson joined Lucas at the table and sat down with a thud. “She cost our school the state championship our junior year.”
His mother made a tsking sound. “Youcost the school the state championship, and it was worth it to teach you a valuable lesson.”
The lesson he’d learned was that karma took some time but would be there in the end. At that moment, he stopped regretting letting Olivia talk him into becoming part of the crew. He was going to enjoy making her work off her brother’s debt.
7
