Calmly, Carefully, Completely (The Reed Brothers 3)

“Nope,” he says, stopping to stare into my eyes. “How do you think we got you?” He grins this time. He nods his head toward the house. “Go talk to your mother.”

“TMI, Dad,” I sing. “TMI!” I turn to walk toward the house.

“Reagan!” Dad calls. I turn to face him. “Pete’s a good guy,” he says. “But he’s still a guy.”

“We’re taking things slow, Dad,” I say. Heat floods my face.

“Mmm hmm,” he hums. He goes back to work.

“Take it slow,” Link says.

“I love you, Link,” I call.

“I love you, too,” he calls back.

I walk into the back door and find my mom pouring a cup of coffee. “Pete still alive?” she asks me as she goes to sit down at the table.

“For now.” I sigh. “We fell asleep. Nothing happened, I swear.” Well, not nothing. But we didn’t do anything, really. Nothing that didn’t rock my world as I know it.

“That’s why you’re glowing?” she asks. “Because nothing happened?” She pats the table next to her. “Come sit,” she says.

“Mom,” I grouse, sounding like a child, I know.

“Sit,” she says more forcefully. I drop into a chair.

“Was he kind?” she asks.

I nod.

“Was he considerate?”

I nod and draw my lower lip between my teeth as I fight a smile.

“Was he careful?” She arches her brow at the last question.

“God, Mom,” I complain. “We didn’t do anything. He just kissed me.”

“I’ll make an appointment with my gynecologist if you want birth control,” she says. She looks at me.

I find myself nodding my head, and Mom smiles and pats my hand. “Good girl,” she says on a sigh.

Pete

I’m with the group of hearing-impaired boys, and they’re taking turns riding the horses around the ring. The deaf kids tend to make a group of themselves, and they haven’t been interacting with some of the other kids at the camp. I’ll have to see what I can do about that. Since my brother is deaf, there’s one thing I do know, and it’s that deaf kids don’t see themselves as handicapped. They have a culture all their own, and they can function in society with little or no intervention. But they do tend to clique up since sign language is something they all have in common.

I’ve never spent much time around horses. Or any, if I have to tell the truth. They’re great, big, heavy beasts, and the one I’m leading around the ring keeps nudging me with her nose against my shoulder. “Would you cut it out?” I ask, but she just makes a breathy noise and nuzzles the back of my head. She knocks off my baseball cap, and I bend over to pick it up. But when I do, she bumps me in the ass, and I fall onto my hands in the dirt.

I dust off my hands and look around. Edward, who I can no longer call Tic Tac since I heard his story, is leading one of the other horses. He snorts at me. “Dude, I think you just got bitch slapped. Again.” He chuckles, so I flip him the bird. Edward looks over my shoulder and whistles low, and I turn around to find Reagan walking toward us. She must have gone and taken a shower because her hair’s still damp and she’s plaited it into two braids that hang over her shoulders. She’s wearing a T-shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans, and some brown leather boots that come up mid-calf. Damn, she’s pretty.

She pats the horse I’m leading as she comes closer. “Is Juliette giving you a hard time?” she asks. She leans close to the horse’s ear and whispers to her. The hair on my arms stands up, and it’s not even my ear she’s whispering into. Juliette shakes her head, and Reagan laughs. Damn, that’s a pretty sound.

She walks by me carrying a bucket. “Where are you going?” I yell to her.

She turns back, smiling over her shoulder. “Gotta go get Romeo for Juliette,” she says. “That’s why she’s being so ornery. Her boyfriend is hanging out with the cows.” She nods toward the pasture. “Want to help me?” she asks.

She has Link with her, and he’s following her almost as closely as Maggie, her dog. I doubt that dog ever leaves her side. Hell, I want to be a puppy and follow her, too. I toss the lead rope of the horse I’m holding to one of the boys from the prison program. He grins and shakes his head. He’s the one who called me pu**y whipped last night. Yep. I suppose I am. And it doesn’t bother me in the least.

I run after Reagan, who laughs as I catch up with her. “You look really pretty today,” I say. I want to kiss her so badly I can taste it.

She blushes. “Thank you,” she says, looking down toward her feet.

“I missed you,” I say.

She grins. “You just saw me an hour ago,” she reminds me. Like I need it. All I can think about is the way she felt in my arms. She fit perfectly against my chest.

“Was your dad mad?” I ask. It matters. It really does. I want her parents to like me, but I’m afraid I’m going about it all wrong. I’ve never met a girl’s parents before. Never had any need to. But with Reagan… Everything is different.

She shrugs. “A little.” She laughs. “We had a talk about how to knee you in the nuts, the fact that men only want one thing, and then he gave me way TMI about birth control.”

I stop walking. Wow. That’s a lot to take in. “You talk with your dad about that stuff?”