stopped when it came to Carter dating Kyle’s sister.
Screw that. If Grace Malory had the hots for Carter, it was none of Kyle’s business. If she could draw Carter out of himself and make him happy, so much the better.
Grant would have to see what he could do about that.
“Thanks, Carter,” Grant said. He slid on the coat, which hung the tiniest bit loose—Carter was slightly broader in the chest. “Kiss Faith good night for me, all right?”
His mood better, he made for the tent, determined to talk to Christina.
His good mood evaporated, though, when he saw Christina leaving out the other side of the tent with Ray Malory, their arms around each other.
Ray was very drunk, barely able to walk as they stumbled up the hill to the vehicles outside the house. Christina had already taken away his keys, and now she shoved him into the passenger side of her pickup, shut the door, and came around the driver’s side.
“You don’t have to take me home.” Ray slurred the words out as she got in. “Kyle can do it.”
“Kyle wants to stay and have fun. So do your sisters. I’m done. No reason I can’t run you back to town.”
Christina said her good-byes to Bailey as soon as she’d thrown her bouquet—which Lucy Malory caught—and Christina had been looking for an excuse to leave. She didn’t like that Grant had disappeared in the darkness with the woman Carter had brought to meet him, but she wasn’t certain she wanted to face Grant again either.
Ray scowled, dark brows drawing down over bloodshot green eyes. “If you’re doing this to make Grant jealous …”
“Grant has nothing to do with it.” Christina shoved her key into the ignition and cranked the truck to life. “He has nothing to do with my life anymore, all right?”
Ray growled something but subsided. Christina knew the lie for what it was—she was leaving to avoid Grant—but the second part of her statement was true. She and Grant were finished, didn’t matter that they’d thrown themselves at each other tonight under the trees.
Thrown themselves together, then grabbed hold, kissing, touching, needing. Christina shivered at the remembered sensation of Grant’s hand hard between her legs, his fingers coaxing pleasure from her.
Christina hadn’t been touched like that in a long time. She’d been to bed with Ray more than a few times, but it was different. Ray was not a bad lover, by any means, but what she’d had with Grant …
Had been unsettling. So potent she wasn’t sure she could handle it again.
Not that she was likely to get the chance. She and Grant had found themselves in an unusual situation, both of them hyped up from the wedding. Christina couldn’t blame what she’d done on drink—she had been sipping ginger ale instead of champagne. She couldn’t speak for Grant.
No, their bodies had simply reacted to being close to each other’s, and they’d not stopped themselves.
It was what it was, Christina told herself. Move on.
Ray was very quiet as she drove the five miles into town. He nodded off against the window, his hands relaxed on his thighs. A relief, because Christina didn’t want to talk.
The ranch where Ray lived with Kyle and Grace was on the road that led out the north side of town, which entailed driving around the town square. The county courthouse sat in the middle of the square amid a green lawn. The sheriff’s department, where Ross worked, was here too.
Shops lined the streets around the square, from souvenir places for the Hill Country tourists, to an old bookstore, to a hardware store, to lawyers’ offices, to the feed store at the end. The corner on the northwest side held Mrs. Ward’s restaurant and the gas station.
The hardware store had once been a drugstore, complete with an old-fashioned soda fountain. Christina’s grandmother had shopped there as a kid, meeting her grandfather for a malted at the soda counter. Christina liked to picture them there, even though the sign over the store said Hal’s Hardware now.
Ray drawled next to her, “Too bad it’s all going to go.”
Christina jumped. She hadn’t realized he’d woken up. “Go? What’s going to go?”
“This.” Ray waved an unsteady hand at the slowly passing buildings. “Some developer is trying to buy up the whole town. To make it one big suburb with rows of identical houses and a shopping center.”
“Seriously?” Christina ground to a halt at the stop sign next to the feed store, even though no one else was