“Puffin?” I let out a laugh. “Why?”
He shrugs again.
I try to tone down my eye roll, but it’s harder than I anticipated. I snag the hair at the back of my neck, twirling it as I stare at him. He watches my finger, mesmerized by the movement, it seems. Maybe I can hypnotize people like this.
“It had to do with a tuxedo,” he says, though the final syllable rises like he’s asking a question.
“It’s like you want me to call your bluff!” I say, laughing. The man is terrible at lying.
He shakes his head, a strand of hair dropping over his forehead. I reach out to push it out of his face, our eyes meeting.
I pull my hand back, shocked by my inappropriate behavior.
“Uh, sorry,” I say quickly. “You just had…hair.” I gesture to his general face region, not helping the situation at all.
“I appreciate the help.”
Now it’s my turn to use cleaning up as a distraction. We pack up the security room in silence, though not the awkward kind that it might’ve been a week or two ago. Carter and I move around the small room and each other in a flow so smooth, it might as well be choreographed.
“Why did you become a Mitchell?” I ask. “You don’t seem that excited about it.”
Carter sighs, and for a minute, I think he’s going to decline to answer. But then he says, “I never wanted to be a Mitchell. I came into this world as an Anderson, and I wanted to stay that way. It was the name my mom gave me, the one I grew up with. When Wilson said he wanted me to legally take his last name, I said no. Or, to be honest, I screamed no, loudly, before stalking off like the surly fourteen-year-old I was. There was no possible way I was going to take the last name of the man who had ignored me my entire life. The man who married another woman when my mom was days away from giving birth to me.”
I continue to clean, making sure he knows I’m listening but not prying. “But then?”
Another sigh. “But then my mom told me Wilson was offering to increase his child support by a thousand dollars a month if I changed my name. I still said no. Like the petulant child I was, I said no, claiming I would work all summer and earn as much money as he would pay us.”
He coughs like his throat can’t handle saying that many consecutive words at one time. “My mom’s laughter turned into tears as she explained that working breakfast rather than dinner meant she was bringing in less money in tips, and for the first time, she wasn’t sure where she was going to find the cash to pay our bills. I offered to quit football and get a job after school, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. She knew all about my plans to get out of Wild Bluffs, and part of that plan was an athletic scholarship if an academic one didn’t pan out.”
“I’m sorry, Carter. I…”I what? Didn’t know? We all assumed it was something like that.“I shouldn’t have pried.”
“It’s fine. But yeah, the day I formally became a Mitchell was one of the worst of my life.”
It’s silent as we both continue to pack our things.
“Are you headed up to check the comms devices?” Carter asks when we’ve both got our equipment packed and ready to be on a truck to Amsterdam in a few hours.
“I am.”
“Want some company?”
I feel the slow smile pull on my face. Company in general? No. Carter’s company?
“Sure,” I say. “If you want to.”
Shifting the backpack with my laptop and essential equipment onto my back, I mentally work through my checklist for tonight. The earpiece check should be the last thing I need to get done.
We’re in Tokyo in a week, so the equipment we used in Dublin has already started its long journey there. Our gear from tonight will start the seventeen-hour drive south to the Netherlands bright and early tomorrow. It’s a quick enough turnaround that I’m surprised we have a full travel day for it. We’ll have almost twenty-four hours where only the executive protection team is working, and Carter plans to change them out fairly frequently to get everyone as much time off as possible.
It’s that twenty-four-hour stretch that made the conversation with Nash about fraternizing with the other agents a requirement.
“So what did Nash say when you talked to him about Mikayla?” I ask.
“He assured me nothing was happening between them.”
“But?”
“But he’s interested in her, and as much as it pains me to admit it, I think she might be interested in him too.” Carter runs a hand through his hair, the carefully groomed length on the top turning into valleys where his fingers pass through.
