Have My Baby (Crescent Cove 1)

Simple as that.

My nipples hardened and I crossed my arms over my chest. See? I couldn’t even think the words sex and Seth and not react. The fact that my body wasn’t cooperating with my firm no was getting really annoying.

I shut my eyes as the word firm teased out a memory of Seth shifting in the booth as he explained his plans for me. When he’d stood over me, there had been little doubt he meant what he said. Oh, the dark denim masked most of his…situation, but there was a bulge behind his zipper that I had to stop thinking about.

“Where are you?” Sage’s voice rang out from the front of the tiny house. She really just had to walk in a small circle and she’d find me.

“Here,” I called out.

“Should I worry that you’re on the floor?”

I peered at the doorway, but instead of Sage’s face, there was a huge arrangement of lilacs and daisies tucked into a copper watering can.

I didn’t need to look at the card to know it was from Seth. My head thunked back onto the hardwood. “Dammit.” I slung my arm back over my face. Why the hell did he have to remember both me and my mama’s favorite flowers?

Couldn’t he be like the guys I heard my friends complain about? The clueless boyfriends or husbands who bought them a vacuum instead of a bracelet for an anniversary?

That guy was easy to ignore.

This one?

Not so much.

Add in thirteen years of being my best friend and I was friggin’ toast.

“Where do you want me to put this? And why don’t you have any furniture?”

I hauled myself off the floor. ?

?By the door is fine. In fact, put it in your car and take it home.”

Sage put down the jumbo watering can. “I will take it home, but only because it’s your home now too. Or did you forget that little fact?”

“Of course not.” I tucked a stray curl out of my face and back into my fraying French braid. Like a damn homing beacon, I couldn’t stop myself from crossing to the flowers. I brushed the back of my knuckles along the delicate lilac petals before curling my fingers back into my dirty palms. A fine later of dust caked my hands, arms, and knees from packing and hauling boxes. “And that’s why I didn’t need all this stuff.”

“We could have put it in storage,” Sage said with a flutter of hands.

I dabbed at the sweat on my forehead. I needed a shower something fierce. “None of it was worthy of storage.”

Her huge green eyes were about a blink away from tears. “There has to be something you want to keep.”

“Would that be the cracked Walmart lamp, or the sagging wicker round chair circa 1994?”

“Stop. You can’t throw everything away, dammit.”

Sage actually stomped her foot. It was sort of cute in a fluffy half unicorn, half pixie kind of way. The unicorn half was the one that had a little mettle behind her words. She wasn’t a pushover, even if she was the sweetest, most fanciful woman I knew.

“Some kids from the university came and took me up on my bargain basement deals.”

“You didn’t use Craigslist.”

When I didn’t disabuse her of that little statement, her eyebrows shot up.

“Are you insane? And why didn’t you wait until I got here?”

I shrugged. “Not like I couldn’t handle myself.”

“You are on a semi-secluded road a quarter mile away from the road and the lake. Anything could have happened.”