Pit Stop: Baby! (Crescent Cove 4)

My closest friend in town was Macy, and she wasn’t exactly one to plan games of the pin the rattle on the baby donkey variety. So, that left my sister.

“Not that we’re keeping track or anything, but you’ll do this for me, right?”

“Hmm?” Kel picked up a package of baby-sized plastic feeding dishes and carefully studied the back.

They even had to have their own plates, for pity’s sake. They were like a strange little alien subset of humanity.

Perhaps I was more like Macy than I’d realized.

“I don’t really have any friends.” I swallowed hard as my sister gave me a sidelong glance. “I have a couple back home, and Macy is kind of becoming a friend, but she’s sort of anti-baby and I don’t know anyone who’d give me a shower. The baby will need all kinds of stuff and I’m okay with going without, but I don’t really want him or her to.”

“Oh, sweetie, of course I’ll give you a shower.” Kel dropped the package in her cart and turned to cup my cheeks. “It’s not every day my baby sister has her first baby.”

“First and possibly last, depending how badly I screw this one up.”

“That’s the spirit. Positive thinking for the win.” She shook her head. “Seriously, Ry, you’re just in that initial panic stage. Sooner rather than later, you’ll relax.”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I won’t relax for the next eighteen years.”

“Well, that may be true, but—” She grew silent as Ally came careening around the other end of the aisle, her brows knitted together and her eyes wild. “What’s wrong?” Kel asked.

“Sage went to collect Star, but not fast enough. Now Alex is throwing up and he just splashed Laurie and she’s screaming like he tried to murder her. Seth is at his wit’s end. I have to go too. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, no. That’s okay. We’re basically done. You’ve already helped so much.”

“Yeah, but I just remembered I drove us all here. I can drop you off on the way—”

Kelsey shook her head. “No worries. I’ll call Dare. He’ll be getting off work soon anyway. Go on, go home to your family.”

“If you’re sure. Thanks, Kel. Congratulations to you, Rylee.” Ally smiled. “Exciting times.”

“Thank you.”

It was only after Ally left that I realized she was the first person who’d congratulated me on being pregnant. As if it was a good thing rather than the scourge of the earth.

“Let me just call Dare—”

“Wait, I can call Gage—”

Too late.

Kel was on the phone with my brother-in-law, and that meant the chances of Kel spilling the baby beans before we arrived home were high. Either way, Dare would know by tonight that his brother was the irresponsible inseminator, but I’d prefer not to be there when the information was shared.

Asking Kel to keep a lid on it was pretty much useless. She would try. It was just her lips were about as secure as a child’s lunchbox.

Jeez, I was already thinking in kid terms. Children didn’t even have lunch boxes anymore, did they? Paper sacks or lunch lines were where it was at.

Along with getting pregnant, I’d plunged back into Little House on the Prairie times in my own head.

“He’ll be on his way in a few,” Kel said to me.

I tried to smile. Yay.

Once Kel got off the phone, we checked out her massive cart of stuff. We’d just made it outside when Kel’s very safe sedan slid up to the curb. The trunk lid lifted just before Dare climbed out. He took a look at Kelsey’s pile of purchases, then hurried over to help us load it all into the car.

“We havin’ twins and I missed it?” There was no missing the rumble in his voice—or the hard kiss he gave my sister before she had a chance to answer.

Romance was all around me. It took all shapes and forms, but it was there.