Daddy in Disguise (Crescent Cove 7)

One

Sometimes the universe just did not see fit to provide what you wanted. In this case, I wanted to be alone..

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay and help clean up?”

“Go.” If I had to watch my frighteningly pregnant friend—and original employee—teeter around the café any more tonight, I was going to have a damn nervous breakdown. “Moose has texted me no less than three times looking for you.”

Veronica Masterson, café baker extraordinaire and wife of Murphy aka Moose, sighed. “He’s always worried.”

“Considering you barely fit behind the wheel of your huge-ass SUV, it’s not shocking.” Because, of course, Vee had to overachieve in all ways, including babies. One wasn’t enough. Which, hey, I got it. Baby fever was at an all time high in Crescent Cove. But man, twins right after having a baby?

Yeah. No thank you very much times a billion.

“Give Bray a big smacking kiss for me.” Okay, yes, I was soft on her little boy. I couldn’t help it. Every time he saw me he suction-cupped himself to me like an octopus. And he was just as leggy as one, thanks to his huge dad.

“I will. Murphy said he was conning him into another bedtime read.”

“Llama, Llama?”

“Is there any other book these days?”

I hid a smile. I rather liked that one myself—enough to give it to most of the kids in the ever expanding baby-crazy group of women who kept taking over my café, Brewed Awakening.

I steered her toward the door. “It was a light evening. Cleanup will be a snap.”

“But Clara already left. She had that test—”

“Vee, I’m a big girl. I’ve been closing this place for well over two years now.” And as sweet as my server was, I was a helluva lot faster than Clara anyway.

“Almost three, actually.”

My heart did a little twist in my chest. “Yes, three.” I wasn’t exactly sure where the whole of the summer went, but my anniversary was coming up again. Which just happened to coincide with Halloween, my favorite time of year.

“I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

“What exactly is going to happen in the Cove?”

“You don’t know. Serial killers love to use small towns because it’s least expected.”

I sighed as I nudged her toward the door. “You gotta stop listening to those podcasts.”

Vee gave me some side-eye. “You love horror movies, and yet you won’t look at the realistic parts of the world.”

“I don’t need to. Shit is hard enough. Besides, I like the pretend kind of murder and mayhem where I know the killer is going to get his comeuppance.” That wasn’t exactly true. At least in the good kinds of horror movies, the bad guy had to come back at the end.

However, my favorite worrywart had to be on her way. And thankfully, she wasn’t into watching scary flicks, so she was none the wiser.

“Is Gideon next door at least?” Vee hung her cross-body purse over her head and swung it around to the back since, surprise, it didn’t fit in the front.

I jumped back a step before I got smacked with some sort of the baby paraphernalia that was forever spilling out of that thing. “I’m not sure. I’m not his keeper.”

Okay, so that sounded a little bitchy. I was definitely not his keeper. Even if I kept sneaking over there to see what was what. However, it wasn’t because of the man.

Not exactly.

Nope, it was because he and his crew were working on my newest acquisition, The Haunt. A restaurant that combined my two favorite things, food and horror movie memorabilia. I’d managed to procure a good mix of employees from the café who wanted to do something different as well as bring in some fresh blood—pun intended.

Not only did I have an anniversary deal to figure out for Brewed Awakening, this year, I was adding another whole business to that annual event. And my nerves were at an all-time high. At this point, I didn’t even know if the restaurant was going to be ready.

Mostly because my favorite carpenter-slash-contractor wouldn’t give me a straight answer about what was going on next door. In fact, he kept barring me from going over there. Oh, he gave me really good explanations as to why I couldn’t. Insurance and safety and blah, blah, blah.