Lucky Baby (Crescent Cove 11)

“Someday you’ll figure out that I’d do anything for you, Ruby.”

She buried her face in my neck. “I’m starting to believe that.”

I wrapped my arms around her tighter. Good thing I was a patient man. Well, not generally, but I was learning to be.

Keeping things light, I set her down. “Wait until you see inside.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I opened the passenger side door, and Butch bounced inside with the springs that seemed to be in her damn feet. After exploring from the wheel well to the bench seat, she turned to face us, her tongue lolling out.

“Oh, wait.” I opened the glove box and took out the pint-sized red jacket I’d gotten for B. I came out with a pair of antlers and handed them to Tish.

She gave me a bland look. “I’m not wearing those.”

“C’mon.” I found the little switch on the top of the headband and tiny twinkle lights blinked.

“Not in this lifetime.”

I shrugged and put them on. “I’ll go get your bags.”

“They’re on the porch.”

“On it.” I clomped my way to the porch, then hurriedly made sure the door was locked. When I got back to the truck, she was fussing with the lights all over the interior of the truck.

I opened my door. “What are you doing?”

She snorted. “You can’t drive with those.”

“Watch me.” I slid inside and the antlers bent forward. Not exactly a lot of headspace for my giant self. “Okay, so maybe not.”

She plucked the antlers off my head and threw them in the back. Butch attacked them with glee and curled herself in the curve of the headband.

“This is insane. How many… Never mind.” She saw the banded battery packs I’d tucked into the front corner of the dash. “That’s a lot.”

I shrugged. “Made you smile.”

“Might not make you smile when it’s dark and all you see are the interior lights.”

“Don’t get all pragmatic on me, woman.”

She giggled and leaned in to kiss me again. “I wouldn’t dare.”

A few minutes later, we were all packed and heading for Buffalo. It wasn’t going to be a long trip, but as usual, weather wasn’t on our side. I was almost certain our route was following the storm. It wasn’t going to be a bad one, just would slow down our progress.

“We can wait to go after Christmas.”

“No. I know you want to see Cohen. And your dad.”

She slipped her feet out of her boots and tucked one under her butt. My Amazon liked to pretzel herself whenever she did manage to sit her ass down. Today’s socks were all the Marvel hero logos. From what I could tell, they were knee socks.

That shouldn’t be hot. And yet, as usual, when it came to Ruby, everything seemed abnormally attractive.

She reached in the backseat to give B a scratch. “I do. We should probably do the whole doctor thing before we tell my family.”

My stomach went leaden. “If you want to wait, we can.”

“I don’t want to.” She reached over to cover my hand on my thigh. “I want to tell them. I just don’t know how all of this is going to go.”