Who's the Daddy (Crescent Cove 3)

I frowned down at the pile of paper cranes. Okay, maybe I was overdoing it a little. But then again, Sage was the one who told me stories about how many of these crazy paper animals Oliver made her.

I sniffled and wiped my hand under my nose. Why the hell were my eyes leaking? I huffed out a breath and got up to wash my hands and face and blow my nose. Maybe I was sicker than I’d thought. There was no reason for me to be getting all teary about paper cranes.

Just because I’d never had a guy in my life who cared enough about me to obsessively make little paper animals didn’t mean my life was incomplete. And okay, so what if my ex-boyfriend had treated me more like an afterthought than his partner? That was on me too. I was the one willing to take scraps.

That was so over. Crescent Cove was my fresh start.

I exhaled and waved a hand near my eyes to dispel the rest of the tears then stalked over to my phone and opened my music app. I didn’t have to sit here in silence and cry about dumb stuff.

Because the dumb stuff pushed me into thinking too much about a certain single dad I had no business worrying about. He hadn’t even had the decency to tell me he had a child, let alone that said child was in my class.

Who got the name Dare from Charles, dammit? Not that Charles suited him. Maybe Charlie, but definitely not the name fit for a royal. A guy with that name would not have the kind of oral prowess that made me dream about him four weeks-plus later. Even just remembering it made my toes tingle.

And other things.

The fact that I’d never had such things happen between my legs in my life could account for some of it. Like never to the tenth power of ever. But that didn’t mean I should still be thinking about him.

I couldn’t even do a one-night stand properly. Okay, so it was two nights, but it wasn’t even like it was a wild weekend. Two distinct moments of madness.

Three if I counted the way he pushed me up against my desk. Until memories of almost tossing my cookies in his face made me reach for my phone. Talk about ruining the moment. I didn’t need to relive that particular personal movie reel.

Cranking the volume on the Matt Nathanson song, “Faster,” did the trick. I shook my booty a little as I gathered the cranes carefully and put them in a huge box to take to Ally’s house.

Next was the little name cards for the mason jar favors. I should have done them a week ago, but getting the reports ready for the parent-teacher meetings had consumed most of my evenings. Falling asleep before nine each night wasn’t exactly helpful for getting things done either.

As I finished the tag for the last of the mason jars on my counter, they all began to rattle from the rumble of something downstairs with a heavy bass. I’d put on my cleaning playlist, but growl rock was not my preferred genre. Nor could my little speakers hit that volume. I reached over for my phone and hit pause.

Sure enough, music was pulsing through my floorboards. One person had moved into the other end of the building on my floor, but the storefront beneath me had been empty even prior to me moving in.

I stuffed my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and went to investigate. The blast of the scent of coffee when I opened my door threatened to put me on my knees.

Whoa, nelly.

I drank my morning coffee to perk up my brain, but it had never been a staple in my life beyond that. In fact, a Diet Coke was just as effective for me. I crept down the stairs to the lobby of the building. The unmistakable scent of chocolate and coffee beans hung in the air like a fog. The butt end of a truck blocked the double doors of the previously newspapered windows.

The old plate glass windows had been replaced with more ornate glass with gorgeous arches. A petite woman with the smallest paintbrush ever was slowly drawing something on the window in gold paint. Her lower half was moving to some internal beat that did not match the overhead song. A bright turquoise rag swished around like a tail from the back pocket of her overalls. It matched the Chucks she was wearing. A bright pink T-shirt and high lemon-blond ponytail finished out her ensemble. Oddly, the upper part of her was rock steady, as if it was completely separate from the bottom half of her.

A shrill whistle made me scrunch up my shoulders and stumble back a step as strapping guys wearing gray uniforms with a patch on the pocket that said GF pulled huge pallets of coffee through the main aisle and disappeared down the back hall.

In the middle of all the chaos was a girl—no, a woman. I hated it when people called me a girl. I was twenty-six-years-old, for heaven’s sake. But my red hair and freckles made me look years younger. Especially when I couldn’t be bothered with makeup.

But this woman had a startlingly angular face and an athletic body. She wore a black tank top and slightly faded black jeans with black and white Chucks. She was shouting over the deafening sounds of music and machines. Her inky hair was piled up on her head in a messy bun that I never could quite pull off and her face was completely devoid of makeup. Siberian Husky blue eyes suddenly pierced me where I stood.

“Hi.”

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked.

My eyebrows shot up. “Upstairs neighbor,” I shouted back.

She mouthed, “crap,” under her breath. Only reason I knew that was the champion lip reading capabilities I had thanks to years of teaching kids. Five-year-olds were prime mumblers.

I put my hands on my hips as she walked around the boxes before finally stroking her hand along a very large black and purple commercial coffee machine adorned with…flames? Definitely not the same kind I’d seen in Starbucks. Nope, there was nothing standard about the beast of a thing. Or the way the woman petted it with a smile on her face.

The smile faded as she got closer to me. She gestured toward the door and I followed her out to the front of the building. We squeezed by the truck as she gave a parting order to a wiry guy with jet-black hair.

She turned to me. “Hey, sorry. I meant to give you a head’s up about the cafe.” She wiped her hand down her denim-clad thigh, then held it out. “I’m Macy Devereaux.”

I glanced down at her hand, then at her eyes. They were a truly startling blue, and I’d never batted for the other team. At least not yet. I shook her hand. “I’m Kelsey Ford.”