Have My Baby (Crescent Cove 1)

“I haven’t seen you since the weekend. Every time I stop in the diner, you’re not there.”

“Darn. Must’ve missed you.” She glanced out the window. “Damn rain. Can barely see the lake.”

“Yeah, you’re wet.” I brushed a damp curl away from her cheek and she bristled, backing away from my touch just as I’d done.

My words hung in the air between us. Heavy, rich with meaning well beyond what I’d intended.

“In your dreams, Hamilton,” she said, her taunt falling short of the target.

She didn’t know my dreams. I was only beginning to fathom their scope myself.

Our server returned with our bottle of wine. After pouring it into two glasses, I ordered Ally a martini even though her stare nearly burrowed a hole into the side of my head.

If she wanted a martini, a martini she would have. With an extra olive I could steal.

“He probably thinks I’m a wino,” she muttered as she opened her menu.

“Can’t please you, woman.”

“Sure you can. Stop ordering for me like this is a date. We never order for each other.”

“I beg to differ. Did you or did you not order the tiramisu for me the last time we went out?”

“That’s because it was a sacrilege you’d never had it. And you licked the plate clean.” She disappeared behind her menu and I grinned down at mine, barely resisting the urge to make a sly remark.

Thank God we were back on an even keel. If she stayed hidden behind that menu, I might not be starstruck by just the sight of her again.

Maybe I did have a fever.

Through our salads, braised lamb for me and chicken parm for her, and our tiramisu desserts—hey, I could admit when I’d seen the error of my ways—we kept the conversation light and easy. She had two martinis and a glass of rosé, and I had two glasses of wine. Neither of us were drunk, just relaxed. Easy with each other, as we’d always been.

After the weirdness I’d introduced into our relationship with my contract, it was nice to be chill enough to laugh and tease each other as we usually did. My getting annoyed at her mention of a cute guy seated in her section of tables at the diner was new, but I chalked that up to thinking way too much about her reproductive organs lately. Thoughts in that direction tended to spread.

Kissing her senseless the other night—and being kissed back the exact same way—also probably didn’t help.

I didn’t actually care if she found another man “cute.” Bully for her.

Okay, so I cared. A lot. And that might’ve been when I’d decided to go for that second glass when I usually stopped at one when I was driving. But we wouldn’t be on the road for hours yet, since we intended to walk the shops that lined Main Street and head up the pier to check out the lake. If the freaking rain ever decided to stop screwing with our plans.

We had summer splendor to appreciate, goddammit.

Also rain meant Ally was more likely to make excuses about cutting the night short. I wasn’t in any hurry for that to happen.

At least until we squabbled over splitting the bill. My insistence on paying added an extra sour note to the evening, but I pretended I didn’t notice her dismay and headed up the street in the light drizzle as planned.

Eventually, she caught up with me, grumbling only a little.

“Cowboy boots probably weren’t the best choice of footwear, though I do like how they make your legs look.”

“You can’t see my legs in this dress.”

“Sure I can.”

“It’s dark out.”

“Your point?”

She blew out a breath and turned up the walk to one of the quaint old homes in our small town that served as a shop—in this case, a year-round Christmas store. “You can’t see my legs and you have no reason to check them out in any case.”