Claim My Baby (Crescent Cove 2)

Another message came through from Ally.

If you say so. So you’re coming by? Lunch after?

Sure. Where do you want to eat?

Oh God, I could eat a horse & its young. Hmm, how about that new Italian place?

I was already salivating. So much for the flu. I’d no sooner finished throwing up than I was ravenous. That didn’t seem likely for some kind of weird food poisoning either.

Lordy, was I fucked. Possibly fucked.

But what I didn’t know for sure couldn’t harm me. In the meantime, there were carbs.

With the hot pumpernickel rolls?

No way. Really? I think I just had an O. Not that I remember what those feel like.

If those rolls are as good as they say, they’re probably almost as good as my last O.

Yeah, no self-generated Os either. I’d have to climb over my belly to even get near between my legs.

I started to text back that mine definitely hadn’t been self-generated—I still didn’t really know how to do those properly, Oliver or no Oliver—when reality smacked me like a cold, dead fish.

Self-generated was all I was supposed to be having. Anything else would be deemed a bestie betrayal of the highest order.

You lost your virginity and you didn’t tell me?

Worse, the Oliver thing. What was the next level beyond bestie betrayal? Friendship homicide?

Then again, Ally had been the one who’d sent Oliver after me to Vegas. If not for her, we wouldn’t be having the best sex of my life. Well, I’d had no sex before, but still, I knew when I was in the presence of greatness.

Not Oliver himself. Just his penis. He was egotistical enough. I wasn’t going to help him by telling him how he’d rocked my world.

Rather than even addressing Os in any form with Ally, I went with the better part of valor. I ended the conversation and said I’d see her soon, gaudy decorations along with a little class for contrast in hand.

I finished packing my overnight bag with my new lingerie—full price for the first time ever—then picked up the tiny swan I’d searched through that box of paper goods to find.

God, I was already looking forward to seeing Oliver again and it had been, what, five hours since he’d left my loft? It didn’t seem to matter.

If this was what it felt like to be an addict, I didn’t want to stop. And that scared me most of all.

After grabbing my bag, I headed downstairs. I dropped the bag in my trunk, but I didn’t take my car to lunch. Why bother when the real estate office was right down the street, along with the drugstore and florist, and the Italian place was just around the corner?

Blessing and curse of a small town. Everything and everyone was right there. No privacy. No secrets.

No running away.

Except that was just what I was doing. I wasn’t headed toward the stores I wanted to stop by on the way to Hamilton Realty. It was warm for mid-February, so I’d detoured to my favorite place pretty much all year long.

The shore of Crescent Lake.

There were a few kids and parents stomping through the slushy snow, and the mail boat was just pulling into the dock. The wind stirred my hair and I pushed it back, narrowing my eyes on a little brunette girl who was racing in circles with a balloon in her hand. Bright pink. While I watched, she let go and cried out as it floated away.

As if in slow motion, I ran toward it, diving up into the air to try to snatch it before the wind yanked it away. My fingers brushed the end of the ribbon, wrapped around, and locked on. I released a triumphant cheer and fell back on my ass in the snow, the pain echoing dully through my spine.

Smart. Real smart. You’re afraid you’re pregnant and you just did a swan dive? What’s wrong with you?

“Thanks, lady,” the little girl said, tugging the balloon from my hand. A tall, willowy woman I assumed was her mother was behind her, hand on her shoulder. “I just got it for winnin’.”