My Ex's Baby (Crescent Cove 8)

“Right.” He slammed the door. “Sure.”

I could go to work. Crash on the couch in my office for a few hours then open up the store.

Working was smart. It was the one thing I’d always been good at.

Not marriage material, Kin. You’re good with the biz side. Not so much the personal.

I started to take off his hoodie, but he shook his head. “Keep it.”

“Thanks.”

What was I going to do with this? Not wear it to bed when I was cold, that was for sure.

I definitely wasn’t going to sniff it to remember how it had been to kiss him—and for him to kiss me back. He’d even started it.

Why had he started it?

“Yeah. See ya whenever.” Then he disappeared around the front of his truck and got in.

I watched him pull out of the space and drive toward the exit without a backward glance. My throat was on fire, and I was pretty sure I was going to keel over from an adrenaline crash. Two of them in the span of twelve hours.

“You okay, Kinleigh?” Gina crossed the parking lot to me. “Was August all right?” Her gaze dropped to my mouth.

Did it look he’d just kissed the hell out of me? My stupid Irish skin showed everything. I pushed my hair out of my face. I probably looked like a train wreck. “Yeah, just tired. I didn’t want to make him go all the way to my house then to his. Opposite directions.”

“Oh.” She smiled brightly, just like Gina always did. Thankfully, she didn’t call me out on my obvious bullshit response. I must’ve looked really bad. “Yeah, that makes total sense.”

Of course it did.

See? I could be smart. I hadn’t ruined anything.

I’d prevented a colossal mistake just in time.

One

New Year’s Eve

I gazed out the window of my shop. Kinleigh’s Attic was currently closed. Heck, most of Crescent Cove was currently closed, and not just because it was the biggest night to party. Nope, the place had practically shut down because we were all going to witness the very chilly nuptials of two of the central figures of our town.

Macy Devereaux and John Gideon were getting hitched in a very impromptu New Year’s Eve wedding at the gazebo. Their fast-forwarded timeline was occurring mostly because Macy was knocked up. Not really a shocker in this town, but they were one of the few couples who’d actually gotten engaged before implantation.

However, the real kicker was that Macy had given the green light to starting a family. Then the water in the Cove had struck again. It was almost research-worthy. Actually, I’d seen more than one article pop up on Reddit about our little town’s baby boom.

If we had to be famous for something, I guess the baby thing wasn’t a bad deal. But for once, today wasn’t about babies. It was about love.

For a thrown together wedding, the view was breathtaking. Personally, I’d figured a Halloween wedding was totally going to be their thing. However, the baby’s due date was going to make that a big ol’ no.

I leaned against the windowsill, tapping my short blue nails against the frosty panes of my window. The sun had set, dropping the temperature quite a bit from what it had been earlier this afternoon. The rare sunshine had been a bonus for decorating the pier and surrounding trees. I could see just enough of the park from the back of my shop to get a peek at what the guys in Gideon’s crew had been up to.

Mason jars danced from the branches, thanks to the brisk wind off the water. I knew they were lit up with battery-powered tealights since the guys had raided my shop and all the nearby ones for any and all they could find. Amazon Prime didn’t have enough tiny candles to handle the look Vee—Veronica Masterson, the co-matron of honor and the bakery wiz over at Brewed Awakening—was determined to pull off.

She and Rylee Kramer were part of Macy’s very small inner circle and were prepared to move heaven and earth to make this wedding as special as possible.

Vee was also heavily pregnant and had taken on some Macy personality traits over the last few days. Yikes. Her husband, Murphy, was one of Gideon’s closest friends, so they were all fired up to make this wedding as perfect as possible given the abbreviated timetable.

The gazebo itself was still lit up from Christmas, but they’d swapped out the

fat vintage colored lights along the overhang with sassy orange ones. Bats hung between each bulb. The rest was a wash of white twinkle lights everywhere with a Macy flavor.