Daddy Undercover (Crescent Cove 9)

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Then there’s your car being at the sheriff’s all the time lately. Lou said that even when she gets up to let out Skeeter at four am, your car is in his driveway. All I want to know is if his car is in your driveway.”

I did not want to be having this conversation with my mother at the diner or anywhere else. But especially not here where practically half the town could hear her interrogating me.

She’d picked the dinner rush to ask me these things, rather than on the phone or maybe privately at Thanksgiving, oh, day after tomorrow. Worst of all, some of my friends were eating dinner a few tables away. I didn’t want to put Jared’s business in the street, but lying didn’t sit well with me either.

So, I did what I did best. I waved her off and went back to the kitchen to plate another order.

My mom was sitting with Erica so she wouldn’t go for blood at the level she normally would when it came to fresh gossip—especially if it involved her last-born child. Erica was almost on the verge of popping so our mom wouldn’t risk…dislodging her baby early with an argument. She’d just nudge me

up to the brink of one.

The problem with my plan? The food I plated belonged to the table of my friends I’d been referring to. I hadn’t been their server because Polly had reached them first, but we all took turns delivering the meals.

Reluctantly, I wheeled up the cart with everyone’s orders to the booth that contained Kinleigh and August Beck, plus August’s sister, Ivy, and August’s younger brother, Caleb, who taught at the Catholic school. “Hey, guys. Glad to see you here tonight. Rory away?” I asked Ivy as I started plucking plates off the cart.

“Yeah, back in LA. He’ll be home early Thursday. He’s producing Ian Kagan’s album, and Ian’s cutting a single with their friend Flynn on the west coast.”

“Hard being rich and famous,” I teased as I set down Ivy’s huge house salad with a side of garlic breadsticks.

Ivy sighed. “Emphasis on famous. He keeps getting busier, and Rhi is teething. She’s always crying for daddy, and mama can’t do anything right.”

Kinleigh reached across the table to squeeze her bestie’s—and sister-in-law’s—hand. “He’ll be home soon, and then he’ll be here through the holidays. Soon, you’ll be sick of him.”

Ivy smiled wistfully. “I can’t wait for that. I’m thinking of going back with him when he returns there in the new year. My ice cream truck isn’t open in the winter, and it might be fun to give Rhi a change of scenery.”

“You too,” Caleb put in, gazing pointedly at his sister. “You need to see something other than a kid latched to your nipple.”

August rubbed his forehead. “Can we not? Hi, Gina. Thanks for that,” he said as I set his meatloaf down in front of him.

I’d already served Caleb his burger while Ivy was considering her temporary west coast relocation.

“You’re all so settled and domesticated that it’s disturbing. You’re single, right, G?” Caleb flashed me his entirely too disarming smile.

“I am so single,” I said loudly enough for my mother to hear in the next aisle.

If she started speculating harder about Jared and I, there was a good chance she’d start sharing her thought process as facts. Not to cause trouble necessarily. She was just a mom. And moms did that stuff.

I frowned. Not that I would ever know that for myself as one. At least it was unlikely. No matter what kind of roleplaying I was doing with Jared and his adorable daughter.

God, he had a daughter. I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop doing a doubletake at that.

“Religiously single,” I added as I served Kinleigh her triple decker club, just in case there was someone left in the tri-state area who had not heard me declare my personal status.

A cough sounded behind me that sounded suspiciously like my sister, along with a harrumph that most definitely came from my mother.

Caleb took a big bite of his burger before slowly wiping his mouth. “Religiously? I like that. Me too. Wanna be biblical together?”

Someone stomped his foot under the table with enough force that he groaned, but I wasn’t sure who. Any of the other three people in that crowded booth were equally likely to try to do him harm.

I gave him a thin smile. “I’m abstaining.”

“Oh, really? Beautiful woman like you?” Caleb took another wolfish bite and then chewed and swallowed. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Laying it on like that cheese, huh?” Ivy shook her head.

Caleb was a bit of a ladies’ man in town, and he was rather shameless about it. As the only single Beck sibling, he made no bones about his desire to remain uncoupled for the next century.