The guy in the suit in the mirror wasn’t me. He couldn’t be. I wasn’t ready to pack it all in yet.

I’d only graduated college a couple of years ago. Marriage? A baby on the way? Fuck, middle-aged guys did that stuff. Me? I was still young and fancy free.

But I wasn’t. Not anymore. Not since the morning Marjorie Maplewood had walked into my office at Hamilton Realty, waving around a white stick that didn’t belong to a popsicle.

This kid is yours, Hamilton. Don’t try to pretend it isn’t. What are you going to do about it?

It had never occurred to me that the child wasn’t mine, but I’d probably stared at her for two full minutes before finding my voice. Marj hadn’t appreciated that, and she’d burst into such loud sobs that my loyal assistant, Shelly, ran in from the reception area with a handkerchief, a mint, and plenty of judgment.

An hour later, we’d been engaged and planning a wedding. Okay, maybe two hours.

Now I was facing my reflection in a spotted mirror in a back room at Our Lady of Peace Church, and the ticking minutes might as well have been a time bomb that wouldn’t be kind enough to kill me.

Jesus, you’re an asshole. She’s the mother of your child.

And I was marrying her. I knew my duty. It wasn’t our child’s fault. Truth was, I already wanted that baby. I had as soon as I’d stopped panicking.

Hell, I was still panicking, but I was moving forward anyway.

A soft knock came at the door and I turned, expecting my father. He was one of the few pleased as could be about this union. Marjorie’s family wasn’t as well-to-do as ours, but they had good social positioning. My father sold property for a living—as did I now—and was always negotiating deals and searching for angles. My mom leaving the family when I was a kid, certainly hadn’t softened him. If anything, he’d become harder and more inflexible.

Everything has a price, Seth. Even people. Especially people.

But it wasn’t my father. The woman standing in the doorway, her dark hair wreathed in a crown of tiny wildflowers, would never worry about social standings or brokering deals. She called me on my shit and made me laugh while doing it.

“Hey, you,” Ally said, and I smiled for the first time since I’d walked into this narrow, stuffy room.

What that said, I didn’t want to analyze.

She took a step forward and for a moment, light surrounded her, making her pale blue dress seem even paler. Almost…white. And if I tilted my head, that crown of flowers on her head could be attached to a veil.

Almost immediately, the tightness in my chest eased and I could breathe again. I wasn’t going to run out of oxygen before I even walked down the goddamn aisle.

“Ally Cat,” I said, my voice sounding scratchy even to my own ears. I moved forward and gripped her shoulders, drawing her back enough that I could search her eyes. Then she slugged me in the gut and the spell was broken.

I wasn’t marrying Ally. That wasn’t what we were about. We were buddies.

We’d met in Mrs. Danforth’s third period English class in tenth grade on the second day of school. Ally had been absent the first day, and I was a transfer from the godawful prep school my father had sent me to in Connecticut. I’d lasted a year there, which was three years fewer than my twin, Oliver. Then I’d landed in public school in our small town, still unsure if I was making a colossal mistake—sure, prep school had sucked, but school was never fun—and I’d been half as interested in starting Of Mice and Men as I was at looking down Marcie Culpepper’s V-neck top.

Then Ally had hurried into the classroom, her hair done up with crazy sticks, her arms full of books, and dropped into the empty seat beside me. She’d taken one glance at the way I was hunched over my desk to ogle Marcie’s boobs and smirked.

Between that and the fact that I’d assumed she’d ditched the first day of class, I’d figured she was totally badass. I found out later her mom was sick and she’d stayed home with her to keep her company. But my badass opinion of Ally had remained all these years.

This badass chick was my best male friend…who just happened to have a pair of tits.

Sure, occasionally, I noticed more about her than a friend should. Like how her hair always smelled like fucking sunshine, or that her legs seemed six miles long. I always shut that crap down immediately. She’d been dealing with her mother’s illness all along, and with every passing year, her mom grew frailer. I was Ally’s support system. The only certainty she had in her life.

Just as she was mine.

“Seth? Hey, wise ass, you okay?”

I flexed my hands on her shoulders, not quite ready to let go. Normally, I didn’t grab hold of her as if she was my only lifeline, but it sure as hell felt as if I was facing an abyss.

One of my own making.

“What’s going on?” She reached up to lay her hands over mine, and the softness of her skin made me swallow hard.

I had to haul myself back. To remember who I was marrying.

“Nothing. Last minute jitters, I guess.” I smiled and let her go, tucking my itchy hands into my pockets.

Ally smiled, relaxing finally. “Understandable. It’s not every day that Scorer Seth gets put on lockdown.”

See, she was glad I wasn’t going there too. She’d even mentioned my old stupid high school nickname. Scorer Seth, the guy who never missed when he set his mind on a woman. Now I was engaged, and of course, Ally wouldn’t want me going there. But she never had.

Our entire friendship, we’d kept each other firmly in the friend zone. It was safer. Didn’t make sense to risk screwing up a good thing, not when we had so few others we could count on.

We were it for each other. And we always would be.

“Scorer Seth never learned.” Giving in to the urge to touch her one more time, I reached up to adjust her flower crown, and she immediately followed my hand to adjust it herself. That was my girl, always double-checking my work.

I grinned and moved back to the mirror to work some more on my tie. My eternal downfall. Knowing that, she let out a sigh and walked over to fix it for me, accomplishing the task in two seconds flat. When she started to move back, I grasped her wrist and her gaze flew up to mine.

“Promise me this won’t change,” I said urgently.

“What?” She let out a nervous little laugh, the kind I rarely heard from her. No matter what, Ally had her shit together. “You want me to promise to always fix your ties? Okay, I can do that—”

“No. I want you to promise we’ll still be this way together. That just because I have a wife now, we’ll still be like…this.” I gestured between us with my free hand. “That you won’t pull away.”

She laughed again, averting her gaze. Telling me without words she’d intended to do exactly that.

“We’ll always be friends. But your wife will be your best friend now. As she should be. If you’re worrying about me, don’t. I’m good.” She tried to shake off my hold, but when that didn’t happen, she shook back her hair instead. “I’ve got it all handled.”

“What if I don’t? I don’t want this to change. Fuck, Al, you’re my best friend.”

Gently, she pulled away. “We’ll always be friends,” she repeated. “I better get to my seat. It’s almost time. Break a leg, Hamilton.” She flashed a weak smile. “Or whatever you say in times like this.” She leaned up on tiptoe and kissed my cheek. “I’m so happy for you.”

She was gone before I could reply.

I reached up to cup my cheek. My skin was still tingling from her lips.

She hadn’t promised me. The only promises I could count on now were my own. The ones I’d already made to my unborn child, and soon, to my wife.

I would do what was right.

* * *

I hopped back a good three feet, but it was way too late. “Aww, come on.”

I stared down at the puddle of coffee dripping from the worn Formica tabletop to the red vinyl booth. The cracked pot in my hand held a jagged edge that could be a prop in a Quentin Tarantino movie. Right down to the coffee-stained orange lip.

If I had to sacrifice my last pair of white Converse sneakers to the coffee gods, at least it should’ve been goddamn full octane coffee, not decaf.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Diggs. Don’t move, okay?”

Mrs. Diggs, one of the diner’s regulars, shuffled to the end of her booth and cupped her mug in her manicured hands. She picked up her feet—clad in bright orange and white sneakers—as the coffee raced toward the wall of windows.

I winced. Dammit, the baseboards needed a scrub again. Maybe I could convince Mitch to let me stay late or come in early one day. I’d been picking up as many shifts as he’d allow me to, but at least if I did this it wouldn’t require talking to people.

I was pretty much talked out.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“Fine. I just don’t want you to get cut, okay? Give me a quick second and I’ll brew you a fresh pot.” Disgusted, I dropped my threadbare towel over the glass and scraped the shards into a pile as I shimmied my way out from under the table. “Sage, can you grab me another towel?” I hollered over my shoulder.

My best friend’s head popped out from around the corner. I gave her a rueful smile as I lost the battle against the river of coffee.

Sage rushed over with a pile of towels and crouched beside me. She blew a honey blond curl out of her face. No matter how many pins Sage Evans jammed into her twisting pile of curls, one invariably escaped. Luckily it only enhanced her heart-shaped face and huge green eyes.

“What happened?” She started mopping up the escaping coffee.

“Careful.” I grabbed her hand just before a hook-shaped shard of glass took a chunk out of her palm.

“Jeez, what did you do?”

I set what was left of the pot on the table. “One too many times left on the burner while empty is my guess. I barely tapped the side of the table and pop-crash.”

“Coffee.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Full pot no less.” I managed not to let the growl or the string of swear words free as I reached back under the booth and mopped up the coffee under Mrs. Diggs’ feet. “Okay, you’re set.”

The woman put her feet down as I crawled back out from under the booth. A pair of dark jeans and black boots stopped two inches from my coffee-splattered khakis.

I knew those boots.

My gaze skipped up to the way his jeans molded to strong thighs and a bulge behind his zipper that had caused me way too many sleepless nights.

My best friend since high school tucked his thumb into his pocket and drummed his fingers lightly against his leg. “Is this a new customer service thing?”

My mouth tipped up at one corner. If he only knew what kind of service I wanted to offer. “Jerk.”

Even with the slightly burnt decaf wafting up from the floor—and covering me from knee to toes, couldn’t forget that part—there was no denying Seth Hamilton’s delicious toasted sugar and sex scent.

It was some ungodly expensive cologne. I wasn’t exactly proud of the fact that I’d gone to a department store’s counter to take an extra whiff of it. I’d hunted it down so I didn’t seem like some perv by burying my face in his chest to get a better inhale.

However, the bottled version wasn’t nearly as divine as it was on Seth. Probably had something to do with his stupid pheromones.

Or the fact that his alarmingly perfect body chemistry made everything smell good—even during that one night we spent together with his daughter up all night with a fever.

I’ve relived that night more than I care to admit. Not the awful part. I’m not a freak. But I can’t help remembering the aftermath when we melted into a heap on the couch in half-hysterical laughter from exhaustion and relief. Yeah, so I shouldn’t have noticed, but I’m human.

It wasn’t like I jumped him.

I thought about it for a hot second. To be honest, I think about it all the damn time. When you didn’t get any attention of a sexual nature, it tended to take over the whole frontal lobe. The fact that he was so delectable didn’t help. However, the idea of tilting our perfect friendship into naked time was too much to deal with. Much of my life was the same refrain.

Me lusting after my best friend. Him completely clueless. Me more than willing to let him stay in the dark. It was a pathetic song that I couldn’t stop playing.

I scrubbed my tingling palms on my thighs and noticed his untucked white dress shirt. He was still wearing a navy sport jacket so he wasn’t completely off the clock, but definitely not in sales-mode. His dark hair was tousled from the breeze off the water, a pair of mirrored aviators hid his equally dark eyes, and his perpetual scruff made my insides buzzy. Who the hell needed caffeine when Seth came into The Rusty Spoon?

Or the thoughts of me on my knees in front of said man.

Good God, pull it together, girl. I slapped my thighs to kill the last of the buzzing. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself.” He bent at the waist and I got a blast of that sugar sex. He took off his sunglasses and his eyes crinkled at the sides as he smiled. His gaze slid from me to Sage. “Two-woman job? Must be serious.”

“Hey, Pita.” Sage rolled her eyes before bunching all the towels together. “I’ll put on that pot for you.” She stood up and dropped the pile on the lunch counter so it wouldn’t drip all over the floor.

“Thanks,” I murmured.

“Wow, ten points for the full-on shatter, Ally Cat.” He helped me to a standing position, then hustled around the counter for the garbage and dragged it over to me. He must have heard the crunch and click of glass because he cupped his hands around mine and pulled them over the bin. I didn’t bother trying to save the towel, just shot the whole thing in the trash. “No cuts?”

“I’m fine, Dad.” Or I would be if he’d let me go. Because seriously, I couldn’t deal with tingles on top of mortifying coffee splatters. Not that I wasn’t used to the eternal stains that were part of being a waitress at the diner. It just seemed extra embarrassing in front of Seth.

He flipped my hands palms up then coasted the pads of his fingers over the tops. “All good.”

I curled my fingers into my palms. “Told you. The only casualty is my Chucks.”

He glanced around the garbage to my shoes. “Yeah, they’re toast.”

“No, I’ll just use them as my new mopping shoes.”

He frowned.

“What?”

“Nothing.” The little wrinkle between his brows cleared as he noticed Mrs. Diggs in the booth. “Aren’t you looking lovely, Mrs. Diggs? New workout gear?”

“Charmer.” But she preened and smoothed her bejeweled hand over the expensive designer Adidas jacket in the same orange and white of her shoes. “Nice to see someone watching after our Alison though.”

“Always.”

“Oh, brother.” I turned to the counter lined with red vinyl stools and collapsed onto one to take stock of my situation.

Most of the coffee had hit the floor and my shoes, so I guess that was something at least. I stalked down the aisle and inwardly groaned at the squeak of my rubber soles. I hustled to the carpet in front of the door and scuffed my feet. I could actually feel the coffee squishing inside my shoes.

Ugh.

My life—up to my ankles in crap coffee. Of course.

I went around behind the counter to take care of the pile of towels Sage had left. “What’s up, Seth? You don’t usually come in this late.”

“I actually have some papers for you.”

My gaze swung back to him. He nodded to the back of the diner where he always sat. “Can you take a few minutes?”

It was only then that I noticed the folder in his hand. The white Hamilton Realty logo scrawled across the dense green glossy folder. My stomach twisted for a whole different reason this time.

Mom’s house.

My house.

What could have been my house if it wasn’t full of shitty memories and the stench of too much antiseptic. I closed my eyes as a wave of exhaustion chased the sad. It had been three months since my mom had finally passed away after a soul-crushing bout with cancer. She’d always been fragile, but the last five years had about killed me too.

By the end, all I wanted was peace for her.

And maybe a little for myself. I only let that part out in the deepest, darkest parts of the night where sleep and waking overlapped. When the quiet was finally comforting and the hiss of the oxygen compressor wasn’t my constant companion for the first time in too many years to remember.

But then the alarm pushed me out of the quiet and into my current reality. Bills, life, the diner, plans…all jumbled together in my little planner. And the little secret pocket where I’d stashed the page of classes I wanted to take. I had sent off for a few brochures from schools in New York City, and I looked at them now and then.

It had been so long since I could think about what I wanted that I honestly wasn’t quite sure what to do. But it didn’t stop me from poring over my brochures and the college catalog online.

Too bad dreams didn’t pay the bills.

I pressed a shaking hand over my belly. “Yeah. Let me make sure I can take my fifteen.”

I hurried over to the sink. My rings clicked together as I soaped up my hands to get the coffee smell off them. “Mitch, I’m going to take my break.”

He only grunted. Typical.

“Sage, you okay?”

She waved me off. “Sure. Take it now before the biddies come in for the early bird special.”

“Truth.” I smoothed my hand over my apron and stuck my order pad in the front pocket. I double checked that I had three pens like I always did. Patrons were notorious thieves. Not sure why they wanted my cheapie Bic pens, but they were forever walking off with them.

Stop stalling.

I was tempted to roll my eyes at myself, but that took too much energy and I didn’t have much to spare. I grabbed a fruit plate and a scoop of cottage cheese to get me through the rest of the evening. Sage and I might have time for a bite after the dinner rush, but more often than not, it just rolled into dessert business and the endless coffee mug crowd.

I snagged a menu on my way down the aisle to him. Seth was sprawled in his favorite booth, his long legs encroaching on my side. I kicked his boot as I sat down and dropped the menu in front of him. “How you don’t have that memorized is beyond me.”

He straightened and placed his phone face down on the table, then propped the menu against the wall. “Just coffee this time.”

“Oh. Have an appointment?” I ate a forkful of my cottage cheese.

He sneered at my plate. “So gross.”

I forked up some more and held it in front of him. “So good.”

“Disgusting.”

I snagged a piece of pineapple to go with my forkful and chewed with a smile. “How would you know? You still won’t try the wonders of my fruit plate.”

“It’s a texture thing.”

“And yet you’ll eat grits.”

“Only Angelo’s grits. Which reminds me.” He flipped over his menu. “I have been dreaming about his kitchen sink omelet.”

“Kinda lame dreams.”

He glanced over the menu. “I can’t have dreams about you naked all the time.”

“Har-har.”

He winked at me and I tamped down the hormones prepared to leap across the table.

Sage came over with a grilled cheese sandwich and slid it in front of me. In her other hand was a pot of coffee. “What are you having, Seth?”

I frowned. “I didn’t order this.”

Sage put her hand on her hip. “That fruit thing isn’t going to hold you over for the rest of the day.”

“Thanks. My ass won’t thank you, but I do.”

“Your ass is just fine.”

“Sure is,” Seth agreed.

What the hell was up with the comments? He didn’t notice my ass.

Did he?

I shook my head and peeled the triangles apart as the lava-like mixture of cheddar and muenster that spilled onto the plate made me moan. Cheese was my downfall. I could pretty much give up anything except that.

Noticing Seth’s smirk, I dragged my fingertip through the cheese and brought it to my mouth. “What?”

“Should we leave you alone?”

“Fine by me. We’ll live happily ever after, won’t we, you gooey piece of perfection?”

Seth shook his head. He flipped his mug right side up on the saucer. “I’ll just have coffee.”

“You sure?” Sage asked as she poured.

“Yeah. I really want that omelet, but it’ll have to wait until next time.”

Sage nodded. “You got it.” She glanced at me. “I got Mrs. Diggs.”

“Oh, crap. I forgot.” I swiveled to give the older woman a smile.

“No worries.”

“She wasn’t mad?”

Sage shook her head. “Too busy staring at this one’s ass.” She nodded at Seth.

He waggled his eyebrows.

Sage rolled her eyes. “I’ll leave you guys to it.”

As soon as she walked away, Seth folded his hands on the folder. “So about the house.”

I looked down at my sandwich and picked up half. “Want?”

He smiled. “I wouldn’t want to come between you two.”

I shrugged. Fine by me. I sucked at sharing anyway. If he wanted to keep it about business, I could do that. “How’d we do?”

He blew out a breath. “I’d prefer to leave it on the market so we—”

“Nope. Can’t. John Chandler gave me three months to sell and here we are a week past that.”

His eyebrows snapped down and his jaw muscle flexed. I’d bet twenty bucks he was grinding his molars. But it was my decision, not his.

“I told you I could—”

“Nope.” I yanked a napkin out of the dispenser to degrease my fingertips before I covered his clenched hands. “You know I can’t.” He’d been trying to throw money at all my problems for years, but my answer was always the same. Even if he had more money than most of the Crescent Cove population combined, I couldn’t take money from a friend.

Especially not Seth.

God, not him.

“Let me talk to John. We throw him a hell of a lot of business. I can pull a favor.”

“No.”

I had a feeling the three months I’d been granted was already one of those favors. No matter how much history I had in this town, a banker wasn’t going to let me slide when it came to prime land, even if it was on the fringes of lakefront property. Add in the mortgage I could barely scrape together now that my mother’s social security was gone and the only math that made sense was selling the house.

John Chandler over at Crescent Cove Credit Union might be a sweet man who coached Little League on the weekends, but he was still a businessman. And there were rules.

Rules I was intimately aware of. My mother’s modest life insurance policy did little more than cover her burial and a small memorial service.

“I’ve got a guy who’s buying up some of the older…” He trailed off.

I squeezed him one last time before sliding my hands back across the table and picking up my sandwich again. “Shacks? You can say it. I know my house wasn’t much.”

He swiped his hand along the back of his neck. “Dammit, Al.”

“It is what it is. She wanted a house on the lake, and it was all I could afford on my meager salary and what she had in the bank. It was enough for us.” My bedroom had been little more than a closet, but my mom had been happy her last few years and that had been all that mattered.

“A new company is looking to build family houses on the lake to beef up the rentals for the season.”

“The Kennedys kind or…?”

He nodded. “The middle-income kind of families. I’m not completely against what they’re doing.”

I broke off a corner of my toasted cheese and popped it in my mouth. “That’s great. You know this town relies on seasonal visitors. Though I’m glad they’re not just making mansions.”

His eyes glittered. “No.”

I knew Seth and his brother had been working hard to keep Crescent Cove from turning into the Hamptons part two. They were probably the only reason half the coast hadn’t been razed and turned into huge houses and overpriced hotels.

But the Cove was a mix of wealthy and working class. Just the way I loved it. Though I wouldn’t mind being one of the wealthy someday.

And maybe if I could get the house sold and get back to even, I’d have at least a chance at some kind of future besides drowning in debt.

“What’s the offer?”

I listened to him drone on about the sale and the banks. I swallowed when he opened the folder and slid a printed page my way. The sale price wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but it would cover what I needed it to.

It would leave me with a big fat zero in my bank, but at least it wasn’t a minus sign.

Right now, that was glorious and I was calling it a win. I folded the paper in half. “Thank you, Seth.”

“Don’t thank me. I’d rather you walked away or haggled for more.”

I lifted my chin and pushed my plate away. “Do you think I’d actually get it?” He opened his mouth. “Without doing upgrades and all the things you wanted me to do to the house?” He shut it. “I thought so.”

“Fuck.” He slumped in seat a little. “I don’t like any of this.”

“You don’t have to like it. Just make sure I don’t get too screwed and be my friend. Simple things. It’s all I really need.” I put my leg out and twisted my ankle to show off my splattered shoes. “And a new pair of sneakers. Which I need to work to pay for. Just let me know when and where to be to sign the papers.” I started to slide out of the booth.

“Your fifteen isn’t over yet.”

I paused.

“Almost. Fifteen minutes goes quick. You know that.”

He pressed his lips together and his eyes flared with something. I didn’t even want to think about what they flared with. It didn’t happen often, but there were moments when I wondered if he thought about other, less platonic things when it came to me.

But it was much easier to file those moments away as aberrations and fantasies.

“Just one more thing.”

“It’s never just one more thing with you.”

“You’re killing me, Al.”

“Right back atcha, buddy.” Exasperation was the word of the day. When he leaned forward, his dark eyes were a little too serious. I straightened and pulled my hands away from my plate to land in my lap. I twirled my thumb ring as a sudden chill climbed up my hairline.

He leaned forward, suddenly earnest. Too earnest. When Seth Hamilton acted solemn, he was up to something, and chances were high I wouldn’t like it.

“Will you have my baby?”