Page 23 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Hopper

“ S urprise!” The words are muffled behind the front door of Tru’s bungalow in a leafy neighborhood just outside the Hollywood Hills.

My shoulders drop. For fuck’s sake. I’m late. I wait a few minutes, and when the fervor dies down, I knock on the door.

Of course it’s Tru who opens it, and when I see her face, I grimace. “I’m sorry. I was right behind them, I swear.”

“Come on, you’re only thirty seconds late,” she says.

“I missed the surprise,” I remind her.

But she just shakes her head. Her eyes, out of nowhere, well with tears, and she throws her arms around me, which is easier said than done, since the woman’s got a house growing on her front. She never would have been this forgiving before. This baby’s made her indulgent as hell.

“Happy baby,” I say. Because I have no idea what you’re supposed to say at these things .

“Oh Hopper. Thank you for being you,” she says.

Over her shoulder, I see the room is full of a dozen or so people—some friends of Tru, her husband, Kevin, plus all of my team.

The house is confusingly decorated for this shower, but also the holidays, which I generally try to block out.

There’s holly and a Christmas tree, but also pale pastel balloons everywhere.

Kevin has the same vibe. He’s got a Santa hat on and a t-shirt that reads Dad Era Loading with a half-filled progress bar across his belly.

But I barely notice any of that, because my eyes land on Chris, who’s coming around the corner from the kitchen, smoothing her hands on her dress.

The minute I spot her, I can’t look anywhere else.

And it’s not just because she freezes when she sees me.

Or because she’s shooting daggers at me with her eyes.

It’s because that dress is not just a dress.

It’s a sundress. Sundresses are hot as hell.

But on her? Fucking nuclear. The straps are barely there, the front dips down between her breasts, and the gauzy yellow fabric flows like water over every angle and curve.

It’s all bright and cheerful too. Of course she’s also wearing cute little white Keds and big pink hoop earrings.

I get irrationally angry, suddenly, at the California sun.

I can’t wait to go back to the gray skies and heavy coats of Redbeard Cove in November.

Except Chris looks good in those sweaters big enough to swallow her too.

I realize I’m struggling to breathe, and not just because I can’t stop staring at Chris. Tru won’t let go. In fact, she’s sobbing into my neck.

“Is this going to hurt the baby?” I croak through a squeezed windpipe, acutely aware of the giant roundness between us.

Tru finally lets go, taking a shaky breath but keeping her hands on my arms. “No, you big dummy. Hugs don’t hurt a baby.

Sushi will, apparently. And turkey sandwiches.

And a thousand other things, supposedly.

But not hugs.” She snuffles loudly. “I’ve got something for you, okay? Don’t let me forget to give it to you.”

“Okay,” I say. I have never once seen Tru this sentimental.

“Honey, let the poor guy in,” Kev calls from the hallway.

Tru’s husband is a good few inches taller than her, so, thankfully, he blocks my view of Chris the next time I look, which is immediately.

“Sorry,” Tru says, walking back to her husband and throwing her arms around him. He looks at her reverently, kissing her forehead, and I’m hit with a sudden wallop of envy. Not of him and Tru, per se, but of the fact that he has all this.

I’ve never wanted to have kids. The thought has always scared the shit out of me. I had the worst male role models known to humankind. How could I not completely fuck it up if I became one? Plus pregnancy’s kind of freaky. And yet…

My eyes coast over to Chris, and I suck in a breath, because she’s holding someone’s baby. She’s rocking a tiny human in her arms. She looks fucking perfect. Natural. Motherly. Sweat breaks out all over me for no good reason. Thanks, God, for sticking your tongue out at me with that one .

“Okay, well, I’ve got a few things out in the car I need to bring in,” I say, my voice pitched high.

“Oh, that can wait,” Tru says, twining her fingers through Kev’s and resting her head on his shoulder. “Why don’t you come in and get comfortable?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a ton of food and beer. Whatever you want,” Kevin says. Then he leans into Tru. “You need anything, honey? You should put your feet up.”

Honestly I just want to come in and do the requisite time and leave. I start filming in Redbeard tomorrow, so my plan was to mope around my place. That is, to hang out in my pool, maybe with a scotch, until I have to fly back.

Like I’ve conjured her, Chris appears then. The baby’s in another woman’s arms in the living room.

She frowns as she peers down at the huge bag in my hand. “Is that all you brought?”

“No, it’s not all,” I snap back, glad to have her slotted back into argumentative assistant territory, for the time being, anyway.

I don’t know what the fuck seeing her holding that baby did to me, but it was goddamned terrifying.

Almost as terrifying as how when she looks at me again, my mouth goes dry and all I want to do is sweep her up and talk to her the way Kev talks to Tru.

You need anything, honey?

Tru laughs. “I see you two are getting along as swimmingly as when I left you!”

Chris and I exchange a glance.

I think we both know we’re not in the same place we were three weeks ago.

But I can’t exactly explain what’s changed.

As for Chris, I get the sense she still hates my guts, despite the way she’s shown up for me.

But we haven’t talked about any of it. I still feel like shit for not immediately apologizing for what happened at the hotel.

But I died a thousand deaths trying to figure out what the right thing to do about that was.

I had no idea how to explain that I feel like I abandoned another woman for her—one I never officially met but managed to put in the hospital. Any way I put it, it sounded unhinged.

“Yeah. We’re peachy,” Chris says, summing it up. To me, she says, “Come on, I’ll help you bring in whatever else you got.”

Outside, the afternoon sun is hot, the air still. I say something about how I had to park two blocks away because of the other cars clustered around Tru and Kevin’s place. And touch on the shitty parking situation in general in this pretty little suburb of LA. Then quiet reigns once more.

“So I guess you were right,” I say, just to break the silence between us.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” Chris asks.

I know she heard me.

I slant her a look. “I said you were right. She wanted a shower.”

“Of course she wanted a shower.”

“How did you know? She told Cindi no three times.”

“You just know. Some people truly don’t want one, and they’ll tell you. But Tru wanted one.”

I don’t pretend to understand that. “Well. Thank you for making it happen. It’s great.”

“You haven’t made it past the foyer yet.”

“I’m sure it’s great. ”

Chris goes to roll her eyes, but we’ve arrived at my Land Rover.

Chris’s eyes go wide. “Hopper, what the hell?”

“What?”

It’s very clear what she’s staring at. She does a full circle around the vehicle, which is crammed so full it’s a road hazard. “You did this?”

“I do know how to buy shit.” When I open the back, a large bunch of colorful balloons tries to make a run for it.

“Shit!” I grab the ribbons with one hand, keeping them from making full liftoff, while catching a giant teddy bear with my foot.

Chis reaches for the bear. “Hopper.” She snuggles the teddy bear to her chest like a small child, and once again, I’m hit with that same weird gooiness in my chest I felt when seeing her with that baby.

“So you went shopping for all this? On your own?”

“It was mostly online.”

“And the wrapping?”

I grimace. “Yeah, I did it myself.” It didn’t feel right to have a service do that part when the only effort I made was clicking on a bunch of stuff and putting it on my Amex.

Chris pulls out a box. It’s half wrapped, the text clearly visible on the cardboard. Yet somehow there’s an abundance of paper on the opposite side. “Well. I guess it’s the thought that counts.”

“It got late,” I say defensively.

Her lips twist. “So you wrapped these in the dark.”

“Maybe.” I run a hand over my mustache and chin. “ Fine, I also might have had a glass of scotch or two to get me through it. The liquor, not the eggs.”

Chris shoots me a look from under her brows, but I see the smile in her eyes. God, I’ve missed that smile. I want to mainline it into my veins.

She pulls out another present, this one a giant ball wrapped with two completely different paper patterns. It wouldn’t be terrible, except when she turns it around, there’s a sock taped to the side where the papers join.

Chris snorts with laughter.

“Well, shit,” I say.

Chris starts pulling them all out, one by one, handing each present to me, where I start a pile on the curb. She’s fully laughing now, pulling out each package like it’s Christmas.

I help her with the heavier ones, but I’m not looking at the presents. I’m staring fully at her. My eyes are glued to her as her deep, throaty laughter tumbles into in my ears, ringing all the way down to my toes.

I am in shit. Deep, deep shit.

Last week, I thought I’d be okay. I reasoned that all the feelings I was having toward my assistant were because I felt so shitty for hurting her.

That I was maybe getting confused, because I felt the same way as I did when I played hooky last year.

When I kept driving up to this dirt track a guy I met at an airport in Vancouver told me about.

It’s a couple hours up the coast. Super hard to get to, but better than anything you’ll find down here.

Where I met a girl on the bike. The girl Chris reminds me of, and who, I swear to God, if she hadn’t told me she didn’t ride bikes, I might have even thought was her .