Page 1 of Windlass (Seal Cove #3)

Stevie would do anything for her friends, including, it appeared, carry baggage the approximate density and weight of a neutron star.

She lowered the last box to the floor of the cabin living room and wiped her sweating palms on her jeans.

It was hot for late June. Too hot to be hauling boxes of Morgan’s things out of the back of a truck at any rate.

Sweat pooled in places best left arid. At least Morgan hadn’t decided to move into her girlfriend’s cabin in August or, worse, January.

“What did you pack in this?” Stevie asked, nudging the impossibly heavy plastic bin with her toe. “Weights?”

Morgan, who stood a rude seven inches taller than Stevie, winced as she took note of the box at Stevie’s feet. “How much will you hate me if I say yes?”

Stevie tore off the tape securing the plastic lid and pried it open. A set of kettlebells stared up at her.

“Are you serious right now?”

Morgan ran a sheepish hand through her short, dark curls, her blue eyes rueful. “I didn’t mean for anyone else to grab that one.”

“Sure you didn’t.” Stevie did a little mental arithmetic. “This weighs at least seventy pounds. What kind of asshole packs a box with seventy pounds of weights in it when her best friends are helping her move?”

The best friends in question were Stevie, Angie, and Stormy.

Stevie and Morgan had been inseparable since they were kids.

They worked together now at the Seal Cove Veterinary Clinic, where Stevie played technician to Morgan’s large animal veterinarian, and had even lived together up until today.

They’d met Angie, their other roommate, at the veterinary clinic, and through Angie, Stormy, who owned a café-and-brewery in town and who did not live with them, something Stevie currently regretted.

Deeply. The number of roommates had dwindled over the year, with their fourth roommate, Lilian, moving in with her girlfriend earlier that winter, and now it would just be Stevie and Angie.

Shit .

“This kind,” said Stormy, popping her head into the living room and patting Morgan on the shoulder. “Cold drinks are ready in the kitchen.”

“Beer?” Morgan asked, her tone hopeful.

“Water. I poured you each a glass. You need to hydrate.”

“Or drink the pain away.” Stevie rubbed her right biceps.

“You lift seventy pounds all the time,” said Angie, who had followed Stevie in from the truck with a few miscellaneous items that had broken loose in transit. She lightly pinched Stevie’s arm.

Her fingers were warm. Stevie tried not to let her gaze linger on the delicate beads of sweat dotting Angie’s chest and shoulders, which meant she ended up staring at the strip of skin between the top of Angie’s leggings and the bottom of her cropped yoga top.

Why, why had anyone let the early aughts back into style?

She snapped her gaze back up to Angie’s face, focusing instead on her wavy brown hair, which she’d bundled into a messy bun.

A few strands had sprung loose to hang in languid curls around her face.

Somehow, that was worse.

Besides, knowing Angie, she would have shown up in a sports bra and bike shorts regardless of style. The aughts could not be blamed for everything.

“Yeah, I lift that much for work .”

“Marvin is work? Don’t let him hear you say that.” Angie tossed her armful of junk into a chair and propped a hand on her hip. “You carry that dog around like a toddler, and he weighs what, sixty-five?”

“Yeah, well, those five pounds make a difference.”

“Are you actually hurt?” Morgan asked.

At the real concern in her friend’s voice, Stevie dropped the act. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

“I appreciate your help, buddy.”

“Go get me some water.”

Morgan grinned and obliged, returning with two glasses, which she handed to Angie and Stevie before returning with one for herself and Stormy.

Like Angie’s, Stormy’s tight black curls were piled high on her head, but unlike Angie’s, they remained contained, save for the short strands she’d left out intentionally to frame her face.

Morgan’s short hair did what it usually did: looked like it was just dying for some tall drink of water to run her fingers through the thick curls, which was, in fact, why they were there—moving Morgan into said tall drink of water’s house.

“How are you not dying like the rest of us?” Stevie asked Stormy with a vague gesture to indicate the unseasonable heat.

“I work in a kitchen.” Stormy caught Stevie’s eye. “And I deadlift fifty-pound bags every day. This is nothing.”

“I deadlift your mom,” Stevie said automatically.

The other three groaned, though Angie did let loose an, “Eyyyy,” first, before settling onto the arm of Stevie’s chair to drink.

The couch and remaining chair were occupied by Morgan’s worldly possessions, leaving her little choice.

Stevie studiously looked away from the bare skin now directly at her eye level. Her peripheral vision noticed anyway.

Friend. Roommate. Friend. Roommate. As usual, the mantra didn’t help.

Cold water landed on the tip of her nose. She yelped as more splashed onto her shirt and whipped her head around in time to see Angie lower her empty glass.

“You looked hot,” she said, shrugging.

Stevie gave the best scowl she could muster, trying not to read into the words. Angie booped her nose with a forefinger, smirking.

“Whatever,” said Stevie.

“Pizza time,” said Morgan. “Usual toppings?”

“Lil’s not here, so we can have meat .” Stevie used her monster voice for the last word. Everyone needed a monster voice.

“I like the veggies though. Stick with the usual half-and-half?” Angie swung one leg up beneath the other and settled more comfortably against the chair. Her skin smelled like her sweat and preferred scented lotion, and her clothes gave off a whiff of laundry detergent.

Stevie tried to think of something—anything—else.

If Lilian and her girlfriend Ivy were here .

. . but they weren’t, and even if they hadn’t had to work, she wasn’t sure what they could have done to save her aside from offer additional distraction.

Watching Ivy push Lil’s buttons was Stevie’s favorite sporting event, but they’d need to add mud wrestling to counteract the Angie Affect TM .

Because the universe was a cruel, cold, unfeeling place, Angie decided this was the perfect time to idly toy with Stevie’s ponytail.

Not the kind of distraction she needed. Her body purred, and if it really had been a cat, she would have squirted it with a spray bottle.

She endured the exquisite torture of Angie’s touch while her friends debated pizza toppings, slipping into a heated, half-drowsy stupor that she would’ve called bliss if it were anyone but Angie.

Not that it would feel like bliss if it were anyone but Angie.

Which was entirely the point.

Friend. Roommate. Friend. Roommate.

Emilia finally came to her rescue by returning home.

“You were supposed to wait for me to help you,” she scolded Morgan as she pushed open the screen door of the log house she’d inherited from her father.

“Surprise,” said Morgan, grinning like the idiot she absolutely was.

Emilia looked around at the boxes with a frown. “You’re letting me carry them upstairs.”

“Start with that box,” said Stevie, pointing at the bin of kettlebells with her foot.

“Do not.” Morgan shot Stevie a genuine glare. “You hurt your back. Of course, I wasn’t going to let you help move.”

“Such a gentleman,” said Stormy.

“It’s the decent thing to do.”

“Unlike the indecent things you get up to the rest of the time.” Stormy wiggled her eyebrows.

She still hadn’t let Morgan live down the time she’d overheard Morgan and Emilia doing some of those very same indecent activities on Morgan’s boat.

As Stormy was now fond of saying, sound carried over water.

“Oh my god. My back is fine. I just tweaked it.”

“How?” Stormy asked, feigning innocence.

Emilia reached for a bag of clothes, her cheeks reddening, and stalked upstairs.

Stormy cackled. Angie slid off the arm of Stevie’s chair and followed, hefting the bin of kettlebells easily.

The muscles in her ass, arms, and back flexed with the effort, accentuating the hollow at the base of her spine.

Stevie had devoted an unhealthy amount of time to deliberately not thinking about how that particular dip of skin might taste.

One hour and several slices of pizza later, Stevie climbed into the passenger seat of Angie’s beat-up Range Rover and leaned her head back against the fraying headrest with an exaggerated sigh.

“Please tell me you have no plans to move anytime soon.”

Angie laughed. “Frankly, I am surprised it took Morgan this long to leave. I thought Lilian would be the last holdout.”

“Well, she still has most of her plants here, and the tortoise, so can we really say she moved out?”

“She doesn’t sleep here. Ergo, she moved out.”

“So you’re essentially saying that a toothbrush gives a person squatter’s rights?”

“Maybe,” said Angie. “Though I was thinking more along the lines of consecutive nights slept there. I let Lana keep a toothbrush, but I wouldn’t want her claiming she lives with us.”

Stevie tried not to take the words like a blow to the solar plexus. In this, she was unsuccessful.

“Yeah, well,” she said, aware that this was a somewhat insubstantial reply, but unwilling to say anything that would upset Angie, even if all she really wanted to do was rip Lana a new one.

She hated few people as much as she hated Angie’s .

. . whatever Lana was. Ex. On-and-off-again fuck buddy. Terrible decision.

After several moments, Angie turned on the radio and began to hum along to whatever pop song crackled through the speakers. Stevie closed her eyes and pretended to rest.