Welcome to Pembrooke: the complete Pembrooke series

by Prince, Jessica

  And damn she looked good holding that baby.

  “She tell you about what went down with Layla at the bakery today?” Noah asked, pulling me out of my own head.

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do about that woman.” Anxiety clawed at my insides whenever I thought about my daughter. I’d give anything to have Eliza with me constantly, but I just didn’t have what I needed to take to a judge in order to strip Layla of her rights. At least not yet. But the wait felt like it was slowly killing me.

  “Man, you should have seen your girl,” he tilted his chin toward Chloe, appreciation heavy in this voice. “Didn’t know she had that kind of spunk in here. Even I was a little scared of her. Sweet, shy Chloe’s got some claws on her, brother. And they’re sharp as hell. I’m pretty sure Satan’s Mistress is still feeling the sting of them.”

  I wasn’t going to lie, after Chloe told me what had happened, and the boiling rage that turned my vision red finally subsided, I’d gotten hard as a rock visualizing my little sunshine going toe to toe with the she-devil. Hell, I was getting hard now just thinking about it.

  “Says good things she’d defend you and your girl like that,” he continued. “Woman like that, well, I’d say she’s worth keeping around for the long-haul. But that’s just me,” he shrugged like he thought he was being smooth and I didn’t have a clue what he was getting at.

  “You aren’t telling anything I haven’t already realized, man.” I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, one side of my mouth hitching up in a grin.

  He chuckled. “So you managed to pull your head out of your ass?”

  “Yep.”

  “Thank Christ,” he sighed and patted me on the shoulder. “Harlow will be pleased. Now she won’t have to shank you in your sleep.”

  * * *

  Chloe

  I let out a yawn as I walked into Derrick’s house, dropping my purse and overnight bag on the couch as I passed. “Lucy’s adorable,” I smiled through my exhaustion as I thought about the tiny baby I’d just spent hours holding. Was there anything on earth that smelled better than a newborn baby?

  “She’s a little cutie,” Derrick agreed as he closed and locked the front door. “You look like you could fall asleep standing, baby.”

  I hummed and gave him a sleepy smile as I kicked my sandals off. “I probably could.”

  He moved closer and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Waking up so fucking early can’t be good on you, sunshine.”

  I nuzzled into his chest, basking in his warmth and the concern lacing through his words. I never thought I’d be where I was right in that moment. I’d dreamed of Derrick holding me just like this countless times, but I didn’t actually think it would happen. I always considered him out of my reach. To be honest, sometimes I still had to pinch myself just as a reminder that I wasn’t dreaming.

  “It comes with the territory, honey. A baker’s gotta bake.”

  His hands ran a soothing pattern up and down my back and he spoke against the top of my head, “Maybe if you didn’t hold such a tight rein on your employees, you’d see they’re more than capable of picking up a little bit of the slack.”

  I pulled back to look up at him, his arms wound around my waist so I couldn’t move completely away. “What are you talking about?”

  “You put too much pressure on yourself, baby.”

  My brows furrowed. “Well, yeah. It’s my business. My livelihood. If I don’t do it, who will?”

  “Did the bakery fall to ruin when you were out sick?”

  “No,” I answered on a glare, making him smile that devilish smile I loved so much.

  “Who do you think took care of everything while you were gone those few days?”

  “My staff,” I grumbled, reluctant to concede his point.

  “I know you want to be in control.” He reached up with one hand and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m not saying you need to let things go completely, but maybe work out a schedule where you’re not the only one going in at the butt-crack of dawn to prep and bake for the day. I have no doubt your guys would be willing to take on the extra work. They’re pastry chefs after all, isn’t that what they like to do?”

  I opened my mouth to argue but my mind blanked. There wasn’t a single thing I could say that he wouldn’t be able to rebuff, easily. Because the fact was, he was right.

  “I see I’m getting through,” he chuckled and I smacked him in the shoulder.

  “No need to gloat about it.”

  “Ah, but there is. You see, if you lighten your load and share some of the early morning hours, I won’t have to feel so guilty for keeping you up all night long.”

  The glower I pasted on my face contradicted the rush of moisture I felt between my legs. God, he was hot. “Someone’s feeling cocky.”

  His mouth came down on mine. “And in a few minutes, you will be too.”

  * * *

  My hands squeezed the slats of the headboard so tightly my knuckles grew white. I moaned in ecstasy as I threw my head back. I couldn’t remember sex ever being so good before.

  “That’s it, sunshine,” Derrick grunted as he pounded into me from behind, one of his hands leaving my hip in order to wrap my hair around his fist. “I want to feel you squeezing me.”

  “Oh, God. Don’t stop Derrick. So close. Baby, so close,” I groaned, using the headboard as leverage to push myself back on his cock even harder.

  “Does my girl need it harder?” he asked after pulling on my hair so I’d straighten up on my knees, giving him the perfect access to my ear and neck.

  “Yes. Yesssss,” I hissed out when he gave my hair another yank, never once losing stride in this thrusts.

  “Want to fuck you hard, baby. You want that too?”

  “Uh huh.”

  I cried out at the loss of him when he pulled out, but the sound was cut off when he suddenly flipped me onto my back, spread my legs wide, and shoved back in. Hard.

  “Hang on,” he warned just as he grabbed hold of the headboard like I’d been just seconds ago and began fucking me so hard I could feel him everywhere.

  “Oh shit! Oh God. Yes, yes! Just like that,” I cried as I dug my nails into his shoulders. I could feel my release building, building, building, threatening to crash over me and pull me under.

  “Fuck,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “So fucking beautiful. Christ, sunshine, the way you take my cock… goddamned perfect.”

  My hold slipped on his sweat-dampened skin and I lost purchase of his shoulders, raking my nails on his chest as he continued to thrust, driving me closer to insanity with each one. He must have loved the bite of pain, because he lost all control, his whole body moving as he powered in and out, fucking me like a madman.

  “Need you to come,” he panted, his hazel eyes a shade darker than normal as he stared down at me.

  “I’m close,” I gasped. “So fucking close.”

  “Get there, baby.”

  “Almost,” I whimpered.

  “Get there,” he pulled almost all the way out before slamming back, “now!”

  That was all it took. I fell over, yelling his name as the most intense, most powerful, most consuming orgasm I’d ever experienced washed over me. It seemed to last forever. My back arched, my eyes screwed shut, and all I could do was hold on as pleasure rocked through my entire body, clamping my walls down on his cock so hard I was sure it had to have hurt.

  “Holy shit,” he groaned, his hips pumping one last time before he buried himself deep and emptied inside me. “Fuck fuck fuck! Unh. Oh God!”

  Every twitch, every jerk of his erection sent tremors through me until we both collapsed in a panting, sweaty heap onto the mattress.

  I had no clue how long we lay there in silence, nothing but the sounds of our short, choppy breathes filling the room, but it wasn’t until we’d managed to slow both our heart rates down that he pushed up on his forearms and looked down at me, his eyes warm with so
mething unfamiliar, something I’d never seen in them before as he smiled.

  “Next weekend I have Eliza, I want you here with us,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  My eyes went wide for a moment before I laughed. “Derrick, I think sex might have melted your brain.”

  He stared in silence for several seconds, just long enough to make me squirm with discomfort, which only brought attention to the fact that he was still inside me. “Derrick?” I asked, uncertainty shrouding me voice.

  “I want her to know about us,” he said softly.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Dead serious, sunshine.” He leaned down and ran his nose along mine. “I told you, this is real. We’re real. I want her to know you’re in my life as something other than just a friend.”

  “You don’t…” I swallowed audibly against the emotion building in my throat. “You don’t think it’s too soon?”

  God, his smile was going to be the death of me. No man should be allowed to have that brilliant of a smile. “Not at all. Besides, she’ll be fucking beside herself with excitement.”

  I giggled. “Yeah. She does kind of like me, doesn’t she?”

  “I think it’s safe to say she more than likes you, sunshine.”

  “I more than like her too,” I whispered. My chest squeezed as the words I so desperately wanted to say fought to be released. I knew it was too soon, I knew it would more than likely freak him out, but I couldn’t hold them in. I needed him to know how I felt.

  “I more than like you too.” Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the most eloquent way to tell a man you loved him, but I’d kind-of-sort-of chickened out last minute.

  He laughed before releasing a sarcastic breath. “Well thank God for that, because I’d hate to tell you I love you and not have you say it back.”

  I froze and I swear to God, my brain malfunctioned just then. “What?”

  His lips brushed against mine softly. “I,” brush, “love,” brush, “you.”

  “Like a… friend?” I dragged out, desperately needing confirmation that I hadn’t stumbled into some sort of alternate reality where down was up, left was right, and love meant something totally different.

  “No…” One of his brows quirked up. “Like the woman I want to move into my house sometime in the near future so I never have to sleep without her next to me again.” I gasped, but he kept going. “Like the woman I see eventually wearing my ring, carrying my last name, and if she’s willing, hopefully someday my babies.”

  “Babies?” I asked on a sniffle as tears broke free and began making tracks into my hair. “Like more than one?”

  “Well how many are you thinking you want, sunshine? I mean, I already have one. Are we talking a football team’s worth here? Because I don’t know if I have that kind of strength.”

  I laughed through the tears and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him to me. “I was thinking three,” I whispered in his ear. “But like you said, we already have one, so I’d be happy with two more.”

  His head shot up, hazel eyes intense as he stared at me. “We?”

  I wasn’t sure if I was stepping over the boundaries, but he had to know the full truth. “I love your little girl, Derrick. I know I’m not her mother, and I’d never want to try and replace Layla if that wasn’t what Eliza wanted. But she’s special to me. I want to give her what she needs. I want to be there for her just like I would any child I gave birth to.”

  “God, you’re amazing,” he breathed.

  “Now, that being said,” I continued. “I hate Layla with a fiery passion and even though I hope she gets her shit together for Eliza’s sake, I’ll still want to throat-punch her on a regular basis. But for you and Eliza’s sake, I’ll refrain.”

  “Big of you,” he laughed.”

  I shrugged with a smile. “I thought so.”

  He kissed me hard, every ounce of his love for me pouring through that one kiss until he finally pulled back, leaving me breathless as he began to grow hard inside me.

  “Again?” I asked with wide eyes.

  “Depends?”

  “On what?”

  “Well,” he moved forward just an inch, and it was enough to make me hot all over again. “You haven’t technically said you love me back.”

  “I haven’t?” I groaned, lifting my hips to try and get some friction going.

  He pulled out. “Nope.”

  “Silly me. Derrick?”

  “Yeah, sunshine?”

  “I’ve been in love with you since you moved to Pembrooke, and I never stopped.”

  Another breathtaking smile. “That’ll work.”

  Oh yes it would.

  22

  Chloe

  As I paced the length of Derrick’s living room for about the thousandth time, nervously chewing on my thumbnail while I waited, I thought back to the conversation we’d had earlier that morning over breakfast.

  “Baby,” Derrick’s voice shook me out of my thoughts, pulling me back into the present. “You have to relax. You’re gonna give yourself an ulcer if you keep worrying so much.”

  “I can’t help it!” I cried, throwing my hands in the air before letting them fall back onto the counter. “I’m freaking out! What if she hates the idea of us being together? What if she thinks I’m trying to take you away from her or something, and she ends up hating me?”

  He chuckled and I kind of wanted to punch him. “That’s not gonna happen, sunshine.”

  “But what if it does?!”

  “It won’t,” he replied adamantly.

  It did nothing to sooth my frayed nerves. “I think we should wait,” I spit out quickly.

  He stared at me, a blank expression on his face before going back to the pancakes I’d made us. He shoveled a bite into his mouth, chewed, then swallowed and stated plainly, “No.”

  “No? What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean no. We aren’t waiting. We’re telling her today once I get her home, and you’re going to see all this worrying was for nothing. And I, being the gentleman that I am, won’t say ‘I told you so.’”

  “Ugh!” I shouted. “You’re being unreasonable!”

  He stood from his stool at the island and carried his plate to the sink, actually taking the time to rinse it and put it in the dishwasher. That almost made me hot enough to forget what I was stressing about and jump him right there in his kitchen.

  He leaned against the counter, thick arms crossed over his wide chest, and regarded me with a somewhat bored look on his face. “Okay, I can see there’s no talking you off this ledge you’ve put yourself on, so I’ll do you a favor.” I actually breathed a sigh of relief, thinking he’d come around to seeing my side of things. That was, until he spoke again. “I’ll tell her myself on the way here. That way, when we get back, it’ll all be done and you’ll see how great she takes the news.”

  “That’s not a favor!” I stomped my foot. I found myself doing a lot of that over the nearly two weeks we’d been dating. God, that man could frustrate the hell out of me. Good thing for him he was so good looking.

  He pushed off the counter and headed my way. “Well, that’s the best I got baby.” He planted a kiss on my forehead and grabbed his keys. “Now, I gotta go get my little girl. We’ll be back in about an hour, think you can get a hold of yourself by then?”

  My answer was to flip him off. He laughed and gave me a peck on the lips before moving away, calling, “Love you too, sunshine,” over his shoulder just before the front door closed.

  The sound of Derrick’s truck rumbling up the drive yanked me back to reality. It was do-or-die time. And don’t ask me why I was approaching the situation like a fighter about to climb into the cage, there was nothing about my thought process at that moment that was rational.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I forced my feet to move toward the front door. I stepped out into the front stoop and crossed my arms over my chest, giving the truck and its occupants a tiny, unsure smile. Seconds later, the passenger door
was thrown open and Eliza jumped out and barreled toward me.

  “Miss Chloe!” she shrieked, only coming to a stop once she’s plowed into me, nearly taking me off my feet, and wrapped her arms around my waist. “Daddy told me you’re his girlfriend!” she exclaimed, leaning her head back to look up at me with happy, shining hazel eyes. “Does that mean you’re gonna get married? Oh! Can I be your junior bridesmaid?! I’m too big to be a flower girl, and Lilly said she was a junior bridesmaid in her cousins wedding and it was so cool! She got to wear a dress kinda like the rest of the bridesmaids and got to stand up there with the rest of them and everything! When you and Daddy get married I want to do that! Can I, pleeeeease?”

  I lifted my head, eyes wide as I glanced at a smirking Derrick as he carried Eliza’s bag to the house.

  I looked back down at Eliza and finally returned her hug. “Uh, sure…” I answered hesitantly. “If we ever get married, you can totally be a junior bridesmaid.”

  She squealed in delight and pulled away to do a little happy dance that made me laugh. “So you’re happy about it?”

  “Totally!” she yelled. “You’re the coolest, and you make Daddy smile like, all the time. And now I’ll have someone who I can do stuff with like, give pedicures and watch all those movies Dad complains about because he says they’re too girly. And you can teach me how to bake!”

  Yep, I was pretty sure my heart just exploded. I blinked rapidly, unwilling to turn into one of those weepy women who cried every single time they felt happy about something.

  “We’ll do all those things,” I said in a soft voice, pulling her in for another hug. “And just for the record, I totally think you’re the coolest, too.”

  She pulled back and graced me with a smile that made me love her even more. “I know. I’m just like my dad.” With a wink, she ran into the house.

  “Don’t say it,” I warned to Derrick who’d stood there, watching our entire interaction with one hand casually in his pocket.