Page 16 of The Agent’s Curvy Seduction

We stay locked together afterward, my hand resting on her stomach, her fingers tracing lazy circles on my forearm. I press a kiss to her shoulder and speak against her skin.

"I want you pregnant."

She goes still. "What?"

"I want to watch you get soft and round with my kid. I want to feel it move under my hand." I keep my voice steady, possessive. "I want you tied to me in every way that matters. More than one if you'll let me."

She doesn't pull away. Instead, she covers my hand with hers and laces our fingers together over her stomach. "I know what that means," she says quietly. "And I'm choosing it. I'm choosing you."

The quiet acceptance in the gesture settles something deep in my chest.

We eventually get out of bed. I make coffee while she showers. The ordinary rhythm of it already feels like a future I refuse to give up.

When I walk back inside, Willow is in the kitchen wearing another one of my shirts, bare legs and wild curls and a soft smile that hits me harder than any of the filthy things we did this morning. She looks at me like she can tell something shifted.

"Everything okay?" she asks.

"It is now." I cross the room, cup the back of her neck, and kiss her slow and deep. "You're safe. I'm making sure of it."

She leans into me, forehead against my chest. "You didn't have to tell me that."

"Yes, I did. You deserve to know I'm handling it."

She tips her head back and looks up at me. There's still a little fear in her eyes—fear of how fast this is moving, fear of wanting it as much as I do—but underneath it is something steadier.

"Okay," she says quietly. "I'm not running."

I kiss her again, slower this time, and feel the last of the morning's tension leave my shoulders.

seven

. . .

Willow

Flour dusts the counter in a soft white cloud, and for a second I let myself pretend this is just an ordinary afternoon. Sun coming through the kitchen window. Hudson somewhere outside, splitting wood he doesn't need to split because he likes having something to do with his hands. Me, barefoot on cool tile, elbow-deep in butter and sugar because baking is the only thing that's ever quieted the noise in my head.

I haven't made anything from scratch since the accident. Not really. The bakery had its own recipes, its own systems, and slipping into someone else's rhythm was easier than facing my own. But this morning I woke up wanting something specific—something that tasted like before—and the only way to get there is a box I haven't opened in seven months.

I go up to the guest room where I dumped my duffel bag that first chaotic night and dig to the bottom until my fingers find the small wooden box. I haven't touched it since Hudson carried it into the SUV for me. I sit on the edge of the bed and just hold it for a minute, feeling the weight of it, the familiar rough grain under my palms.

Inside: a few photographs. My brother's bracelet, thin leather cord with a single wooden bead. A pressed flower from my mother's garden. And underneath all of it, wrapped in a dish towel that still, impossibly, faintly smells like vanilla—my mother's recipe book.

I haven't opened it since the crash.

I sit there with it in my lap before I finally lift the cover.

The pages are soft with age, edges gone velvety from years of flour-dusted hands turning them. My mother's handwriting fills the margins—little notes to herself, adjustments, hearts drawn next to the recipes she loved best. And there, three pages in, is the snickerdoodle recipe, and next to it, in smaller, messier handwriting that isn't hers at all, my little brother's attempt at copying her cursive: Tommy helped!! with three exclamation points because he was nine and thought everything deserved that much enthusiasm.

My throat goes tight.

I remember standing on a step stool next to him in our kitchen, both of us covered in cinnamon sugar, my mother laughing at the mess we were making. I remember him sneaking dough when he thought no one was looking, grinning at me with his mouth full, daring me not to tell.

I remember my father leaning in the doorway one evening, watching us bake, a look on his face I didn't understand at the time—something soft and a little sad, like he was trying to memorize the moment.

Keep your mother's recipes safe, Willow, he told me once, out of nowhere, a few weeks before the accident. We'd been cleaning up after dinner. I'd laughed and asked him why he was being so weird about a book of cookie recipes.

Some things are worth saving, he'd said. Doesn't matter if anybody else understands why.