Free Here Comes Trouble by Erin Kern

T-shirt and denim shorts. The familiar stirring below his belt had him taking a deep breath and shifting his legs. The only time he ever saw her in anything other than denim was at work. He had a feeling if his father didn’t have a dress code, she’d show up in ripped jeans.
    “Feeling lonely tonight?” Lily squirmed on his hip. Chase adjusted her while waiting for Lacy to say something.
    She blinked her round, bedroom eyes and shifted her attention to the baby on his hip. Lacy’s full, unpainted mouth curved upward when Lily let out a string of baby-blabber. “Hello, little sweetie.” One of Lacy’s slender fingers tickled the bottom of Lily’s bare, chubby foot. Lily swung her leg back and forth and shoved her whole fist in her mouth, drool pouring down her hand.
    Chase stood back and decided to let Lacy enter. Her hypnotic, orangey-vanilla scent swirled around his head when she walked past him. No woman he’d known ever smelled like Lacy. Most women sprayed on some atrocious flower perfume that lingered for twenty minutes after she left. Lacy’s scent was sweet and subtle; something only to be smelled when a person got close enough. When he did get close enough, her essence clouded his vision and made his dick stand to attention.
    “You’re babysitting tonight?” She walked ahead of him through his foyer, giving a view of her excellent, toned ass.
    “Uh,” he cleared his throat and tore his attention away from the backs of her creamy thighs. “Noah and Avery haven’t had a night out in a few months so I offered to watch the munchkin.” Now he wished he was alone.
    Lacy eyed the baby paraphernalia. “If they ever need a hand, I’d love to watch her.”
    Chase set Lily down and she crawled over to her pile of toys. “She’s quite the handful. And noisy.” To prove his point, Lily let out another baby-sized shriek when one of her toys vibrated.
    Lacy squatted next to the six-month old. “I think she’s sweet. And totally gorgeous.”
    “She’s quite the looker, isn’t she?” Chase sprawled himself down on the leather couch and stretched his long legs in front of him.
    “She looks like your mother.”
    His mother? He gave his niece some scrutiny, taking in her brown curls, gray eyes and heart-shaped lips. Most people saw Avery and few saw Noah. Personally, Chase thought the girl was an equal mixture of both her parents.
    Chase shook his head. “She doesn’t look anything like my mother.”
    Lacy eyed the picture of Julianne McDermott on his wall and shifted her gaze back to Lily. “She looks a lot more like your mom than you realize. They have the same hair and same eyes.”
    “She has Noah’s eyes.”
    Lacy tilted her head to one side, her waterfall of blonde hair falling over one shoulder. “The color, maybe but not the shape. That she got from your mother.”
    Chase narrowed his eyes at his guest and tried to ignore how long and smooth her bare legs were. “You didn’t come here to talk about my niece’s genetics.”
    A nervous giggle curved her mouth upward. “You always were observant.”
    As cute as they were, nervous giggles hardly ever left Lacy’s lips, nor did she ever just show up at his house. Something was up with her.
    “What were you doing? Sitting around thinking, ‘I’ll stop by to see my old friend Chase?’”
    “You got any red wine?” she asked, completely out of the blue, ignoring his question.
    “What am I, a woman?” He grinned when she rolled her eyes in a teenage fashion. “There’s some Sam Adams in the fridge.”
    She pushed herself to her feet. “That’s good enough.”
    His eyes stayed to her backside when she walked through the archway leading to the kitchen. The fridge door, opened then closed. A nanosecond later, she returned with a dark, cold bottle of beer. He should have asked her to bring one for him. Only the power of alcohol could tame the sexually charged atoms swirling through his body. How sick of was it of him to be fending off a