Courtney's Baby Plan

by ALLISON LEIGH,

Courtney smiled, too, even though she knew that Mason wasn’t entirely joking.

  “Well.” She handed the nameless kitten to him and rose. “I’m going to tell everyone goodbye so we can head out. Uncle Matt said he smells more snow coming, and I want to get home before it hits.”

  Mason had to either take the kitten or let her fall onto the table. The two little girls—one belonging to Ryan and one to Beck, the guy engaged to marry Lucy—had been stuck like glue to him and Courtney since they’d produced the kitten from the basket they’d brought her in.

  “Plato can’t name her,” Shelby said seriously. “He’s a dog.”

  Chloe giggled. “He would only name her woof.”

  “Woof the cat.” Despite himself, Mason grinned. “Think I like it.”

  Chloe beamed at him. “Are you gonna marry Auntie Court?”

  His grin suddenly felt strangled. “What?”

  “No,” Courtney said, sailing back into the kitchen. She swept her niece up in her arms from behind and kissed the back of Chloe’s neck, making her laugh even harder, before setting her back on her feet. “Nobody is marrying Auntie Court.” She treated Shelby to the same upswing and kiss. “Mr. Hyde’s just a friend, remember?”

  Chloe wrinkled her nose and eyed Mason. She touched his cast with gingerly fingertips. “Does your leg hurt?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Does your face hurt?” Shelby stared up at him, innocence personified.

  He saw the way Courtney caught her lip in her teeth as her startled gaze turned toward him. “Not anymore.”

  “How’d you get it hurt?”

  The kitten was curled on his arm, purring. He could feel its faint vibration, even though it was too soft to hear. “My leg or my face?”

  “Your face,” Shelby replied immediately. “Lucy already told me you got your leg broke from a truck. You’re not supposed to get in front of trucks that are moving.”

  “You’re right about that,” he agreed ruefully.

  Courtney reached for his crutches, propped out of the way near the door, and held them out to him. “We should get going.”

  Strangely enough, he ignored the bailout.

  Shelby was still watching him curiously. There was no fear in her face. No horror. Just a child’s simple curiosity.

  “I got hit with a lot of broken glass,” he told her with huge understatement. “It was a long time ago in another accident.”

  Chloe’s face crunched up even more. “My dad broke a glass in our kitchen and he got a piece stuck in his toe. He was mad,” she added. “But my mom picked it out and put a bandage on it. You must have had a lot of bandages.”

  He nodded. “Yup. I did.”

  Evidently satisfied, Shelby touched his cast. “Can we sign your cast? Jenny Tanner’s brother at school had a cast on his arm, and everyone in his class signed their name on it.”

  Chloe nodded. “But you don’t have any on yours. Can we?”

  “Girls—” Courtney started.

  “You’d have to find a pen.” Mason cut her off. Her amber eyes widened a little. Then they turned all soft and dangerous again, and he wished he would have just taken the crutches and bailed like she’d obviously expected.

  The girls ran out of the kitchen.

  “Glass?” Courtney asked.

  “And metal and whatever else was part of the building that exploded,” he said in a low tone that wouldn’t carry.

  She held the crutches against her. “What happened?”

  “I didn’t stop a psychotic bomber quick enough. He liked targeting Canadian day care centers.”

  She looked horrified. “Did you catch him?”

  “Once I’d gotten all of the kids and staff out of the building. Yeah.” He waited a beat. “I killed him before the bomb blew.” He’d known he hadn’t enough time left to get out of the building after making sure everyone else was away, but he’d been damn certain that the other guy wouldn’t, either.

  Her lips pressed together. “I think I’m glad,” she said after a moment.

  “It was just a job.”

  The corners of her lips turned upward. “Right.”

  The girls came running back into the kitchen, both bearing black markers. And then they were bent over his cast for long enough that he stopped wondering what Courtney was really thinking to worry about just what the little girls were writing.

  Turned out that six- and seven-year-old girls didn’t just sign their names. They had to draw flowers and hearts around them, too.

  “Thanks,” he said when they were finally finished.

  Courtney wasn’t even trying to hide her smile.

  “You sign it, too,” Chloe demanded, holding the pen up to her.

  Without looking at him, Courtney leaned over the cast, near his ankle, and wrote. He tried to see what it said, but the angle was impossible.

  By then, Mallory had come into the kitchen. And she, too, needed to sign the cast.

  And then Mason found himself sitting there while everyone in the whole damn house signed the cast.

  By the time they were done, and he and Courtney were finally making an escape—and it did feel like an escape—there was writing over ninety percent of the thing, and Courtney was smiling like the cat who’d stolen the cream.

  She waited while he pulled himself into her backseat, as usual with his leg stretched across the seat, then handed him his crutches as well as the basket containing Woof. “That wasn’t so terrible, was it?”

  He eyed the doodles and the names and the comments that littered his cast. “I thought you planned to get home before the snow started,” he said.

  Her smile didn’t dim. She looked up at the sky, where snowflakes had begun drifting down. “Oh, well. Plans change. We’ll get home, anyway.” Then she closed the car door and went around to the driver’s side.

  Mason looked down at the kitten he held.

  If he could have, he’d have blamed the hollow ache inside him on cat claws.

  But the kitten just lay there curled against his chest, silently purring.

  Chapter Twelve

  “So you’re positive?” Mason eyed Courtney’s face closely.

  If she lied, he’d know it. He’d see it in her eyes.

  “Yes,” she assured. “I’m positively not pregnant.” It was six days since the night they’d made love. She set the plate containing a meat loaf sandwich in front of him and turned back to the sink. “I told you the timing was wrong, and turns out, I was right.”

  He eyed her back. She was wearing a long-sleeved black running top and matching body-skimming running pants. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she had a red winter scarf wrapped around her neck.

  He could see that she was telling the truth.

  But he couldn’t tell if she was relieved or not.

  “Then nothing can get in the way of number 37892 anymore,” he said.

  “Right.” Her voice was chipper. She dried her hands on a towel and picked up the gloves that she’d left sitting on the counter. “I’ll be back in plenty of time to drive you to the hospital. Do you need anything else before I go?”

  He needed plenty.

  But he wasn’t going to ask and she knew it.

  He shook his head. “Thanks for the sandwich.”

  She just smiled and headed for the door, stopping only long enough to pet Plato where he was lying by the door, his big body curled protectively around tiny little Woof.

  And then she was pulling on the gloves and slipping out the back door. Through the window, Mason could see her begin the routine of stretches she religiously performed before she went on her runs. Didn’t matter that there was still a thin layer of snow on the ground or that the air was cold enough to send rings around her head when she breathed.

  His appetite gone, Mason pushed aside the plate and limped into the dining room. He was having his leg xrayed that afternoon to see if his cast would be coming off the following week as scheduled or if he would only be graduating to a small
er, more walking-friendly cast.

  Either way, there would be no more reason for him to stay with Courtney. He could head back to his anemic apartment and get back to work.

  That fact should have filled him with relief.

  He made a face, sat down at her computer and turned it on, then sent an email to Cole using a convoluted path of servers.

  And then he just sat there in front of the computer, looking at nothing in particular.

  He needed to remember that he and Courtney had dodged a bullet.

  No baby.

  Not one of his, at any rate.

  Courtney would be gone for at least an hour on her run, so he pushed away from the computer desk and half jumped, half limped down the hall to his bedroom. He’d already read all of the books he’d brought with him. And he’d read all of the ones on Courtney’s bookshelf that he didn’t already have.

  Turned out they had similar tastes.

  He looked around the bedroom, trying to envision it as a baby’s nursery.

  The vision came much too quickly, and he blamed it on the fact that he’d seen Courtney’s choices for furniture and such on the damn computer.

  When his cell phone rang, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Shaking his head at himself, he pulled it out of his pocket. “Hyde.”

  “Clay,” Axel said with laughter in his voice. “You busy?”

  Making himself crazy? Definitely. “Not at the moment.”

  “Courtney out?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why do I have the feeling that you already know?”

  “Because we just saw her running past us. Be there in a sec.” The line went dead.

  Mason exhaled and headed out to the living room just in time to see Axel’s truck pulling into the driveway.

  The “we” part was quickly explained when he saw Tristan Clay, Axel’s uncle, climb out of the truck, too.

  Mason sat down in one of the chairs and waited. As he’d expected, Axel didn’t stand on ceremony. He just walked right on in. “Hey.”

  Mason looked from the younger man to the older. “What’s going on?”

  Tristan smiled faintly and held up the thin file folder that he was carrying. “Axel showed me these profiles you’ve worked up.”

  Mason eyed Axel. “Helped work up,” he corrected. “And you’ve got a big mouth.” Cole had known about Mason’s help pulling together a few profiles on some cases Axel had on his plate. And now Tristan did, too.

  “I want you to come and work for me,” Tristan said.

  Mason raised his brows. “I already work for HW.”

  Tristan nodded once. “On Cole’s side of the operation. All international.” He sat on the arm of the couch and tapped the file against his thigh. “We’ve got needs on the domestic side, too. One in particular that I believe you can fill.”

  “Cole know you’re poaching on his side of the fence?”

  The other man smiled, looking unperturbed. “I’m not worried about Cole.”

  Neither was Mason when it came right down to it. “I got out of profiling a long time ago.”

  “After the Canadian day care incident.” Tristan nodded. “I know.”

  Mason figured that Tristan probably knew what had followed, as well, since he was as close to being the number two man in the agency as it was possible to get. What he didn’t know was how much his nephew Axel knew about his past.

  Despite working together on numerous cases, Mason had never discussed it with him.

  “But these—” Tristan tapped the file folder again “—clearly prove that you haven’t lost the gift. There has already been some action on two of the cases where the feds were previously stuck against a brick wall.” He smiled faintly. “’Course, you’d be working mostly out of Weaver, which—as you’ve probably discovered—doesn’t offer quite the conveniences as Cole’s shop does.”

  Mason was shaking his head before Tristan even stopped talking. “No. I’m not moving to Weaver.”

  “You’d be well compensated.”

  It wasn’t the money. He was already well compensated for the work he did. If he wanted to, he could retire right now. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Stubborn. Cole warned me.”

  Mason almost smiled. “I appreciate the offer. But Weaver’s not for me.”

  “Too bad.” Tristan slanted a look at his nephew, then pushed to his feet and went to the door. “I think you’d be a good addition around here. If you change your mind, let me know. I can always put a guy like you to good use.” He pulled open the door and stepped outside.

  Axel followed him. “Just give it some time to roll around in your head,” he advised, hanging back. “No harm. No foul.”

  “I can’t stay here.”

  “Because of Court?”

  Mason grimaced. “What makes you think that?”

  Axel gave him a look. “This is Weaver, man. You were kissing in public. Unless you like having water-balloon fights with condoms or something, you’re obviously sleeping with her. And besides all that, anyone with decent vision—and mine is perfectly fine—can see the sparks flying in the air when you’re with each other.”

  Mason muttered an oath. He shoved out of the chair and started to pace, but there wasn’t a lot of satisfaction in it when he had to hop on one foot to do it. “Nothing’s private in this town.” Except the fact that they hadn’t used a condom at all. Except the fact that he hadn’t gotten her pregnant, anyway.

  He knew for certain that Courtney wouldn’t have shared those details with anyone. And he sure as hell hadn’t.

  “There are a few things a person can keep a lid on if they try.” Axel shrugged. “Tara’s pregnant again, and we’ve managed to keep it quiet for the past month and a half.”

  Mason stared.

  “We wanted to wait until she was further along before we shared it. She had a miscarriage a while back that only we and her OB know about, too.”

  “She’s okay?”

  Axel nodded. “Perfect. And as of this week, she’s a solid four months along, with no indication that anything’ll go wrong.”

  Mason shoved his hand through his hair. “How do you do it?” Yeah, Axel was younger than he was. He hadn’t been with the agency as long. But he’d still seen his share of action. He knew how things could turn bad in the blink of an eye. “Act like you’ve got a normal life?”

  “Because it is a normal life,” Axel returned.

  “Tara knows what you really do.” She had to, since Axel had been assigned to protect her when her twin brother, Sloan, had come to the agency for help. “She knows you don’t—” he air-quoted “—breed horses.”

  “I do—” Axel air-quoted “—breed horses. Real horses. But she knows I also work for Tris. It’s normal for us, because we make it that way. Because being together is what is important.”

  “And if you don’t come walking in the door some weekday afternoon at five o’clock because you ended up on the wrong side of a weapon, that’s gonna be normal?” Mason shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Cops get married,” Axel returned. “Anyone who’s a first responder gets married. They have lives.”

  “And a damn high divorce rate,” he muttered. And statistically speaking, he knew the success of marriages for HW operatives was even rarer.

  “Anyone who gets married takes that chance.” Axel glanced out the doorway. “Just because Greta couldn’t take it doesn’t mean Courtney can’t.”

  Mason stiffened. “Who the hell said anything about that?”

  Axel just shook his head. “Dude. You have got it bad.”

  “She’s too young, anyway. I’ve got thirteen years on her, for God’s sake.”

  At that, Axel laughed. “Twenty-six years on earth, a hundred and six years in her soul. Tara said something like that once about her. Called her an old soul. Said it’s one of the things that makes her such a good nurse. That ability she’s got to let people just be who they are. If you haven’t noticed that about her by now—”
he shook his head “—then maybe I do need my vision checked. As far as I’m concerned, age differences—one way or the other—only become an issue if you make them one.”

  “She’s your cousin. I’d think you’d want to protect her a little more.”

  “From the likes of you?” Axel rolled his eyes and walked toward the door. “That is one of the most asinine things I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.” He lifted his hand. “Think about Tristan’s offer. Profiling instead of direct security? Would get you out of the way of flying objects more often. It’s not quite a banker’s nine-to-five, but in our business it’s as close as you’re ever likely to get.”

  Mason didn’t reply.

  He watched Axel stride to his truck, where his uncle was waiting, and drive away.

  He slowly pushed the door closed.

  Plato and his new sidekick had padded into the living room. Even as Mason watched, the dog picked the kitten up in his mouth and set her on the couch. Then he jumped up beside her, circled a few times and settled down with a harrumphing sigh.

  “Talk about the odd couple.”

  Plato just wagged his tail a few times. If the dog understood, or agreed, it was pretty obvious that he didn’t care.

  “Healing nicely.” Dr. Jackman was peering at the computerized X-ray of Mason’s leg. He tapped the end of his pen against the screen. “There. And there.” He tapped again. “And there. Those are the sites of the fractures.” He tapped once again. “That’s where the first pin became infected.” He nodded and slid his pen into his lapel pocket as he turned to face Mason. They were sitting in his office at the hospital. “It all looks good.” The gray-haired doctor smiled at Courtney. “Nice job, Nurse Clay.”

  Courtney shook off the praise. “All I did was give him a few meals and make sure he took his meds on time.”

  She’d done a helluva lot more, Mason figured, but that was none of the orthopedist’s business. “Good enough to cut me out of this thing early?”

  Courtney suddenly pushed out of her chair. Mason eyed her. She didn’t look at him, though. Her eyes were trained solely on the doctor.

  “Actually—” Dr. Jackman considered for a moment “—yes. You’ll need to follow up with a few weeks of physical therapy to strengthen the muscles again. But yes.”