Courtney′s Baby Plan
Courtney's Baby Plan
Allison Leigh
There was no future for Courtney with him, and she was the kind of woman who deserved futures.
She was young and beautiful and caring and came from a strong, close family.
He was past young, scarred up on the inside as well as the out, and the only family he knew—or who mattered to him—was the family of Hollins-Winword security agency.
It was a fact of life that was easy enough to remember when he was usually a continent or two away from her.
But sprawled across a bed under her roof?
That was an entirely different matter.
She reappeared in the doorway with a gigantic Saint Bernard at her side.
“You didn’t get a dog.” Mason eyed the shaggy beast. “You got a damn horse.”
She grinned, bringing a surprising impishness to her oval face and tucked her long, golden hair behind her ear.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Dear Reader,
This year marks the thirteenth year I’ve been blessed to be able to share the Double-C Ranch “family” with all of you. When I started out, I had no idea what a wonderful adventure it would all turn out to be—and continues to be, every single day. Though I certainly hoped that you would welcome the family into your lives, I could never have come close to understanding how wonderful it would be knowing just what a special home these people would find with you.
Now, here we are again, with Courtney Clay, who is settling into the home and the future she wants to make. And with Mason Hyde—who has as little idea when he starts out how much he wants that home to be with him—as I did when I started out more than a decade ago.
And so their adventure begins …
Thank you for being there to share it!
Allison
About the Author
There is a saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. ALLISON LEIGH doesn’t believe that, but she does believe that you can never have enough books! When her stories find a way into the hearts—and bookshelves—of others, Allison says she feels she’s done something right. Making her home in Arizona with her husband, she enjoys hearing from her readers at: Allison@allisonleigh.com or PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.
Courtney’s Baby Plan
Allison Leigh
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my family.
Prologue
Iat all started with a kiss.
A twenty-dollar kiss, to be precise.
Courtney Clay inhaled carefully and stared up at the man standing outside her apartment door. She didn’t do this sort of thing … inviting strange men into her home during the wee hours. Or any hour, for that matter.
But then Mason Hyde wasn’t entirely a stranger. He was a friend of her cousin’s, after all.
And he could kiss like nobody she’d ever met.
The statement whispered through her mind, tempting.
She straightened her fingers, then curled them once more around the doorknob. “Do you want to come in?”
His eyes were deep shadows despite the porch light burning brightly above her front door. “Yes.” His voice was deep. Blunt. And—as it had struck her from the first moment she’d encountered him—entrancingly melodious. That first time, when she’d heard him speaking to someone else, she’d thought how his voice didn’t seem to quite match his almost dangerous-looking appearance.
The second time, just that afternoon when he’d stopped in front of her kissing booth at the town’s Valentine’s Day festival, plunked down a twenty for a five-dollar kiss and told her with a crooked smile that she could keep the change, she’d realized just how perfectly his voice did fit him.
And even though there had been a narrow table between them on which that twenty-dollar bill rested, she’d felt something curl inside her when he’d spoken. And something curl even more tightly when his eyes had stared into hers.
Her knees had felt a little shaky. Her stomach had danced a little nervously. And her voice had risen about half an octave when she’d thanked him for his generous donation on behalf of the local school that was benefiting from the funds being raised that day.
But then his lips had tilted a little crookedly, which seemed to make the thin scar that slashed down his face from his right temple to his jaw even more apparent, and he’d leaned across the table toward her and brushed his lips gently … simply … across hers.
And that’s where her memory stopped dead in its tracks.
The contact of his lips on hers had simply caused every cell in her brain to short-circuit.
Which is what had led them here.
To this moment.
With him standing at her door in the wee hours of the night, exactly twenty minutes after she’d gotten off her shift at the hospital. Exactly where—and when—she’d uncharacteristically invited him, in a rushed, quiet voice, lest anyone else around the kissing booth hear her, after he’d murmured that he’d really like to see her again. Somewhere. Anywhere that didn’t involve a line of ten guys—young and old—who were happy to hand over a few bucks to kiss a pretty nurse.
Now, though, despite saying that he did want to come inside, he hadn’t moved so much as an inch. Instead, he was watching her intently with those eyes that she knew from the kissing booth were a startlingly pale green against his olive-toned skin.
“Are you sure you want me to come in? I’m not going to want to leave anytime soon. We could go out somewhere. Have some coffee.”
She hadn’t expected that. Her moist hand tightened around the door handle as she continued looking up at him. She was tall. But he was a whole lot taller. A whole lot broader.
Go somewhere for coffee? Somewhere safe. Somewhere innocuous. Or invite him in?
She didn’t have indiscriminate encounters with near strangers. She didn’t do anything in her life that wasn’t well thought-out. Well planned.
But she didn’t want to go to the all-night coffee shop and sit across a table from him pretending that all she wanted was conversation and coffee.
She wanted his long arms wrapped around her.
Wanted to be held against his wide, wide chest.
Wanted his warm lips on hers.
She wanted. Period.
More than ever before in her life.
And even though her heart bumped nervously inside her chest, she moved her bare feet, stepping back as she pulled the door fully open.
“Yes.” Her voice was soft but clear. “I’m sure.”
His lips slowly tilted and he stepped inside.
Without a word, he reached for her with one hand, and with the other, he pushed the door closed.
Chapter One
“No,” Mason Hyde said adamantly as he stared up at his boss. And he hoped to hell he showed none of the alarm he was feeling. “You can’t fire me.”
“You insist on checking yourself out against medical advice and I’ll have no choice.” Coleman Black’s voice was flat. Unmoved. “I don’t need stupid agents. What I do need is you recovered and healthy, Mase.” The gray-haired man frowned and moved across the hospital room, finally showing some emotion—even if Mason figured it was only irritation. “You just had surgery yesterday,” Cole pointed out. “And two days before that, you were still in the hospital in Barcelona.”
Mason grimaced and looked away. Maybe stupid was the perfect word to describe his desperation to get out of the hospital, but if anyone should understand why he needed to get out … get away … it should have been Cole.
Yeah, he was Mason’s boss. But he was also Mason’s friend. And Mason didn’t have many people in his life that he considered a friend. He had even fewer people in his life who knew his history like Cole did.
“I don’t want to end up like I did before,” he muttered, and hated that the admission made him feel weak.
Cole glanced at the open door to Mason’s room and shook his head. “Maybe if you told the hospital what your history is, why you keep refusing the—”
“No.” Mason cut the other man off. It had been ten years, for God’s sake. But right now, lying there in a hospital bed while pain racked every corner of his body, it felt as if it were just yesterday.
Yesterday, when he’d been in another hospital—only that trip had been courtesy of an explosion rather than a deadly aimed SUV. Then, he’d been shot full of endless painkillers. Painkillers that had become the only thing he’d been able to think about and just about the only thing he’d been able to care about. He’d ended up losing everything—except his job—that really had mattered to him.
He’d be damned if he’d head down that road again.
And he’d be damned if he’d admit to anyone now what a hole he’d had to climb out of before. Particularly his doctors. “It has nothing to do with anything now,” he muttered.
Cole raised his eyebrows and pointedly eyed the contraption that held Mason’s casted left leg at a strange angle above the bed. A triangular bar was also suspended above Mason’s chest, allowing the big man something to grab on to with his left hand, since his right was also in a long cast. “I believe the entire medical community would disagree,” he said drily. Then he sighed, knowing that there were some arguments that never would work with Mason. The man marched to his own drummer.
The phone inside his lapel pocket was vibrating. Had been ever since he’d walked into Mason’s hospital room ten minutes earlier. As the head of Hollins-Winword, he had at least fifty things that needed his immediate attention. Yet he was here, standing in a hospital room having a battle of wills with one of his most talented—and most stubborn—agents.
He stifled a sigh again. It was no coincidence, he supposed, that talent and stubborn seemed to generally go hand in hand. An agent had to have a strong will to work in the field. Cole didn’t want to have anyone under his watch who didn’t have a strong will.
But right now, that particular trait was causing him no small amount of consternation.
“Well, the doctors are up to you as long as you’re inside these walls. But once you go AWOL from this place, your recuperation is up to me. And I’m telling you that you don’t have a choice. Either you give up the notion of not needing any more medical care, or you won’t have a job to come back to.
At the best of times, Mason’s face was stoic. Cole had known the man since long before he’d acquired the thin scar that extended nearly the entire side of his face, so he knew that basic expression wasn’t owed to the scar. And now, given the situation, Mason’s face had all of the animation of the grim reaper.
“You can’t fire me.” Mason’s voice was low. Gruff.
Which meant he was actually worried that Cole would.
And much as it pained him, that’s what they both needed right now. “I can and I will,” he assured flatly. Though he wasn’t quite sure how. But Cole hadn’t gotten to where he was without mastering the art of a bluff. Not that he was bluffing, exactly. He truly did not want to lose Mason as an agent. Whether he was profiling maniacal nuts or invisibly protecting people who weren’t easy to protect, the guy had a talent that went miles beyond training. It was instinctive. As if he’d been bred into it.
But more importantly, Cole didn’t want to lose Mason, period. And the damn fool was likely to kill himself at the rate he was going.
The annoyance of his buzzing cell finally drove him to pull it out of his pocket and glance at the display. More crises that, at least, had nothing to do with his business with Mason. He pocketed the phone. “Be glad you have alternatives,” he continued. “I know Axel Clay has talked to you. Considering everything, getting out of Connecticut and lying low in Wyoming for a few months while you recover seems an excellent idea to me.”
Mason slid him a look. Trust Cole to hedge around until he got to the crux of the matter. The older man had obviously been a spy for too damn long. How else had he known that he and Ax had spoken?
He started to reach for the bar to shift in the bed, but just thinking about lifting his arm above his shoulder sent a shock wave down his spine. Instead, he curled his good hand into a fist and breathed through the pain, reminding himself that feeling that pain was a helluva lot better than ending up addicted to painkillers again, and feeling only the uncontrollable urge for another numbing pill. “Bugging the hospital telephone, Cole?”
His boss didn’t answer that. “His solution is pretty damn perfect, far as I’m concerned. Not only will you be under the watchful eye of a nurse without having to stay in the hospitals you detest, but you’ll get some peace from the media hounds here.”
“I’ve had enough of nurses, thanks.” At any other time, Mason might—might—have found the double entendre humorous, but right then, he couldn’t muster it. “I’ll be bored crazy in Wyoming,” he lied. Nothing had been boring the last time he’d been there over a year and a half ago.
The other man just shrugged. “Then you get yourself transferred to a twenty-four-hour care center whether you like it or not or you stay here, ‘cause you’re not going to your own place. I know you. You go to that box you call a home, and you’ll do too much before you should and end up back here again even worse off than you are now.”
If it weren’t for the heavy-duty antibiotics that were being intravenously pumped into him, Mason wouldn’t even have to be in the hospital. The collision between his body and the SUV he’d jumped in front of had happened a week ago. The most recent surgery that he’d had to finish putting Humpty Dumpty back together again was the last one he was supposed to need. And if he hadn’t gotten the infection that necessitated that surgery, his doctors and his nurses would have been glad to see the last of him the minute they’d finished wrapping half his body in plaster.
“Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” he muttered. The longer he stayed in the hospital, the worse he felt. But if he left on his own, Cole would cut him off from the only thing that mattered to him.
“I’ll check on you tomorrow morning.” Obviously unmoved, Cole headed toward the doorway of Mason’s private room. “Either have a plan in place or give me your resignation.” His voice was hard, and without another glance his way, the man walked out of the room.
Mason leaned his head back and let out a long, colorful oath.
Agents who pushed Cole hard got pushed back hard. And more than a few good ones had ended up walking away from the agency that had been the center of Mason’s life for so many years.
He wasn’t going to be one of them.
He grimaced and threw his good arm over his eyes. He could feel panic nibbling at the edges of his sanity.
And Mason wasn’t a man who panicked.
Admitting it, even to himself, was damn hard.
But not as hard as it had been to kick an addiction that had ruled his life for eighteen months. And right now, ten years or not, he was craving a narcotic numbness as badly as he ever had.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Hyde. How are we feeling today?” The young nurse who came into the room on her squeaking, rubber-soled shoes greeted him in a revoltingly cheerful voice. One corner of Mason’s brain had to give the kid credit for maintaining that unswerving cheer when dealing with him.
He knew he wasn’t an easy patient.
“When you have a dozen broken bones, we will talk about it,” he said wearily. He wasn’t interested in watching her as she fussed around him—even if she was about as cute as a fresh-faced cheerleader—and closed his eyes.
She didn’t reply, but he could still hear her moving around and feel her faint touch as she checked this and adjusted that. Which meant maybe the kid did have the ability to learn.
“You know, Mr. Hyde,” she said after a moment, proving that he’d overestimated, “I couldn’t help but hear a little bit of your conversation with your visitor.”
He opened his eyes and watched her.
She smiled tentatively, looking more than a little nervous. “I was out in the hall waiting to come in and change your IV bag. Anyway,” she rushed on, “I’m supposed to help convince you that it’s in your best interests to stay with us for a while longer, but I do know some really good nurses who provide home health care if you’d like some names.”
He shrugged and held back a curse at the pain the movement caused. “Yeah. Sure.” His voice was short. And even though he had no real intention of following up on her well-intentioned list, at least it took the nervousness out of her eyes. She could get on her way and leave him in peace.
She deftly slid the call button into the fingers that protruded below the edge of his cast. “I’ll get the names for you. Be sure to call if you change your mind and want something stronger than the OTC stuff for that pain.”
He’d chew off his tongue before he asked for anything stronger. He managed a relatively civil grunt in return, and her shoes carried her, squeaking, back out of the hospital room.
When he’d called Cole, he’d hoped to enlist the guy’s aid to get out of the hospital. His place wasn’t much, but at least he didn’t have an ongoing stream of medical professionals bugging him every hour on the hour, and he wouldn’t be a call button away from begging for a damn narcotic. His job kept him on the road about fifty weeks out of the year, and his apartment was more a repository for the mail that was shoved through the mail slot than it was a home.
Hell. He didn’t even have dishes in his kitchen cupboards. He barely had soap and a towel in his bathroom.
The only thing he’d end up finding at his apartment was more discomfort and a barrage of phone calls from eager reporters who’d regrettably discovered he was the so-called hero who’d saved the life of an internationally known businessman’s daughter.
Mason wasn’t the only one who was media shy. He didn’t want strangers looking into his life, poking and speculating. But he also worked for an agency that preferred operating under the radar. Their primary concern was security—personal and international—and it was beneficial for everyone concerned that their activities not be looked at too closely by an inquisitive public. Particularly since HW generally operated with the government’s tacit approval. They handled the stuff that the elected boys and girls couldn’t—or didn’t want to—get caught up in.
Unfortunately, Donovan McDougal—or someone from his sizable camp—had opened their mouth to the wrong person about Mason’s involvement in McDougal’s personal security, and even though Cole had done his best to get a lid on it, the newshounds were busy sniffing out the story behind the near-tragic “accident.”
He let the call button fall out of his grip and reached out for the hospital phone that was on a rolling stand beside the bed. His cell phone had been decimated by the vehicle that had hit him. He’d had no opportunity to replace it yet, but he had a good memory for numbers. He dragged the corded, heavy phone closer with his good arm so he could punch out the numbers.
Axel answered on the second ring.
“Set it up,” was all Mason said. Then he let the receiver clatter back in place.
Going along with Axel’s idea might keep Mason in Cole’s good graces, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea. Yeah, Ax’s cousin was a registered nurse. Yeah, she’d recently bought a house and wanted to pick up some extra money.
From the outside, it might seem like a win-win situation. Courtney Clay padded her bank account, and Mason got Cole off his back.
But none of them knew about the night that Mason had spent in Courtney’s bed over a year and a half ago. A memorable night. The kind of night that haunts a man.
But it had only been one night. He’d known that going in, he’d known it when he’d walked away the morning after and also when, during the days that followed, he’d had to fight the urge to contact her again.
Women like Courtney Clay were better off without guys like Mason Hyde in their lives.
Even she had agreed to that particular fact.
He was surprised that she’d gone along with her cousin’s suggestion to not only give Mason room and board now but to also provide him with whatever nursing care he needed until he could take care of himself.
But maybe she hadn’t been as haunted as he’d been by that night together. Maybe it made no difference to her one way or another who her temporary roommate was going to be. Maybe it was just about the money.
It didn’t seem to fit what he knew about her. But then, what he knew most about her was what her lips tasted like. What her smooth, honey-tinted skin felt like beneath his fingertips.
She’d been the one to invite him to her place that long-ago day. He’d been in Weaver for a few days helping Axel out on a case. And though Mason had made it plain he wanted to see her again, he’d had no expectation, no plan, that it would lead to her bed.
She was too young for him, but she was an incredibly beautiful woman. Turning down that particular opportunity had even occurred to him. Until she’d whispered for him not to worry. It was just one night. She’d said those words herself.
So when she’d stared up at him in the shadowy light of her living room and began unbuttoning her blouse, he’d helped her finish the job.
He’d made the mistake of forgetting who and what he was when he’d tried to have a normal life eleven years ago. He wasn’t going to do it again.
Not even when the temptation came in the form of a shapely, blonde nurse whose touch still hung in his memory.
He was in a wheelchair.
Even though Courtney had expected it, the sight of Mason sitting in the chair made her wince inside.
“Remember what you’re doing this for,” she whispered to herself. She needed to keep her long-term plan in the forefront of her mind. It would be the only way she could get through the short-term … awkwardness.
She gave a mental nod and drew in a quick, hard breath as she brushed her hands down the front of her pale pink scrubs. Then she pulled the door wide and stepped out onto her porch to watch her cousin push Mason’s wheelchair up the long ramp that her brother had finished building just that morning over the front and back steps so that once her boarder did arrive, they’d be more easily able to get him in and out of the house.
She realized she couldn’t quite look Mason in the face and focused instead on her cousin. “Everything go okay with the flight out from Connecticut?”
“How would he know?” Mason answered before Axel could. His pale green gaze drew hers. “He wasn’t the one cooped up on the plane.”
A frown pulled his slashing eyebrows together over his aquiline nose. Combined with the dark shadow of beard on his jaw—evidence that he hadn’t shaved in at least a few days—he looked thoroughly put out.
She lifted an eyebrow and managed a calm smile. “Feeling a little cranky, are we?”
“What is it with you nurses and the eternal we?”
“Ignore him,” Axel advised as he pushed the wheelchair past her into the house. He pulled a fat, oversized envelope from beneath his arm and handed it to her. “He’s been bitching since I picked him up in Cheyenne. Here’re his meds.”
Courtney took the envelope and looked inside at the various prescription bottles it contained. She’d already reviewed a copy of her new patient’s medical chart. It had been faxed to her yesterday after Axel had called her out of the blue to ask if she was interested in taking on a home health care patient.
She’d done similar work before. Just not when the patient in question was living under her roof. But the money he’d said the patient would pay had been enough to get her interest, and in a hurry.
It was only after she’d agreed and had asked how he knew the patient that she’d learned who her new roomie was going to be.
There was no earthly way, at that point, that Courtney would have been able to back out without explaining to her cousin why. And she had no intention of sharing those particular details.
So, she’d squelched her reservations and reviewed the file when it arrived. Even though she was trained for objectivity, she’d been horrified at the injuries that Mason had sustained. She also hadn’t been able to help wondering how on earth he’d been hurt, but that particular information had not been in his chart.
Which meant it was probably work related.
She was ridiculously familiar with the hush-hush aura surrounding the company that Mason worked for, because it was the same company that many of her relatives had worked for. Or still did.
Of course she wasn’t supposed to know much about Hollins-Winword. But she wasn’t an idiot. She had ears that worked perfectly well. The first time she’d heard the name, she’d been a schoolgirl. As she’d gotten older, she’d discerned more.
And then when Ryan went missing …
She broke off the thought. It was pointless reliving the misery of believing her big brother was dead, because he was home now. Safe and sound, miraculously enough a newlywed with a family of his own.
She followed Axel and Mason into the house and nudged the door closed behind her as she studied the labels on the prescription bottles. Various industrial-strength antibiotics and vitamins and minerals. When she got to the last bottle, though, she frowned a little.
She’d read in Mason’s file that he refused to take prescription-strength pain medication, yet that’s exactly what she was looking at.
There was nothing in his file about drug allergies, so—if he was anything like the men in her family—it was probably more likely some macho belief that real men didn’t need anything to take the edge off their pain, even if it was only for a few days.
She dropped the narcotic back in the envelope and stepped around Mason’s protruding leg cast. She set the envelope on the square dining room table near the arch separating the great room from the kitchen and turned toward the men. “Your room is at the end of the hall.” Meeting Mason’s gaze only made her skin want to flush, so she focused on the few stray, silver strands glimmering among the dark brown hair that sprang back thick and straight from his forehead. “The bathroom is next to it. You are able to manage with crutches, aren’t you?”
“It’s not pretty, but yeah.” He sounded marginally less cranky than before, and Courtney couldn’t help but feel a rush of sympathy for the man.
No matter what had transpired between them that Valentine’s night, the man was recovering from several serious injuries. He had matching long, blue casts on his right arm and his left leg. She also knew that he’d suffered several bruised ribs. He was in pain and, for now, was having to depend on someone else to help him with basic functions from bathing to eating. Of course he was cranky.
Anyone would be.
She looked at her cousin. “Why don’t you bring in the rest of his things, and I’ll get Mason settled in bed.” She could feel heat climbing her neck at that. She didn’t bother waiting for Axel to respond but moved next to him and nudged his hands away from the wheelchair so she could push it herself.
Last night, before she’d gone on duty at the hospital, she’d rearranged some of the furniture in her living area to accommodate Mason. Her experience with him told her that he wasn’t the least bit clumsy. But Mason was a big man and, clumsy or not, he had a cast covering one leg from foot to thigh. That, combined with the cast on his opposing arm, meant he’d need all the space he could maneuver in, whether by wheelchair or by crutches.
The wheels on the chair squeaked slightly against the reclaimed-wood, planked floor as she pushed him down the hall, hesitating only briefly when they passed the bathroom. “Tub with a shower,” she told him in the most neutral nurse’s voice she could muster.
“Don’t tease me. Only thing I get these days is a wet washcloth.”
She felt heat in her throat again as she turned his chair slightly and carefully pushed him into the spare bedroom. “Sorry. I imagine a real shower is something you’re looking forward to.”
He made a grunting sound in reply.
After angling the chair alongside the bed, she moved around it. She’d already pulled the covers back, and the pillows were stacked up against the wrought-iron headboard. There was also an old recliner from her parents that Ryan had muscled into one corner of the room.
She stopped in front of Mason. He was wearing a white T-shirt that strained at his shoulders and a pair of gray sweatpants with one leg split up the side to accommodate the cast. His toes below the cast were bare, and he had on a scuffed tennis shoe on his other foot.
And he still managed to make her mouth water. Which was not what a nurse should be thinking about her patient, she reminded herself. “Ready to get out of the chair?”
He looked no more enthusiastic than she felt. “You’re not strong enough to lift me.”
“Not if you were dead weight,” she allowed. “But you’re not. So which do you prefer? Bed or chair?”
He didn’t look at her. “Bed.”
Which he probably took as some admission of weakness. Coming from a family of strong individuals, that, too, was something with which she had plenty of familiarity. “All right.” Before she could let her misgivings get in the way, she locked the wheels and removed the arm of the wheelchair. Then she bent her knees close to his and grasped him loosely around the waist, leaving room for him to brace his good leg beneath him as she lifted. “Ready?”
He gave another grunt, putting out his uninjured hand against the mattress, so he could add his own leverage. “Just do it.”
She tightened her arms, lifting with her legs, and held back her own grunt as she took his weight for the brief moment before he got his leg beneath him. Then he was out of the chair, pivoting more or less smoothly until he landed on the bed, sitting.
She held on to him only long enough to be certain that he wasn’t going to tip over, before she straightened. Her stomach was quivering nervously, but the sight of his pale face and tight lips took precedence. “I know,” she murmured. “Not very pleasant. But it’ll get better.”
His expression shifted from pain to pained. “I don’t need coddling.”
She gave him the kind of stern look she’d learned from her grandmother. Gloria was retired now, but she’d been a nurse, and it was in that capacity that she’d met Courtney’s grandfather, Squire Clay. And she’d had plenty of years since then to refine that stern look and pass it on to her granddaughters. “Believe me,” she assured him, “you won’t get coddling from me. Now, do you want to sit there on the side of the bed or lean back?” She didn’t wait for an answer before she reached down for his casted leg.
But his hands brushed against hers as he did the same, and she had to suck down another shock of tingles that ripped through her. She moved her hand from beneath his. Feeling shaky again, she deftly tucked a wedge of foam, which she’d gotten from the hospital, beneath his leg and stepped away, while he swore and jabbed at the pillows propped behind him.
Sweat had broken out on his brow.
She curled her fingers, fighting the urge to help him as he awkwardly shifted, lest he mistake her assistance for the banned coddling. “What can I get you to make you more comfortable?”
He finally settled, his head leaning against the headboard behind him. He shoved his hand through his hair and looked up at her. “I don’t suppose sex is one of the options, is it?”
Chapter Two
Courtney stared, and the heat that she’d been trying to keep at bay flooded hot and furious into her cheeks. “Excuse me?”
“You want me to repeat it?”
Her lips parted. She wanted to say something, but there just weren’t any words that were coming to mind.
And then there wasn’t time, because Axel came into the room and dumped a very worn leather duffel bag on the floor next to the foot of the bed. He also had a pair of metal crutches that he propped against the wall near the doorway. “I’d hang around and shoot the breeze,” he told them both, “but Tara’s got an appointment this afternoon and I’m on Aidan-duty. Hard to believe how much one fourteen-month-old kid can get around.” He pulled a slender cell phone out of his back pocket and handed it to Mason. “Courtesy of Cole,” he told him, before bumping knuckles with Mason’s fist and hustling out of the room.
A second later, they heard the front door open and close.
Courtney held her tongue between her teeth and looked back at Mason. “No,” she finally said, breaking the thick silence. “Sex is not an option. Obviously.”
His gaze trapped hers, but she couldn’t tell if he was amused or not. “Because you think I’m presently incapable, or because I didn’t call you the morning after?”
She shoved her curling fists into the pockets of her scrubs. She didn’t even want to entertain ideas of what Mason was capable or incapable of doing. “I didn’t ask you to call me,” she reminded. Not the morning after, nor during the twenty months that had passed since then. “You’re here because you’re recovering from an assortment of injuries. Period.”
The corner of his lips lifted a fraction. “Yeah, that’s what I expected but figured we might as well get it out of the way so you can stop looking worried that I’m going to bring it up.”
Ordinarily, she preferred being straightforward, too. But right now, she wished she could keep up the pretense that nothing had ever occurred between them. “Number one—” she leaned over and picked up his duffel bag “—I wasn’t worried. And number two, now it’s out of the way. Subject done.” She hefted the surprisingly heavy bag onto the empty surface of the dresser and glanced at him over her shoulder. “I’ll unpack this if you don’t mind?”
His lips twisted. His gaze was unblinking. “Do I have a choice?”
Her fingers let go of the zipper pull. “Yes,” she said slowly and turned to face him. “Nobody is trying to run your life for you, Mason.” She didn’t know what was more disturbing. His presence, the taste of his name on her lips after all this time or the disturbing notion that he considered himself some sort of captive.
“You’ll be the first nurse who hasn’t tried.”
She leaned her hip against the dresser and folded her arms over her chest. In just the one night that they’d shared, he’d learned her body better than she’d known it herself. But other than the fact that he worked for the same company that had nearly stolen her brother for good, what she really knew about Mason could have fit on the head of a pin.
“Then I’ll be the first,” she said quietly. “The only thing I’m doing here is making sure you continue your recovery safely and with as much comfort as possible. You’re the one in control of your situation. Not me.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, which just seemed to concentrate that pale green and make it even more startling against his dark lashes. “Why did you agree to all this?” He lifted his hand, taking in the room and, she presumed, the situation in general.
She chewed the inside of her lip, then went for honesty. “I didn’t know you were the patient,” she admitted. “Not until after I’d agreed.”
He lifted his eyebrow. “Why didn’t you back out?”
Now, that was trickier.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She did, but she had no intention of sharing her reasoning.
Remember what you’re doing this for.
“So.” She patted the duffel bag. “Do you want me to leave this for you to deal with … or …?”
He was silent for so long that she couldn’t help wondering even more what was inside his head. She’d wondered a whole lot that night they’d been together, too. At least, she had during the moments when she’d been able to draw a coherent breath.
Which had been few and far between.
She swallowed down the jangling memory.
“Knock yourself out,” he finally said.
Feeling ridiculously relieved to have something to keep her hands busy, she turned to the task. He had a few pairs of jeans, a half-dozen colored T-shirts and a handful of sweatpants—all one-legged like the pair he was wearing. The sum total of his clothing wasn’t enough to fill even two of the six dresser drawers, and the pair of athletic shoes and scuffed cowboy boots didn’t come close to filling the floor of the bedroom closet.
Aside from a small leather shaving kit, the rest of the duffel was crammed with books, which explained the weight.
Hardbacks. Paperbacks. Some that looked brand new and others that looked as if they’d seen the wear from hundreds of hands. She stacked a bunch of books on the nightstand next to the bed, where they’d be in easy reach for him. “You’re a reader.” And an eclectic reader, to boot. He had everything from the latest thriller topping the bestseller charts to political commentaries and biographies to classic literature.
He shifted against the pillows, and she couldn’t help but see the way a thin line of white formed around his tightly held lips. “So?”
She adjusted the high stack. “Don’t get defensive. It’s just an observation.” She left the rest of the books in a stack on the dresser. “And not that it looks like you’ll run through all of these anytime soon, but I have a pretty loaded bookcase myself in the living room, too. You’re welcome to help yourself. Do you prefer to get around with wheels or these?” She held up the crutches.
“Those,” he said immediately. “Get rid of the chair altogether.”
“All right.” She propped the crutches right next to the bed, between the headboard and the nightstand. “Besides the books, feel free to help yourself to anything else around here.”
He lifted his eyebrow again, giving her a long look, and she pressed her lips together. He was toying with her. “Food-wise and such,” she clarified. “I’ll get you set up with a meal before I have to go to the hospital for my shift and bring Plato in so you can meet him. He’s gotten spoiled and used to having this bed for his own, but he’s a smart boy. You just tell him to stay off and he will.”
“Plato?”
She realized she was speaking so fast she was almost babbling and hated giving him any evidence that she was unsettled by his presence. “My Saint Bernard. He’s out in the backyard right now.”
“You didn’t have a dog before.”
“I didn’t own a house with a yard before,” she returned.
“No.” His gaze felt heavy on her face. “You had that apartment.”
Her throat suddenly felt dry and she swallowed, folding her arms over her chest. His gaze seemed to focus on them. Or on the achingly tight breasts that they were pressing against.
Probably her imagination.
Hopefully, just her imagination.
It was difficult enough ignoring her attraction for him, without thinking that he still carried some for her, too.
“What, um, what do you like to eat?”
His eyebrow peaked.
“For lunch,” she added doggedly.
“There’s nothing that I don’t much like.”
She moistened her lips. “You’re not exactly helping me here, Mason. If I came in here with brussels sprouts, would you be loving them?”
His expression suddenly lightened, and a faint smile toyed around his surprisingly lush lower lip. “Honey, as long as I don’t have to cook ‘em, I’ll be damn happy to eat ‘em.”
She exhaled and rolled her eyes. “Spoken like most men,” she said wryly and headed out of the bedroom, taking the wheelchair with her.
She didn’t breathe again, though, until she reached the privacy of the kitchen, and once she did, it took considerable effort not to collapse on a chair and just sit there.
But she hadn’t been exaggerating to Mason. She did have to get to work soon.
Just because her bank account was going to be dancing a jig before this was all over and Mason went on his way in a few months, didn’t mean that she didn’t have to earn her regular wages.
She folded the chair and stowed it in a closet, then moved past the ladder-back chairs surrounding the kitchen table that was tucked into the small bay overlooking her backyard, and pulled open the refrigerator door. Until recently, she’d never made much effort at cooking for herself. She’d never had to. It was always so easy just to drop by her folks’ place, or one of her other relatives’, and grab a bite when she was looking for some home-cooked food.
But things were changing. Takeout and scavenged meals weren’t going to do. So, after she’d moved into the house, she’d begun making an effort, and now her refrigerator was well stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables. She had a chicken casserole that she’d made the day before, as well as sliced pot roast, and she chose the thick, sliced beef to make two sandwiches for Mason. She added a sliced apple, a glass of water and a thick wedge of peach pie that she couldn’t take credit for since Ryan had brought it over.
Not giving herself a moment to dither over the meal—and dither she would, if she allowed it—she arranged everything on a sturdy wooden tray and carried it back to the bedroom, stopping only long enough to grab up the envelope with his meds and tuck it under her arm.
She breezed into the bedroom, her footsteps hesitating when she found him with his nose in a book, a pair of black-rimmed glasses perched almost incongruously on his aquiline nose.
Why she found the sight so particularly touching, she couldn’t say. But she did. Which just meant that she had to push a brisk tone past the tightness in her chest. “I have soda or iced tea, if you want something to drink other than water.” She tossed the envelope on the foot of the bed and grabbed the well-used folding lap table that she’d already had on hand and deftly set it over his lap, sliding the tray on top of it. “Or beer,” she added, remembering that had been his preference before. “Though, you really shouldn’t have alcohol right now.”
She glanced at him, waiting, and found him watching her, his glasses and book set aside. “What?” she asked.
“How’d you do that without spilling the water?”
Surprised, she looked down at the lap tray and meal. “Practice,” she said simply. “So … what do you want to drink besides water?”
His gaze passed her to land on the envelope lying near his foot. His lips tightened a little and he looked back at the meal. “Water’s all I need.” His jaw slid slightly to one side, then centered again. “Thank you. This looks good. I was half-afraid you’d be bringing in brussels sprouts.”
She smiled slightly. “Behave yourself and I won’t have to.” She picked up the envelope and poured the bottles out into her hand. “When was your last dose of antibiotics?”
He didn’t look up from the food. “Before I left Connecticut.”
Which meant too many hours. She set all but two of the bottles on the nightstand, where they’d be in easy reach for him, and poured out his doses, setting them on the tray. “You missed a dose.”
“I’ll live.”
“What’s your pain like?”
He bit off a huge corner of thick-sliced bread and tender beef and shrugged.
Macho men.
“On a scale of one to five,” she prodded. “Five being the worst.”
“Twelve,” he muttered around his mouthful.
She wasn’t particularly surprised. She could practically see his discomfort oozing out of his pores. “Good thing you’re eating,” she said and popped the lid off his painkillers. “It’ll help keep your stomach settled with this stuff.”
He lifted his hand, stopping her before she could drop one on her palm. “Throw the damn things down the toilet. I don’t need ‘em.”
She gave him a look. “Twelve?”
His gaze slid over hers, then away. “Fine.” His voice was short. “I don’t want them.”
“It’s not a sign of weakness to need—”
“I said no.”
She slowly put the cap back on the bottle, sensing that this was about something other than macho posturing. And, judging by the way he was holding himself even more stiffly than before, that he didn’t want her prying.
Which told her more than words could have said, anyway.
“Fair enough.” She set the bottle next to the others. “But you don’t have a choice about those,” she said firmly. She pointed to the two pills next to his plate. “If you want your bones to heal, you’ve got to beat back that infection once and for all.” She headed to the doorway. “I’ll go get Plato.”
Mason watched Courtney stride out of the room.
It was a helluva thing that he was almost more interested in the damn pill bottle within arm’s reach than he was in watching the particularly enjoyable sight of her shapely form moving underneath the thin pink fabric of her scrubs.
He swallowed the last of the first sandwich, leaned his head back against the pillows and closed his eyes. Too easily, the night they’d spent together came to life in his mind.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and opened his eyes again.
Since the moment he’d thrown McDougal’s daughter, Lari, to safety, he’d been in hell.
Coming to Weaver was just one more layer of it.
There was no future for Courtney with him, and she was the kind of woman who deserved futures. She was young and beautiful and caring and came from a strong, close family.
He was past young, scarred on the inside as well as the out, and the only family he knew—or who mattered to him—was the family of Hollins-Winword.
It was a fact of life that was easy enough to remember when he was a continent or two away from her.
But sprawled across a bed under her roof?
That was an entirely different matter.
“Plato, come meet Mason.”
He heard her voice before her footsteps and then she reappeared in the doorway with a gigantic Saint Bernard at her side.
“You didn’t get a dog.” Mason eyed the shaggy beast. “You got a damn horse.”
She grinned, bringing a surprising impishness to her oval face, and tucked her long, golden hair behind her ear. “He’s a big boy,” she agreed. Her fingers scrubbed through the dog’s thick coat and the beast’s tongue lolled with obvious pleasure. “But he’s a total marshmallow. He’s four and very well behaved.” She stopped next to the bed and gestured to the dog, who plopped his butt on the floor and looked across the mattress at Mason with solemn brown eyes. “Mason’s a friend, Plato.”
Mason stuck out his good hand and let the dog sniff him. Evidently satisfied, the dog slopped his tongue over Mason’s fingers and thumped his tail a few times.
Courtney smiled, then looked at the watch around her wrist. “I’ve got to get to work.” Her gaze skipped over Mason and around the room. She picked up the cell phone that Axel had left. “I’m adding the number at the hospital,” she said as her fingers rapidly tapped. “Plus my own cell number.” When she was finished, she set the phone on the nightstand. “But I’ll warn you—cell service isn’t always the greatest around here. There’s a landline in the kitchen, though.” She patted her hip. “Come on, Plato. Back outside.”
“Does he always stay outside?”
Courtney shook her head. “Not always. But I don’t want him disturbing you.”
Mason leaned forward a little, rubbing his hand over the dog’s massive head. “He’ll give me someone to talk to.”
She smiled slightly. “Well. He is pretty good company. I’ll pop back home when I get my dinner break, but it’ll be pretty late.” She headed toward the doorway. “Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, though. If I can’t make it over, there’s always going to be someone who can.” She gave a faint wave and disappeared.
Mason looked from the doorway to the pill bottles on the bedside table to the dog, who was watching him as if he could read his mind.
“Don’t you worry, Plato,” Mason muttered. “Soon as I get these casts off, I’ll be out of here.”
And away from temptation.
He looked from the prescription bottle back to the empty doorway.
Both temptations.
“It sounds like the perfect opportunity for you.” Lisa Pope, the other nurse who shared the emergency room’s night shift with Courtney, leaned her elbows on the counter and smiled. “Keep an eye out for a patient while he heals up and collect room and board at the same time.”
Courtney didn’t look up from the medical chart she was updating and smiled a little wryly. “It does sound perfect,” she agreed. In theory.
“Sounds perfect,” Lisa prompted. She raised her eyebrows. “What’s the problem?”
Courtney shook her head. “No problem.” None that she intended to share.
Lisa leaned closer over the desk. At the moment, the Weaver Hospital’s emergency department was quiet. “He must not have a wife, or he wouldn’t need care. So is he handsome?” Her eyes danced wickedly.
“Whether he is or not is beside the point. He’s a patient.”
Lisa sighed noisily and straightened. “Honestly, girl. You are twenty-six years old, so beautiful that other women ought to hate you, and I swear you live the life of a nun. It’s practically criminal.”
Courtney gave a laughing snort. “Why does it matter to you? You’re besotted with your husband, and you know it.” Lisa and Jay even had a darling little girl, Annie.
Lisa lifted her shoulder. “Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean a little vicarious living is out of the question. So … handsome or not?”
Courtney gave a huge sigh and closed the chart. “Mason is—” She broke off, trying to find a good word to describe the man and failing entirely. “Handsome enough.” She settled on the adjective, just because it was expedient. Despite the scar on his face, he was a striking man. Not handsome exactly, because he had a certain aura of … darkness around him. “More importantly, he’s a patient.”
Lisa made a face. “Well. At least tell me you’re going to spend the extra money you’re earning on something more interesting than fresh paint for your house trim. For nine months, all you’ve talked about is that house of yours.”
A laugh started to bubble in the back of Courtney’s throat.
Nine months.
It was almost funny.
She looked across the counter at her coworker and friend and shrugged casually, hiding the squiggle of excitement inside her. “What can I say? It’s my home. I want it to be perfect.”
Perfect for when it wasn’t just her living there.
Then she waved her hands in a shooing motion as she turned her attention back to paperwork that needed to be completed ASAP. “Now, we’d better get back to work or the boss lady around this place will have our heads.”
They both grinned, because the boss lady who ran the Weaver Hospital happened to be Courtney’s mother, Dr. Rebecca Clay. But the grins didn’t last long because the doors to the E.R. slid open, and Courtney’s sister-in-law, Mallory, strode inside, shrugging out of her jacket as she moved. “Got a high-risk mom coming in by air,” she greeted as she moved rapidly across the tiled floor past the desk where Courtney and Lisa were. “They’re at least ten minutes out.”
Courtney was already following her. “I’ll call the team.” She didn’t even look back to see Lisa assume her seat at reception.
Mallory nodded and pushed through the double doors, Courtney on her heels.
The quiet evening was over, and Courtney didn’t have a chance to think about much of anything until it was time for her dinner break at ten o’clock.
She drove the short distance home and let herself into the house. There was a water glass sitting on the counter in the kitchen where she hadn’t left it, but that was the only indication that Mason had been moving around the house.
A light came from his room down the hall, and she headed there quietly in case he was sleeping. She stuck her head around the doorway and looked inside.
He was sprawled on the bed, more or less in the same position that she’d left him. A book was lying closed on the mattress beside him, and Plato was lying next to that.
Her dog’s brow wrinkled as he looked at her, but he didn’t lift his head. He looked as if he were settled for the night. Between the big dog and the big man, there was barely a spare inch of mattress left.
Courtney settled a light blanket over Mason and turned off the light. Mason still didn’t stir. That was good. He needed sleep.
“Good boy,” she whispered to Plato, giving his head a scratch.
She left the house again and went back to the hospital to finish her shift. The second half passed even more quickly than the first, thanks to a motorcycle accident on the highway outside of town. It was just after three o’clock when she got home again.
Mason’s room was still quiet, except for the faint sound of his snoring.
She smiled a little to herself and went into her own bedroom, which was across the hall from his. She exchanged her scrubs for a pair of lightweight pajama pants and a tank and then—because she always needed to unwind for a while after getting off shift—headed out to the family room again. She’d barely sat down in front of her computer when she heard the pad of Plato’s paws. He propped his head on her knee, flopping his tail against the floor.
“So, Plato. Are you ready to have a baby?”
Chapter Three
Courtney rested her chin on her palm and stared at the computer screen, her mind eagerly whisking into the future.
“A little boy or a little girl?” She didn’t care which. She glanced at the dog. “Come this time next year, we’ll have a smiling, gurgling little someone to cuddle. What do you think?”
Plato’s warm brown eyes stared back at her. He made a low sound that she took as complete agreement.
Brilliant dog that he was.
She grinned and reached out to run her fingers through his thick, silky hair, and he grinned back at her, pushing his head harder against her palm. His long, feathered tail slapped the base of her chair. “I knew you’d like the idea, too.” Plato had been around children before she’d adopted him. His previous owner had run a foster home before cancer had stricken her.
Thinking of the woman who hadn’t only been Courtney’s teacher in Cheyenne, but also her friend, made her sigh.
Then she leaned over and pressed a kiss on Plato’s big head before turning back to the computer screen that glowed in front of her. She wasn’t going to end up like Margaret, taking in other people’s children when they couldn’t properly care for them. For Margaret, that had been enough.
Not for Courtney.
She wanted a child of her own.
“Thank goodness for Axel, huh?” She didn’t look away from the computer screen. “If it weren’t for him, we’d be waiting even longer.” Of course, when her cousin had approached her about taking in Mason, he’d had no idea of her plans and still didn’t. For that matter, nobody in her family had any idea.
She simply wasn’t ready to share, yet.
She looked back at her faithful companion and scrubbed her fingers through his thick coat again. “You’re the only one who knows,” she whispered.
The four-year-old Saint Bernard gave a huge, contented sigh.
Which had pretty much been the dog’s reaction ever since she’d begun voicing her intention to add to their small family.
She was twenty-six years old. Financially independent in a modest way. She had a good job. She—along with the bank—owned a home that she’d spent the past nine months remodeling.
And she wanted a baby.
So what if she didn’t have a man in her life?
Weaver, Wyoming, was a small town. She’d known all of the available men here since they’d all pretty much been in diapers. She also knew the men who weren’t available, yet liked to think they were.
She had no problem giving them all a pass.
The fact was, not a single man in Weaver had ever really turned her head, romantically speaking.
Well.
She grimaced slightly. Not any man who was from Weaver, she amended, thinking of the man sleeping right down the hall from her.
She was a modern, independent woman.
She had scads of supportive—albeit nosy—family members in the area. Everything in her life was aligned perfectly, just as she’d planned and worked for.
And now, thanks to Axel’s suggestion and Mason’s rent, she’d have the funds she needed even sooner than she’d planned.
If she’d learned anything in her life, it was not to wait too long to put into action the things you wanted.
Well, the waiting was done.
For months, she’d been checking out the various websites of sperm banks. Checking references. Checking reputations. And she’d finally settled on one—Big Sky Cryobank. It was located in Montana, had been around for as long as she’d been alive and came with impeccable references.
Now, given what she was earning, thanks to Mason, she would be able to bank enough extra money to pay the cryobank fees and the associated physician fees, since she knew her health insurance wasn’t going to cover the process of getting pregnant. She’d also have enough in her savings to tide her over for a few months when the baby came, so she wouldn’t have to go back to work the very second her maternity leave was used up.
“Everything is perfect,” she told Plato.
The dog stared up at her as if he could read her mind.
She grimaced a little. All right. Modern, independent woman or not, she had to admit that “perfect” would be the husband and a wedding ring along with the baby she was desperate to have. But she wasn’t willing to wait for all of that to come knocking at her door. Not when her door—save that one night with Mason all those months ago—was essentially silent. “As perfect as it’s likely to get,” she allowed, giving Plato a firm look.
“What’s perfect?”
She jerked, her heart lurching in her chest, and spun around on her chair to peer down the darkened hallway. “Mason. What are you doing awake?”
His rubber-tipped crutches provided a slow, rhythmic clump as he moved closer.
Her heart hadn’t stopped lurching, and she rose, wishing like fury that she’d thought to put on a robe over her thin knit pajamas. Thank heavens the room was lit only by a small lamp and the glow from her computer monitor. He would never be able to see the thumping in her chest, which felt so heavy it was probably visible. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
He finally stopped on the other side of the dining room table. He shook his head.
She moistened her lips and pressed her palms down the sides of her drawstring pants. “Do you need anything? You were sleeping when I came by during my break, and I didn’t want to disturb you then. But if you’re hungry or thirsty, I’m happy to get something for you.” Better to have a task to focus on, even if she did realize that she was talking too fast in the process.
He shook his head again, then jerked his chin toward the computer. “What’s that? One of those computer dating websites? Searching for your perfect match?”
She barely kept herself from shutting off the computer monitor. “Sort of.”
His dark gaze shifted back to her. “What’re you looking for? Blond hair? Dark hair? Blue eyes? Brown?”
She laughed a little nervously. Maybe if she described him, he’d drop the subject. Or not, considering his “sex option” comment when he’d arrived.
She wasn’t brave enough to find out.
Nor was she brave enough to hear what sort of comments he might have about her decision to find a daddy for her baby through a sperm bank. She pushed a few buttons on the computer keyboard, and the screen went blank, and she moved toward him. Away from the narrow desk where the computer sat. But the closer she got to him, the warmer she became.
Fortunately, there were a few working brain cells left inside her head for her to realize the heat wasn’t coming from inside her, but physically radiating from him. At a temperature much higher than normal.
She reached up and pressed her palm against his forehead. He was burning up.
“Mason,” she tsked. “You have a fever. Are you in pain?”
“No.” He’d closed his eyes and sighed faintly when she’d laid her hand on his forehead. The kind of sigh that signaled relief.
“I don’t believe you,” she murmured, but left her hand on his forehead a moment longer than necessary before she tucked herself between his casted arm and his side. She slid the crutch out of her way and leaned it against the table.
The feel of his torso against hers was blazing hot.
“Come on. You shouldn’t be on your feet.” She wrapped her arm behind his back for support and gently nudged him in the direction of the hallway.
“I don’t want to go back to bed. I’m sick of beds at the moment.”
“Okay.” She shifted slightly. “How about the couch?”
He gave a faint grunt and, with most of his weight on his remaining crutch, headed toward it. By the time he’d managed to half hop and half crutch his way around until he could pretty much collapse on the smooth leather cushions, she was glad she’d rearranged the furniture. She was also out of breath, and she didn’t consider herself exactly out of shape. Not with the running that she did.
She propped her hands on her hips and blew out a breath. “Now stay there.”
“Funny girl.” He finally let go of the crutch that he was still clutching, and it slid to the floor. “I hate this,” he muttered.
A fresh wave of sympathy plowed over her. “I can only imagine.” She gently shushed Plato out of the way when he tried tucking his big head on the couch next to Mason, then grabbed one of the soft throw pillows from the opposite end of the couch and deftly tucked it behind his head. “Just take a few deep breaths. I’ll be right back.” The dog trotted after her as she hurried into Mason’s bedroom. He gave her a faint woof, then leapt up onto the bed, turned around a few times and lay down.
Courtney left him there, retrieved the wedge cushion, as well as Mason’s antibiotics, grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator in her kitchen and wet down a clean washcloth.
She went back to him and folded the damp cloth over his forehead.
He lifted his hand to it. “I don’t need that.”
She pushed it right back into place. “This is not coddling,” she assured drily.
“Feels like it.”
“Stop complaining.” She rattled the antibiotics bottle. “Did you take a dose before you went to sleep?”
“Yes, Nurse Ratched.”
She couldn’t help but grin. The big, tall, dangerous-looking man sounded as cranky as an overtired five-year-old. “Mason, you have no idea,” she warned lightly. “I work the night shift in an emergency room. I can order the meanest sons of guns around.”
“I’m shaking in my boots.”
“You’re not wearing any,” she reminded him, then went to her own medicine cabinet in her bathroom to retrieve a bottle of acetaminophen as well as her ear thermometer.
Back in the living room, she spotted the wet cloth clutched in his fist and not on his forehead.
Stubborn.
But then, so was she.
She shook out a few of the pills, opened the bottle of water and tugged the damp cloth of out his grip, then handed them to him.
“What are they?”
“Good old Tylenol. For fever and maybe to help dull the pain a little.” She didn’t think now was the best time to broach the subject of his prescribed painkillers. He’d already said he refused to take them, and that was his right.
He swallowed the pills and drank down half the bottle of water, then leaned his head back again against the square pillow. She folded the cloth once more over his forehead. “Leave it.” She touched his chin lightly and tried to ignore the tantalizing feel of that raspy chin. “Turn your head a little.”
“Why?” His voice dripped with suspicion.
“So I can torture you some more, of course.” She held up her thermometer. “I need your ear for a moment.”
He grimaced and turned his head slightly.
“Take comfort in the fact that it could be worse.” She quickly took his temp and then sat back on her heels. “Well, it’s not as high as I thought it might be, but if it’s not back down to normal by morning, I’m going to have my mother come by.”
He pulled the cloth off his face and gave her a look. “Your mother.”
“She’s a doctor.”
He shook his head slightly. “Right. I should have remembered that.”
She tugged the cloth out of his hand yet again and replaced it on his forehead. “Should? Why?”
“I met her once,” he said, sounding annoyed. “Because I remember stuff. I’m supposed to remember stuff.”
She didn’t know why she was unnerved to think that he’d met her mother. He’d spent a few weeks in Weaver around the time that they’d been … uninvolved. It wasn’t unnatural to think he might have met more of her family than just her, particularly since he’d been working with Axel. “Stuff … about cases?”
He lifted the cloth enough to give her a baleful look from beneath it. “Cases of what?”
Fortunately, she had a lifetime of experience dealing with men who thought they could control a situation with just such a look. “Cases for the agency, naturally.”
Mason felt only slightly better than roadkill, yet he still was shocked by the words that Courtney uttered so blithely. “What do you know about the agency?”
“More than I ever wanted to,” she assured evenly. “We nearly lost my brother because of Hollins-Winword. You work for them, too.” Her gaze drifted over him.
Maybe he did have a fever, because it felt like everywhere that amber gaze landed, a fire started to burn. “I never told you about my work.” He damn sure had never mentioned the name of the agency.
“So you don’t work for them? And I’ll bet the fact that you’re laid up like this has nothing to do with them, either.” She was still crouched on the floor beside the couch. It was a physical effort to drag his eyes away from the warm, golden glow of her.
So much skin, and so much on display, thanks to the thin shirt that she wore.
His fingers twitched, and he pushed around the cloth on his forehead just to keep them busy. “Right now I’m not working for anybody.” It was true enough in a sense. But since he was more or less toeing the line that Cole had drawn in the sand, it was only a temporary truth. “And I’m laid up because I wasn’t moving fast enough when I needed to.”
“Mmm.” She didn’t look convinced.
He wasn’t in the mood to argue about it. For one thing, it wouldn’t serve any good purpose.
All he needed to remember was that she was his landlady for the time being. A landlady nurse.
Who smelled like something soft and powdery and gently alluring.
She moved and her hand nudged his, slipping the cloth away. “I’ll get this wet again for you.”
He didn’t argue that, either, and watched her straighten and move across the living area, around the small dining table that shared the space with her computer and through an arch that led to the kitchen.
Her long hair swayed against her slender back that was faithfully outlined by her thin blue tank top. And then there was the womanly flare of her hips and the long, long legs….
Watching her was like watching a fantasy unroll in his head.
Only, the night that they’d spent together had been indelibly real, and he knew good and well that the reality was eons better than any fantasy.
He heard the sound of water and then she was walking back toward him, and the front view was equally as magnificent as the rear view had been.
He wondered who had been living the fantasy with her lately and grimaced over the acid taste that thought put in his mouth. “Why are you trolling the internet for matches?”
Her smooth, stupefyingly feminine walk halted. She blinked once, then shrugged casually. “Why does anyone? Because they’re curious? Bored?” She crossed the last few steps to the couch and lowered the blessedly cool cloth to his forehead again. “Lonely? Hopeful?”
“I’m not asking about anyone.” A yawn suddenly split his face. “Sorry,” he muttered and tried to shift, but the cast on his leg made it awkward, and the sharp pain in his back made it impossible. He bit back an oath. “I’m asking about you.”
She was watching him with that sympathetic, “poor baby” look in her eyes. “I guess you could put me in the hopeful camp,” she said after a moment.
“So you’re trying to find yourself a husband. On the damn internet. Don’t you know the dangers there are in—”
“Don’t you know that I’m a grown woman and am more than capable of handling any supposed dangers out there? How’s it any worse than meeting a stranger in a bar? Or a Valentine’s Day kissing booth?” she added with pointed amusement. “And just to be clear, I am not looking for a husband.”
“Just to be clear,” he returned, “I know you’re a grown woman. My memory’s not impaired about that, at all.”
She cleared her throat, her amusement seeming to dissipate in the blink of an eye. “I think it would be better if we just pretended that never happened.”
His head was throbbing. His toes sticking out from the bottom of his cast were throbbing. And every spot in between was throbbing. He felt like he was burning from the inside out, and not all of it was because of some stupid temperature.
The fever he had for her was ninety percent of his problem.
“You brought it up first,” he reminded. “But if you can pretend, go for it. I can’t.”
“Why not?” For the first time, he heard frustration in her voice. “It was just one night.”
“Yeah, it was one night. But there wasn’t anything just about it.”
She shook her head. It only made the long, thick strands of gold hair slide across her gold shoulder and curl over the full jut of her breast, which was clearly—thank you, Lord, for torturing him with that incredible sight—delineated by the thin fabric of her shirt.
“It’s only going to make things … awkward,” she insisted.
“Then things will be awkward,” he said flatly. “‘Cause I can’t forget about it.” Nor did he want to.
The night they’d spent together was as much a perfect memory as it was a very necessary reminder.
Making love with her had been the most indescribable thing he’d ever experienced. And he needed to remember that it had been temporary.
Short-lived by necessity.
And by choice.
He pressed the damp, not-so-cool cloth down over his eyes. “Just make sure you’re careful about it.” His voice sounded as dark as he felt inside. “Meeting up with whatever hopeful suitors you find. There’re a lot of crazies out there. And guys who’ll take advantage of you the second you let down your guard.”
“So … you don’t have any problem with the idea of me finding a, um, a date like this.” Her voice went so smooth that warning bells jangled in the back of his mind.
She sounded miffed.
If he were honest, he could have told her, hell yeah, he had a problem with it.
He had a problem with the notion of her going out with any other guy, no matter where or how she met the man.
He had a problem thinking about anyone touching her. Physically. Emotionally.
But that sort of honesty wouldn’t get them anywhere.
“Like you said. You’re a grown woman. It would be unusual if you didn’t want to date.” To marry. Have children. “Though, I’d have thought you’d have plenty of pickings at the hospital and wouldn’t have to resort to meeting strangers in a bar. Or aren’t there any eligible doctors there?”
She was silent just long enough that his curiosity started nagging at him and he peered at her from beneath the cloth again. She was chewing at the inside of her lip, her eyes narrowed. But after a moment, all she said was, “You should be in bed.”
“No.”
He was almost surprised when she didn’t argue.
“All right. But if you need to get up or anything, just call my name. I’ll hear you.”
The last damn thing he wanted to do was call her name so she could help his sorry butt off the couch just so he could take a leak. That was the only thing he could think of at the moment that would make him willing enough to bring on a fresh set of agony by moving around.
Unless it was to go to her bed.
Which would be a joke right now.
The mind and some parts of his body were definitely willing, but the rest of him—the injured, aching part of him—just sat back with a snide, cruel laugh at the very idea of it.
“I’ll yell,” he said, having no intentions of it at all. “G’night.”
She hesitated a moment longer, still looking strangely indecisive. But then she did turn on her heel and head down the hall. A moment later, he heard the sound of a door closing softly. Then water running.
His fertile mind took off like a shot, and again, the part of him that was in control got a damn good laugh.
His head hurt. His ribs and his back hurt. He had an itch beneath the cast on his arm that was driving him batty. It was hours before he finally dozed off. The sky that he could see through a kitchen window was beginning to lighten. And when he did sleep, his dreams were a jumbled mess.
Cole was behind the wheel of the SUV aiming for little Lari McDougal. Mason watched it all unfold, his dream-state legs refusing to run fast enough, knowing he wasn’t going to make it. Wasn’t going to be able to save the child.
Only, Lari wasn’t a child, he realized as he forced his legs to move through the sludgelike paralysis that was holding him in place. It was Courtney.
Beautiful, young Courtney.
The SUV was speeding closer. Mason could see the whites of Coleman Black’s eyes.
He yelled out to Lari. To Courtney.
Knew it was too late. He was too late….
He jerked and barely caught himself from rolling off the couch. His heart was pounding in his chest, his breath coming fast and hard.
But at least he knew where he was.
In Courtney’s house. Sleeping on a surprisingly uncomfortable leather couch while cool sunshine streamed through the plentiful windows.
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Allison Leigh
There was no future for Courtney with him, and she was the kind of woman who deserved futures.
She was young and beautiful and caring and came from a strong, close family.
He was past young, scarred up on the inside as well as the out, and the only family he knew—or who mattered to him—was the family of Hollins-Winword security agency.
It was a fact of life that was easy enough to remember when he was usually a continent or two away from her.
But sprawled across a bed under her roof?
That was an entirely different matter.
She reappeared in the doorway with a gigantic Saint Bernard at her side.
“You didn’t get a dog.” Mason eyed the shaggy beast. “You got a damn horse.”
She grinned, bringing a surprising impishness to her oval face and tucked her long, golden hair behind her ear.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Dear Reader,
This year marks the thirteenth year I’ve been blessed to be able to share the Double-C Ranch “family” with all of you. When I started out, I had no idea what a wonderful adventure it would all turn out to be—and continues to be, every single day. Though I certainly hoped that you would welcome the family into your lives, I could never have come close to understanding how wonderful it would be knowing just what a special home these people would find with you.
Now, here we are again, with Courtney Clay, who is settling into the home and the future she wants to make. And with Mason Hyde—who has as little idea when he starts out how much he wants that home to be with him—as I did when I started out more than a decade ago.
And so their adventure begins …
Thank you for being there to share it!
Allison
About the Author
There is a saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. ALLISON LEIGH doesn’t believe that, but she does believe that you can never have enough books! When her stories find a way into the hearts—and bookshelves—of others, Allison says she feels she’s done something right. Making her home in Arizona with her husband, she enjoys hearing from her readers at: Allison@allisonleigh.com or PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.
Courtney’s Baby Plan
Allison Leigh
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my family.
Prologue
Iat all started with a kiss.
A twenty-dollar kiss, to be precise.
Courtney Clay inhaled carefully and stared up at the man standing outside her apartment door. She didn’t do this sort of thing … inviting strange men into her home during the wee hours. Or any hour, for that matter.
But then Mason Hyde wasn’t entirely a stranger. He was a friend of her cousin’s, after all.
And he could kiss like nobody she’d ever met.
The statement whispered through her mind, tempting.
She straightened her fingers, then curled them once more around the doorknob. “Do you want to come in?”
His eyes were deep shadows despite the porch light burning brightly above her front door. “Yes.” His voice was deep. Blunt. And—as it had struck her from the first moment she’d encountered him—entrancingly melodious. That first time, when she’d heard him speaking to someone else, she’d thought how his voice didn’t seem to quite match his almost dangerous-looking appearance.
The second time, just that afternoon when he’d stopped in front of her kissing booth at the town’s Valentine’s Day festival, plunked down a twenty for a five-dollar kiss and told her with a crooked smile that she could keep the change, she’d realized just how perfectly his voice did fit him.
And even though there had been a narrow table between them on which that twenty-dollar bill rested, she’d felt something curl inside her when he’d spoken. And something curl even more tightly when his eyes had stared into hers.
Her knees had felt a little shaky. Her stomach had danced a little nervously. And her voice had risen about half an octave when she’d thanked him for his generous donation on behalf of the local school that was benefiting from the funds being raised that day.
But then his lips had tilted a little crookedly, which seemed to make the thin scar that slashed down his face from his right temple to his jaw even more apparent, and he’d leaned across the table toward her and brushed his lips gently … simply … across hers.
And that’s where her memory stopped dead in its tracks.
The contact of his lips on hers had simply caused every cell in her brain to short-circuit.
Which is what had led them here.
To this moment.
With him standing at her door in the wee hours of the night, exactly twenty minutes after she’d gotten off her shift at the hospital. Exactly where—and when—she’d uncharacteristically invited him, in a rushed, quiet voice, lest anyone else around the kissing booth hear her, after he’d murmured that he’d really like to see her again. Somewhere. Anywhere that didn’t involve a line of ten guys—young and old—who were happy to hand over a few bucks to kiss a pretty nurse.
Now, though, despite saying that he did want to come inside, he hadn’t moved so much as an inch. Instead, he was watching her intently with those eyes that she knew from the kissing booth were a startlingly pale green against his olive-toned skin.
“Are you sure you want me to come in? I’m not going to want to leave anytime soon. We could go out somewhere. Have some coffee.”
She hadn’t expected that. Her moist hand tightened around the door handle as she continued looking up at him. She was tall. But he was a whole lot taller. A whole lot broader.
Go somewhere for coffee? Somewhere safe. Somewhere innocuous. Or invite him in?
She didn’t have indiscriminate encounters with near strangers. She didn’t do anything in her life that wasn’t well thought-out. Well planned.
But she didn’t want to go to the all-night coffee shop and sit across a table from him pretending that all she wanted was conversation and coffee.
She wanted his long arms wrapped around her.
Wanted to be held against his wide, wide chest.
Wanted his warm lips on hers.
She wanted. Period.
More than ever before in her life.
And even though her heart bumped nervously inside her chest, she moved her bare feet, stepping back as she pulled the door fully open.
“Yes.” Her voice was soft but clear. “I’m sure.”
His lips slowly tilted and he stepped inside.
Without a word, he reached for her with one hand, and with the other, he pushed the door closed.
Chapter One
“No,” Mason Hyde said adamantly as he stared up at his boss. And he hoped to hell he showed none of the alarm he was feeling. “You can’t fire me.”
“You insist on checking yourself out against medical advice and I’ll have no choice.” Coleman Black’s voice was flat. Unmoved. “I don’t need stupid agents. What I do need is you recovered and healthy, Mase.” The gray-haired man frowned and moved across the hospital room, finally showing some emotion—even if Mason figured it was only irritation. “You just had surgery yesterday,” Cole pointed out. “And two days before that, you were still in the hospital in Barcelona.”
Mason grimaced and looked away. Maybe stupid was the perfect word to describe his desperation to get out of the hospital, but if anyone should understand why he needed to get out … get away … it should have been Cole.
Yeah, he was Mason’s boss. But he was also Mason’s friend. And Mason didn’t have many people in his life that he considered a friend. He had even fewer people in his life who knew his history like Cole did.
“I don’t want to end up like I did before,” he muttered, and hated that the admission made him feel weak.
Cole glanced at the open door to Mason’s room and shook his head. “Maybe if you told the hospital what your history is, why you keep refusing the—”
“No.” Mason cut the other man off. It had been ten years, for God’s sake. But right now, lying there in a hospital bed while pain racked every corner of his body, it felt as if it were just yesterday.
Yesterday, when he’d been in another hospital—only that trip had been courtesy of an explosion rather than a deadly aimed SUV. Then, he’d been shot full of endless painkillers. Painkillers that had become the only thing he’d been able to think about and just about the only thing he’d been able to care about. He’d ended up losing everything—except his job—that really had mattered to him.
He’d be damned if he’d head down that road again.
And he’d be damned if he’d admit to anyone now what a hole he’d had to climb out of before. Particularly his doctors. “It has nothing to do with anything now,” he muttered.
Cole raised his eyebrows and pointedly eyed the contraption that held Mason’s casted left leg at a strange angle above the bed. A triangular bar was also suspended above Mason’s chest, allowing the big man something to grab on to with his left hand, since his right was also in a long cast. “I believe the entire medical community would disagree,” he said drily. Then he sighed, knowing that there were some arguments that never would work with Mason. The man marched to his own drummer.
The phone inside his lapel pocket was vibrating. Had been ever since he’d walked into Mason’s hospital room ten minutes earlier. As the head of Hollins-Winword, he had at least fifty things that needed his immediate attention. Yet he was here, standing in a hospital room having a battle of wills with one of his most talented—and most stubborn—agents.
He stifled a sigh again. It was no coincidence, he supposed, that talent and stubborn seemed to generally go hand in hand. An agent had to have a strong will to work in the field. Cole didn’t want to have anyone under his watch who didn’t have a strong will.
But right now, that particular trait was causing him no small amount of consternation.
“Well, the doctors are up to you as long as you’re inside these walls. But once you go AWOL from this place, your recuperation is up to me. And I’m telling you that you don’t have a choice. Either you give up the notion of not needing any more medical care, or you won’t have a job to come back to.
At the best of times, Mason’s face was stoic. Cole had known the man since long before he’d acquired the thin scar that extended nearly the entire side of his face, so he knew that basic expression wasn’t owed to the scar. And now, given the situation, Mason’s face had all of the animation of the grim reaper.
“You can’t fire me.” Mason’s voice was low. Gruff.
Which meant he was actually worried that Cole would.
And much as it pained him, that’s what they both needed right now. “I can and I will,” he assured flatly. Though he wasn’t quite sure how. But Cole hadn’t gotten to where he was without mastering the art of a bluff. Not that he was bluffing, exactly. He truly did not want to lose Mason as an agent. Whether he was profiling maniacal nuts or invisibly protecting people who weren’t easy to protect, the guy had a talent that went miles beyond training. It was instinctive. As if he’d been bred into it.
But more importantly, Cole didn’t want to lose Mason, period. And the damn fool was likely to kill himself at the rate he was going.
The annoyance of his buzzing cell finally drove him to pull it out of his pocket and glance at the display. More crises that, at least, had nothing to do with his business with Mason. He pocketed the phone. “Be glad you have alternatives,” he continued. “I know Axel Clay has talked to you. Considering everything, getting out of Connecticut and lying low in Wyoming for a few months while you recover seems an excellent idea to me.”
Mason slid him a look. Trust Cole to hedge around until he got to the crux of the matter. The older man had obviously been a spy for too damn long. How else had he known that he and Ax had spoken?
He started to reach for the bar to shift in the bed, but just thinking about lifting his arm above his shoulder sent a shock wave down his spine. Instead, he curled his good hand into a fist and breathed through the pain, reminding himself that feeling that pain was a helluva lot better than ending up addicted to painkillers again, and feeling only the uncontrollable urge for another numbing pill. “Bugging the hospital telephone, Cole?”
His boss didn’t answer that. “His solution is pretty damn perfect, far as I’m concerned. Not only will you be under the watchful eye of a nurse without having to stay in the hospitals you detest, but you’ll get some peace from the media hounds here.”
“I’ve had enough of nurses, thanks.” At any other time, Mason might—might—have found the double entendre humorous, but right then, he couldn’t muster it. “I’ll be bored crazy in Wyoming,” he lied. Nothing had been boring the last time he’d been there over a year and a half ago.
The other man just shrugged. “Then you get yourself transferred to a twenty-four-hour care center whether you like it or not or you stay here, ‘cause you’re not going to your own place. I know you. You go to that box you call a home, and you’ll do too much before you should and end up back here again even worse off than you are now.”
If it weren’t for the heavy-duty antibiotics that were being intravenously pumped into him, Mason wouldn’t even have to be in the hospital. The collision between his body and the SUV he’d jumped in front of had happened a week ago. The most recent surgery that he’d had to finish putting Humpty Dumpty back together again was the last one he was supposed to need. And if he hadn’t gotten the infection that necessitated that surgery, his doctors and his nurses would have been glad to see the last of him the minute they’d finished wrapping half his body in plaster.
“Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” he muttered. The longer he stayed in the hospital, the worse he felt. But if he left on his own, Cole would cut him off from the only thing that mattered to him.
“I’ll check on you tomorrow morning.” Obviously unmoved, Cole headed toward the doorway of Mason’s private room. “Either have a plan in place or give me your resignation.” His voice was hard, and without another glance his way, the man walked out of the room.
Mason leaned his head back and let out a long, colorful oath.
Agents who pushed Cole hard got pushed back hard. And more than a few good ones had ended up walking away from the agency that had been the center of Mason’s life for so many years.
He wasn’t going to be one of them.
He grimaced and threw his good arm over his eyes. He could feel panic nibbling at the edges of his sanity.
And Mason wasn’t a man who panicked.
Admitting it, even to himself, was damn hard.
But not as hard as it had been to kick an addiction that had ruled his life for eighteen months. And right now, ten years or not, he was craving a narcotic numbness as badly as he ever had.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Hyde. How are we feeling today?” The young nurse who came into the room on her squeaking, rubber-soled shoes greeted him in a revoltingly cheerful voice. One corner of Mason’s brain had to give the kid credit for maintaining that unswerving cheer when dealing with him.
He knew he wasn’t an easy patient.
“When you have a dozen broken bones, we will talk about it,” he said wearily. He wasn’t interested in watching her as she fussed around him—even if she was about as cute as a fresh-faced cheerleader—and closed his eyes.
She didn’t reply, but he could still hear her moving around and feel her faint touch as she checked this and adjusted that. Which meant maybe the kid did have the ability to learn.
“You know, Mr. Hyde,” she said after a moment, proving that he’d overestimated, “I couldn’t help but hear a little bit of your conversation with your visitor.”
He opened his eyes and watched her.
She smiled tentatively, looking more than a little nervous. “I was out in the hall waiting to come in and change your IV bag. Anyway,” she rushed on, “I’m supposed to help convince you that it’s in your best interests to stay with us for a while longer, but I do know some really good nurses who provide home health care if you’d like some names.”
He shrugged and held back a curse at the pain the movement caused. “Yeah. Sure.” His voice was short. And even though he had no real intention of following up on her well-intentioned list, at least it took the nervousness out of her eyes. She could get on her way and leave him in peace.
She deftly slid the call button into the fingers that protruded below the edge of his cast. “I’ll get the names for you. Be sure to call if you change your mind and want something stronger than the OTC stuff for that pain.”
He’d chew off his tongue before he asked for anything stronger. He managed a relatively civil grunt in return, and her shoes carried her, squeaking, back out of the hospital room.
When he’d called Cole, he’d hoped to enlist the guy’s aid to get out of the hospital. His place wasn’t much, but at least he didn’t have an ongoing stream of medical professionals bugging him every hour on the hour, and he wouldn’t be a call button away from begging for a damn narcotic. His job kept him on the road about fifty weeks out of the year, and his apartment was more a repository for the mail that was shoved through the mail slot than it was a home.
Hell. He didn’t even have dishes in his kitchen cupboards. He barely had soap and a towel in his bathroom.
The only thing he’d end up finding at his apartment was more discomfort and a barrage of phone calls from eager reporters who’d regrettably discovered he was the so-called hero who’d saved the life of an internationally known businessman’s daughter.
Mason wasn’t the only one who was media shy. He didn’t want strangers looking into his life, poking and speculating. But he also worked for an agency that preferred operating under the radar. Their primary concern was security—personal and international—and it was beneficial for everyone concerned that their activities not be looked at too closely by an inquisitive public. Particularly since HW generally operated with the government’s tacit approval. They handled the stuff that the elected boys and girls couldn’t—or didn’t want to—get caught up in.
Unfortunately, Donovan McDougal—or someone from his sizable camp—had opened their mouth to the wrong person about Mason’s involvement in McDougal’s personal security, and even though Cole had done his best to get a lid on it, the newshounds were busy sniffing out the story behind the near-tragic “accident.”
He let the call button fall out of his grip and reached out for the hospital phone that was on a rolling stand beside the bed. His cell phone had been decimated by the vehicle that had hit him. He’d had no opportunity to replace it yet, but he had a good memory for numbers. He dragged the corded, heavy phone closer with his good arm so he could punch out the numbers.
Axel answered on the second ring.
“Set it up,” was all Mason said. Then he let the receiver clatter back in place.
Going along with Axel’s idea might keep Mason in Cole’s good graces, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea. Yeah, Ax’s cousin was a registered nurse. Yeah, she’d recently bought a house and wanted to pick up some extra money.
From the outside, it might seem like a win-win situation. Courtney Clay padded her bank account, and Mason got Cole off his back.
But none of them knew about the night that Mason had spent in Courtney’s bed over a year and a half ago. A memorable night. The kind of night that haunts a man.
But it had only been one night. He’d known that going in, he’d known it when he’d walked away the morning after and also when, during the days that followed, he’d had to fight the urge to contact her again.
Women like Courtney Clay were better off without guys like Mason Hyde in their lives.
Even she had agreed to that particular fact.
He was surprised that she’d gone along with her cousin’s suggestion to not only give Mason room and board now but to also provide him with whatever nursing care he needed until he could take care of himself.
But maybe she hadn’t been as haunted as he’d been by that night together. Maybe it made no difference to her one way or another who her temporary roommate was going to be. Maybe it was just about the money.
It didn’t seem to fit what he knew about her. But then, what he knew most about her was what her lips tasted like. What her smooth, honey-tinted skin felt like beneath his fingertips.
She’d been the one to invite him to her place that long-ago day. He’d been in Weaver for a few days helping Axel out on a case. And though Mason had made it plain he wanted to see her again, he’d had no expectation, no plan, that it would lead to her bed.
She was too young for him, but she was an incredibly beautiful woman. Turning down that particular opportunity had even occurred to him. Until she’d whispered for him not to worry. It was just one night. She’d said those words herself.
So when she’d stared up at him in the shadowy light of her living room and began unbuttoning her blouse, he’d helped her finish the job.
He’d made the mistake of forgetting who and what he was when he’d tried to have a normal life eleven years ago. He wasn’t going to do it again.
Not even when the temptation came in the form of a shapely, blonde nurse whose touch still hung in his memory.
He was in a wheelchair.
Even though Courtney had expected it, the sight of Mason sitting in the chair made her wince inside.
“Remember what you’re doing this for,” she whispered to herself. She needed to keep her long-term plan in the forefront of her mind. It would be the only way she could get through the short-term … awkwardness.
She gave a mental nod and drew in a quick, hard breath as she brushed her hands down the front of her pale pink scrubs. Then she pulled the door wide and stepped out onto her porch to watch her cousin push Mason’s wheelchair up the long ramp that her brother had finished building just that morning over the front and back steps so that once her boarder did arrive, they’d be more easily able to get him in and out of the house.
She realized she couldn’t quite look Mason in the face and focused instead on her cousin. “Everything go okay with the flight out from Connecticut?”
“How would he know?” Mason answered before Axel could. His pale green gaze drew hers. “He wasn’t the one cooped up on the plane.”
A frown pulled his slashing eyebrows together over his aquiline nose. Combined with the dark shadow of beard on his jaw—evidence that he hadn’t shaved in at least a few days—he looked thoroughly put out.
She lifted an eyebrow and managed a calm smile. “Feeling a little cranky, are we?”
“What is it with you nurses and the eternal we?”
“Ignore him,” Axel advised as he pushed the wheelchair past her into the house. He pulled a fat, oversized envelope from beneath his arm and handed it to her. “He’s been bitching since I picked him up in Cheyenne. Here’re his meds.”
Courtney took the envelope and looked inside at the various prescription bottles it contained. She’d already reviewed a copy of her new patient’s medical chart. It had been faxed to her yesterday after Axel had called her out of the blue to ask if she was interested in taking on a home health care patient.
She’d done similar work before. Just not when the patient in question was living under her roof. But the money he’d said the patient would pay had been enough to get her interest, and in a hurry.
It was only after she’d agreed and had asked how he knew the patient that she’d learned who her new roomie was going to be.
There was no earthly way, at that point, that Courtney would have been able to back out without explaining to her cousin why. And she had no intention of sharing those particular details.
So, she’d squelched her reservations and reviewed the file when it arrived. Even though she was trained for objectivity, she’d been horrified at the injuries that Mason had sustained. She also hadn’t been able to help wondering how on earth he’d been hurt, but that particular information had not been in his chart.
Which meant it was probably work related.
She was ridiculously familiar with the hush-hush aura surrounding the company that Mason worked for, because it was the same company that many of her relatives had worked for. Or still did.
Of course she wasn’t supposed to know much about Hollins-Winword. But she wasn’t an idiot. She had ears that worked perfectly well. The first time she’d heard the name, she’d been a schoolgirl. As she’d gotten older, she’d discerned more.
And then when Ryan went missing …
She broke off the thought. It was pointless reliving the misery of believing her big brother was dead, because he was home now. Safe and sound, miraculously enough a newlywed with a family of his own.
She followed Axel and Mason into the house and nudged the door closed behind her as she studied the labels on the prescription bottles. Various industrial-strength antibiotics and vitamins and minerals. When she got to the last bottle, though, she frowned a little.
She’d read in Mason’s file that he refused to take prescription-strength pain medication, yet that’s exactly what she was looking at.
There was nothing in his file about drug allergies, so—if he was anything like the men in her family—it was probably more likely some macho belief that real men didn’t need anything to take the edge off their pain, even if it was only for a few days.
She dropped the narcotic back in the envelope and stepped around Mason’s protruding leg cast. She set the envelope on the square dining room table near the arch separating the great room from the kitchen and turned toward the men. “Your room is at the end of the hall.” Meeting Mason’s gaze only made her skin want to flush, so she focused on the few stray, silver strands glimmering among the dark brown hair that sprang back thick and straight from his forehead. “The bathroom is next to it. You are able to manage with crutches, aren’t you?”
“It’s not pretty, but yeah.” He sounded marginally less cranky than before, and Courtney couldn’t help but feel a rush of sympathy for the man.
No matter what had transpired between them that Valentine’s night, the man was recovering from several serious injuries. He had matching long, blue casts on his right arm and his left leg. She also knew that he’d suffered several bruised ribs. He was in pain and, for now, was having to depend on someone else to help him with basic functions from bathing to eating. Of course he was cranky.
Anyone would be.
She looked at her cousin. “Why don’t you bring in the rest of his things, and I’ll get Mason settled in bed.” She could feel heat climbing her neck at that. She didn’t bother waiting for Axel to respond but moved next to him and nudged his hands away from the wheelchair so she could push it herself.
Last night, before she’d gone on duty at the hospital, she’d rearranged some of the furniture in her living area to accommodate Mason. Her experience with him told her that he wasn’t the least bit clumsy. But Mason was a big man and, clumsy or not, he had a cast covering one leg from foot to thigh. That, combined with the cast on his opposing arm, meant he’d need all the space he could maneuver in, whether by wheelchair or by crutches.
The wheels on the chair squeaked slightly against the reclaimed-wood, planked floor as she pushed him down the hall, hesitating only briefly when they passed the bathroom. “Tub with a shower,” she told him in the most neutral nurse’s voice she could muster.
“Don’t tease me. Only thing I get these days is a wet washcloth.”
She felt heat in her throat again as she turned his chair slightly and carefully pushed him into the spare bedroom. “Sorry. I imagine a real shower is something you’re looking forward to.”
He made a grunting sound in reply.
After angling the chair alongside the bed, she moved around it. She’d already pulled the covers back, and the pillows were stacked up against the wrought-iron headboard. There was also an old recliner from her parents that Ryan had muscled into one corner of the room.
She stopped in front of Mason. He was wearing a white T-shirt that strained at his shoulders and a pair of gray sweatpants with one leg split up the side to accommodate the cast. His toes below the cast were bare, and he had on a scuffed tennis shoe on his other foot.
And he still managed to make her mouth water. Which was not what a nurse should be thinking about her patient, she reminded herself. “Ready to get out of the chair?”
He looked no more enthusiastic than she felt. “You’re not strong enough to lift me.”
“Not if you were dead weight,” she allowed. “But you’re not. So which do you prefer? Bed or chair?”
He didn’t look at her. “Bed.”
Which he probably took as some admission of weakness. Coming from a family of strong individuals, that, too, was something with which she had plenty of familiarity. “All right.” Before she could let her misgivings get in the way, she locked the wheels and removed the arm of the wheelchair. Then she bent her knees close to his and grasped him loosely around the waist, leaving room for him to brace his good leg beneath him as she lifted. “Ready?”
He gave another grunt, putting out his uninjured hand against the mattress, so he could add his own leverage. “Just do it.”
She tightened her arms, lifting with her legs, and held back her own grunt as she took his weight for the brief moment before he got his leg beneath him. Then he was out of the chair, pivoting more or less smoothly until he landed on the bed, sitting.
She held on to him only long enough to be certain that he wasn’t going to tip over, before she straightened. Her stomach was quivering nervously, but the sight of his pale face and tight lips took precedence. “I know,” she murmured. “Not very pleasant. But it’ll get better.”
His expression shifted from pain to pained. “I don’t need coddling.”
She gave him the kind of stern look she’d learned from her grandmother. Gloria was retired now, but she’d been a nurse, and it was in that capacity that she’d met Courtney’s grandfather, Squire Clay. And she’d had plenty of years since then to refine that stern look and pass it on to her granddaughters. “Believe me,” she assured him, “you won’t get coddling from me. Now, do you want to sit there on the side of the bed or lean back?” She didn’t wait for an answer before she reached down for his casted leg.
But his hands brushed against hers as he did the same, and she had to suck down another shock of tingles that ripped through her. She moved her hand from beneath his. Feeling shaky again, she deftly tucked a wedge of foam, which she’d gotten from the hospital, beneath his leg and stepped away, while he swore and jabbed at the pillows propped behind him.
Sweat had broken out on his brow.
She curled her fingers, fighting the urge to help him as he awkwardly shifted, lest he mistake her assistance for the banned coddling. “What can I get you to make you more comfortable?”
He finally settled, his head leaning against the headboard behind him. He shoved his hand through his hair and looked up at her. “I don’t suppose sex is one of the options, is it?”
Chapter Two
Courtney stared, and the heat that she’d been trying to keep at bay flooded hot and furious into her cheeks. “Excuse me?”
“You want me to repeat it?”
Her lips parted. She wanted to say something, but there just weren’t any words that were coming to mind.
And then there wasn’t time, because Axel came into the room and dumped a very worn leather duffel bag on the floor next to the foot of the bed. He also had a pair of metal crutches that he propped against the wall near the doorway. “I’d hang around and shoot the breeze,” he told them both, “but Tara’s got an appointment this afternoon and I’m on Aidan-duty. Hard to believe how much one fourteen-month-old kid can get around.” He pulled a slender cell phone out of his back pocket and handed it to Mason. “Courtesy of Cole,” he told him, before bumping knuckles with Mason’s fist and hustling out of the room.
A second later, they heard the front door open and close.
Courtney held her tongue between her teeth and looked back at Mason. “No,” she finally said, breaking the thick silence. “Sex is not an option. Obviously.”
His gaze trapped hers, but she couldn’t tell if he was amused or not. “Because you think I’m presently incapable, or because I didn’t call you the morning after?”
She shoved her curling fists into the pockets of her scrubs. She didn’t even want to entertain ideas of what Mason was capable or incapable of doing. “I didn’t ask you to call me,” she reminded. Not the morning after, nor during the twenty months that had passed since then. “You’re here because you’re recovering from an assortment of injuries. Period.”
The corner of his lips lifted a fraction. “Yeah, that’s what I expected but figured we might as well get it out of the way so you can stop looking worried that I’m going to bring it up.”
Ordinarily, she preferred being straightforward, too. But right now, she wished she could keep up the pretense that nothing had ever occurred between them. “Number one—” she leaned over and picked up his duffel bag “—I wasn’t worried. And number two, now it’s out of the way. Subject done.” She hefted the surprisingly heavy bag onto the empty surface of the dresser and glanced at him over her shoulder. “I’ll unpack this if you don’t mind?”
His lips twisted. His gaze was unblinking. “Do I have a choice?”
Her fingers let go of the zipper pull. “Yes,” she said slowly and turned to face him. “Nobody is trying to run your life for you, Mason.” She didn’t know what was more disturbing. His presence, the taste of his name on her lips after all this time or the disturbing notion that he considered himself some sort of captive.
“You’ll be the first nurse who hasn’t tried.”
She leaned her hip against the dresser and folded her arms over her chest. In just the one night that they’d shared, he’d learned her body better than she’d known it herself. But other than the fact that he worked for the same company that had nearly stolen her brother for good, what she really knew about Mason could have fit on the head of a pin.
“Then I’ll be the first,” she said quietly. “The only thing I’m doing here is making sure you continue your recovery safely and with as much comfort as possible. You’re the one in control of your situation. Not me.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, which just seemed to concentrate that pale green and make it even more startling against his dark lashes. “Why did you agree to all this?” He lifted his hand, taking in the room and, she presumed, the situation in general.
She chewed the inside of her lip, then went for honesty. “I didn’t know you were the patient,” she admitted. “Not until after I’d agreed.”
He lifted his eyebrow. “Why didn’t you back out?”
Now, that was trickier.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She did, but she had no intention of sharing her reasoning.
Remember what you’re doing this for.
“So.” She patted the duffel bag. “Do you want me to leave this for you to deal with … or …?”
He was silent for so long that she couldn’t help wondering even more what was inside his head. She’d wondered a whole lot that night they’d been together, too. At least, she had during the moments when she’d been able to draw a coherent breath.
Which had been few and far between.
She swallowed down the jangling memory.
“Knock yourself out,” he finally said.
Feeling ridiculously relieved to have something to keep her hands busy, she turned to the task. He had a few pairs of jeans, a half-dozen colored T-shirts and a handful of sweatpants—all one-legged like the pair he was wearing. The sum total of his clothing wasn’t enough to fill even two of the six dresser drawers, and the pair of athletic shoes and scuffed cowboy boots didn’t come close to filling the floor of the bedroom closet.
Aside from a small leather shaving kit, the rest of the duffel was crammed with books, which explained the weight.
Hardbacks. Paperbacks. Some that looked brand new and others that looked as if they’d seen the wear from hundreds of hands. She stacked a bunch of books on the nightstand next to the bed, where they’d be in easy reach for him. “You’re a reader.” And an eclectic reader, to boot. He had everything from the latest thriller topping the bestseller charts to political commentaries and biographies to classic literature.
He shifted against the pillows, and she couldn’t help but see the way a thin line of white formed around his tightly held lips. “So?”
She adjusted the high stack. “Don’t get defensive. It’s just an observation.” She left the rest of the books in a stack on the dresser. “And not that it looks like you’ll run through all of these anytime soon, but I have a pretty loaded bookcase myself in the living room, too. You’re welcome to help yourself. Do you prefer to get around with wheels or these?” She held up the crutches.
“Those,” he said immediately. “Get rid of the chair altogether.”
“All right.” She propped the crutches right next to the bed, between the headboard and the nightstand. “Besides the books, feel free to help yourself to anything else around here.”
He lifted his eyebrow again, giving her a long look, and she pressed her lips together. He was toying with her. “Food-wise and such,” she clarified. “I’ll get you set up with a meal before I have to go to the hospital for my shift and bring Plato in so you can meet him. He’s gotten spoiled and used to having this bed for his own, but he’s a smart boy. You just tell him to stay off and he will.”
“Plato?”
She realized she was speaking so fast she was almost babbling and hated giving him any evidence that she was unsettled by his presence. “My Saint Bernard. He’s out in the backyard right now.”
“You didn’t have a dog before.”
“I didn’t own a house with a yard before,” she returned.
“No.” His gaze felt heavy on her face. “You had that apartment.”
Her throat suddenly felt dry and she swallowed, folding her arms over her chest. His gaze seemed to focus on them. Or on the achingly tight breasts that they were pressing against.
Probably her imagination.
Hopefully, just her imagination.
It was difficult enough ignoring her attraction for him, without thinking that he still carried some for her, too.
“What, um, what do you like to eat?”
His eyebrow peaked.
“For lunch,” she added doggedly.
“There’s nothing that I don’t much like.”
She moistened her lips. “You’re not exactly helping me here, Mason. If I came in here with brussels sprouts, would you be loving them?”
His expression suddenly lightened, and a faint smile toyed around his surprisingly lush lower lip. “Honey, as long as I don’t have to cook ‘em, I’ll be damn happy to eat ‘em.”
She exhaled and rolled her eyes. “Spoken like most men,” she said wryly and headed out of the bedroom, taking the wheelchair with her.
She didn’t breathe again, though, until she reached the privacy of the kitchen, and once she did, it took considerable effort not to collapse on a chair and just sit there.
But she hadn’t been exaggerating to Mason. She did have to get to work soon.
Just because her bank account was going to be dancing a jig before this was all over and Mason went on his way in a few months, didn’t mean that she didn’t have to earn her regular wages.
She folded the chair and stowed it in a closet, then moved past the ladder-back chairs surrounding the kitchen table that was tucked into the small bay overlooking her backyard, and pulled open the refrigerator door. Until recently, she’d never made much effort at cooking for herself. She’d never had to. It was always so easy just to drop by her folks’ place, or one of her other relatives’, and grab a bite when she was looking for some home-cooked food.
But things were changing. Takeout and scavenged meals weren’t going to do. So, after she’d moved into the house, she’d begun making an effort, and now her refrigerator was well stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables. She had a chicken casserole that she’d made the day before, as well as sliced pot roast, and she chose the thick, sliced beef to make two sandwiches for Mason. She added a sliced apple, a glass of water and a thick wedge of peach pie that she couldn’t take credit for since Ryan had brought it over.
Not giving herself a moment to dither over the meal—and dither she would, if she allowed it—she arranged everything on a sturdy wooden tray and carried it back to the bedroom, stopping only long enough to grab up the envelope with his meds and tuck it under her arm.
She breezed into the bedroom, her footsteps hesitating when she found him with his nose in a book, a pair of black-rimmed glasses perched almost incongruously on his aquiline nose.
Why she found the sight so particularly touching, she couldn’t say. But she did. Which just meant that she had to push a brisk tone past the tightness in her chest. “I have soda or iced tea, if you want something to drink other than water.” She tossed the envelope on the foot of the bed and grabbed the well-used folding lap table that she’d already had on hand and deftly set it over his lap, sliding the tray on top of it. “Or beer,” she added, remembering that had been his preference before. “Though, you really shouldn’t have alcohol right now.”
She glanced at him, waiting, and found him watching her, his glasses and book set aside. “What?” she asked.
“How’d you do that without spilling the water?”
Surprised, she looked down at the lap tray and meal. “Practice,” she said simply. “So … what do you want to drink besides water?”
His gaze passed her to land on the envelope lying near his foot. His lips tightened a little and he looked back at the meal. “Water’s all I need.” His jaw slid slightly to one side, then centered again. “Thank you. This looks good. I was half-afraid you’d be bringing in brussels sprouts.”
She smiled slightly. “Behave yourself and I won’t have to.” She picked up the envelope and poured the bottles out into her hand. “When was your last dose of antibiotics?”
He didn’t look up from the food. “Before I left Connecticut.”
Which meant too many hours. She set all but two of the bottles on the nightstand, where they’d be in easy reach for him, and poured out his doses, setting them on the tray. “You missed a dose.”
“I’ll live.”
“What’s your pain like?”
He bit off a huge corner of thick-sliced bread and tender beef and shrugged.
Macho men.
“On a scale of one to five,” she prodded. “Five being the worst.”
“Twelve,” he muttered around his mouthful.
She wasn’t particularly surprised. She could practically see his discomfort oozing out of his pores. “Good thing you’re eating,” she said and popped the lid off his painkillers. “It’ll help keep your stomach settled with this stuff.”
He lifted his hand, stopping her before she could drop one on her palm. “Throw the damn things down the toilet. I don’t need ‘em.”
She gave him a look. “Twelve?”
His gaze slid over hers, then away. “Fine.” His voice was short. “I don’t want them.”
“It’s not a sign of weakness to need—”
“I said no.”
She slowly put the cap back on the bottle, sensing that this was about something other than macho posturing. And, judging by the way he was holding himself even more stiffly than before, that he didn’t want her prying.
Which told her more than words could have said, anyway.
“Fair enough.” She set the bottle next to the others. “But you don’t have a choice about those,” she said firmly. She pointed to the two pills next to his plate. “If you want your bones to heal, you’ve got to beat back that infection once and for all.” She headed to the doorway. “I’ll go get Plato.”
Mason watched Courtney stride out of the room.
It was a helluva thing that he was almost more interested in the damn pill bottle within arm’s reach than he was in watching the particularly enjoyable sight of her shapely form moving underneath the thin pink fabric of her scrubs.
He swallowed the last of the first sandwich, leaned his head back against the pillows and closed his eyes. Too easily, the night they’d spent together came to life in his mind.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and opened his eyes again.
Since the moment he’d thrown McDougal’s daughter, Lari, to safety, he’d been in hell.
Coming to Weaver was just one more layer of it.
There was no future for Courtney with him, and she was the kind of woman who deserved futures. She was young and beautiful and caring and came from a strong, close family.
He was past young, scarred on the inside as well as the out, and the only family he knew—or who mattered to him—was the family of Hollins-Winword.
It was a fact of life that was easy enough to remember when he was a continent or two away from her.
But sprawled across a bed under her roof?
That was an entirely different matter.
“Plato, come meet Mason.”
He heard her voice before her footsteps and then she reappeared in the doorway with a gigantic Saint Bernard at her side.
“You didn’t get a dog.” Mason eyed the shaggy beast. “You got a damn horse.”
She grinned, bringing a surprising impishness to her oval face, and tucked her long, golden hair behind her ear. “He’s a big boy,” she agreed. Her fingers scrubbed through the dog’s thick coat and the beast’s tongue lolled with obvious pleasure. “But he’s a total marshmallow. He’s four and very well behaved.” She stopped next to the bed and gestured to the dog, who plopped his butt on the floor and looked across the mattress at Mason with solemn brown eyes. “Mason’s a friend, Plato.”
Mason stuck out his good hand and let the dog sniff him. Evidently satisfied, the dog slopped his tongue over Mason’s fingers and thumped his tail a few times.
Courtney smiled, then looked at the watch around her wrist. “I’ve got to get to work.” Her gaze skipped over Mason and around the room. She picked up the cell phone that Axel had left. “I’m adding the number at the hospital,” she said as her fingers rapidly tapped. “Plus my own cell number.” When she was finished, she set the phone on the nightstand. “But I’ll warn you—cell service isn’t always the greatest around here. There’s a landline in the kitchen, though.” She patted her hip. “Come on, Plato. Back outside.”
“Does he always stay outside?”
Courtney shook her head. “Not always. But I don’t want him disturbing you.”
Mason leaned forward a little, rubbing his hand over the dog’s massive head. “He’ll give me someone to talk to.”
She smiled slightly. “Well. He is pretty good company. I’ll pop back home when I get my dinner break, but it’ll be pretty late.” She headed toward the doorway. “Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, though. If I can’t make it over, there’s always going to be someone who can.” She gave a faint wave and disappeared.
Mason looked from the doorway to the pill bottles on the bedside table to the dog, who was watching him as if he could read his mind.
“Don’t you worry, Plato,” Mason muttered. “Soon as I get these casts off, I’ll be out of here.”
And away from temptation.
He looked from the prescription bottle back to the empty doorway.
Both temptations.
“It sounds like the perfect opportunity for you.” Lisa Pope, the other nurse who shared the emergency room’s night shift with Courtney, leaned her elbows on the counter and smiled. “Keep an eye out for a patient while he heals up and collect room and board at the same time.”
Courtney didn’t look up from the medical chart she was updating and smiled a little wryly. “It does sound perfect,” she agreed. In theory.
“Sounds perfect,” Lisa prompted. She raised her eyebrows. “What’s the problem?”
Courtney shook her head. “No problem.” None that she intended to share.
Lisa leaned closer over the desk. At the moment, the Weaver Hospital’s emergency department was quiet. “He must not have a wife, or he wouldn’t need care. So is he handsome?” Her eyes danced wickedly.
“Whether he is or not is beside the point. He’s a patient.”
Lisa sighed noisily and straightened. “Honestly, girl. You are twenty-six years old, so beautiful that other women ought to hate you, and I swear you live the life of a nun. It’s practically criminal.”
Courtney gave a laughing snort. “Why does it matter to you? You’re besotted with your husband, and you know it.” Lisa and Jay even had a darling little girl, Annie.
Lisa lifted her shoulder. “Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean a little vicarious living is out of the question. So … handsome or not?”
Courtney gave a huge sigh and closed the chart. “Mason is—” She broke off, trying to find a good word to describe the man and failing entirely. “Handsome enough.” She settled on the adjective, just because it was expedient. Despite the scar on his face, he was a striking man. Not handsome exactly, because he had a certain aura of … darkness around him. “More importantly, he’s a patient.”
Lisa made a face. “Well. At least tell me you’re going to spend the extra money you’re earning on something more interesting than fresh paint for your house trim. For nine months, all you’ve talked about is that house of yours.”
A laugh started to bubble in the back of Courtney’s throat.
Nine months.
It was almost funny.
She looked across the counter at her coworker and friend and shrugged casually, hiding the squiggle of excitement inside her. “What can I say? It’s my home. I want it to be perfect.”
Perfect for when it wasn’t just her living there.
Then she waved her hands in a shooing motion as she turned her attention back to paperwork that needed to be completed ASAP. “Now, we’d better get back to work or the boss lady around this place will have our heads.”
They both grinned, because the boss lady who ran the Weaver Hospital happened to be Courtney’s mother, Dr. Rebecca Clay. But the grins didn’t last long because the doors to the E.R. slid open, and Courtney’s sister-in-law, Mallory, strode inside, shrugging out of her jacket as she moved. “Got a high-risk mom coming in by air,” she greeted as she moved rapidly across the tiled floor past the desk where Courtney and Lisa were. “They’re at least ten minutes out.”
Courtney was already following her. “I’ll call the team.” She didn’t even look back to see Lisa assume her seat at reception.
Mallory nodded and pushed through the double doors, Courtney on her heels.
The quiet evening was over, and Courtney didn’t have a chance to think about much of anything until it was time for her dinner break at ten o’clock.
She drove the short distance home and let herself into the house. There was a water glass sitting on the counter in the kitchen where she hadn’t left it, but that was the only indication that Mason had been moving around the house.
A light came from his room down the hall, and she headed there quietly in case he was sleeping. She stuck her head around the doorway and looked inside.
He was sprawled on the bed, more or less in the same position that she’d left him. A book was lying closed on the mattress beside him, and Plato was lying next to that.
Her dog’s brow wrinkled as he looked at her, but he didn’t lift his head. He looked as if he were settled for the night. Between the big dog and the big man, there was barely a spare inch of mattress left.
Courtney settled a light blanket over Mason and turned off the light. Mason still didn’t stir. That was good. He needed sleep.
“Good boy,” she whispered to Plato, giving his head a scratch.
She left the house again and went back to the hospital to finish her shift. The second half passed even more quickly than the first, thanks to a motorcycle accident on the highway outside of town. It was just after three o’clock when she got home again.
Mason’s room was still quiet, except for the faint sound of his snoring.
She smiled a little to herself and went into her own bedroom, which was across the hall from his. She exchanged her scrubs for a pair of lightweight pajama pants and a tank and then—because she always needed to unwind for a while after getting off shift—headed out to the family room again. She’d barely sat down in front of her computer when she heard the pad of Plato’s paws. He propped his head on her knee, flopping his tail against the floor.
“So, Plato. Are you ready to have a baby?”
Chapter Three
Courtney rested her chin on her palm and stared at the computer screen, her mind eagerly whisking into the future.
“A little boy or a little girl?” She didn’t care which. She glanced at the dog. “Come this time next year, we’ll have a smiling, gurgling little someone to cuddle. What do you think?”
Plato’s warm brown eyes stared back at her. He made a low sound that she took as complete agreement.
Brilliant dog that he was.
She grinned and reached out to run her fingers through his thick, silky hair, and he grinned back at her, pushing his head harder against her palm. His long, feathered tail slapped the base of her chair. “I knew you’d like the idea, too.” Plato had been around children before she’d adopted him. His previous owner had run a foster home before cancer had stricken her.
Thinking of the woman who hadn’t only been Courtney’s teacher in Cheyenne, but also her friend, made her sigh.
Then she leaned over and pressed a kiss on Plato’s big head before turning back to the computer screen that glowed in front of her. She wasn’t going to end up like Margaret, taking in other people’s children when they couldn’t properly care for them. For Margaret, that had been enough.
Not for Courtney.
She wanted a child of her own.
“Thank goodness for Axel, huh?” She didn’t look away from the computer screen. “If it weren’t for him, we’d be waiting even longer.” Of course, when her cousin had approached her about taking in Mason, he’d had no idea of her plans and still didn’t. For that matter, nobody in her family had any idea.
She simply wasn’t ready to share, yet.
She looked back at her faithful companion and scrubbed her fingers through his thick coat again. “You’re the only one who knows,” she whispered.
The four-year-old Saint Bernard gave a huge, contented sigh.
Which had pretty much been the dog’s reaction ever since she’d begun voicing her intention to add to their small family.
She was twenty-six years old. Financially independent in a modest way. She had a good job. She—along with the bank—owned a home that she’d spent the past nine months remodeling.
And she wanted a baby.
So what if she didn’t have a man in her life?
Weaver, Wyoming, was a small town. She’d known all of the available men here since they’d all pretty much been in diapers. She also knew the men who weren’t available, yet liked to think they were.
She had no problem giving them all a pass.
The fact was, not a single man in Weaver had ever really turned her head, romantically speaking.
Well.
She grimaced slightly. Not any man who was from Weaver, she amended, thinking of the man sleeping right down the hall from her.
She was a modern, independent woman.
She had scads of supportive—albeit nosy—family members in the area. Everything in her life was aligned perfectly, just as she’d planned and worked for.
And now, thanks to Axel’s suggestion and Mason’s rent, she’d have the funds she needed even sooner than she’d planned.
If she’d learned anything in her life, it was not to wait too long to put into action the things you wanted.
Well, the waiting was done.
For months, she’d been checking out the various websites of sperm banks. Checking references. Checking reputations. And she’d finally settled on one—Big Sky Cryobank. It was located in Montana, had been around for as long as she’d been alive and came with impeccable references.
Now, given what she was earning, thanks to Mason, she would be able to bank enough extra money to pay the cryobank fees and the associated physician fees, since she knew her health insurance wasn’t going to cover the process of getting pregnant. She’d also have enough in her savings to tide her over for a few months when the baby came, so she wouldn’t have to go back to work the very second her maternity leave was used up.
“Everything is perfect,” she told Plato.
The dog stared up at her as if he could read her mind.
She grimaced a little. All right. Modern, independent woman or not, she had to admit that “perfect” would be the husband and a wedding ring along with the baby she was desperate to have. But she wasn’t willing to wait for all of that to come knocking at her door. Not when her door—save that one night with Mason all those months ago—was essentially silent. “As perfect as it’s likely to get,” she allowed, giving Plato a firm look.
“What’s perfect?”
She jerked, her heart lurching in her chest, and spun around on her chair to peer down the darkened hallway. “Mason. What are you doing awake?”
His rubber-tipped crutches provided a slow, rhythmic clump as he moved closer.
Her heart hadn’t stopped lurching, and she rose, wishing like fury that she’d thought to put on a robe over her thin knit pajamas. Thank heavens the room was lit only by a small lamp and the glow from her computer monitor. He would never be able to see the thumping in her chest, which felt so heavy it was probably visible. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
He finally stopped on the other side of the dining room table. He shook his head.
She moistened her lips and pressed her palms down the sides of her drawstring pants. “Do you need anything? You were sleeping when I came by during my break, and I didn’t want to disturb you then. But if you’re hungry or thirsty, I’m happy to get something for you.” Better to have a task to focus on, even if she did realize that she was talking too fast in the process.
He shook his head again, then jerked his chin toward the computer. “What’s that? One of those computer dating websites? Searching for your perfect match?”
She barely kept herself from shutting off the computer monitor. “Sort of.”
His dark gaze shifted back to her. “What’re you looking for? Blond hair? Dark hair? Blue eyes? Brown?”
She laughed a little nervously. Maybe if she described him, he’d drop the subject. Or not, considering his “sex option” comment when he’d arrived.
She wasn’t brave enough to find out.
Nor was she brave enough to hear what sort of comments he might have about her decision to find a daddy for her baby through a sperm bank. She pushed a few buttons on the computer keyboard, and the screen went blank, and she moved toward him. Away from the narrow desk where the computer sat. But the closer she got to him, the warmer she became.
Fortunately, there were a few working brain cells left inside her head for her to realize the heat wasn’t coming from inside her, but physically radiating from him. At a temperature much higher than normal.
She reached up and pressed her palm against his forehead. He was burning up.
“Mason,” she tsked. “You have a fever. Are you in pain?”
“No.” He’d closed his eyes and sighed faintly when she’d laid her hand on his forehead. The kind of sigh that signaled relief.
“I don’t believe you,” she murmured, but left her hand on his forehead a moment longer than necessary before she tucked herself between his casted arm and his side. She slid the crutch out of her way and leaned it against the table.
The feel of his torso against hers was blazing hot.
“Come on. You shouldn’t be on your feet.” She wrapped her arm behind his back for support and gently nudged him in the direction of the hallway.
“I don’t want to go back to bed. I’m sick of beds at the moment.”
“Okay.” She shifted slightly. “How about the couch?”
He gave a faint grunt and, with most of his weight on his remaining crutch, headed toward it. By the time he’d managed to half hop and half crutch his way around until he could pretty much collapse on the smooth leather cushions, she was glad she’d rearranged the furniture. She was also out of breath, and she didn’t consider herself exactly out of shape. Not with the running that she did.
She propped her hands on her hips and blew out a breath. “Now stay there.”
“Funny girl.” He finally let go of the crutch that he was still clutching, and it slid to the floor. “I hate this,” he muttered.
A fresh wave of sympathy plowed over her. “I can only imagine.” She gently shushed Plato out of the way when he tried tucking his big head on the couch next to Mason, then grabbed one of the soft throw pillows from the opposite end of the couch and deftly tucked it behind his head. “Just take a few deep breaths. I’ll be right back.” The dog trotted after her as she hurried into Mason’s bedroom. He gave her a faint woof, then leapt up onto the bed, turned around a few times and lay down.
Courtney left him there, retrieved the wedge cushion, as well as Mason’s antibiotics, grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator in her kitchen and wet down a clean washcloth.
She went back to him and folded the damp cloth over his forehead.
He lifted his hand to it. “I don’t need that.”
She pushed it right back into place. “This is not coddling,” she assured drily.
“Feels like it.”
“Stop complaining.” She rattled the antibiotics bottle. “Did you take a dose before you went to sleep?”
“Yes, Nurse Ratched.”
She couldn’t help but grin. The big, tall, dangerous-looking man sounded as cranky as an overtired five-year-old. “Mason, you have no idea,” she warned lightly. “I work the night shift in an emergency room. I can order the meanest sons of guns around.”
“I’m shaking in my boots.”
“You’re not wearing any,” she reminded him, then went to her own medicine cabinet in her bathroom to retrieve a bottle of acetaminophen as well as her ear thermometer.
Back in the living room, she spotted the wet cloth clutched in his fist and not on his forehead.
Stubborn.
But then, so was she.
She shook out a few of the pills, opened the bottle of water and tugged the damp cloth of out his grip, then handed them to him.
“What are they?”
“Good old Tylenol. For fever and maybe to help dull the pain a little.” She didn’t think now was the best time to broach the subject of his prescribed painkillers. He’d already said he refused to take them, and that was his right.
He swallowed the pills and drank down half the bottle of water, then leaned his head back again against the square pillow. She folded the cloth once more over his forehead. “Leave it.” She touched his chin lightly and tried to ignore the tantalizing feel of that raspy chin. “Turn your head a little.”
“Why?” His voice dripped with suspicion.
“So I can torture you some more, of course.” She held up her thermometer. “I need your ear for a moment.”
He grimaced and turned his head slightly.
“Take comfort in the fact that it could be worse.” She quickly took his temp and then sat back on her heels. “Well, it’s not as high as I thought it might be, but if it’s not back down to normal by morning, I’m going to have my mother come by.”
He pulled the cloth off his face and gave her a look. “Your mother.”
“She’s a doctor.”
He shook his head slightly. “Right. I should have remembered that.”
She tugged the cloth out of his hand yet again and replaced it on his forehead. “Should? Why?”
“I met her once,” he said, sounding annoyed. “Because I remember stuff. I’m supposed to remember stuff.”
She didn’t know why she was unnerved to think that he’d met her mother. He’d spent a few weeks in Weaver around the time that they’d been … uninvolved. It wasn’t unnatural to think he might have met more of her family than just her, particularly since he’d been working with Axel. “Stuff … about cases?”
He lifted the cloth enough to give her a baleful look from beneath it. “Cases of what?”
Fortunately, she had a lifetime of experience dealing with men who thought they could control a situation with just such a look. “Cases for the agency, naturally.”
Mason felt only slightly better than roadkill, yet he still was shocked by the words that Courtney uttered so blithely. “What do you know about the agency?”
“More than I ever wanted to,” she assured evenly. “We nearly lost my brother because of Hollins-Winword. You work for them, too.” Her gaze drifted over him.
Maybe he did have a fever, because it felt like everywhere that amber gaze landed, a fire started to burn. “I never told you about my work.” He damn sure had never mentioned the name of the agency.
“So you don’t work for them? And I’ll bet the fact that you’re laid up like this has nothing to do with them, either.” She was still crouched on the floor beside the couch. It was a physical effort to drag his eyes away from the warm, golden glow of her.
So much skin, and so much on display, thanks to the thin shirt that she wore.
His fingers twitched, and he pushed around the cloth on his forehead just to keep them busy. “Right now I’m not working for anybody.” It was true enough in a sense. But since he was more or less toeing the line that Cole had drawn in the sand, it was only a temporary truth. “And I’m laid up because I wasn’t moving fast enough when I needed to.”
“Mmm.” She didn’t look convinced.
He wasn’t in the mood to argue about it. For one thing, it wouldn’t serve any good purpose.
All he needed to remember was that she was his landlady for the time being. A landlady nurse.
Who smelled like something soft and powdery and gently alluring.
She moved and her hand nudged his, slipping the cloth away. “I’ll get this wet again for you.”
He didn’t argue that, either, and watched her straighten and move across the living area, around the small dining table that shared the space with her computer and through an arch that led to the kitchen.
Her long hair swayed against her slender back that was faithfully outlined by her thin blue tank top. And then there was the womanly flare of her hips and the long, long legs….
Watching her was like watching a fantasy unroll in his head.
Only, the night that they’d spent together had been indelibly real, and he knew good and well that the reality was eons better than any fantasy.
He heard the sound of water and then she was walking back toward him, and the front view was equally as magnificent as the rear view had been.
He wondered who had been living the fantasy with her lately and grimaced over the acid taste that thought put in his mouth. “Why are you trolling the internet for matches?”
Her smooth, stupefyingly feminine walk halted. She blinked once, then shrugged casually. “Why does anyone? Because they’re curious? Bored?” She crossed the last few steps to the couch and lowered the blessedly cool cloth to his forehead again. “Lonely? Hopeful?”
“I’m not asking about anyone.” A yawn suddenly split his face. “Sorry,” he muttered and tried to shift, but the cast on his leg made it awkward, and the sharp pain in his back made it impossible. He bit back an oath. “I’m asking about you.”
She was watching him with that sympathetic, “poor baby” look in her eyes. “I guess you could put me in the hopeful camp,” she said after a moment.
“So you’re trying to find yourself a husband. On the damn internet. Don’t you know the dangers there are in—”
“Don’t you know that I’m a grown woman and am more than capable of handling any supposed dangers out there? How’s it any worse than meeting a stranger in a bar? Or a Valentine’s Day kissing booth?” she added with pointed amusement. “And just to be clear, I am not looking for a husband.”
“Just to be clear,” he returned, “I know you’re a grown woman. My memory’s not impaired about that, at all.”
She cleared her throat, her amusement seeming to dissipate in the blink of an eye. “I think it would be better if we just pretended that never happened.”
His head was throbbing. His toes sticking out from the bottom of his cast were throbbing. And every spot in between was throbbing. He felt like he was burning from the inside out, and not all of it was because of some stupid temperature.
The fever he had for her was ninety percent of his problem.
“You brought it up first,” he reminded. “But if you can pretend, go for it. I can’t.”
“Why not?” For the first time, he heard frustration in her voice. “It was just one night.”
“Yeah, it was one night. But there wasn’t anything just about it.”
She shook her head. It only made the long, thick strands of gold hair slide across her gold shoulder and curl over the full jut of her breast, which was clearly—thank you, Lord, for torturing him with that incredible sight—delineated by the thin fabric of her shirt.
“It’s only going to make things … awkward,” she insisted.
“Then things will be awkward,” he said flatly. “‘Cause I can’t forget about it.” Nor did he want to.
The night they’d spent together was as much a perfect memory as it was a very necessary reminder.
Making love with her had been the most indescribable thing he’d ever experienced. And he needed to remember that it had been temporary.
Short-lived by necessity.
And by choice.
He pressed the damp, not-so-cool cloth down over his eyes. “Just make sure you’re careful about it.” His voice sounded as dark as he felt inside. “Meeting up with whatever hopeful suitors you find. There’re a lot of crazies out there. And guys who’ll take advantage of you the second you let down your guard.”
“So … you don’t have any problem with the idea of me finding a, um, a date like this.” Her voice went so smooth that warning bells jangled in the back of his mind.
She sounded miffed.
If he were honest, he could have told her, hell yeah, he had a problem with it.
He had a problem with the notion of her going out with any other guy, no matter where or how she met the man.
He had a problem thinking about anyone touching her. Physically. Emotionally.
But that sort of honesty wouldn’t get them anywhere.
“Like you said. You’re a grown woman. It would be unusual if you didn’t want to date.” To marry. Have children. “Though, I’d have thought you’d have plenty of pickings at the hospital and wouldn’t have to resort to meeting strangers in a bar. Or aren’t there any eligible doctors there?”
She was silent just long enough that his curiosity started nagging at him and he peered at her from beneath the cloth again. She was chewing at the inside of her lip, her eyes narrowed. But after a moment, all she said was, “You should be in bed.”
“No.”
He was almost surprised when she didn’t argue.
“All right. But if you need to get up or anything, just call my name. I’ll hear you.”
The last damn thing he wanted to do was call her name so she could help his sorry butt off the couch just so he could take a leak. That was the only thing he could think of at the moment that would make him willing enough to bring on a fresh set of agony by moving around.
Unless it was to go to her bed.
Which would be a joke right now.
The mind and some parts of his body were definitely willing, but the rest of him—the injured, aching part of him—just sat back with a snide, cruel laugh at the very idea of it.
“I’ll yell,” he said, having no intentions of it at all. “G’night.”
She hesitated a moment longer, still looking strangely indecisive. But then she did turn on her heel and head down the hall. A moment later, he heard the sound of a door closing softly. Then water running.
His fertile mind took off like a shot, and again, the part of him that was in control got a damn good laugh.
His head hurt. His ribs and his back hurt. He had an itch beneath the cast on his arm that was driving him batty. It was hours before he finally dozed off. The sky that he could see through a kitchen window was beginning to lighten. And when he did sleep, his dreams were a jumbled mess.
Cole was behind the wheel of the SUV aiming for little Lari McDougal. Mason watched it all unfold, his dream-state legs refusing to run fast enough, knowing he wasn’t going to make it. Wasn’t going to be able to save the child.
Only, Lari wasn’t a child, he realized as he forced his legs to move through the sludgelike paralysis that was holding him in place. It was Courtney.
Beautiful, young Courtney.
The SUV was speeding closer. Mason could see the whites of Coleman Black’s eyes.
He yelled out to Lari. To Courtney.
Knew it was too late. He was too late….
He jerked and barely caught himself from rolling off the couch. His heart was pounding in his chest, his breath coming fast and hard.
But at least he knew where he was.
In Courtney’s house. Sleeping on a surprisingly uncomfortable leather couch while cool sunshine streamed through the plentiful windows.
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Allison Leigh
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Courtney′s Baby Plan, электронная книга автора Allison Leigh на английском языке, в жанре современные любовные романы