The Baby Mission

by Marie Ferrarella

  It was getting hard for her to think again. What was this effect he had on her?

  “I wasn’t myself last night.”

  She felt his lips curving against her skin. He was smiling. She could feel warmth flowing to every part of her.

  “Any chance of your secret identity making a reappearance this morning?” he asked.

  He was dissolving her will faster than a gale traveling through soap suds. It was a struggle just to keep her eyes from shutting, her body from sinking back down. Her protest barely carried conviction. “Warrick, we’re on a case—”

  “We’re on a bed,” he countered, working his way to the other side of her neck. Causing mini-quakes in her stomach. “And once we go out of this room, it’s going to be business as usual. I want to stay here with you like this a little longer, maybe make a few more memories to sustain me.” She felt his breath along her back. Everything inside of her tightened in anticipation. Suddenly she was looking up into his eyes as he cupped her cheek. It took everything she had not to curl into his palm. “Is that so bad?”

  “No,” she breathed. From some dark region, a little voice urged her to remember the fiasco that resulted when she had been with Thorndyke. She snapped to attention. “Yes. Look, we can’t do this.”

  He knew that she was probably right, knew all the arguments against this. Knew only one argument for it. Because he wanted her. Again. “Newsflash, we already did do this.”

  “Okay.” She told herself to get up out of bed. That’s all she needed to do. After all, this was Warrick. She knew him. He wouldn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. Wherein lay her problem. Because she did want to. “We can’t do this again.”

  “Why?” Straightening, he looked at her. Maybe they needed to say this aloud. “We’re both adults, both know the rules of the game.”

  Right now, with Warrick touching her like that, looking at her like that, she wasn’t sure she even knew her own name.

  C.J. cleared her throat. It was impossibly dry. Where was saliva when you needed it? “And those are?”

  “No strings. No promises. Just two consenting adults…” He smiled warmly into her eyes, touching her again. “Consenting.”

  She wondered what the melting point for people was. The way she felt, she was very nearly there. “No strings?” she echoed. That sounded good. In theory.

  He nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. “No strings. We both know that strings only tangle you up, make you trip.”

  “Right.” He was absolutely right. So why did she suddenly want to start a string collection? Why this desire to gather together the world’s biggest ball of twine? No, no, Warrick was right. They were two sane adults—hungering for a few insane moments.

  Her heart was hammering too hard, surrendering the battle without a decent shot being fired. The next minute he had pulled her down until she was flat on her back and under him.

  “Right,” he echoed just before he brought his mouth down on hers.

  The fire ignited a beat before his lips even touched hers. Anticipation had primed her response to him.

  Primed her.

  God help her, but she wanted this with every fiber of her being, even though she knew she shouldn’t. In the light of day, with reason returning, she really shouldn’t.

  But she did.

  The sound of bells began to peal in her soul, in her brain. Bells. Ringing.

  The urgent sound took a moment before it penetrated. It took her a moment longer before she could identify it. Not bells, a cell phone. One of their cell phones was ringing.

  Warrick had heard it, too. He lifted his head, drawing back. Impatience creased his forehead. They knew it could be important. He rose away from her, sitting back on his knees. “Yours or mine?”

  “I don’t know.” They both rang the same. Sitting up, still more than a little dazed, she looked where both cell phones lay on the nightstand where they’d been left last night. Obviously, the signal problem had cleared itself up. Talk about bad timing.

  She picked up his first, then hers. Hers had the lit screen.

  “Mine,” she told him. Taking a deep breath, she hoped that she didn’t sound breathless as she felt. “This is Jones.”

  “Chris, it’s Mom.”

  Responses programmed before the beginning of time made C.J. pull the sheet up around her more tightly, covering her breasts. “Hi, Mom, what’s up?”

  “The baby’s temperature.”

  “What?” Alert, concerned, C.J. sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Behind her, she felt Warrick tap her on the shoulder, silently asking to be enlightened. She waved him back, her attention riveted to the voice on the other end of the line. Something was wrong with her baby. “How high is it?”

  Her mother didn’t answer immediately, as if debating whether or not to tell her. “A hundred and two.”

  “Omigod.”

  The bed moved behind her. Warrick came around it to face her. “What is it?”

  Shaking, she covered the receiver. “The baby has a 102-degree temperature.” C.J. removed her hand, her attention back to her mother. How was this possible? She’d left the baby in perfect health just yesterday morning. “But she was all right when I called you last night.”

  “Baby’s temperatures can suddenly go up and just as suddenly go down again. I didn’t call to panic you, Chris. I knew you’d want to know. I’ve got a call in to her pediatrician.”

  Dr. DuCane had come with excellent references and she hadn’t been disappointed when she’d met the woman. But this was her baby they were talking about. C.J. struggled to get ahold of herself.

  “Maybe you should go to the emergency room with her, have the doctor meet you there.” C.J. ran her hand over her forehead and tried to think. Why couldn’t she think? Why was everything such a jumble in her head? She’d always been able to think on her feet before, that was her greatest strength. Up until now. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  “There’s nothing you can do, honey,” her mother told her. “Everything’s being taken care of. I don’t want you breaking any speed limits. Ethan had a fever of 106 once, and he’s still with us.” She recited chapter and verse from a book that had guided her through all five of her children’s childhoods. “‘Babies temperatures fluctuate all over the place until they’re seven.”’

  She didn’t care about other babies, she cared about hers. And she needed to be there with her.

  “I’ll be there as soon as possible,” C.J. reiterated. “Call me after you talk to the doctor.”

  Slapping the cover down on the phone as she ended the conversation, she realized that her hands were shaking. This having a baby was so much harder than she thought. Labor was only the beginning.

  “Here.” C.J. looked up and saw that Warrick had gathered her clothes together and had placed them on the bed next to her. He was stepping into his underwear.

  Even in the midst of a crisis, she couldn’t help thinking that he had to have one of the most magnificent bodies she had ever seen. The next moment she upbraided herself. What kind of a mother was she, having the hots for someone while her baby was burning up?

  “We can be on the road in fifteen minutes,” he told her. She nodded in response. Something on her face must have caught his attention because he stopped after he pulled up his pants and buttoned them. “She’s going to be all right, C.J.” She didn’t remember ever hearing him sound so comforting. “Babies get sick all the time.”

  She snapped out of her stupor and began hurrying into her clothes. “That’s what my mother said.”

  “She ought to know.” He pushed his arms through his sleeves and quickly buttoned his shirt. “She raised five of you.”

  C.J. nodded, knowing she should have felt comforted. Knowing that all she felt was scared.

  After one quick ten-minute stop at a drive-through for something that vaguely passed as breakfast, plus four containers of black coffee, they were on the road for home.

&
nbsp; The tension inside the vehicle was almost tangible. There was tension because they hadn’t had the opportunity to either redefine or renew the boundaries that they had crossed over last night, nor would they. Not until the reason for the preponderance of tension was resolved.

  When they’d left the motel, C.J. had gone to the driver’s side. Warrick blocked her and claimed the wheel. “I don’t think you’re in any condition to drive right now, and I don’t have a death wish.” He’d expected an argument. Instead she’d merely nodded her head and gone to the passenger side.

  That was when he knew the extent of her concern.

  The silence was making him uneasy. Warrick turned on the radio, selecting a station he knew she liked over one for himself. They had extremely different taste in music. Hers was modern, his leaned toward the oldies. Anything after 1970 was far too modern for him.

  He glanced at her profile. If she was any more rigid, she would have qualified as granite. He pressed down on the accelerator. The speedometer climbed over the legal limit.

  “She’s going to be all right,” he finally said, breaking the silence for the second time. He wasn’t even sure she’d heard him the first time around.

  I have to believe that, C.J. thought desperately. Anything else was unthinkable. Two months into the relationship and she couldn’t imagine her life without her daughter. But she was so little….

  C.J. clenched her hands in her lap as she tore her mind away from going through that door. She refused to allow herself to think of anything bad happening.

  She slanted a look in his direction. There was something comforting about his smile. “Thanks,” she whispered.

  He glanced at the rearview mirror to make sure there were no police cars in the vicinity. The road had opened up and there were no other cars in either direction. “For what?”

  Her nails were sinking into her palms. She unclenched her hands. “For not saying ‘I told you so.”’

  Where the hell had that come from? “Why would I say that?”

  Didn’t he remember? “You were the one who told me to stay home. Twice.”

  Warrick carefully negotiated a curve, then resumed his former speed. “And what…if you were home, the fever wouldn’t have happened?”

  He made the basis of her guilt and self-reproach sound foolish. “No, but—”

  He didn’t give her a chance to come up with an argument. The whole thing was ridiculous.

  “And don’t tell me that if you were home, you would have handled it any better than your mother’s handling it right now. You probably would have called her for advice.” When she said nothing, Warrick spared her a look. “Am I wrong?”

  C.J. dragged her hand through her hair. “No, you’re right.” A hint of a smile slipped over her lips. “Damn it, I really do hate saying that.”

  Warrick grinned. “That’s just your natural competitiveness coming to the fore.” The road stretched unobstructed for the next two miles. He spared her a look. “You know, C.J., just because you grew up in a house full of competitive boys who you were constantly pitting yourself against doesn’t mean that everyone is interested in competing with you.”

  As if they hadn’t been in constant competition from the first moment they were partnered up. “Are you turning over a new leaf?”

  “I was never in competition with you.” Warrick paused for a moment, then couldn’t resist adding, “I was your mentor.”

  She shifted in her seat to look at him. “I beg your pardon, who was whose mentor?” She was the one with seniority, albeit only by six weeks. In actuality they had grown up together at the Bureau.

  “There you go again, competing.” A motorcycle policeman was approaching from the opposite direction. Warrick eased back on the accelerator. He glanced in her direction and smiled. It was nice to have her bounce back.

  They didn’t bother going first to the federal building but instead went directly to her parents’ house. Warrick barely had time to stop the car before she was jumping out and hurrying up the walk.

  “Remember to open the door, not tear it off its hinges,” he called after her.

  C.J. ignored him as she fumbled with her keys, then opened the door. Her mother was in the living room. Her father sat in his recliner, holding a fussing baby in his arms.

  She crossed to him immediately and took the baby in her arms, breathlessly asking, “How is she? Did she see the doctor? What did the doctor say?”

  Behind her, she heard Warrick come in and close the door.

  “Dr. DuCane came to her office and saw her,” her father told her. “She said it would be less costly that way.”

  “I don’t care about the cost. How is she?” In time-honored tradition C.J. pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead to check for a fever. The baby was warm but not burning up the way she’d feared.

  “Dr. DuCane prescribed an antibiotic. Your father’s already picked it up at the drugstore.” Her mother’s voice, for once, was calm, soothing. “She has otitis media.” C.J. looked at her mother blankly. “Middle ear infection,” Diane explained. “You and Wayne were both prone to that when you were little.”

  C.J. frowned, kissing the baby’s forehead again. “She still feels warm.”

  Diane leaned over and performed her own test. “Her fever’s down considerably from late last night. But don’t get alarmed if it shoots up again.” She spoke from experience. “Children can be sick in the morning, perfectly fine in the afternoon and sick again in the evening.”

  C.J. sighed. This was a great deal more than she’d thought she’d signed on for initially. Her stomach felt as if it was tied up in knots. “God, when does it stop, Mom?”

  “I don’t know.” Diane laughed softly. “How old are you now?”

  C.J. cradled the baby against her. The fussing had lessened a degree. “Point taken.”

  “You can stay here tonight if you’d like,” her mother invited. “I can get your old room ready.”

  C.J. was sorely tempted by the offer. It would be easy just to let her mother take over. She was clearly the expert here. But she didn’t want to grow dependent on her mother’s help. She had to do this on her own.

  “Thanks.” She addressed both her mother and her father, knowing that he had probably been right there, taking his turn at pacing the floor with the baby. “But I just want to get her home and into her own bed.”

  “Fine.” Diane accepted her daughter’s choice. “Then I’ll come along with you.”

  C.J. was torn. There was pride and then there was stupidity. She’d already done one stupid thing in the past twenty-four hours. She wasn’t about to go for two. Her protest lacked conviction. “You don’t have to do that, Mom.”

  Diane read between the lines. She’d been a young mother once, too. “Don’t worry, I’m not crowding you. I’ll just stay long enough to give you an opportunity to shower and change your clothes. You want to get the feel of the road off you, don’t you?”

  C.J. looked at Warrick significantly. “Yes, I guess that’s for the best.”

  Chapter 11

  “You gave me quite a scare there, kidlet.”

  Finished feeding the baby, C.J. got up from the kitchen table and put the empty bottle on the counter with one hand while she held her daughter close to her with the other. It had been a tough few hours, but, as her mother had promised, things were settling down again. The baby’s fever was gone. Thank God.

  Walking to the living room, she kissed the top of her baby’s head. The soft, fine blond hair brushed against her lips. Not quite ready to put her down for the night, C.J. took her into living room and sat down on the sofa. She needed to give the baby her medicine, anyway.

  She looked down at the small face that seemed to watch her with rapt attention. “Of course, I’m new at this, you realize, but I think I might have this panic thing under control.”

  C.J. knew better, actually. She had a feeling there would always be an element of underlying panic involved. It was only a matter of how well s
he hid it when it occurred and how well she performed under its influence.

  “Until the next time, probably.” The baby nestled against her, C.J. unscrewed the top and measured out the prescribed dose on a curved baby teaspoon. “Now take your medicine like a good girl. The pharmacist told Grandpa it tastes like bubblegum.” She laughed at that. “Yeah, right, like you know what bubblegum tastes like. Time enough for that later, when I’m not afraid you’re going to swallow it.” She smiled as the baby’s lips parted and she swallowed the medicine without complaint. “That’s a good girl, Joy.”

  Then, putting the teaspoon down on the coffee table beside the bottle, C.J. looked at her daughter again and shook her head. She’d been so worried, so scared returning home. How had her mother done it? How had she survived five of them?

  “Your grandmother’s incredible, cupcake, I hope you know that.” She rose again, patting the baby on the back. As she started for the stairs, someone rang her doorbell. Perfect timing.

  “You expecting anyone?” she asked the baby. “It’s too late for the Avon lady.” Setting the baby down in the portacrib she had set up beside the sofa, C.J. made her way to the front door. “Who is it?”

  “Ice-cream man.”

  Even through the door, she recognized the voice. C.J. swung open the door. “Warrick? Was there a break in the case?”

  “No, no break.” He held up the paper bag he was holding. “I just thought you might need one, so I brought you some ice cream.”

  She looked at him incredulously. “At ten o’clock at night?”

  “I stayed late at the office, thought I’d tackle some paperwork for a change.” He always put it off as long as he could. It was his least favorite part of the job. Warrick nodded at the car in the driveway. “I see Rodriguez dropped off your car like I asked.”

  “Yes, he got here about six. Thanks.”