ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5)

by Glenna Sinclair

Ash moved up close behind me, resting his hand lightly on the small of my back. I looked up at him, grateful that he understood how overwhelmed I was. But then another man came over, a tall man who had the same dark hair and green eyes as Ash despite the clear difference in his more slender physique.

  “Brother!” this new man said. “It’s not good enough to be a wealthy business owner with your face plastered all over newsstands all over the city, but now you deliver babies in the middle of the night? Impressive!”

  Ash just shook his head, a slight grin softening his features. He drew me up closer beside him and said, “David, this is Wilhelmina Kaufman.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Wilhelmina.”

  “Mina, please,” I said, as I accepted his proffered hand.

  “Mina,” David said with a slight bow.

  Then Ash turned me and gestured to the others. “That’s Rose,” he said, gesturing to the middle-aged woman who was still cooing over the baby, “and the pregnant woman is Joss. Behind her is Kirkland, and that’s Mabel beside him.”

  It was all so overwhelming. So many people all staring at my baby and me. I felt out of place in the ill-fitting scrubs. And I needed a shower. My hair was limp and greasy, falling unpleasantly all around my face. I felt like I’d just put in twelve hours of hard labor and stumbled into a formal dinner party.

  There were more people inside. Ash led the way in, and I was a little surprised to see desks scattered among the couches and love seats in the large, open living room. Sitting around one of those sitting areas was a man with a small bandage on his head and a woman with long hair that was pulled back with a heavy clip. They stood as we came inside, the woman coming over to steal a glance at the baby.

  “Oh, he’s beautiful,” she said, smiling at me.

  “Thank you,” I said, unsure what else to say.

  Someone had taken the baby out of his car seat and they were passing him around, admiring him like he was a member of their family and they were trying to identify familiar features. It was sort of surreal because this was what I’d imagined it would have been like when I was kid and I fantasized about having children. But I’d thought my mom would be here to admire my first child and I’d have a faithful, caring husband at my side beaming with pride.

  I was tired.

  “Are you breastfeeding?” someone asked.

  I blushed, but nodded.

  It seemed like a terribly personal thing to ask a stranger. But these people didn’t seem to think I was a stranger, even though I still wasn’t sure who was who or why they were here. I mean…I knew some about the people who worked for Gray Wolf Security. There’d been a magazine article. But putting names and roles to faces was a struggle.

  Ash stayed close to me. After a few minutes, he whispered near my ear, “Are you tired? Do you want to see your room?”

  Again, I looked at him with gratitude pouring from my eyes. He just nodded, turning me toward the stairs in the back corner of the room.

  “Where are you going, Ash?” David called, rushing over to head us off.

  “I’m going to show Mina her room.”

  “You’re setting her up here in the house?” David cocked his head slightly, looking hard at me. “Wouldn’t one of the cottages be better?”

  “No.”

  That was all Ash said on the subject. He led me past David, and David, much to his credit, just stayed there. I glanced back at him and caught the concerned look in his eye, but I wasn’t sure what the concern was about. Was he afraid I was out to hurt Ash?

  He might not be far from the truth.

  At the top of the stairs, Ash led me down a short, wide hallway that opened up into a large sitting area with three doors strategically placed around it. He opened the door on the left, pushing it wide so that I could step through. It was a large bedroom with large, heavy pieces of furniture. There was a queen-sized bed, two dressers, and side tables. And, on the far side of the room under a window that looked out over the front of the house, was a beautiful, clearly expensive, basinet for the baby.

  I pressed a hand to my mouth as I stared at it.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “The baby needs a place to sleep, doesn’t he?”

  I turned to him and threw my arms around his neck. He stood stiff for a moment, but, slowly, his arms came around my waist. He held me for a second, then stepped back.

  “You should try to get some rest.” He gestured to the closet. “Kate, Donovan’s wife, is about the same size as you. She brought over some clothes for you to use until we can get you some of your own.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.”

  He turned and left then, closing the door behind him.

  I touched the cool cloth side of the basinet, tears welling in my eyes. I couldn’t have gotten anything like this for my baby, not all by myself. Not any time soon. Yet, he was going to have everything he needed, thanks to Ash Grayson.

  The irony of that was not lost on me.

  Chapter 4

  At the Compound

  David watched as the women fussed over the sleeping baby and the men tried to pretend they weren’t just as fascinated. He couldn’t imagine his brother delivering this baby all on his own, but it was good to know he was capable of such a thing. Not that he ever would have doubted it. Ash had always been extremely cool under pressure.

  Donovan, a bandage still on his forehead from the car accident he’d been involved in last week, stood behind his wife, his hand on her shoulder, watching her watch the baby. David knew what was going through his mind. They’d been married eight months now. Their thoughts were beginning to move toward creating their own little family.

  Ricki, David’s wife, was having the same sort of thoughts, though she was a little more reluctant than he imagined Kate to be. Ricki was an independent sort of person, one who was used to thinking only of herself. It’d been an adjustment, these last five months since their wedding, for her to change her way of thinking. But she was coming around. He was pretty sure that seeing this baby would be an inspiration, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.

  Kirkland seemed more interested in the baby than David would have expected. But again, since he found Mabel, his entire personality had seemed to soften. He was standing behind her now, his arms wrapped around her. He whispered against her ear, as David watched, and she twisted around a little, laughing as she reached up to offer him a kiss.

  Joss was settled on the couch, her incredibly inflated belly resting on her lap. She was watching Rose cradle the baby, a sort of longing mixed with fear in her eyes. David wondered if she was thinking about her son, Isaac. He died from injuries sustained in the car accident that killed his father, only eighteen months old, too young to understand what’d happened to him. It was an event that haunted Joss for a long time. Up until this moment, she’d seemed to embrace her new beginning, but David found himself wondering if maybe it was all too fast.

  Ash came back downstairs just as the baby woke and began to fuss.

  “Do you want to hold him?” Rose asked, as he rejoined the crowd.

  He shook his head. “I’m sure you’ve got things under control.”

  Of course she did. Rose had three boys of her own, the last of which had moved out just two weeks ago to attend a summer session that was designed to give him a head start on his college career. Rose was the only one of the group gathered, besides Joss, who had any experience with an infant. And she seemed quite at home with the baby in her arms even as his wails grew in pitch for several minutes before dying down again.

  Ash slipped off to the kitchen in search of the horrible coffee he was constantly drinking. David followed.

  “What did Emily find out about her?”

  Ash shook his head. “She had no ID, and her fingerprints didn’t come back with anything.”

  “So we know nothing about her?”

  Ash met his brother’s eyes, a determinatio
n in them that David knew well.

  “She’s a homeless woman who needs help. What else do we need to know about her?”

  “How much trouble she brings with her.”

  “Have you been doing this work too long, David?” Ash asked. “Do you see conspiracy everywhere you turn now?”

  “No. But bringing some stranger into the house without having the slightest clue about who she is seems stupid.”

  “She picked me at random. She couldn’t have known who I was, or that I’d even been there. I go that bar, what, once a year?” Ash shook his head. “She’d have to be pretty diabolical to have planned all of this out, especially going into labor at just the right moment.”

  “Maybe,” David said, not really sure she’d have to be that diabolical. Just smart. And with the article that had just come out in Mabel’s magazine, able to read. “But we do have enemies.”

  “We do. But she’s not on that list.” Ash poured his cup of coffee and picked the mug up, wrapping his hands around it. “She’s an innocent. And when we stop helping the innocent, we should probably get out of this business.”

  Ash brushed past David on his way back to the impromptu party going on across the room. Kate had the baby now, and she offered him to Ash, but he again declined, seeming content to watch the ladies pass him around.

  As David joined the group again, Mabel asked, “What’s his name?”

  Ash seemed a little embarrassed, as he hesitated in his answer. “Ford,” he finally said. “Short for Ashford.”

  This stranger had named her baby after Ash.

  Chapter 5

  Ash

  It was late. Everyone had gone home, leaving the house eerily quiet. It was still a little hard to get used to David having somewhere to go at night, no longer spending hours and hours sitting at his workstation studying the video feeds coming in from the homes and businesses of our clients, or working to improve the software he’d created to alert everyone should something unusual happen. He didn’t even live on the property anymore in one of the cottages I’d had designed and constructed for the members of my team. He and his new bride, Ricki, had a house a few miles away in the city of Santa Monica. Donovan, too, lived in town with his wife, Kate, leaving his cottage empty as well. Kirkland still lived in his cottage, with Mabel often there by his side. She had an apartment in town, but I got the impression she was moving in a little bit at a time. And Joss. She was here less and less, preferring to spend her time with her lover, Carrington Matthews, and his daughter, McKelty.

  They were all moving on. Yet, I felt like I was still in a rut, still in the same place I was three years ago when my life imploded. Limbo. That’s what it was. Until I knew for sure that Alexi was dead or alive, I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back. I was just stuck.

  I settled in the window seat and looked out over my property. I no longer felt the satisfaction I’d once gotten from knowing I could provide for myself and whoever came along. I’d had dreams, the things Alexi and I would do together. I thought they were dreams that we shared. Maybe we had. Maybe we hadn’t. I was beginning to doubt everything I thought I knew about the woman I loved, and I hated that. I had never doubted Alexi before. But so much time had passed. If she was still alive, wouldn’t she have tried to find me by now?

  That bothered me. It had bothered me for a while. And then David’s file, the things it showed, suggested things about Alexi that I never would have imagined her capable of. It couldn’t be true. How could David find these things so easily when it took me so long just to find a few little hints about where she might have gone after Afghanistan? The file was wrong. Those pictures…they weren’t my Alexi. I didn’t care what it said, what it showed. It wasn’t my Alexi.

  I fully believed I would learn the truth someday. But there was a part of me that was beginning to accept that the dreams we’d had together would never become reality.

  Limbo.

  I sighed, standing and stripping my shirt off, determined to attempt to get some sleep—even though a good night’s sleep had been something of a distant memory since all this began. I had dreams that woke me every few hours, and I often did all I could to avoid them. But it’d been a long few days, and I was actually pretty tired. Maybe exhaustion would keep the dreams away.

  I exchanged jeans for shorts and was just climbing under the covers when I heard the first wails coming from Mina’s room. I waited, listening. A few minutes passed and the baby continued to cry, the cries growing in volume. I hesitated, not wanting to intrude on Mina, but she didn’t seem to be responding to the baby. I slowly climbed out of bed and crossed the hall, pausing at her slightly ajar bedroom door. I could see her curled up in the bed, her dark hair even darker against the white pillows.

  I hesitated again, standing in the doorway and watching her chest move rhythmically as the baby cried. Finally, I pushed my way in and went to the basinet, not sure what to do. I knew nothing about babies. I was afraid to touch him and was actually shocked that I hadn’t hurt him, holding him too close as I drove to the hospital. When I lifted him out of the basinet, his head flopped backward and his cries intensified. I slipped a hand under his head, a little awed by the fact that my palm was nearly twice the size of his tiny head.

  I lifted him to my chest and cradled him there. He stopped crying, resting his cheek against my bare skin. He was dressed in a little undershirt that snapped between his legs and wrapped in a light blanket. I ran my hand down his back, patting his diapered bottom. I wondered if he needed a new diaper, but I didn’t know how to go about changing it if he did. But then he moved his head, pressing his little mouth against me, clearly hunting for something I couldn’t offer him.

  “Did he wake you?”

  I turned, surprised to find Mina sitting up and watching me.

  “I think he’s hungry.”

  She held out her hands. “Bring him to me.”

  I did, awkwardly handing the baby over as she adjusted her position. She started to lift the t-shirt she was wearing, so I turned, trying to give her privacy.

  “Don’t go,” she said softly.

  I didn’t know what to do and that seemed to be the rule rather than the exception these days. I wasn’t used to being at a loss. I always knew how to act and always did exactly what needed to be done, but with this domestic thing…I was completely lost.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, facing the window rather than Mina. I could hear the baby taking his meal, the small gulps strong and impressive for one so small. I glanced at them, curious despite everything. I had to admit it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. The baby, nestled against his mother’s bare breast, her face tilted to watch him, one of her fingers brushing against the side of his face. There was love there, no doubt about it.

  “I’m sorry about the circus when you arrived.”

  She looked up, a dreamy, if sleepy, expression in her eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “They were just curious about you.”

  “I’m sure they were. I don’t suppose it’s every day you deliver a baby and then bring the homeless, pathetic woman home with you.”

  “I wouldn’t say pathetic.”

  She smiled. “But homeless.”

  “How long had you been on the streets?”

  She looked back down at the baby, touching his cheek again. “Almost a week.”

  “Before that?”

  “I was living with the baby’s father. But things went sour between us.”

  “Does he know? About Ford, I mean?”

  “Not yet. I’m a little afraid to contact him.” She was quiet for a moment, then she groaned, looking up with tears in her eyes. “He’s not a nice man.”

  I could see the truth in her eyes. He’d been violent. I’d met women who were abused before. Gray Wolf handled all kinds of security cases, some included female professionals who were trying to get away from a violent lover. They all had the same look in their eyes, the same sort of weariness. Fearful ca
ution.

  I touched her knee lightly. “You’re safe here.”

  Her eyes fell to the baby again. “You must think I’m pretty pathetic.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But I am. I ran away from home when I was nineteen because my father…we never got along. He was…a difficult man. And then I found myself in Los Angeles, thinking I could become famous and change everything that’d gone bad in my life.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “No one ever tells you how hard it is to get a job, let alone catch the attention of some producer or director. I never even set foot on a sound stage. After six months, I pretty much knew I had no talent. But then I couldn’t go home.”

  It wasn’t an unfamiliar story. Emily was full of stories like this one, all these girls she often came up against in her work with the LAPD. She’d even tried to help a few, roping me in with requests for funds to pay for hotel rooms while she arranged to get a girl into rehab or a plane ticket home. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. But Emily wasn’t the type to give up.

  “I was desperate, and desperate people do stupid things.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything else,” I said, laying my hand on her knee again. “I’m not your judge. I don’t really care where you come from. I just want to see my namesake well cared for.”

  She looked down at the baby again. “I never would have been able to give him the things he needed if not for you.”

  “It’s the least I could do.”

  Her eyes were filled with tears again, as she lifted the baby to her shoulder, patting his back lightly. Her breast, the nipple moist from the baby’s mouth, was completely exposed. I felt like a dirty old man looking at her. But it wasn’t a sexual sort of thing that drew my eyes to her. It was the natural beauty of motherhood that got me. It made me think of Alexi and wonder if she would have nursed our babies at her breast.

  “I should go and let you get some sleep.”

  She grabbed my hand before I could stand.

  “I’ll pay you back for all you’ve done. I promise.”