Courtney's Baby Plan

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  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 f
amiliar 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.