Courtney's Baby Plan

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “Birthday?”

  He told her and she filled in the squares, unable to hide her surprise. “Your birthday is February 15? The day after Valentine’s Day?”

  “So?”

  She tucked her tongue in the roof of her mouth for a moment. “So…no reason.” Just that they’d spent Valentine’s night together in her bed. She guessed it was pretty plain why he hadn’t thought to mention that it was his birthday the next day—because she hadn’t mattered enough for him to share that fact. “I wouldn’t have thought you were thirty-nine, though.”

  “Since I feel like I’m about sixty, I’m not sure how to take that.”

  She couldn’t help but smile faintly. “You don’t look older than your age,” she assured mildly. In fact, despite his hard, scarred face and the few silver strands sprinkled in his dark hair, she thought he looked younger.

  Thoughts which were not helping to get the necessary paperwork completed.

  He gave her his home address in Connecticut, and when it came to his emergency contact, he shrugged. “None.”

  “Mason.” She gave him a look. “You must have family. Someone.”

  “Coleman Black,” he finally said with a sigh. “Close enough.”

  She’d met Coleman Black on more than one occasion. Not because she knew he was deeply involved in the agency that she was not supposed to know about, but because he was Brody Paine’s father and Brody was married to her cousin Angeline.

  Angeline, as far as Courtney had been able to discern, was much fonder of her father-in-law than Brody was.

  “So you are with the agency,” she murmured. He just gave her a stony look and she shook her head a little. “I don’t see what the big secret is. Half my family has been involved with it or still are.” She clicked the pen a few times. “Do you have his phone number?”

  He rattled off an 800 number.

  She dutifully filled it in, then turned the clipboard around for him to sign the bottom of the form. His scribble was firm, slanted and barely legible.

  She flipped the form over and started on the profile on the back. “Height? Six-four, six-five?” she guessed. “Five. Two-forty.”

  And not an ounce of fat to spare, she knew from experience. She wrote down his weight.

  “No drug allergies.” She glanced at him. “Right?” She remembered it from his medical chart from Connecticut.

  “Right.”

  She quickly dashed down the items. “Previous surgeries?”

  He gave her a dry look. “It would take more than the back of that sheet of paper to list them all.”

  “Any history of heart disease? Stroke? Diabetes? On your mother’s side or your father’s?”

  “No idea. They died when I was a kid.”

  Her fingers tightened around her pen. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged as if it didn’t matter.

  “Who took care of you?”

  One of his eyebrows peaked. “That on the form, too?”

  “Obviously not.” She studied him. Everything about him now screamed capable. Loner. But he hadn’t always been. At one time in his life, he’d been young. A child.

  A parentless child.

  If he’d had relatives who’d taken him in, they were either gone or he didn’t consider them close any longer, since he’d provided Coleman Black’s name as his emergency contact.

  “Hey, Courtney.” Richie, the acne-skinned imaging tech came around the corner, and she tamped down a swell of irritation at the interruption. “What’s up?”

  Getting Mason’s cast repaired, and making certain he hadn’t done any harm to his arm beneath, was a lot more important than peeling away the plethora of onion-skin layers surrounding Mason Hyde’s life. She showed Richie the crack on Mason’s dark blue cast. “Wyatt is going to try to flag down Dr. Flannery to take a look.”

  Richie nodded. “He’ll need films?”

  “That’s what I’m figuring.”

  “I’ll get the mobile unit.”

  Richie had barely moved out of sight, when Pierce Flannery strode into the room, his long white doctor’s coat flapping behind his long legs. “Courtney,” he greeted, his brown gaze warm. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Doctor.” Courtney smiled and gestured toward Mason, whose eyes had narrowed on the young doctor’s face. “This is Mason Hyde. I’m providing his home health care and—” she touched Mason’s cast “—unfortunately didn’t do a good enough job. His cast is cracked.”

  “Well.” Flannery lifted Mason’s arm a few inches and studied it from every angle. “Get a film and we’ll see if we need to start from scratch or if we can just patch it up.” He looked at Mason, taking him in fully. “What ran over you? A train?”

  “A Hummer,” Mason said. “Felt like a train when I was bouncing off it onto the side of the road, though.”

  Courtney blinked a little.

  Given his injuries, she’d assumed there’d been some sort of collision involved. But she’d also assumed that he’d been inside a vehicle of his own, at least.

  Not that he’d been struck down by one.

  “You were on foot?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t look at her, but at the doctor. “How long’s this gonna take?”

  “Shouldn’t be long, even if we have to take off the cast and put on a new one.” The doctor’s gaze traveled to Courtney over Mason’s head. He smiled. “Though I’ll freely admit that if it takes a while, it’ll be no hardship, considering the company.”

  He was flirting with her and obviously didn’t care who witnessed it. She kept her smile in place, but made certain not to let it look too friendly. She had no interest in encouraging the doctor. “I’ll see what’s holding up Richie,” she said and headed in the direction the tech had taken.

  “So. You a friend of our lovely Nurse Clay?” Once Courtney was gone, the doctor’s gaze fixed on Mason.

  “Not exactly.” Mason could read the younger man well enough. Even if he’d said he was a friend—and all that could be implied by that sometimes nebulous term—the doctor would still be interested in Courtney.

  Who could blame him?

  Courtney was an exceptionally beautiful woman with a smile and friendliness that would have garnered attention even if she hadn’t been tall, long-legged and this side of voluptuous.

  “But I am concerned with her best interests,” he added with a warning edge.

  “Good for you,” the doctor said, and he seemed to be sincere.

  When it came to his work, Mason had a knack for sizing up a person’s character. He just didn’t seem able to get a bead on this guy. Because he wasn’t a subject that Mason was investigating? Or because he obviously had his eye on Courtney?

  Either way, it irritated the hell out of Mason.

  He didn’t like things being cloudy.

  “The portable unit is out of commission.” Courtney’s voice preceded her appearance by a half a second. She moved behind his wheelchair, bringing with her that soft scent of hers. “I’ll have to take you over to imaging.”

  Flannery glanced at his watch, then nodded. “Let me know when you have the films. I’ve got some calls to take care of and a few patients to see.” He looked over Mason at Courtney and smiled.

  Just for her.

  Mason’s casted leg twitched with the urge to sweep the guy off his well-shod feet.

  His chair began moving. “I’ll make sure you’re paged,” Courtney told the doctor before rolling Mason out of the exam area.

  He felt a grin pushing at his lips.

  Unfortunately, it was still there when they reached the imaging department, and she gave him a suspicious look. “What are you looking so pleased about?”

  “Nothing. I’ll just be glad to get out of here again. Why are you resorting to the online things when you’ve got a perfectly good specimen in the doc back there?”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “I beg your pardon?”

  “He’s interested in you.”

  For a moment, she
looked lost for words. “That doesn’t mean I’m interested in him.”

  “Why not? Is he a closet nerd or something?”

  She laughed a little. “I have no idea. Why do you care?” Her eyes narrowed. “How did you end up getting hit by an SUV, anyway?”

  “By getting in its way. Is he married?”

  “No, he’s not married. And clearly you got in the way. I figured that out for my own brilliant self. But…how? Was the driver drunk or something?”

  “Or something. Doctors are supposed to be good catches, aren’t they?”

  She huffed. “I’m not playing catch! And that’s all you’re going to say? Or something,” she deadpanned his flat answer.

  “That’s all.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “Were you impaired?”

  He frowned. “What?” Given everything, maybe he shouldn’t have been shocked by the question, but he was.

  And then, considering the concern in her amber-colored eyes, it was just impatience that rolled through him. “Hell. No.” He shook his head. “Believe me, honey. Until I became impaired by these damn injuries, I haven’t even been tempted. Not once in a decade.”

  She studied him. “Actually, I believe you. Maybe it wasn’t even an accident at all. Was he aiming for you?”

  Mason let out a noisy breath. “You’re not going to leave this alone, are you?”

  “If you didn’t want me to be curious, then you shouldn’t have said anything about it at all when Dr. Flannery asked.”

  The fact that she was right didn’t help him any.

  He looked around the empty waiting room. “No. He wasn’t aiming for me. How long’s this X-ray going to take, anyway?”

  “As long as it takes,” she returned smoothly. Then she made a face. “I don’t know.” She walked across the waiting area and disappeared through an open doorway, returning a few minutes later. “You’ll be up next, after they finish with the patient already back there.”

  She sat on the edge of a molded plastic chair and plucked the clip out of her hair. She closed her eyes as the long blond strands tumbled around her shoulders and raked her fingers through them before twirling it back up into the fat clip. Then she opened her eyes again.

  She looked tired.

  “Would you still be sleeping if we weren’t here?”

  Her fine, level brows pulled together. “It doesn’t matter.”

  It mattered to him. “You don’t have to stay. I don’t need a babysitter. Go track down Flannery. He’ll probably ask you out on a date.”

  “Considering that you somehow put a crack in your cast, I’m not so sure you don’t need a babysitter. But I wouldn’t go back to sleep, even if I went home, so quit using that as an excuse to get rid of me and my curiosity. And if I wanted a date with Dr. Flannery, I’d get one. So drop it.” She pushed to her feet. “I’ll be back.” She pointed at him. “Don’t move.”

  “Funny girl.”

  She smiled faintly as she went through the doorway once more.

  She was gone a little longer this time.

  Long enough for a tired-looking woman to walk in carrying a brown-haired little girl with a heavily bandaged wrist. The woman gave Mason a wary look and took one of the chairs in the far corner of the room.

  He’d had similar reactions from strangers before, just not when he was obviously laid up with injuries. He knew he looked like some version of scary hell, particularly as unshaven and unkempt as he was now.

  He gave her a nod and a smile, but she didn’t look comforted by it, and he stifled a sigh.

  Mason wished Courtney would return. Playing verbal games with her was a helluva lot better than just sitting here inside the hospital. Scaring perfectly innocent people with the way he looked wasn’t anything he particularly relished.

  Fortunately, a girl in a white lab coat appeared and gestured to the woman. They disappeared through the same doorway Courtney had, and Mason waited alone a little longer until the waiting was wearing down his last nerve.

  He shifted awkwardly in the chair and tried to ignore the itch on his calf beneath the cast by even more awkwardly trying to wheel the chair through the doorway after her. He’d made it far enough to get wedged between the protrusion of his leg and the angle of the chair, when Courtney reappeared.

  She stopped at the sight of him and crossed her arms, tilting her head to one side. “Looks like you’re almost stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

  It was truer than she knew.

  Her eyes glinted when he said nothing. “Would you like some help?”

  “Would you like to cut the sarcasm?”

  “Maybe if you weren’t so thickheaded and could possibly, just possibly, do what you are asked—”

  “Told, you mean.”

  “—then I might be able to cut the sarcasm.”

  “Just move the damn chair, would you?”

  She tsked and, reaching around him, pushed the chair back several inches until his cast was no longer jammed in the doorway.

  Her head was inches from his. “I’m going to take you back there,” she said softly and so sweetly that it made his teeth hurt. “But you’re going to have to wait for Richie for about five minutes. He’s still with someone else. Think you can be a good boy for that long?”

  Maybe it was the ironic glint in her amber eyes.

  Maybe it was the proximity of her head to his.

  Maybe it was just for the hell of it.

  He hooked his left hand around her neck and watched her pupils flare. “I’m no boy,” he murmured. “And we both know I can be good.”

  Then he tugged her forward a few inches and caught her mouth with his.

  Chapter Five

  Before her common sense took over, Courtney felt herself sinking oh-so-dangerously into his kiss. Her heart bumped unevenly inside her chest, and her hands found his shoulders, her fingers pressing through his T-shirt to the warmth beneath.

  “Ahem.” The sound vaguely registered. And when it was repeated—who knew how many times—it finally penetrated.

  She straightened like a shot.

  Her gaze skittered over Mason’s face and landed on Wyatt Mead’s. The tall, lanky male nurse had a grin visible above his short goatee and a twinkle in his gray eyes.

  Her lips tingled, but she stared down her coworker as she slipped behind Mason’s chair and somehow managed to wrap her nerveless hands around the handles. “Is Richie ready?”

  Wyatt looked even more amused. “Not as ready as you two, but yeah.”

  Courtney ignored the comment and pushed Mason into the first of the three imaging suites, where Richie was waiting near the X-ray table. Courtney positioned Mason’s chair next to him and, when the technician took over arranging Mason’s arm where he needed, avoided Mason’s gaze as she practically fled from the room.

  Wyatt was waiting in the corridor outside, his eyebrows raised. “Well, well, well,” he teased. “The elusive and untouchable Ms. Clay does like a touch now and then.”

  “Shut up, Wyatt.” She brushed past him, only to turn and give him a pointed glare, complete with pointed finger. “If this gets around, I’ll know exactly who to blame.”

  “Who, me?” He pressed his hand against his chest and tried to look innocent. “All I was doing was coming back to let you know that Rodney will be here soon.” He was the hospital’s on-call orthopedic technician. Whether Mason’s cast needed to be repaired or replaced, Rodney Stewart would be the one to do it.

  “Thank you. But I mean it, Wyatt. Keep your mouth shut, or I’ll make certain that you’ll never get a date with an available girl in this town again.” It wasn’t that Wyatt wasn’t a perfectly good-looking guy. But he was an R.N. and, sad to say, in Weaver, male nurses were still an oddity. Some of the locals were slow to get past it, which is why Courtney had set the guy up on more than one date with a few of her friends. He was shy until you got to know him, and the reports she’d gotten back were that he was fun and interesting, but so far the right match ha
dn’t been made.

  Which was sad, too, because Wyatt was one of those rare breeds of men who wanted a commitment. He wanted a wife and kids and the whole shebang.

  Now, he was just tsking at Courtney as if her threat was beneath her.

  “I don’t gossip,” he said.

  She snorted. “Everyone in this town gossips,” she returned. Next to ranching, it seemed to be the preferred occupation. Even among her own family, the tendency thrived.

  She had no desire for people to start wagging their tongues about her kissing anyone, and even less desire for word of that to reach her family. Considering her mother ran the hospital, it could reach her ears even quicker than most. “I’m just asking you—in this one instance—to forget what you saw.”

  “Get me a date with Dee Crowder.”

  Dee was an elementary school teacher who worked with Courtney’s cousin Sarah Scalise. “Are you trying coercion?”

  “Is it working?”

  “Ask her out yourself, Wyatt. For heaven’s sake, you see her every morning over at Ruby’s when you’re both stopping in for coffee before work.”

  “She’s always flirting with people.”

  “She’d probably flirt with you, too, if you managed to give her a smile instead of just staring into your coffee and mumbling good morning.” From inside the suite, she could hear Richie talking to Mason and knew that he’d be finished soon. “I’ll put a bug in Dee’s ear, okay? But—” she pointed her finger into Wyatt’s face “—not unless you promise.”

  He smiled and crossed his fingers over his heart.

  She exhaled noisily and rolled her eyes heavenward. “You’re a great guy, Wyatt. I wish you’d have a little more confidence in yourself. You’re not shy with me.”

  “Yeah, but you make it easy.” He gave her a wink and walked away.

  “Seems to me you’ve got plenty of guys around here interested in you.”

  She turned and looked at Mason.