Their Baby Girl...?: The Baby Mission / Her Baby Secret

And missed out on what was probably the greatest experience of his life.

He smiled to himself as they all got out and he hurried behind the gurney. It made him glad that for once he had been slow to follow through on his original instincts.

Warrick stepped out of the way to allow the paramedics to slide C.J.’s gurney into the ambulance. At that moment, as he watched, she looked very vulnerable. It placed her in an entirely new light for him. She’d probably punch him out if she knew what he was thinking, he thought. But that didn’t change the fact that he had an overwhelming desire to be there for her, to somehow shield her, although from what he hadn’t the vaguest idea.

Had to be the high he was still running on because of the delivery, he decided.

With the gurney secured in place, Warrick started to climb into the ambulance.

The paramedic beside C.J. placed a hand out to block his entrance. “Only relatives ride in the back with the patient.” He cocked his head, scrutinizing him. “You her husband, buddy?”

“That’s Special Agent Buddy,” C.J. informed him. “And he’s my partner.”

Unconvinced as to the propriety of all this, the attendant raised his brow. “Like a life partner?”

Warrick glanced toward C.J. and saw that she was looking at him, amusement highlighting her exhausted features. That she could smile after what she’d just been through amazed him.

“Maybe as in life sentence,” he cracked. “We work together.”

That settled it for the attendant. He reached for the doors, ready to pull them shut. “Sorry, then you’ve got to follow behind in your car.”

Warrick was quick to get his hand up, blocking the doors before they closed. He looked at C.J. Hers was the only opinion that mattered in this. “You want me in the ambulance?”

Under normal circumstances, her answer would have been flippant. But these weren’t normal circumstances. She was feeling elated and teary and a hundred other things. She needed someone there with her to run interference until she could pull herself together. “Yes.”

Warrick looked meaningfully at the paramedic. “Then, it’s settled.”

The paramedic raised his hands, surrendering and backing off. “Sorry, just stating company policy, Special Agent.”

“I’ll take it up with your boss,” Warrick said, climbing on.

The trip to Blair Memorial Hospital took just long enough for Warrick to make the necessary call to her parents. He left it up to Diane to notify the others, knowing it would probably take a matter of seconds.

He was right. C.J.’s family converged on the hospital less than ten minutes after the front desk had found a room for her on the maternity floor.

The six-foot-two nurse with the kindly smile had no sooner helped C.J. slip into bed than Warrick was knocking on the door. He peered into the room just as she said, “Come in.”

Some of C.J.’s color was returning, he noted. She was beginning to look like her old self again. Feisty and contrary. He felt relieved. “Got some people out here who for reasons beyond me seem to be awfully anxious to see you. Can they come in?”

As independent of ties as she liked to pretend to be, C.J. had to admit that it felt good to know that she had family close by who cared about her. “I guess we can’t keep them out, can we?”

“You just try, sweetheart,” her father said, pushing past Warrick as he sailed into the room. Nodding at the nurse who was a shade taller than he was, James Jones elbowed his way next to the bed and took one of his daughter’s hands into both of his. His blue eyes crinkled, barely disguising the concern etched on his face. “How are you, darlin’?”

“Tired.” C.J. tried to rally, summoning what energy she could. Her brothers surrounded her bed, leaving a space for her mother directly opposite her father. “How did you all manage to get here so fast?”

“Dad broke a few speed limits,” Diane told her, attempting to look annoyed but not quite pulling it off. “What are you doing, having this baby without me? I thought I was supposed to be your coach.”

C.J. glanced at Warrick who was standing at the foot of her bed behind one of her brothers. “I had to settle for second best.”

Diane turned her attention to the man she had taken aside and charged with her daughter’s care the very first time she’d met him. “Thank God you were there to help her, Byron.”

C.J.’s eyes shifted toward her partner. As ever, the use of his given name didn’t seem to faze him when her mother called him by it. It still amazed her. She supposed he more or less considered her family to be his own. Her brothers were his friends, and her mother and father were like a second set of parents to him.

Or maybe even a first set from the little she’d managed to get out of him about his childhood. Warrick had been an only child. An accident of nature was the way he had put it once. His parents had kept him, much the way a customer keeps an item they’d accidentally broken in a shop and were forced to pay for. The relationship was that sterile.

There was no mention of love, of affection existing in his past, even remotely. He rarely spoke about them, even when she asked him direct questions. His father had died some years back and his mother had remarried and was living out of the country. Even that had not come firsthand to her. Warrick had told her mother one rainy Sunday afternoon after watching a football game on TV with the male contingent of her family.

It amazed C.J. how much information her mother could get out of her closemouthed partner. There were times when she honestly thought her mother had missed her calling, although, to hear Diane Jones tell it, being the wife of a prominent criminal lawyer and the mother of three more, plus another potential up-and-coming barrister as well as an FBI agent, was more than satisfying enough for her.

That her mother added her as an addendum was just a trademark of her sense of humor. C.J. knew that her mother doted so much on her that it was difficult for the woman not to show it.

Warrick shrugged carelessly at her mother’s comment. “C.J. did most of the work.”

“Most of it?” C.J. hooted. “Ha! I did all of it.”

“Knowing C.J., you’re lucky to have come out of the ordeal alive,” Brian, her oldest brother, said to Warrick.

Warrick poked his tongue into his cheek. “She did get a little testy.”

“Spoken like a typical man,” C.J. countered. “You try pushing out an elephant through a keyhole, see how cheerful you stay.”

Ever the referee even after her children were grown, Diane held up her hands, waving all involved parties into silence.

“Enough. The bottom line is that the baby’s here, Chris is all right, and we’re all together.” She laced her arm through her husband’s, glowing with contentment. “So, have you decided what my new granddaughter’s name is?”

C.J. shook her head. Ever mindful of the possibility that something might go wrong, she had refused to think of any names for either sex while she was pregnant. “No, not yet.”

Her father looked at her, his disappointment apparent. “Not even one name? Oh, Christmas, you even put that off?”

C.J. shut her eyes. Christmas Morgan were her official given names, laid on her by an act of whimsy on her father’s part because she’d been born on Christmas morning.

When she opened her eyes again, it was to look at the guilty party. “Well, when I do come up with a name, it’s going to be a hell of a lot better than ‘Christmas,’ I can promise you that.”

Warrick grinned. He knew this was a really sensitive topic for her. “What’s the matter with being called Christmas? Although I have to admit, it doesn’t exactly suit you.”

“And just exactly what is that supposed to mean?” she wanted to know.

Ethan nudged Jamie, the baby of the family. “Nice to see that the miracle of birth hasn’t changed you any, Chris.”

She was feeling better already. Having her family here was the best medicine of all. “Maybe growing up in a houseful of boys had something to do with that,” she pointed out. “I had to be twice as good as each of you just to hold my own.”

“Your own what?” Jamie cracked. As the youngest, he was forever struggling to find his own place in a family of overachievers. The fact that at six-five, he towered over all of them helped to help balance things out.

“Her own everything,” Wayne said. With two brothers born before him and a sister and brother born after, Wayne was the most even tempered of the family, given to thinking twice before speaking once. It was a trait his mother often wished out loud had been spread out amid her other children. Moving forward, Wayne brushed a kiss on his sister’s forehead. “Get some rest, kid. You look like hell.”

“Thanks.” Her eyes met her brother’s. “You always did know what to say to perk a girl right up.”

“Why don’t we all leave and let Chris get some well-deserved rest?” Diane suggested.