When he’d left Mabel’s bed that morning (with her only opening one eye to look at her alarm clock, muttering, “Dude, you’re a machine,” then falling right back to sleep), he went direct to his dogs for breakfast, then immediately set out.
So when he got home, he headed to his laptop.
He downloaded the pictures and sent them encrypted to Harry and Rus with the email saying,Got interesting intel to share, may be nothing, so not urgent.
He then texted them both the password to open the encrypted file.
After that, he headed out to the dogs, aggravated, because he was facing a week of four hours a day of client training (including Tonks), on top of feeding, pen cleaning and finding time to get back to his schedule of regular exercise, a board meeting at Stony Bluff, and a two-hour road trip (one way) next Saturday to pick up his next litter.
He also had to find time to be sure the romper room was set up, winterize his house, pick up his own load of firewood and talk Mabel into spending the night away from Moxie because he wanted to fuck her in his bed so when she wasn’t in it, he could smell her on his sheets.
He also had to face Artemis, Major and Blitz’s final departure on Friday, not to mention them each being gone for one full afternoon and one entire evening, his plan to assist the dogs and their new owners in getting to know each other and starting to bond, so the separation from Hutch wasn’t so hard on the animals.
Therefore, he had a busy week, and he’d wanted to start it knowing that he got Harry and Rus the photos they needed to get to work seeing if they could find if the women at The Lion and The Lamb had ever been reported missing.
And he hadn’t accomplished that mission.
But he was normally an in bed no later than ten, out of it no later than five type of guy.And spending his nights banging Mabel was messing with his sleep routine.
And his energy.
It was cute how she teased him, but he wasn’t a machine.He was a thirty-seven-year-old man, and he was beginning to drag.
They needed a chill Sunday.
Lots of sex, but early to fucking bed.
He was drilling Artemis on her stealth crawl when his phone vibrated in his back pocket.
He pulled it out and saw it was Harry.
“Yo, Harry,” he answered.
“Hey, Hutch,” Harry replied.
Hutch was about to mention the email and say what he saw that morning could wait for when it wasn’t a weekend, when Harry spoke.
“Lillian is pregnant.”
He felt a huge grin spread over his face, and he wasn’t so used to the many Mabel had given him the past week not to note in the back of his mind that, since his dad died, he hadn’t done it very often, and now he was doing it all the time.
But now, it was for Harry, who had been through hell, losing his first wife in a horseback riding accident, then he faced a tenure of being a good cop but working for one who was filth.
Not to mention Lillian, who’d been put through it by Karl Abernathy.
They deserved this good news.He didn’t know any who deserved it more.
“Jesus, brother.That’s fantastic,” he said.“Congratulations.”
“Thanks, man.”
“How far along is she?”
“Fifteen weeks.”
Hutch did the mental math then said, “So Baby Moran was a guest at Mom and Dad’s wedding.”
Harry chuckled.“Lillian didn’t know it yet, but…yeah.”
