“I don’t know.” Cathy brushed her fingertip across the baby’s cheek. “We’d thought we’d name him Sam, but—”
“Awful name, I dated a girl named Sam once.” Knox shook his head. “Try something else.”
“What about Jeremy?” Craig asked, his arm draped over the other chair to hold the baby’s fingers.”
Cathy stared at the now sleepy baby. “I like Jeremy.”
“I like it, too,” Irina said as the plane touched down.
More than she’d ever realized.
Chapter Eleven
KNOX
“It’s not a big deal,”Knox said as the driver merged onto I-70.
“You’re right. It’s a huge deal.” Irina smiled at him from across the bench seat. There was loads of room in the back of the Escalade, and since they’d left the airport and prying eyes, she’d given him space.
He didn’t love it.
Didn’t love that the adrenaline had worn off of the delivery, leaving room for lots of thoughts to creep in. Linx’s wife would probably call them intrusive thoughts, or some shit like that.
Honestly, the baby delivery thing left him a little rattled. There’d been a second when he worried the bleeding wouldn’t stop with the afterbirth, and he’d be responsible for being an idiot who thought he could handle more than he actually could.
He’d always tended to jump and then look to see where he might land. Usually, that worked out for him. But afterward he realized exactly how far he’d jumped and the risks he’d taken, and then the probably-shouldn’t-have-done-that crept in.
“What other skills have you been hiding?” Irina asked playfully, unaware of his internal freak-out.
He liked the playful and the way it distracted him from…himself. His body also liked the playful, maybe a little too much. Because while the question wasn’t seductive, this was Irina, and he was all kinds of turned on and turned around when they were together lately.
He opened his mouth to say something inappropriate about bedroom skills, but decided against it.
“That’s it.” He did his best to plaster on his happy-go-lucky face. “I can help in an emergency, and write a killer riff.” He’d gone for happy, but it sounded kinda sad, even to him.
“Help?” Irina lifted her eyebrows. “You did more than help. You are a hero.”
That killed the dose of turned-on he’d been nursing, and made him itch all over. He was nobody’s hero.
Didn’t want to be a hero or accept the responsibility that came along with it.
He’d just been in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how a guy looked at it.
“Hey.” Irina used her fingertip against his jaw to turn his face to hers. “What’s going on?”
He liked the little touch. Maybe it was platonic and perhaps it was the kind of thing she’d have done for anyone. Even him, long before they decided to get married. All the same, dammit, he enjoyed her touch.
“Nothing’s going on.” He turned back to the window to count the cars they passed.
He hadn’t done the car counting thing since he was a kid.
“What is so interesting out there?” Irina peeked around him to glance out the window.
“When I was a kid, I used to count the number of cars that passed when I’d be doing the parent swap on Saturdays.” Back then it was easier to count than to think about what he left behind and what came next. Because he never really fully knew what came next. “It was easier than being angry.”
“It’s okay to be angry when your parents are going through a divorce,” Irina said, moving her hand to his and giving him a squeeze.
He shook his head. “They didn’t need that from me. They needed me to be a good kid, so that’s what I was.”
