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  There was no future for Courtney with him, and she was the kind of woman who deserved a future.

  She was young and beautiful and caring and came from a strong, close family.

  He was past young, scarred up on the inside, as well as the out, and the only family he knew—or who mattered to him—was the family of Hollins-Winword security agency.

  It was a fact of life that was easy enough to remember when he was usually a continent or two away from her.

  But sprawled across a bed under her roof?

  That was an entirely different matter.

  She reappeared in the doorway with a gigantic Saint Bernard at her side.

  “You didn’t get a dog.” Mason eyed the shaggy beast. “You got a damn horse.”

  She grinned, bringing a surprising impishness to her oval face and tucked her long, golden hair behind her ear.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Dear Reader,

  This year marks the thirteenth year I’ve been blessed to be able to share the Double-C Ranch “family” with all of you. When I started out, I had no idea what a wonderful adventure it would all turn out to be—and continues to be, every single day. Though I certainly hoped that you would welcome the family into your lives, I could never have come close to understanding how wonderful it would be knowing just what a special home these people would find with you.

  Now, here we are again, with Courtney Clay, who is settling into the home and the future she wants to make. And with Mason Hyde—who has as little idea when he starts out how much he wants that home to be with him as I did when I started out more than a decade ago.

  And so their adventure begins….

  Thank you for being there to share it!

  Allison

  COURTNEY’S BABY PLAN

  ALLISON LEIGH

  Books by Allison Leigh

  Harlequin Special Edition

  §The Rancher’s Dance #2110

  §Courtney’s Baby Plan #2132

  Silhouette Special Edition

  †Stay… #1170

  †The Rancher and the Redhead #1212

  †A Wedding for Maggie #1241

  †A Child for Christmas #1290

  Millionaire’s Instant Baby #1312

  †Married to a Stranger #1336

  Mother in a Moment #1367

  Her Unforgettable Fiancé #1381

  The Princess and the Duke #1465

  Montana Lawman #1497

  Hard Choices #1561

  Secretly Married #1591

  Home on the Ranch #1633

  The Truth About the Tycoon #1651

  All He Ever Wanted #1664

  The Tycoon’s Marriage Bid #1707

  A Montana Homecoming #1718

  ‡Mergers & Matrimony #1761

  Just Friends? #1810

  †Sarah and the Sheriff #1819

  †Wed in Wyoming #1833

  **A Cowboy Under Her Tree #1869

  ††The Bride and the Bargain #1882

  *The Boss’s Christmas Proposal #1940

  §Valentine’s Fortune #1951

  †A Weaver Wedding #1965

  †A Weaver Baby #2000

  †A Weaver Holiday Homecoming #2015

  ‡‡The Billionaire’s Baby Plan #2048

  ††Once Upon a Proposal #2078

  §§Fortune’s Proposal #2090

  ALLISON LEIGH

  There is a saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. Allison doesn’t believe that, but she does believe that you can never have enough books! When her stories find a way into the hearts—and bookshelves—of others, Allison says she feels she’s done something right. Making her home in Arizona with her husband, she enjoys hearing from her readers at [email protected] or P.O. Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772.

  For my family.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  It all started with a kiss.

  A twenty-dollar kiss, to be precise.

  Courtney Clay inhaled carefully and stared up at the man standing outside her apartment door. She didn’t do this sort of thing…inviting strange men into her home during the wee hours. Or any hour, for that matter.

  But then Mason Hyde wasn’t entirely a stranger. He was a friend of her cousin’s, after all.

  And he could kiss like nobody she’d ever met.

  The statement whispered through her mind, tempting.

  She straightened her fingers, then curled them once more around the doorknob. “Do you want to come in?”

  His eyes were deep shadows despite the porch light burning brightly above her front door. “Yes.” His voice was deep. Blunt. And—as it had struck her from the first moment she’d encountered him—entrancingly melodious. That first time, when she’d heard him speaking to someone else, she’d thought how his voice didn’t seem to quite match his almost dangerous-looking appearance.

  The second time, just that afternoon when he’d stopped in front of her kissing booth at the town’s Valentine’s Day festival, plunked down a twenty for a five-dollar kiss and told her with a crooked smile that she could keep the change, she’d realized just how perfectly his voice did fit him.

  And even though there had been a narrow table between them on which that twenty-dollar bill rested, she’d felt something curl inside her when he’d spoken. And something curl even more tightly when his eyes had stared into hers.

  Her knees had felt a little shaky. Her stomach had danced a little nervously. And her voice had risen about half an octave when she’d thanked him for his generous donation on behalf of the local school that was benefiting from the funds being raised that day.

  But then his lips had tilted a little crookedly, which seemed to make the thin scar that slashed down his face from his right temple to his jaw even more apparent, and he’d leaned across the table toward her and brushed his lips gently…simply…across hers.

  And that’s where her memory stopped dead in its tracks.

  The contact of his lips on hers had simply caused every cell in her brain to short-circuit.

  Which is what had led them here.

  To this moment.

  With him standing at her door in the wee hours of the night, exactly twenty minutes after she’d gotten off her shift at the hospital. Exactly where—and when—she’d uncharacteristically invited him, in a rushed, quiet voice, lest anyone else around the kissing booth hear her, after he’d murmured that he’d really like to see her again. Somewhere. Anywhere that didn’t involve a line of ten guys—young and old—who were happy to hand over a few bucks to kiss a pretty nurse.

  Now, though, despite saying that he did want to come inside, he hadn’t moved so much as an inch. Instead, he was watching her intently with those eyes that she knew from the kissing booth were a startlingly pale green against his olive-toned skin.

  “Are you sure you want me to come in? I’m not going to want to leave anytime soon. We could go out somewhere. Have some coffee.”

  She hadn’t expected that. Her moist hand tightened around the door handle as she continued looking up at him. She was tall. But he was a whole lot taller. A whole lot broader.

  Go somewhere for coffee? Somewhere safe. Somewhere innocuous. Or invite him in?

  She didn’t have indiscriminate encounters with near strangers. She didn’t do anything in
her life that wasn’t well thought-out. Well planned.

  But she didn’t want to go to the all-night coffee shop and sit across a table from him pretending that all she wanted was conversation and coffee.

  She wanted his long arms wrapped around her.

  Wanted to be held against his wide, wide chest.

  Wanted his warm lips on hers.

  She wanted. Period.

  More than ever before in her life.

  And even though her heart bumped nervously inside her chest, she moved her bare feet, stepping back as she pulled the door fully open.

  “Yes.” Her voice was soft but clear. “I’m sure.”

  His lips slowly tilted and he stepped inside.

  Without a word, he reached for her with one hand, and with the other, he pushed the door closed.

  Chapter One

  “No,” Mason Hyde said adamantly as he stared up at his boss. And he hoped to hell he showed none of the alarm he was feeling. “You can’t fire me.”

  “You insist on checking yourself out against medical advice and I’ll have no choice.” Coleman Black’s voice was flat. Unmoved. “I don’t need stupid agents. What I do need is you recovered and healthy, Mase.” The gray-haired man frowned and moved across the hospital room, finally showing some emotion—even if Mason figured it was only irritation. “You just had surgery yesterday,” Cole pointed out. “And two days before that, you were still in the hospital in Barcelona.”

  Mason grimaced and looked away. Maybe stupid was the perfect word to describe his desperation to get out of the hospital, but if anyone should understand why he needed to get out…get away…it should have been Cole.

  Yeah, he was Mason’s boss. But he was also Mason’s friend. And Mason didn’t have many people in his life that he considered a friend. He had even fewer people in his life who knew his history like Cole did.

  “I don’t want to end up like I did before,” he muttered, and hated that the admission made him feel weak.

  Cole glanced at the open door to Mason’s room and shook his head. “Maybe if you told the hospital what your history is, why you keep refusing the—”

  “No.” Mason cut the other man off. It had been ten years, for God’s sake. But right now, lying there in a hospital bed while pain racked every corner of his body, it felt as if it were just yesterday.

  Yesterday, when he’d been in another hospital—only that trip had been courtesy of an explosion rather than a deadly aimed SUV. Then, he’d been shot full of endless painkillers. Painkillers that had become the only thing he’d been able to think about and just about the only thing he’d been able to care about. He’d ended up losing everything—except his job—that really had mattered to him.

  He’d be damned if he’d head down that road again.

  And he’d be damned if he’d admit to anyone now what a hole he’d had to climb out of before. Particularly his doctors. “It has nothing to do with anything now,” he muttered.

  Cole raised his eyebrows and pointedly eyed the contraption that held Mason’s casted left leg at a strange angle above the bed. A triangular bar was also suspended above Mason’s chest, allowing the big man something to grab on to with his left hand, since his right was also in a long cast. “I believe the entire medical community would disagree,” he said drily. Then he sighed, knowing that there were some arguments that never would work with Mason. The man marched to his own drummer.

  The phone inside his lapel pocket was vibrating. Had been ever since he’d walked into Mason’s hospital room ten minutes earlier. As the head of Hollins-Winword, he had at least fifty things that needed his immediate attention. Yet he was here, standing in a hospital room having a battle of wills with one of his most talented—and most stubborn—agents.

  He stifled a sigh again. It was no coincidence, he supposed, that talent and stubborn seemed to generally go hand in hand. An agent had to have a strong will to work in the field. Cole didn’t want to have anyone under his watch who didn’t have a strong will.

  But right now, that particular trait was causing him no small amount of consternation.

  “Well, the doctors are up to you as long as you’re inside these walls. But once you go AWOL from this place, your recuperation is up to me. And I’m telling you that you don’t have a choice. Either you give up the notion of not needing any more medical care, or you won’t have a job to come back to.

  At the best of times, Mason’s face was stoic. Cole had known the man since long before he’d acquired the thin scar that extended nearly the entire side of his face, so he knew that basic expression wasn’t owed to the scar. And now, given the situation, Mason’s face had all of the animation of the grim reaper.

  “You can’t fire me.” Mason’s voice was low. Gruff.

  Which meant he was actually worried that Cole would.

  And much as it pained him, that’s what they both needed right now. “I can and I will,” he assured flatly. Though he wasn’t quite sure how. But Cole hadn’t gotten to where he was without mastering the art of a bluff. Not that he was bluffing, exactly. He truly did not want to lose Mason as an agent. Whether he was profiling maniacal nuts or invisibly protecting people who weren’t easy to protect, the guy had a talent that went miles beyond training. It was instinctive. As if he’d been bred into it.

  But more importantly, Cole didn’t want to lose Mason, period. And the damn fool was likely to kill himself at the rate he was going.

  The annoyance of his buzzing cell finally drove him to pull it out of his pocket and glance at the display. More crises that, at least, had nothing to do with his business with Mason. He pocketed the phone. “Be glad you have alternatives,” he continued. “I know Axel Clay has talked to you. Considering everything, getting out of Connecticut and lying low in Wyoming for a few months while you recover seems an excellent idea to me.”

  Mason slid him a look. Trust Cole to hedge around until he got to the crux of the matter. The older man had obviously been a spy for too damn long. How else had he known that he and Ax had spoken?

  He started to reach for the bar to shift in the bed, but just thinking about lifting his arm above his shoulder sent a shock wave down his spine. Instead, he curled his good hand into a fist and breathed through the pain, reminding himself that feeling that pain was a helluva lot better than ending up addicted to painkillers again, and feeling only the uncontrollable urge for another numbing pill. “Bugging the hospital telephone, Cole?”

  His boss didn’t answer that. “His solution is pretty damn perfect, far as I’m concerned. Not only will you be under the watchful eye of a nurse without having to stay in the hospitals you detest, but you’ll get some peace from the media hounds here.”

  “I’ve had enough of nurses, thanks.” At any other time, Mason might—might—have found the double entendre humorous, but right then, he couldn’t muster it. “I’ll be bored crazy in Wyoming,” he lied. Nothing had been boring the last time he’d been there over a year and a half ago.

  The other man just shrugged. “Then you get yourself transferred to a twenty-four-hour care center whether you like it or not or you stay here, ’cause you’re not going to your own place. I know you. You go to that box you call a home, and you’ll do too much before you should and end up back here again even worse off than you are now.”

  If it weren’t for the heavy-duty antibiotics that were being intravenously pumped into him, Mason wouldn’t even have to be in the hospital. The collision between his body and the SUV he’d jumped in front of had happened a week ago. The most recent surgery that he’d had to finish putting Humpty Dumpty back together again was the last one he was supposed to need. And if he hadn’t gotten the infection that necessitated that surgery, his doctors and his nurses would have been glad to see the last of him the minute they’d finished wrapping half his body in plaster.

  “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” he muttered. The longer he stayed in the hospital, the worse he felt. But if he left on his own, Cole would cut him
off from the only thing that mattered to him.

  “I’ll check on you tomorrow morning.” Obviously unmoved, Cole headed toward the doorway of Mason’s private room. “Either have a plan in place or give me your resignation.” His voice was hard, and without another glance his way, the man walked out of the room.

  Mason leaned his head back and let out a long, colorful oath.

  Agents who pushed Cole hard got pushed back hard. And more than a few good ones had ended up walking away from the agency that had been the center of Mason’s life for so many years.

  He wasn’t going to be one of them.

  He grimaced and threw his good arm over his eyes. He could feel panic nibbling at the edges of his sanity.

  And Mason wasn’t a man who panicked.

  Admitting it, even to himself, was damn hard.

  But not as hard as it had been to kick an addiction that had ruled his life for eighteen months. And right now, ten years or not, he was craving a narcotic numbness as badly as he ever had.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Hyde. How are we feeling today?” The young nurse who came into the room on her squeaking, rubber-soled shoes greeted him in a revoltingly cheerful voice. One corner of Mason’s brain had to give the kid credit for maintaining that unswerving cheer when dealing with him. He knew he wasn’t an easy patient.

  “When you have a dozen broken bones, we will talk about it,” he said wearily. He wasn’t interested in watching her as she fussed around him—even if she was about as cute as a fresh-faced cheerleader—and closed his eyes.

  She didn’t reply, but he could still hear her moving around and feel her faint touch as she checked this and adjusted that. Which meant maybe the kid did have the ability to learn.

  “You know, Mr. Hyde,” she said after a moment, proving that he’d overestimated, “I couldn’t help but hear a little bit of your conversation with your visitor.”

  He opened his eyes and watched her.

  She smiled tentatively, looking more than a little nervous. “I was out in the hall waiting to come in and change your IV bag. Anyway,” she rushed on, “I’m supposed to help convince you that it’s in your best interests to stay with us for a while longer, but I do know some really good nurses who provide home health care if you’d like some names.”