James couldn’t help it. He grinned. That firm, no-nonsense tone of voice was the Harper he knew. Plus her continued use of “we” made him happier than he would have expected. Not to mention that she had not suggested they turn the baby over to social services in the event they couldn’t find his mother. She didn’t seem to be entertaining the idea that he should be with anyone other than them, no matter whether they found his mom or not. He might be the one who could step in and handle things like blow-out diapers, but Harper was an intelligent, extremely capable woman who could help him with the other details. Like attorneys. And math homework. When it was time for that.
He really wanted her to still be around when it was time for that.
“We do,” he agreed. He looked from her big brown eyes to the baby who was now sucking on his fist with his nose nuzzled against Harper’s neck.
Yeah, he’d be pretty content right in that spot, too.
“What do you need to examine him?” Harper asked Lexi, breaking eye contact with James after a long moment.
“Let’s get some towels and blankets to pad the table,” Lexi said, shifting into professional gear. “Do you have a scale?” she asked James.
“A scale?” he repeated.
“To weigh things?” Lexi asked.
“I do,” Harper said.
“You’ll have to just step on it without him and then with him, and we’ll use the difference,” Lexi said.
Harper nodded and turned to head for her apartment. James started after her.
“Need help?”
Harper turned to him. “To step on a scale?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Yeah.”
“No.”
“I can… come anyway.”
“I will not be telling you what I weigh, James,” Harper said.
He let his gaze travel over her blatantly. “Not too much for me to lift up against the wall, Professor.”
Instead of blushing or even shooting a glance in the direction of their audience, she said, “Good thing, since I’ve got some shower-wall ideas after last night.” Then she looked at the doorknob.
Grinning, James twisted it and pulled the door open for her.
“Stay here,” she told him as she headed across the landing.
He was still grinning when he turned back to his friends.
“She can totally handle you, can’t she?” Lexi asked, her hand on her hip, looking pleased and amused.
“Totally,” James agreed.
“Shower-wall ideas after last night?” Logan asked.
“You’re a charming son of a bitch,” James told him. “But I managed to make a woman want me even when there were poopy baby diapers involved.”
Caleb laughed, but Lexi shrugged. “I wanted Caleb the minute he offered to take a look at my piece-of-crap car, but the first time I really wanted to tear my clothes off was when I walked in and found him cleaning up poop.”
Caleb looked surprised. “Really?”
“Really. Jack had been fussy all day and clearly wasn’t feeling well, but you insisted I bring him over anyway and go to class. I came to your house that evening, and you had him and Shay in the tub and were cleaning up the floor. For about five seconds I wondered what would happen if I just took my clothes off.”
Caleb’s eyes darkened. “I would have…” He paused then blew out a breath. “Dammit. I wouldn’t have done anything because we couldn’t have left the kids.”
She nodded. “Probably ninety percent of the reason I didn’t do it.”
“The other ten percent?” Caleb asked, his voice a little gruff.
“I didn’t know how you felt.”
Caleb didn’t say anything. His jaw tightened. Then he nodded. “I didn’t know how I felt either.”
Lexi gave him a soft smile. “I know.”
James turned wide eyes to Logan. Logan sighed. “Yes, they’re always like this now.”
James saw Caleb a lot at the station but didn’t see him and Lexi together that much. Logan saw them as a couple more often because of the support group they all attended. It had started as a single-parent support group and was where Lexi and Caleb had met. Dana, Logan’s wife, and Logan’s brother, Gabe, had met there as well, and Logan had come to some of the family events with his brother and nephew. The group continued to meet but had evolved into more of a group of friends who still shared their parenting struggles but also supported each other through everything else life threw their way—the good and the bad.
“That was a long time ago,” Caleb said, clearly still thinking about what Lexi had said.
She laughed softly. “Yeah.”
“You’ve been wanting to take your clothes off for me for that long?”
“For sure.”
Caleb cleared his throat and looked at James. “Sometimes they just cry. For no reason. It’s okay. No one will die. You can’t really hold them too much, no matter what some people say. Sleep whenever you can. No one really knows what they’re doing, so don’t worry too much.”
“What are you doing?” James asked.
“Giving you all my advice now. Lexi and I are heading out as soon as she’s done with the exam.”
Logan laughed. “Kids are with Bea?”
“Yep,” Caleb said simply.
“Bea?” James asked.
“Bea is from the support group,” Lexi explained, her cheeks a little pink. “She takes the kids when neither of us can.”
Great. So Caleb and Lexi were heading home to have sex. He didn’t need to know that.
“So, Lexi,” James said, changing the subject. “If he’s two or three weeks old, that means he was conceived nine months ago, right?”
Lexi shook her head. “It’s not that easy. A typical pregnancy is forty weeks, actually. He doesn’t show signs of being premature—not that we can tell that for sure—but assuming he wasn’t, then he could have been born anywhere from maybe three weeks early to two weeks late.”
“So thirty-eight to forty-three weeks ago?” Caleb asked, doing the calculation quickly.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
James rolled his neck. “Okay, so that’s… what? A five-week window?”
“Give or take,” Lexi agreed.
James sighed. “Give or take how much?”
“Another week or two on either side.”
Dammit.
“How many women is that?” Logan asked with a grin.
James shook his head. He didn’t know for sure. It’s not like he penciled the women in on a planner or even on his phone. He met women. He flirted. If he wanted to sleep with them and they wanted to sleep with him and the opportunity arose, they did. But sometimes those things didn’t all line up.
“I don’t know. Two? Three?” He couldn’t be sure. But that was probably a decent guess.
“That’s it?” Logan gave him a fake shocked look.
“I actually sleep alone almost every night,” James said. “And I do see women more than once. Sometimes.” James wasn’t grinning. This was going to be a pain in the ass. He was going to have to actually get a calendar out and try to remember what he’d been doing and where ten months ago.