Alien vs. Alien

weeks.”
    “To make sure I wasn’t doing the horizontal mambo with Len, Kyle, or Malcolm?” I asked, a tad more sarcastically than I’d intended.
    “No.” Of course, his eyes now weren’t meeting mine. Most A-Cs couldn’t lie to save their or anyone else’s lives, and Jeff was pretty much the prime example of this lack of skill.
    I snorted. “Right, because my husband, Monsieur Jealousy, would
never
worry about something like that.”
    Jeff sighed. “I trust you, baby, I do. I just . . . I needed to be sure. I haven’t really seen you for so long . . .”
    I leaned my head against his chest and let the sound of his heartbeats calm me. It felt so nice to be together again, I didn’t want to bicker or fight. “I know. I’ve missed you so much.”
    “I know.” He kissed the top of my head. “I could feel it. I could also feel that Jamie wasn’t in pain.”
    “Your parents didn’t want to take the chance that we were wrong and that she might still have issues, and I didn’t want to get your hopes up, or mine, and then have to say, ‘Oh, sorry, false alarm.’ It’s been fine being here, but it sucks without you.”
    “I understand. And I can’t really blame you, either. We brought Tito, Emily, and Melanie with us. They’re with Jamie right now.”
    I looked up. “Really? So, if Jamie checks out, we can all go home?”
    Jeff grinned. “Yep. There’s no way I’m leaving my wife and child here any longer unless I absolutely have to. You’re not the only one who’s felt lonely in a room full of other people.”
    It was nice to know he’d missed me as much as I’d missed him. The desire to rip his clothes off and see if we could figure out when the naked pics of me had been taken by reviewing our entire sexual repertoire was pretty much overwhelming.
    Jeff’s eyes smoldered, and he got the sexy “jungle cat about to eat me” look on his face. I loved that look. I’d missed that look for four straight weeks.
    We’d have undoubtedly gone for it, people waiting for us in the dining room or not, but there was a knock on the door.
    Jeff heaved a sigh and let me out of his arms. I managed to refrain from snarling when I opened the door. “Oh, hi, Tito.”
    Tito Hernandez had joined us in Vegas, when some of the many invading bad guys had tried to kill another one of my best friends. Tito had been working three jobs while going to medical school, while cage fighting on the side for fun. Now he was a full-time doctor who still practiced mixed martial arts because he used it regularly—not in the octagon so much as a part of our daily lives.
    “Sorry to interrupt,” he said in a tone that indicated he really wasn’t. “But I figured you’d want to know Jamie’s test results right away.”
    I tried not to tense and failed if Jeff massaging the back of my neck was any indication. “Is she okay?”
    Tito grinned. “She’s fine. It looks like she’s past all the teething she’s going to do for a good long while.”
    I contemplated jumping up and down but figured I’d save my energy for sex. “So we get to go home?”
    “Whenever you want.”
    “Now’s good.”
    Jeff chuckled. “Right after lunch.”
    ="2em"> I sighed. “And here you said you missed me.”

    Yi

CHAPTER 6

    T HE THREE OF US JOINED EVERYONE ELSE in the dining room. Jamie was there sitting on Lucinda’s lap, and she made her “Daddy’s here!” sounds at the top of her lungs.
    Jeff zipped over, and took her out of his mother’s arms, then he and Jamie had some serious Daddy and Daughter Love Time.
    Lucinda took the opportunity. “So, Christopher, we’ve been discussing a wedding party.”
    Amy put on a fake smile while I cringed inside. When I’d first met her, Lucinda hadn’t liked me at all, and the feeling had been mutual. But we’d gotten past that before my wedding, and these days I got along with my mother-in-law pretty well.
    However, Amy and Christopher had made the decision to get married without any fanfare, based on Amy’s quite accurate belief that any time all of us were dressed up some big fugly attacked or politician went nuts.
    This decision had sat just fine with White, Christopher’s father, but not with his aunt and uncle. Because Christopher was also part of the Royal Family of Alpha Four, they’d expected to host a huge wedding for him and Amy. They’d apparently been looking forward to it, especially Lucinda, since she would get to do the mother of the groom job again, because