Page 5 of A Baby for the Firefighter

“Be careful please.”

“I'm always careful!”

Right...

We trudged on further up the hill. As we went, Jake stopped pointing out animals. At one point, he even went up close to a tree with a bird in it, but it flew away. I had the hardest time not feeling alittlehappy about his prey getting away.

“Hey, stop laughing!” Jake complained. “This is hard!”

“Sorry. But yeah it is. Makes it all the more rewarding when you snap the perfect shot, though,” I promised. Really, that was my favorite thing about these trips. I wasn't in love with hiking, or with the idea of getting up at the break of dawn, but if that meant I could capture the beauty of a perfect sunrise on a photograph? Totally worth the pain. Critters were tricky, because they moved, but I'd hoped that would make the day less boring to Jake.

But even giving him animals to stalk wasn't enough to keep the energetic boy quiet. Not entirely.

“Uncle Griff?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you sad that we moved out?”

One of my eyebrows went up. Had his daddy told him to ask me that? “Are you sad?” I turned the question back on him.

“I miss watching cartoons with you.”

Awww.“But we still do that!” I would never give up watching cartoons with my nephew. I dreaded the day he decided he was too old for it.

“But not on Sunday mornings when Daddy wants to sleep in.”

He had a point there. My Sunday mornings were pretty boring these days. “Maybe you should stay over next weekend. How would you like that?” His old room was still empty. Honestly, I had too much space.

“How about this weekend?” Jake asked.

“I uh... kind of have plans this weekend.”

Don't blush, Griff. You're not doing anything worth blushing over.My cheeks heated up so quickly it was ridiculous. I only hoped Jake was still too young to draw any conclusions from that.

“What kind of plans?” The boy regarded me curiously. “Can I come?”

“I'm doing something with a friend.”A friend and nothing more than a friend.“Don't tell your daddy about it, okay?”

Jake's eyes went wide. “Is it a secret?”

Oh no, now I'd really sparked his curiosity. “It's not a secret,” I said quickly. “I just don't think he needs to know.” Really, all I had planned was a movie night with a friend, but if Eli heard of it, he would get it all wrong. Dean wasn't my boyfriend, and we weren't going to be a thing, but try telling my brother that. I only had to shake an alpha's hand and Eli heard wedding bells in his head.

Just becausehe'dgotten married. Didn't mean I was going to. I didn't care what people said, there was no reason an alpha and an omega couldn’t just be friends.

Even if that alpha was hot as hell and shaking his hand gave me all sorts of conflicting feelings I didn’t want to think about. Truth was, I'd brought him garlic bread on our last meeting just to make him stop smelling so damn alpha. That smell always made me want to do things I wasn’t sure I should.

Things I wasn’tbraveenough to do, anyway.

“So can I come?” Jake asked again, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“We'll be staying up very late.”

“I don't mind staying up late.”

Of course he didn't. “Your daddy will mind.”

Jake grinned. “I'll keep your secret if you keep mine.”