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ribs, and he’d make himself a sandwich. And then maybe he’d get twelve hours of shut eye in the room he’d slept in growing up. It was going on noon, and he hadn’t had sleep in more than thirty hours.
    But it wasn’t Thomas he found when he entered the kitchen door. Cat MacKenzie, Thomas’s wife, was behind the stove burning something in the frying pan. Her face was flushed red enough to match her hair and he was surprised he didn’t see smoke coming out of her ears.
    “I don’t understand it,” she yelled. “I can scale a hundred foot wall with suction cups and pick a lock with my eyes closed, but I can’t make a grilled cheese sandwich.”
    Cooper winced at being reminded of what his sister-in-law had once done for a living. Technically she was still a thief, but since she stole for the FBI it wasn’t considered a crime. She’d had to put a halt to her thieving, though, once she’d found out she was pregnant.
    “This is all Thomas’s fault.”
    The pure disgruntlement in that statement had Cooper stifling a laugh.
    “He told me I needed to find something to occupy my time until the baby gets here. He said I could treat it like school and learn the things I never got to when I was growing up. Clearly he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”
    Cooper took pity on her and took her by the shoulders, pushing her towards one of the stools that sat beneath the kitchen island. He took the pan from the stove and went about the task of making them both lunch.
    “How’s Cade doing?” she asked, narrowing her gaze at how easily he flipped the grilled cheese from one side to the other.
    “He’s in and out of it. The bullet that hit his shoulder didn’t do any major damage, but the one that hit his hand tore some tendons. He’s going to have some mobility issues.”
    “Thomas is going up to see him after his last patient is gone. How about you? Are you all right?”
    Having women join the MacKenzie family had been a completely foreign experience to Cooper. He and his brothers were close, but they didn’t talk about their feelings unless they were at gunpoint, and they sure as hell didn’t analyze each other. He’d found out very quickly that the MacKenzie women had no such issues.
    “Yeah, I’m fine. Mostly.” He thought about the look in Claire’s eyes when he’d told her they had no future. The fear that had clutched around his heart when she’d told him she’d made a mistake and didn’t want to see him again.
    “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” he asked.
    “You can always ask me anything, Coop. Even though you’re a cop.”
    Cooper smiled and put a plate of grilled cheese and chips in front of her and sat down with his own lunch.
    “Do you ever worry what would happen to the baby if something happened to you or Thomas? Don’t you think it’s a little unfair to bring a kid into the world knowing that you could end up abandoning him?”
    The reaction he got from Cat was not at all what he’d been expecting. He thought she was going to choke on her sandwich. Laughter rolled from her belly and tears pooled in her eyes. Cooper felt heat crawl up his cheeks and pushed back his stool to get up, but she grabbed his wrist and held him there.
    “Cooper, I love you, even though you took some getting used to at first. I’m sorry I laughed. I know this is serious to you, but that’s the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard. Does this have anything to do with your own feelings after your parents died?”
    Cooper just shot her a narrowed look.
    “Does it have anything to do with you’re the kind of woman you usually gravitate toward and how you like your…extracurricular activities? Why you never bring any one woman around the family and seem incapable of forming any lasting relationships?”
    He growled in annoyance at the way she’d just psychoanalyzed him and put him neatly in a box. Then he watched as sympathy moved through her eyes.
    “Are you asking because of