Page 12 of Red Boar's Baby

For tact’s sake, and also because Diana had a strong throwing arm, Costa decided not to point out that nothing about the way she was telling this story helped with that impression. “Do you have any baby supplies at all?”

“Oh right, Luis gave me a couple of extra diapers. He keeps some stuff around. I should probably go out and get them,” Diana said. She set down her whiskey glass.

“Maybe first you can tell me why in the Sam hill—” Costa always found himself turning into his granddad when he was irritated and trying to keep a lid on it. “—you walked off a crash site with a baby? Did you actually find herina crashed airplane?”

“In the brush near it,” Diana said. “Oh wait, I left something out?—”

“You think? Just one thing?”

“She shifted when I found her. I think she must’ve shifted and got out of the crash that way.”

“Oh, she’s a shifter,” Costa said. He should have realized; now that Diana mentioned it, he felt the slight frisson of recognition that shifters felt for each other. It was strangely distant in this baby, though, even more than in most young children.

The baby was now trying to grab handfuls of his chest hair.

“Yes, hi, still cute,” he said, detaching her one-handed. “Thanks for burying the lede, Di. At least this explains why you didn’t want to report it. Sort of. You need me to put out feelers and see if anyone in the local shifter community has reported a kid missing lately, maybe try to find a foster family until we can find where she comes from?”

“Yes—no—okay, yes, probably, but you haven’t seen what she turns into.”

Costa sighed. At this rate, he was never going to.

The baby chose that moment to twist in his arms, nearly fall out of them, and began to wail.

CHAPTER5

Costa foundthat it was impossible to have a conversation with a crying, flailing baby in the middle of it. Diana impatiently reclaimed the baby and started trying to soothe her with inexpert jiggling. Costa made a couple of attempts to politely offer corrections, which got him glared at. He decided to take advantage of the opportunity to go upstairs, get properly dressed, and call Auntie Lo and let her know that he wasn’t going to be able to make it tonight.

He got Auntie Brill instead—oh good, the nice one—and unchivalrously threw the entire blame on Diana.

“Sorry, Auntie B. Di’s working tonight, and I promised to keep her company.”

“Oh, youdear,” his aunt said. In the background there was clattering, shouting, and a babble of voices that gave him an odd blend of homesickness and relief to be missing the circus. “What a sweet boy you are. —No,notwith those, that’s the nut-free batch! Isn’t she a helicopter pilot?” she went on without missing a beat, while someone complained in the background. “How are you going to help with?—”

“She’s on call for search and rescue,” Costa said swiftly. “So it’s just going to be hanging around drinking bad coffee and seeing if she gets called out, but I didn’t want to let her do it alone.”

“It sounds like things are finally working out for you two,” his aunt said hopefully. The entire family seemed to be convinced that his relationship with Diana was on the rocks—accurately enough, to be fair—but could be repaired with time and family meddling. “Well, you just have a grand evening, and we’ll make sure to put aside some nibbles for you.”

The nibbles would probably feed him for a week.

“Give my regards to Uncle Roddy,” Costa said with a rush of sudden guilt. “Tell him I’m sorry I can’t make it.”

“Jay-Jay will be sad he can’t see you. He’s training his new pony, and he can’t wait to show you the new tricks they’ve learned.”

Costa closed his eyes briefly at his nephew’s name. “I’m sad I can’t see him, too. Please tell Jay and Jenny that I’ll—I’ll try to get out to the ranch this weekend, at least for the afternoon, but I don’t know what work’s going to be like, so I can’t promise anything.”

“We’d love to see you, dear.” His aunt’s voice was gentle, even though she had to raise it above the commotion in the background. “Honey, I said notthere! —Do bring Diana too if you can, love.”

“I will.”

He hung up, cutting off the babble of loved voices into sharp silence. Downstairs, he could hear an occasional soft giggle or coo, so it seemed like Di had gotten the baby calmed down again. Costa took a deep breath, grabbed a previously worn shirt off the back of a chair, and went downstairs as he shrugged into it.

Diana was walking around the living room with the baby cradled in her arms, her head bent low over the small bundle, speaking in a soft voice.

The lamplight cast her in soft shadows, and her face, bent over the baby, was gentle in a way that he had almost never seen it.

The picture she made was so gorgeous, so domestic, that for a shocked instant it took his breath away. He stopped with one hand on the buttons of his shirt. Then she looked up and saw him, and the softness faded into her more usual expression of slightly sardonic curiosity.

“What were you doing up there?” Diana asked.

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