Chapter Eleven

After a quick stop at Jack's place, they headed back to Carter's. Jack wanted to stop for a diaper bag, but Carter wouldn't let him. He'd been in charge of the shopping expedition and since she was still bristling about it, she wasn't going to bend. She decided, given the disaster at the grocery store, that not only were they not taking Cheyenne with them until she was old enough to behave, but there would also be a considerable amount of planning and possibly a written contract stipulating that Jack had to be fair in the decision making process.

They got the bags as far as the kitchen. Jack made a few attempts at putting things away, but Carter was not about to have her cabinets rearranged. She pushed him out of the room. "I'll put everything away."

"I can help." Jack, who figured it was some sort of test for her to determine if he was going to let her do all the domestic chores, held his ground in the doorway, clinging to the box of dryer sheets. His face was impassive; he was not going to screw up.

Carter smiled and yanked the dryer sheets right out of his hands. "You can help me by painting."

He rolled his eyes, but didn't argue.

She busied herself with unpacking the groceries, signing for the furniture that was delivered, and making lunch. She made a valid attempt to bring the changing table and crib to the nursery, but the boxes were so heavy that she couldn't make it any further than the living room. She prayed the boxes contained decent furniture because she really didn't want to have to take them back as well. As it stood following a visual inventory, over half the things that Daniel bought were going back. Carter made a mental note to ask just what Janet had been thinking, since she had ostensibly been there to help.

She ducked into the spare room, which had been converted into a nursery fairly quickly. The furniture previously occupying the room had been disassembled. The room was a shade of pale yellow which Carter was sure she owed to Janet. She would not have stood for pink. Jack was on a stepstool, hanging the wallpaper border around the ceiling. It featured baby animals with no concession to reality. She was annoyed, but she didn't say a word.

Jack turned around and grinned at her. "So, do you think the baby lambs know they're probably about to get eaten by the baby wolves?"

She grinned. "Personally, I was more concerned about the zebras and lions playing together, but I see your point."

Jack shook his head, obviously having expected such a response. "Besides the geographical, biological, and scientific inaccuracies, is it ok?"

Carter nodded, unaware that Jack wasn't looking at her anymore. "It's not pink."

"Pink is…" He was fishing because never once in their relationship had things like appropriate colors for a baby's room come up.

"Bad. Very bad."

Jack nodded. "Noted. No pink."

"It's cute, barring the logical fallacies. Good job."

"Thank you." Jack turned around to face her, revealing that he'd gotten quite a lot of paint on himself and his clothes.

"Yellow is a good color for you, Jack." She continued, not knowing quite what to make of his inexplicable grin. "I've got lunch when you're ready."

"It'll only take me a minute to finish this."

She returned to the living room to sort the pile of baby tings. Jack made it two steps into the room before he noticed the boxes of furniture. "Should I assume I'm putting them together as well?"

Carter shook her head. "I can put them together. I just can't lift them."

Eyeing the terribly large pile of merchandise to return, Jack sighed. "What are the odds the furniture is decent?"

"If it's not, we'll paint it. It'll be too much trouble to take it back." She led him into the kitchen and got the sandwiches out of the refrigerator.

"We'll paint?"

She grinned. "Yellow really isn't my color." When his face didn't crack a smile, she tried shamelessly batting her eyes at him. "You'll paint and I'll be eternally grateful?"

"I'll get started after lunch." They ate in silence for a few minutes. Jack glanced at Cheyenne who was chewing on one of the plastic toys. "Guess that one's a keeper."

"Yes, she does seem to like it, doesn't she?"

"Apparently she didn't get the pink is bad memo."

"She can't read yet." Carter shrugged at him. "She'll learn. Considering her parents, I don't see a lot of frilly pink in her future."

"Carter, we're not dressing her in olive drab."

"Unless she likes olive drab."

"Not even then. I never get to see you in anything else, so I'm taking advantage of this."

Carter blushed and focused on picking at the cheese in her sandwich. She was pretty sure he was interested in seeing her out of work clothes, hence out of work. And so, it followed that meant he was interested in moving their relationship out of the coworkers with a baby stage. Of course, the rules surrounding the coworkers with a baby arena were pretty vague, so she wasn't sure what that all entailed. And beyond flirting, she wasn't sure it could work. There were so many things they didn't know about each other. She wasn't ready to push the issue - not with so many other involuntary changes.

"I'll make space for the bed in the other room. That way there will be room for the other stuff in the nursery." Carter saw no sense in maintaining the pretense of an office at home. When she worked at home, it was on the couch with her laptop.

"We could just put everything in storage now. It'll probably be easier since I'm here and so is my truck."

Carter didn't want to think about the inevitable day when he would leave, joint custody or not. "If we put it in storage now, where will you sleep? I don't think the couch will be good for your back on a long term basis."

Jack looked up from his sandwich with a wide smile. "We worked it out last night."

Her face burned red when she thought about snuggling in his arms. She didn't want him to know he was surprising her so she tried to play it down. "That's always an option."

But Jack was not one to be thrown, certainly not so soon after she'd thoroughly embarrassed him by commenting on his looks. He stood up and put his plate in the sink, leaning down as he passed her chair to whisper in her ear. "Well, then I guess that's worked out." His lips brushed her skin as he spoke, causing a shiver to run through her which she knew he felt.

He made quick work of carrying the boxes to the nursery and Carter would have happily followed him. She loved putting things together - anything at all - and she would have had a blast assembling her daughter's furniture with Jack. But she was very well aware that, if she followed him, she'd be just as likely to jump him as to put together a crib. Besides, she figured if she hid out in the kitchen for a while, Jack would have to solve the dilemma of the bed on his own. She wouldn't mind a bit if he dragged it out to his truck, thus promising her a million different opportunities to finagle him to share her bed. And she wouldn't blame him a bit if he reassembled it in the other room so he could have a place to hide out when he realized she wasn't just flirting with him.

She finished deciding what to keep, even going so far as to load it in the truck. She washed the dishes and rocked Cheyenne while she gave her another bottle. Once Cheyenne was changed and settled down for a nap, Carter was out of ideas. She headed toward the nursery with two bottles of water and a determined set to her jaw. She was not going to let him know he was getting to her. It was the only way she could hold onto her sanity and his respect.

But then she walked in and found him sweaty and shirtless and glaring at the half-assembled crib with that same heated stare that made her want to melt. She didn't know if it was good that he stared at a crib the same way he stared at her, but her mind wasn't actually functioning on most levels. It ha actually been reduced to one simple, all-encompassing thought: Must Not Jump CO.

"According to the directions, Carter, the mattress is supposed to float somewhere up here, but I can't quite figure out how to activate the anti-gravity field."

Oh, dear God. Her knees just about gave out from under her. Jack. Small space. Shirtless. Technobabble. She thought she'd died and gone to heaven. She smiled at him with a goofy smile she would have been terribly embarrassed about had she even been aware of it. "Is it hot in here?"

Somehow completely unaware of her state of mind, Jack used his discarded shirt to wipe at his forehead. "I tried to open the window, but I think I painted it shut."

She took at deep breath and tried to regain control of her senses. Although, in retrospect, thanking her lucky stars that he'd painted the window shut wasn't really in the realm of her normal state of mind. She cleared her throat and looked at the crib, reminding herself that it was probably a good idea to make sure the thing wouldn't fall apart when Cheyenne was sleeping in it. "Let me have a look."

She wound up having to take most of it apart, discovering one piece that Jack had assembled backwards that made all the difference. When she corrected it, he had a fit, pointing at the instructions she was disregarding and swearing he had done it right. She didn't care that he was acting like a baby because he was standing a foot away from her, holding up the side of the crib while she pieced it together and she had an absolutely glorious view of the abs that any man his age would envy.

"That's upside down, Carter. Look!" He kicked at the instructions where they lay ignored at his feet.

She decided she was in control enough to tease him. "Only if you have the anti-gravity model, which apparently, you couldn't afford. I guess colonels don't make what they used to."

He looked down at her, a smile playing on his lips. "You know, I could just move in here and then with the money we save on the mortgage, we could afford the high-end crib."

She knew he intended it as a joke, but at that moment, as much as she was enjoying having him there with her, his words made her breath catch in her throat. Luckily the phone rang, distracting both of them before she did something stupid like agree with him in all seriousness.

He grinned. "You know that's the base, right?"

She shook her head. "It's probably just Daniel or Janet."

"Twenty bucks says that's the base."

"If you're willing to put money on it, you probably put them up to calling. There's no way I'm taking that bet."

He winked at her, shifting the crib that she only then started to realist was probably just as heavy for him as it has been for her. "A backrub says that's the base."

"And if it's not the base?" She did not need the idea of running her hands along his muscles in her head, but she certainly did enjoy having them there.

"Then you get the backrub."

"Deal." She stood up to answer the phone, praying Jack couldn't hear the pounding of her heart.

As she left the room, she could have sworn she heard him mutter. "Either way, I win."

She couldn't bite back the smirk on her face when she returned a moment later. "I have to go to work for a little while. Something with the iris controls. It won't take me long, but trying to explain it to Walter who would then have to explain it to Siler would take years."

Jack ha set the half assembled crib down and was working on the far less daunting task of assembling the drawers for the changing table. He was grinning like the cat that ate the canary. "Whatever you say, Carter." He was gloating about being right and she figured he had every right to. If she'd been paying any attention whatsoever to anything besides his body, she would have known it was the base too.

It didn't really matter because she considered being wrong a victory. Anything that involved touching him she was taking as a win.