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  “This is Lieutenant Brody Gillis and my best friend Ivy. Yes, he is the father,” Marie said.

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” Brody shook her hand.

  “No ma’am here, Marine. We’re going to be on a first name basis so when it’s labor time, Momma’s room is filled with positive energy,” Jenny said. “Are you both going to be in the labor room when the time comes?” Ivy looked at them both. “If you want me to, I’ll be there.” Marie took her hand. “Yes, I’d like that.” Jenny smiled. “You have a great support group. Now, let’s take a look at this little miracle. Some cold goop for your belly. The gel will help us see the baby better.”

  They all watched silently as midwife Jenny used the ultrasound on her belly. She moved it around for a few minutes checking things and using the computer graph to chart growth and size. Marie and Ivy both gasped.

  As nurses, they knew exactly what they were seeing. The little gray image was a little grainy but the most beautiful thing Marie had ever seen. Tears trailed down her face and Ivy was tearing up as well.

  Brody looked at them in alarm. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  “They’re happy, nothing is wrong. Everything looks good. You’re ten weeks on the nose,” Jenny said. She used her finger to point out the area for Brody. “There’s your baby.” She pressed a button and a tiny fast paced rhythm filled the room. “Here, the heartbeat is strong and perfect.”

  “Doesn’t that beat all,” Brody said softly. Marie could hear the amazement in his voice. “Can I get a picture of that, Ms. Jenny?” She laughed. “You can have as many as you want. We’ll see you for your next appointment in a month, Marie, but we need your labs done today, so take this slip to the door down the hall to your left and they’ll draw your blood.”

  Jenny handed her a towel to wipe the gel from her stomach and soon they were walking down the hall. Brody held her hand proudly while showing off the three sonogram pictures he held in his hand.

  “You know he is going to be at Quantico showing those to anyone that will stop long enough to see it,” Ivy said. “He’s sent it to Rafe already via camera phone.”

  “I know. Let him have his moment,” Marie said. “Give me my hand, Brody, I’m going to get my blood drawn.”

  “You need me to go with you, babe?” Brody asked instantly.

  “No, you sit here and, um, send the picture to someone else on your phone,” she teased.

  He grinned. “That’s a good idea. I think I missed the commander in the first round.”

  She shook her head as she walked away and Ivy laughed next to her.

  “Am I still a rat fink for spilling to Rafe?” Marie put her arm around Ivy’s shoulder. “No, I was wrong. I should’ve told him myself. I think he is going to make a great dad.”

  “What about Marie and Brody the couple?” her best friend asked.

  “Like he said, we’ll take that day by day and see where it goes, but I hope it sticks, I really do,” Marie admitted. “After Charlie, I swore off anything close to a relationship, but this baby changes everything, doesn’t it?”

  “I think you two are cute together,” Ivy said with a smile.

  Marie sat to have her blood drawn all the while thinking about Brody.

  And Baby Makes Three, he’d said, and somehow the child inside her helped form a bond to something that scared the crap out of her. She would try, but she prayed this time it wouldn’t fail, not twice, not with her child involved.

  Later that night she lay on her couch with a cool cloth on her head. She rubbed the tiny hard mound of her lower torso and smiled even though she felt like death. You couldn’t tell she was pregnant yet, but because of her profession she could tell exactly where her little bun in the oven was. It was all going to be worth it when forty-two weeks were over and she had a beautiful baby in her arms.

  Boy or girl, she wondered already. Her family had the propensity to have more girls, but what about Brody’s family? They never had much time for conversations.

  As soon as he entered the room they were in each other’s arms before the door was closed. Naked, hot sweaty sexual interactions that left her gasping whenever their culmination hit. Against the wall, on the floor, on the dining room table, once they didn’t make it past the front door. In the midst of her sickness, desire made her sex warm. Lord Almighty, he even had the power to make her horny while she felt like she was on the good ship nausea. There was a knock on the door and she groaned.

  Just go awa , she thought miserably and the knock came again. She moved off the couch with a groan and her stomach rolled in objection to the movement.

  She opened the door to reveal Brody standing there holding a large Tupperware bowl and a smaller square one.

  “Well, you look chipper,” Brody teased.

  Marie rolled her eyes and stepped back so he could come in. “You try throwing up everything you’ve had for the past few weeks.”

  “This is why I come bearing gifts,” he replied. He pulled the cover off the large Tupperware bowl and the smell filled the room. “Hot and sour soup with tofu and chives.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “That does not sound pleasant.”

  “My mom said that it’s the fats in meats and all that good stuff that makes you ill.” He put the bowl on the counter and helped her sit at the dining room table. “So I made you something that will turn your frown upside down.”

  “You made this? I didn’t know you could cook,” Marie said.

  Brody pulled a bowl from one of her overhead cabinets. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, and we’re going to fix that. Now, let’s get you and my boy feeling right.”

  Marie waved him over. “Okay, skip the Sesame Street monologue and give me what you got.”

  Brody chuckled, grabbed a spoon, and put the bowl in front of her. “I already did.”

  She took the first tentative sip and her stomach seemed to say, ahh.

  She looked up at him and smiled. “This is fabulous.”

  “Try a piece of the tofu,” Brody encouraged.

  Marie took a chunk from the bowl apprehensively, sniffed it, and expected it to make her feel sick all over again. Instead, for the first time in weeks, her stomach seemed to settle. She deemed it a miracle and Brody her savior.

  “Oh, I love you so much right now,” she moaned in delight.

  Brody pushed the hair back from her forehead and smiled. “You’ll love me even more when I say no more dry crackers for you and instead you should have homemade gingersnaps with mint. Mom’s secret recipe for all the pregnant women in my hometown in Texas.”

  “I think I love your mom. Can she come live with me?” Marie asked.

  “I wish,” Brody muttered before commanding softly, “Eat your soup first and then you can have a cookie.”

  There was something there, the happiness and light left his eyes for an instant and dark clouds seem to overtake him. Marie sipped her soup silently before saying, “Tell me about your mom and dad.” Brody gave a sarcastic laugh. “Now there’s a story meant for cable.” Marie downed the last spoonful of her soup and picked up the square-covered Tupperware that held the cookies. She reached out her hand to him. “Come on to bed and we’ll get settled and you tell me all about it.” Brody took her hand and followed her. “I don’t think this is a bedtime tale you want to hear.”

  “If you’re going to be in my life and we’re going to give this a go, we have to trust each other,” Marie said firmly. “Now, I’m going to take a shower and then we’re going to bed and there we’ll show each other our baggage and get it right out. Understood, Marine?” Brody grinned. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

  She smiled. “Good, now get down to your skivvies and I’ll meet you in the sack. No hanky-panky because right now I have the energy of a single-cell organism. So for the first time we will talk instead of have sex.” Marie placed the Tupperware container full of cookies on the bedside table.

  “I really like the sex,” Brody teased.

  “I
do too. It’s totally…” Marie pointed her finger at him. “No, bad Marine, we’re doing this right.”

  Brody grinned. “Fine, I’ll be waiting.”

  Marie took a hot shower and the water coursing down her skin made her feel much better. That, combined with the soup that Brody brought, gave her the sense she may survive the first trimester after all. She came out of the shower wrapped in her fluffy bathrobe and she found a nightshirt in the drawer. She felt Brody’s eyes on her and saw his gaze darken as she dropped her bathrobe and slipped into her nightshirt. She opened another drawer and pulled out undies and put them on. It was more for her than him. She usually slept without undies, but with him in her bed she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t try to make love with him. Marie slipped underneath the covers and snuggled into his arms. He was shirtless and his skin was warm beneath her cheek. He leaned over and kissed her gently and then with more passion. Their tongues twined and danced until she pulled away gasping for breath.

  No, Marie, no, she chastised herself. It wasn’t fair to set a stipulation on him that she could not follow herself.

  They had chemistry, of that there was no doubt, but for this to work, their relationship had to be built on something other than the physical.

  “Tell me about your mom and dad,” Marie encouraged.

  “Where to start.” Brody sighed. “My mom is a gem. She is strong, hardworking, and doesn’t see anything but the person you really are. My father, or the man that created me, doesn’t deserve to be called a parent.

  He is a mean, racist pig who tried to break me from the beginning and when he couldn’t, he tried to berate me into submission. But I was a husky lad, and one day he came at me and I’d had enough and I hit back. That was the last of it. I left soon after and joined the Marines and never looked back.”

  “Don’t you see your mother?” Marie asked.

  “She comes and visits. My dad won’t stop her, and she wouldn’t let him,” Brody replied. “She is as tough as steel when it comes to seeing her only son. But I cannot understand why she stays with that evil man that thinks he’s the second coming. Did I mention he is a minister and preaches fire and brimstone to his very small congregation?”

  “He will hate me then, seeing as, in his eyes, I’m the wrong color,” Marie said mildly. She’d dealt with hate before especially in an interracial relationship. There was a lot she had kept secret about her life with Charlie, a lot she wasn’t willing to share even with Ivy.

  “I called my mom to share the news. She is thrilled, and that is all that matters,” Brody said. “That man can rot in hell for all I care. There is no love lost between us.”

  “It must be hard knowing that you can’t share with your father.” Marie rubbed her hand across his chest comfortingly.

  “But that won’t happen to me and this baby.” He rested his hand on her lower stomach. “My son is in there, all warm and snug.”

  “You’re so sure it’s a boy, huh? It could be a girl,” Marie said with a smile.

  “A little girl would be great, but then when she becomes a teenager I’ll start cleaning my gun at the dinner table,” Brody said casually.

  “You won’t do that if we have a boy?” Marie laughed. “He could be a real heartbreaker and have girls lining up outside our door.”

  “That’s my boy,” Brody said proudly.

  His words made the smile fall from her lips and sent her careening into the past where men cheated and the feelings of the women who loved them didn’t matter. The closeness she was feeling to him fell away and anger rose up.

  “Oh, no, you are not raising my child to be a playboy man-whore like you are.” Marie felt her irritation rise even higher. “If it’s a girl, she’s to be protected, yet the boy gets to have no morals and be the slut of his high school?”

  “Whoa, who said that? And, by the way, I’m not a playboy, my mom raised me right,” Brody retorted.

  “Says the man who planned every party at Rafe’s house.” Marie sat up. “Oh, I heard that your name is on every party roster in Quantico and beyond.”

  “Jesus, how did we go from having a nice moment to you thinking I’ve been in every bed on the East Coast?” Brody asked.

  “Because you are a leopard who cannot change his spots and proved it by actually saying that if this baby is a boy he could slut around,” Marie snapped. “You should go home. This wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Marie, there hasn’t been anyone else in my life since we got together the day of the wedding,” Brody said calmly. “And while I may have coordinated those parties, I never slept with any of the girls there. It was all for a good time, a way for our guys to de-stress after all they go through. Me? I run the grill, keep the bar stocked, and handle the music and the clean up. I’m not saying that I haven’t had dates, girlfriends, and even a committed relationship once. But for the love of God, my past is not the thing that should dictate my future with you and my child.”

  “That’s what they all say,” she muttered.

  “Don’t let what happened to you with your ex-husband ruin what we could have,” Brody insisted.

  “You don’t know anything about that,” Marie said and shook her head while tears started to fall down her cheeks.

  “Oh, baby, don’t cry,” he said in a gentle voice and tried to pull her into his arms.

  Marie shook her head again and pushed him away, wiping her tears away furiously. “I’m not crying because I’m hurt. I’m angry. These are tears of anger, and don’t you dare blame it on hormones!”

  Brody pulled her against him and settled back into bed. “I wouldn’t think of it, honey, you have every right to be angry. Do you want a cookie?”

  “No,” she mumbled.

  “All right. Then how about you go to sleep and I’ll hold you all night?” he crooned.

  “I told you to go home.” She yawned.

  “I know you did, baby, and I will as soon as you fall asleep.” Brody ran his fingers through her hair and she felt herself drifting off and barely heard him say, “Eventually you’ll have to let me in and tell me how he hurt you so very badly.”

  “Okay,” Marie said. She had told herself she would relax just for a minute and then kick him out. That wasn’t the case because she ended up sleeping in his arms all night. In the morning he was sitting on the side of the bed with a hot cup of tea and mint gingersnaps for her.

  It was the first morning in weeks where she didn’t throw up her breakfast, and they ended up watching TV in bed whiling away the Saturday afternoon. She remembered his words as he dozed on the pillow next to her. She wasn’t ready to let him in, but she wasn’t willing to give him up either. So they would stay the course the best they could and she hoped to hell she was making the right choices.

  Chapter Four

  “I don’t know what to do, Rafe. I’m half scared to go to her house lately,” Brody said helplessly. “Yesterday, I show up with all the ingredients ready to make her dinner. She asked for mashed potatoes and Salisbury steak. So I start cooking, and then halfway through she changes her mind and says that the smell is making her sick and she couldn’t possibly eat what I was making. Then, she is crying and I go to see why, afraid it is somehow my fault again, but she’s sitting in front of the TV, crying at a fabric softener commercial. Why? Because the baby on the commercial put its finger in its mother’s mouth and she thought it was cute.” Brody looked at Rafe. “Then, wasting all the food that was half made, she ended up wanting cheese pizza. So I order pizza. Then, when the pizza arrives, she tops it with catsup and pickles.” They were sitting in the office they shared. Since Rafe took over command of the new elite unit out of Quantico, the commute was brutal but well worth it for all of them. Ivy and Marie loved their jobs at Walter Reed while Rafe and Brody loved their careers in the Marines. Somehow, they made it all work and that was what mattered in the long run. While people shattered and fell, either on the field or at the hospital, they managed to stay a tight unit. They were friends who were so clo
se they were more like family.

  Rafe looked at Brody with sympathy in his eyes. “Ivy said it’s Marie’s second trimester and her hormones are completely out of whack.”

  “Did I mention one minute she is rubbing against me like a kitten and the next she shuts down cold and I go to sleep with my boys aching,” Brody said. “I don’t know if I’m walking into a minefield or into a meadow filled with daffodils.”

  Rafe was roaring with laughter by the time he was finished speaking and Brody looked at him sullenly. “Hey, remember Ivy is pregnant now and soon you will be sitting here instead of me, buddy.” In December Ivy told Rafe she was pregnant, and then called Marie, crying in joy. Brody recalled it vividly because Marie was then crying and when the foursome finally got together to celebrate their growing families, at least ten minutes was spent with weepy eyes and constant hugs.

  “Ivy is so thrilled to be carrying that even while she’s feeling crappy she has a smile on her face.” Rafe sighed. “Sometimes she thinks I don’t see her crying, but I do. She is scared that she may miscarry. She is taking a leave of absence from the hospital. Her doctor wants her to be taking it as easy as possible until the birth.”

  “I wish Marie would stay home. At night her back aches and her feet swell and, whatever you do, don’t tell her she has started waddling. She has vowed a cruel death to anyone who mentions it.” Brody grinned. “In happier news, we can feel the baby move—little tiny rolls of movement.

  She is twenty-six weeks today and I am supposed to meet her for the appointment at the midwife center. We find out if she’s having a boy or girl.”

  “Well, then you can see how all the suffering is for the best in the end.” Rafe drummed his fingers on the desk. “Do you want to know the sex of the baby?”

  “Hell yeah. We’ve got a nursery to prepare,” Brody replied. “Speaking of which, what would you think of me asking Marie to move in with me?”

  “Don’t you mean the other way around? Your bachelor pad of a townhouse is no place to raise a baby,” Rafe commented.