Maureen Child - At Her Service

In fact, through most of her pregnancy, she’d been seriously grateful that Jeff couldn’t see her. Short women and pregnancy were not a good match, she thought and remembered how she used to stare at the taller moms-to-be at her doctor’s office with such envy. Even at their biggest, those women had somehow managed to look … aglow. While Kelly, on the other hand, had looked like a barrel with legs.

She’d often wondered if Jeff would have been appalled or entranced by the changes in her body, but the coward in her was simply pleased she’d never have to find out.

“I bet you looked beautiful.” She laughed then, a loud, short burst of sound that had her clapping one hand over her mouth. After all, it was a little early to be waking everyone else at the hotel.

“Not even close,” she said. “My brothers insisted that if there was just some way to rig the lights, they’d hire me out as a blimp.”

He scowled at that, and Kelly was instantly sorry she’d mentioned her brothers. “They were just teasing me,” she said quickly.

“Yeah, right,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, and added, “at least they were here for you,” so softly she almost missed it. “Jeff …”

“Did you hate me?” he asked bluntly, and this time kept his gaze fixed on the water below them. “For leaving you pregnant and alone?”

“No,” she said, pulling him around until he was forced to look at her. She had to convince him of this, if nothing else. “Of course not. First,” she reminded him, “I wasn’t alone. My family was here.”

“Yeah, and they were thrilled with me.” “This isn’t about them.” “You’re right,” he said. “This is about you and me, and I need to know. Did you hate me?”

She looked directly into his eyes, willing him to read the truth in hers. Then she said very slowly, “No. I never hated you for making me pregnant.” Some of the tension seeped out of his body, and she went on quickly, hoping to ease away the rest. “It’s not as if I had nothing to do with it, you know.”

A small, too brief smile quirked his mouth and was gone again. “Yeah, I remember.”

“It wasn’t either of our faults that the condom failed.”

“I’m still thinking about suing the company,” he growled.

“Pointless,” she told him. “It says right on the box that they’re ninety-eight percent effective. They gave themselves an out clause.”

“Hmm … clever and ineffective.”

Stewing about how and why a condom failed was useless. She’d learned that herself eighteen months ago. Better to just deal with the reality and accept it. “Jeff, what happened, happened for a reason.”

“You believe that?”

“I do,” she said, and put every ounce of her conviction into the words. She meant it. Every time she looked into Emily’s little face, that feeling grew. There was a reason for that baby. A reason she’d been conceived against all odds. A reason she’d come into the world at all.

Just because Kelly didn’t know what that reason was, didn’t negate it.

“Wish I knew what it was,” he murmured.

“Does it really matter?” she asked, and hoped he’d say no. For Emily’s sake, she didn’t want her baby’s father to be regretting the child’s existence.

A long minute passed before he answered her, and Kelly didn’t realize she was holding her breath until it whooshed out of her chest when he spoke.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Good,” she said, feeling relief sweep through her. For Emily’s sake, she told herself. It was only Emily’s feelings she was concerned with here.

Turning her around in his grasp, Jeff faced the ocean again and drew her close, her back to his front. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her tightly and said, “Tell me about it.”

“It?” she asked, reaching up to lay her hands on his crossed forearms.

“Your pregnancy. Labor. Delivery.” He shrugged and she felt the motion ripple through her. “I want to know everything. Everything I missed.”

His voice carried a silent plea that arrowed into her heart in a swift, sure thrust. He had missed so much, she thought. He’d come home from a series of dangerous missions to discover a daughter he’d known nothing about. And now he was trying, the only way he could, to become a part of that little girl’s life. To know her as her mother did. To be more than the man who’d created her.

To be her father.

Kelly’s heart ached sweetly, and she caressed his arms with gentle, soothing strokes.

Somewhere off to the east, the sun was rising, reaching out with warm hands to caress the night sky and draw pale, soft colors onto its surface. Five stories below them, a handful of surfers in wet suits were already in the cold water, paddling out on the glassy ocean, waiting, hoping for waves to begin a slow curl toward shore.

And while the world woke up, Kelly talked.

Jeff listened and as she spoke, his mind created images to go along with the words. In his imagination, he saw Kelly, round with his child. Going to work, playing with the kindergartners she so clearly adored. Unwrapping clumsily wrapped presents for the baby. Hearing the baby names twenty five-year-olds had come up with.

He saw her in the doctor’s office. Felt her excitement at her first ultrasound when she actually saw Emily inside her. And he also felt a flash of regret that he hadn’t been there, holding her hand, staring at that screen and trying to make out the features of his child on a fuzzed-out screen. He listened to her talk about her brothers and tried not to resent the fact that it had been the Rogan brothers who’d been there to help her, not him. They’d mowed her grass, taken her grocery shopping, set up Emily’s crib and painted the nursery. They’d been there for their little sister at the most important time of her life, while Jeff hadn’t even had a clue as to what was going on.

A flash of useless, directionless anger shot through him with the force of mortar fire, lighting up his insides. Even knowing that it wasn’t his fault … that he hadn’t known … didn’t seem to help.

When she described her labor, though, Jeff was torn between being grateful he’d missed the opportunity to see her in pain and more regret that his hadn’t been the hand she’d clung to. No, that job had fallen to Kevin Rogan. The oldest brother. The man who’d taken his first opportunity to punch Jeff dead in the face.

And damn if Jeff could find it in him to blame the guy.

“Then,” Kelly was saying, and he gave his attention back to her, “Emily was there and the doctor was holding her up like a bowling trophy.” She laughed and Jeff smiled to hear it. “And Emily, she opened her eyes and I swear, Jeff, she looked right at me. The doctor swore that she couldn’t see anything, but I know different. Emily looked at me as if asking, ‘What the heck is going on around here, Mom? What’s all the noise about?”’

He chuckled and rested his chin atop her head, seeing it all through her eyes, wishing he’d been there to see it all for himself.

“Then he laid her across my chest,” she said, her voice so soft he had to strain to hear it. “And she stared into my eyes, took hold of my finger in the tightest grip you could imagine and in that instant, she slipped right into my soul.”

Tears stung his eyes and Jeff was so surprised, he blinked frantically to keep them at bay.

A long minute passed before she sighed and told him fondly, “Kevin was crying like a baby.”

Jeff scowled at the thought of the man who clearly hated the sight of him, being the one to witness the miracle of Emily’s birth.

“He pretended he wasn’t, of course,” she was saying. “No Marine, on pain of death, would ever admit to that, but then you know that, don’t you?” “Damn right,” he agreed, and blinked more quickly.