Laura Altom - The Marine's Babies

“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, I am single. And I intend to stay that way.” Pushing her chair back, she stood. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to do what I was hired for, and check on the babies.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jace said, sending her a playful salute.

“QUESTION,” Jace asked Granola the next morning while performing his helicopter’s flight check. The previous day’s storms had burned off, leaving clear skies with unlimited visibility. Wind out of the south at ten knots.

“Shoot,” Granola said, voice muffled into his flight helmet’s microphone.

“You know this nanny I’ve hired?”

“Yeah. Altitude two-two-zero reached.”

“Check. One-two-zero K-T-A-S reached. No unusual vibrations. Control position normal.” Jace confirmed the maneuver area was clear before launching the next portion of the test. “She’s a sharp cookie. Cute, too.”

“No rotor instability,” Granola said when Jace had finished his portion of the test. “You thinking of asking her out?”

“No way. Wouldn’t she be morally off limits?” Jace initiated a climb.

“I don’t see why. Control positioning check.”

Grunting, Jace performed a series of left-and right-bank angle turns. As expected, everything checked out fine. Returning to base at normal cruising altitude, Jace said, “She used to be some kind of financial guru. She’s not married and she doesn’t have kids, but damn, does she know her way around babies.”

Granola suggested, “Maybe, like Pam, she grew up in a big family?”

“Maybe.”

“You ever think of asking her all of this instead of me?”

“S’pose I could,” Jace said, banking left, “but she’s kind of frosty.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes she just rubs me the wrong way. Like she expects me to be something I’m not.”

“Like a father?” Granola asked.

“Think you’re funny, do you?” Jace threw the helicopter into a hard and fast sixty-degree bank.

“MOM,” Emma said into her cell while filling her Volvo’s empty gas tank. “I promise I’m fine. Happy even.” The twins were strapped into their safety seats with the front windows down, so the air inside the vehicle didn’t get too hot.

“That’s quite a change from the last time we talked. When I told you to get on with your life, I was hoping for that to happen sometime over the next few months. Not in a few days.”

“What can I say? An opportunity came up, and I went for it. I’ve always loved children. You were the one who told me I should borrow some. So, that’s essentially what I did.”

“Great. For once you actually followed my advice. But honey, gauging your happiness level, somewhere along the line you’ve forgotten these aren’t your children.” Her mother’s insinuation that Emma somehow didn’t already understand this fact was insulting. “Plus, you don’t even know the man you’re working for. What if he’s some kind of deviant?”

Topping off the tank, Emma sighed. “He’s not a deviant, Mom. He’s a Marine. I seriously doubt any guy the U.S. Marine Corps trusts with a multi-million-dollar piece of equipment is going to go Hannibal Lecter on me.”

“I didn’t say he was, honey, only that I’m worried about you. Just a week ago, you were so deep into your own thoughts you could hardly carry a normal conversation. Now, you’re all of a sudden healed. Don’t you think I should be concerned?”

What Emma thought was that her mom should mind her own business.

Emma said her goodbyes, grabbed her receipt from the pump and then climbed back behind the wheel of her car.

Beatrice was cranky—had been all through their trip to the grocery store—and was fitfully crying. “We’re on our way home, ladybug,” she soothed, checking on her in the rearview mirror.

She popped a sing-along children’s disc into the CD player, and turned the volume to High.

Bronwyn, at least, happily kicked and cooed.

At the house, Emma made quick work of unloading the babies, then the groceries. Bronwyn seemed content on a pink quilt on the living room carpet, lying on her back, grinning at the mirror and dangling shapes on her baby gym. Beatrice, however, wasn’t so easily amused.

After trying a bottle, baby-food peaches and pears, a diaper change and burping, Emma settled for good old-fashioned rocking in Jace’s navy leather recliner.

Cradling her close, tucking Beatrice’s head beneath her chin, Emma sang softly. “Hush little baby, don’t you cry, Momma’s gonna sing you a lullaby…”

Soon enough, Beatrice had calmed, and then fallen asleep. Lots of times when Henry had been cranky, Emma had found that nothing but human contact soothed. Emma guessed it worked for grown-ups, too, since she had isolated herself from family and friends up north, but still hadn’t found solace. Yet here, now, with two infants and an oftentimes infuriating lug of a Marine, she truly was feeling better than she had in months.

No matter what her mother might think!

Since it was nearing six, Emma knew she should start dinner, but she hated to disturb the baby, who had finally fallen asleep.

A key sounded in the front-door lock, and in walked Jace, wearing his usual grin. His complexion looked sun-kissed, as if he’d spent the day outdoors. “Hey,” he said, setting his flight bag on the tiled entry floor. “How’re my girls?”

“Better now,” Emma said, her voice soft so as not to wake Beatrice. “This one’s had a rough day.”

“She’s not sick is she?” Jace crossed the short distance to the recliner, kneeling alongside it, putting his hand on the infant’s forehead. “She doesn’t feel hot.”

“No. Maybe she just misses her mom. I suppose it’s only natural.”

Jace stayed quiet.

“No word from the PI?”

“Nope.” Exhaustion weighing his shoulders, he rose, then dropped onto the sofa, unlacing his boots.

“How would you feel if Vicki abruptly showed up?”

He shrugged. “It’s a fluid situation. At first, I was panicked enough by the girls’ tag-team screaming that I probably would’ve given Vicki another chance at motherhood. But now…” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You all right?” Emma asked. “You look pasty.”

“I feel pasty.” In a decidedly un-Marine-like pose of vulnerability, he covered his face with his hands. “Em? What if I never figure out how to be a good dad? What if I lack the parental gene?”

Beatrice still in her arms, Emma rocked up and out of the chair to sit alongside Jace. “When you held this one in the park—really held her—she nestled against you like she’d known you forever. Because she has. You’re her father, Jace. Your DNA is hers—and her sister’s. You can’t help but grow into an amazing father.”

He snorted.

“What?”

“Your logic is ludicrous. If all it took to be a perfect parent was DNA, then what was Vicki’s excuse?”

Emma lowered her gaze. Agreed with him, did she?

Jace knew he’d have been laughed out of the Corps for admitting it, but right at that moment, he was jealous of a six-month-old for being held by Emma. In three tours of duty in hellacious war zones, he couldn’t remember ever having been this scared.

“Trust me,” Emma said. “Stop a second to look at who you are. What you do. If you have enough intellect and courage to fly a helicopter in the most dangerous parts of the world, then can’t you use that same chutzpah to raise two amazing babies into well-rounded, happy and healthy grown women?”

Eyes stinging, throat tight, Jace nodded.

“So then you’re feeling better about the whole situation?”

“Sure,” he lied. “Only how am I going to pay for two sets of braces? Two cars? Two college degrees?” Cheeks flaming, he added, “Holy hell, what if one—or both—want to become doctors or lawyers? But then, that might be a good thing, right? Because they’ll have nice, safe jobs and meet straight-laced types who—”