Bonnie Gardner - The Sergeant's Baby

“ I think I’ll have a filet mignon. And a really, really big baked potato with all the trimmings,” Ally said.

“ Only a filet mignon?” Danny asked. “I thought you were hungry enough to eat a horse.”

Ally made a shocked face. “I could never eat Black Beauty.”

Danny had to laugh. “I was speaking figuratively, and you know it. Of course, you’re making up for it with the loaded potato.”

The dining room was crowded and Ally lowered her voice, looking at him conspiratorially. “Humor me. I’m pregnant. I get strange cravings, and I can’t tell from one day to the next what they will be for.”

Danny just smiled and signaled for the waiter. He knew all about cravings. In his case, though, they were not for food.

Dear Reader,

Sometimes military life leads a man or a woman in a direction he or she hadn’t originally intended. Both air force TSGT Danny Murphey and Ally Carter thought they knew exactly where they were going. Then life intruded.

Danny was baseball, apple pie, mom and family. He wanted a home and a family, and he fully expected to be responsible for taking care of them. When he met independent Ally Carter, he thought he’d found the perfect woman. Ally Carter had a mind of her own. She’d come from a less traditional family. Her father had been a cultural anthropologist studying in the Middle East when he met her mother, a native of Tamalya. In Ally’s rebellion against her mother’s traditional upbringing, she almost lost her own happiness.

How do you make two diametrically opposed personalities come together in a meeting of minds (and bodies)? You throw in an unexpected pregnancy, assignment to a Middle Eastern war zone, and mix well. The result is lasting love.

Though there are military special operations schools that prepare servicemen and women for their assignments, I have left the details purposely vague, and I have invented the foreign country in question. However, the reactions and emotions of our characters are real.

I hope you come to know and understand Danny and Ally as I do. And I hope you enjoy reading their story.

Fondly,

Bonnie Gardner

The Sergeant’s Baby

Bonnie Gardner

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In loving memory of my dad, George W. Purcell, Major, U.S. Army Ret. (March 19, 1925–February 17, 2004). He was my first military hero.

To Mud, as always.

As always, I thank, for their hard work and dedication, the military men and women who sacrifice so much to keep our world safe, and the families they must leave behind to keep the home fires burning.

Books by Bonnie Gardner

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

911—SGT. BILLY’S BRIDE

958—THE SERGEANT’S SECRET SON

970—PRICELESS MARRIAGE

1019—SERGEANT DARLING

1067—THE SERGEANT’S BABY

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Two Years Ago

Fort Walton Beach, Florida

Allison Carter stood in her bra and panties in front of the closet and tried to decide what to put on. She’d always preferred slimming blacks and dark colors, but tonight she and her fiancé, Danny Murphey, were going to announce their engagement at Danny’s air-force unit’s annual Fourth of July bash on the beach. She needed something that shouted celebration, for the nation’s birthday and her own special day.

“I like the red one,” Danny said from behind her. He wrapped his arms around hers, pinning them to her sides, and drew her to him. He nuzzled her neck, his breath warm and arousing against her cheek. He was referring to the crimson silk sheath with the oriental motif.

Ally had to admit that she looked great in that dress when she was wearing four-inch heels, but on the sandy beach, they would be very much out of place, nor would she be able to walk. Plus, considering her five-foot frame, she wasn’t so sure the dress would have the same effect when she had on flat sandals.

Ally turned around and found Danny’s lips. She tasted him hungrily, and soon she wasn’t worrying about what to wear.

What was there about this man that made him different from the others she’d dated? Ally wondered with delight. She felt Danny harden against her, but she gently pushed him away.

“There’s plenty of time for that later, Danny,” she said breathlessly, turning back to the open closet. “Tonight’s important. Tonight, we’ll officially be a couple.”

“We aren’t now?” Danny countered. “We’ve been all but living together for months. It’s hardly a secret.”

“I know,” Ally replied. “But it’s a big deal for a woman. I can’t wait to introduce you to the people I work with,” she said as she selected a fuchsia sun-dress. She’d always thought it a little bright, but Danny had helped her pick it out. And she could wear sandals with it. “Will this one pass inspection?”

“Definitely.”

Danny reached around her and grabbed a moss-green polo shirt. Ally loved the way it stretched across his broad chest and over his wide shoulders. She smiled as she thought of the day she’d helped him pick it out. Telling her that he wore green almost every day, he’d rejected it almost immediately. She’d had to explain to him that with his tanned complexion, Irish green eyes and red hair it was perfect, and nowhere close to the same green as his battle-dress air force uniform. She chuckled, remembering.

“I don’t know why it matters, anyway,” Danny said.

“What matters?”

“Introducing me to your friends from work.”

“Not friends, Danny. Colleagues,” she corrected him. “My work is important to me. So are the people I work with.”

“Yeah, but you’ll be quitting soon enough,” Danny said.

Had he really just said that? Ally turned, her hands on her hips, and stared at him. Surely he was joking. But his expression proved that he was serious. “Why on earth would I be quitting my job?”

“No Murphey has ever allowed his wife to work. Not while he was alive, anyway,” Danny said.

“Allowed his wife to work? Allowed?” Ally repeated with incredulity. “What gives you Murphey men or any other men, for that matter, any say in the matter?”

He gaped at her as though she’d spoken in tongues. “As the head of the family,” he said slowly, as if addressing a slow child, “it’s the duty of the man of the house to provide for his wife and children.”

“I did not spend four years in college and work my buns off getting myself established in government civil service to have you or any man tell me that I can’t work, Danny!” Ally exclaimed.

He shrugged. “Okay. Let’s drop it for now. We have a party to go to. Let’s have fun.” He smiled and kissed Ally on the top of her head, then finished dressing. “We can hash the working thing out tomorrow.”

Fayetteville, North Carolina

Allison Carter smoothed her tailored business suit over her rounding belly and drew in a deep breath. She hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to work in her condition, but she’d made her bed—literally—and now she had to lie in it. At least now in her new position as instructor in this specialty school, her life had taken “normal” parameters. Her exhausting travel schedule had been reduced so as to be nearly nonexistent.